RECONSTRUCTION

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 152, 22 March 1919, Page 8

RECONSTRUCTION

EDUCATIONAL REFORM THE TEACHING OF THE MOTHER TONGUE AN ENGLISHMAN'S GREATEST HERITAGE VAST IMPORTANCE OF SCHOOL LIBRARIES (For The Dominion.) (By I*'. L. Combs, M.A.) No. 111. "iivoryone has met with books, which, according to his mind, havo been epoch-making, opening to him horizons whose very existence he had never guessed. They throw wide open tho gates of a new world, where honcqjonvard he will use his mental powers. They aro the spark, which, Jailing on a hearth, kindles into flame materials otherwise never utilised." I'abre: The greatest of modem naturalists.

THE BOOK'S CREATIVE WORD. The quotation from Vabre conies from a book on insect lifo which in this naturestudying era ought to bo in every school in the .Dominion. Tho writer takes leave to doubt whether it is in one of them. Yet therein in his minutely detailed yet pellucid and fascinating style the k'rench Darwin communicates unescapably the contagion of his own enthusiasm for natural history.' What an opportunity for children to assimilate, not tho dead letter, but the vitalising spirit, of a vastly important subject. The pedagogue, serving merely as guide and director, falls back upon a teacher of entomology, a world-renowned observer, I'abre himself, at once .its artistic and its scientific master. Some fragments of anecdotal biography—a selected passage or so—read from the' book to the class, omnivorous curiosities whetted, and the child has up a head of steam that will carry him at high pressure through the instruction of the greatest of living teachers.

Better still, the two or three percent, to whom natural history is a special bent get into touch forthwith with its most stimulating and ennobling exponent. Result? Self-revelation. Fabre, touching hidden springs in their nature, awakens the vague and discursive soul to positive possibilities, to definite aspirations. It gains concentration and continuity of purpose. It learns its mission in life, even as Fabre himself learnt it, from the works of a venerated author. If this were true for one subject only of the curriculum it would deserve at lca.st some attention in a. series of articles designed to be compendious rather than encyclopaedic; Imt it as true of all the subjects of the curriculum—even truer of some. THE BOOK THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS. The school, with its many limitations of time, space, place, and habit, has one boundless possibility. It could at once stimulate and gratify a. thirst for the literary sources of knowledge. In every direction by suggestive teaching, it can oxc.ilo eager interests, mental appetites which themselves supply .the motive power necessary i'or their gratification. The school holds in its hand the open sesame of Ruskin'.s Icing's treasury •-our spacious mothor tongue and the countless wealth of sagacious thought, lofty and various emotion enshrined therein. To learn to read, not fluently and mechanically, ocularly, and •rtioularly, but with mind and imagination, is to be made a free man of the most illustrious company of all times, the thinkers of .tho world. Therein lies communion of spirit with the glowing' core of existence. 'What; is the civilisation of the day—the plastic ciingloinerato of opinions aud aetivities'that comprise it? What is it but the moulded and patterned image of the great bookmen that have graved it, the authors whose ideas and tendencies it. lias adopted, whoso personalities have sunk deep into it as does the seal into hot wax? THE BIBLE A PROOF. When tho English were a people of one book, and that the Bible, the enormous influence a literaluro wielded was patent on all sides. I'or nearly two centuries Europe tried to turn all its institutions into strenuous embodiments of liible teaching arid Jiiblo thought. The crude enthusiasms of its- passionately siuccre readers in Scotland, tor instance, made it, books, chapter, and text, dominant over the largest and pettiest details of national life. Its spirit brooded over every hour of daily domestic existence. Now that tho Biblo is so littlo read, now that both literature and life are catholic in outlook and progressive in spirit, rather than dogmatic and rigoristic, what should replace it? . In what literary successor should be vested the enormous power to sway opinion £nd guide action which tho Biblo onpe possessed? The answer is not difficult to give. As Reformation England was the Peoplo of a Look, so should our modern British Empire bo that of a Library-of Books.

NEXT TO THE TEACHER THE LIBRARY. For this reasons are obvious and need only be cursorily assigned. Tlio diversity of modern problems, their increase, their novelty, demands light upon them from every quarter of the intellectual compass. The fact that owing to our avowed democratic: sentiments all these problems aro susceptible only of a popular solution means that not only the specialist but his master and'ultimate court of appeal, the man in tlio street, should be widely in- ! formed and ready and skilful in his recourse to authorities and sources of information. The man in tho street, there- ! fore, not merely in the superficial sense j which leaves our public reference rooms i empty, but in that deeper one which would create a respectable collection of books in every home, should hnvo the freft run of a library. Ho should feel, that is, at home in it, happy and zealous in the use of it, not merely possess an unexercised right of entry. THE SCHOOL'S LIBRARY ITS INTELLECTUAL CENTRE, ; What could the school do toward this consummation of a library-using democracy, things impossible to a ! Carnegie? In tho first place it should have a library of its own, and a very good one. South Wellington, with its 700 pupils, might very well have one costing at least that number of pounds. The books should be no mcro scratch collection, nor even a generous but casual assemblage of volumes. They should organise themselves round the. systematic processes of the .school's instruction. No half-hour lesson in geography, history, or I science, but should sow appolising hints provocative of inquiries for at least half I a dozen volumes; no exceptionally promising pupil but what at the age of eight or nine should be set moving along lines of special research into tho storied past or the scientific present and future. No teacher well up in his subject but should have at his command ready for distribution the literary seed which he knows will sprout immediately in the mind-soil stirred and turned by his efforts. Yet how appallingly obtuso is our education system. We give 20 hours in a wenlr (far too much) out of 25 to thought processes. Wo give half Hint l ime to I lie mother tongue, but how, after stimulating thought processes, do wo nourish them? llow, after inculcating tho technique of reading, do we go to work to gratify and increase that appetite. for mind communion, which is ils onlv valid objective? The meagre and ill-assorted character of most of muscimol libraries will wiswer this question. In many cases it is with reading as it is with music, if after the scales hail been learnt the pupil eschewed the subject. "THAT MOST DAMNABLE HERESY." To the library, llie codified and catalogued thought_ of our dead and living leaders, the writer has given no undue prominence. This country spends nearly a million a year for no other purpose

Hum to make our people real readers. What results are accomplished? Analyse the borrowings of any circulating library and the results arc not encouraging. Consider, 100, tho fact that after three generations of literary education one ideal of a big section of our overbearing democracy—an ideal urged on the. score of cheapness—is that must damnable heresy, uniform school books. If, on the contrary, in our schools, by means of amplo libraries, diversity of taste and independence of inquiry were cneouraged, it would still be questionable whether their pupils would have a collective mastery of English literature adequate to a national culture in the mother tongue. Uniform school books? Starvation in tho midst of abundance—stereotyped sameness where individuality might bo developed to an unlimited extent. 'We do not even by giving, what is cheap and good compensate our school offspring for their overdose of what i> cheap and nasty. ONE FINAL ASPECT. In conclusion, in teaching power, in numbers, and quality, the Dominion is admittedly weak. Tho readiest immediate substitute or palliative would be ail abundance of suitable literature. If books will help the good teacher much, they will help the pupils of the poor teacher even more.' After all, the setting of a child on its alphabetical legs is no tremendous problem. IVoni then on. if it receive even mediocre assistance, ft can move through an ascending series of carefully graded books to what may almost be termed self-mastery of Knglish literature. The Montesson system demonstrates as much. As will Ihe plant in the seed-bed, so, too, will the mind grow of its own impulse, if only the literary compost is applied to its roots; if, in other words, it has a supply of books (Carlyle's University) to turn to. That the good teacher is dispensable because of the good books, is, of course, a paradox to be avoided, for flic enthusiasm of a sincere and capable exponent of an author, for that author's works, is, and always will be, the best and most effective means of begetting a like enthusiasm and receptivity toward him. But education is at a stage of second best in this Dominion, and the world over, and the great book is 110 despicable runner-up to the gifted educator. That is why next to the teacher in importance and before him in availability and immediate effectiveness the writer lias given place as nil educational organism to the school library. What in detail a school library might be, may perhaps form the subject of an article subsequent to the conclusion of the present series.