HOW HOLIDAYS TEST SCHOOLS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 33, 8 February 1913, Page 10

HOW HOLIDAYS TEST SCHOOLS

'♦ " - FAILURE OF COMPULSION. «"The children are home for the holidays. Do 'the parents realise," asks the Morning Post, "that a very good test of the success with which the school is doing its work is furnished by the children's power of amusing themselvea when the routine of work is removed? Young children' have a wonderful skill in filling up their time with occupations of their own imagining, and children who are bored are showing oni; of the symptoms of imperfection in the arrangements for bringing them up. "These arrangements the schoolmasters and schoolmistresses discuss in concert among themselves in the Christmas holidays, / and we should like to help them by putting before them the way things strike outside observers. " 'Has it ever occurred to yon?' wo should like to ask, "to consider the part which fear plays in people's .lives and how much better men and women would be, how much more efficient and how much happier, if it could be got rid ol altogether?' Half our mistakes in life, much of our rashness, much of our, un* kindness, and three-parts of our insincerity are due to fears. "We propound this question becausu, though it seem 3to us to udmit of only one answer, there are traditions .that make the other way. In the business of instruction the cane can hardly be a good instrument, and its use is a confession of inability to do the work properly, livery boy and girl wants to know, and the plan of compulsion is an admission of failure to present, the.subject in a shape intelligible to the mind to which it is offered. ' "But it is rather for purposes of discipline than as a means ot instruction that recourse is had to fear. In this a great deal depends on the temperament of the child. Not all children are brave. Those that are not may easily be driven ,in upon themselves and made into cowards, unable to tell the truth. Tin* effects of ill-judged severity are sometimes long lasting, possibly permanent. - "The schoolmasters are the persons who probably know most about the inner lives of young people. They might give parents a good deal of help if one of them would take the trouble to write the psychological history of the growing boy. Perhaps they are too busy. For the school of to-day. takes hold of almost too much of the children' 3 time. Not only the lessons, but the games, are system&tised, 'so* that the schoolboy has too little time for himself, and is apt 'to lose the facility of happily occupying himself. "Regulations and examinations tend to uniformity and the sealed pattern. Yet uniformity ia not. vitality, and tho , character that is valuable is personality. May not the educator diminish his utility by •. o.yer-estimating it?- Let any 'educated.' grown man look back and ask himself now many of Iris teachers were aiming at getting- him to think their thoughts ahd how feW of tiienl trying to lead him to think- thoughts of his dwn, ".We most! Of us^liVe on ideas that we ,haye. caught from, others, .and are almost ftfraid of seeing and judging for our.selves. When a man find* dull and dreary ay-book tha^ all his friends talk ■about a»- a -masterpiece he is shy of con-, fessing his own impression. ,-But-it may turn out that his friends ar« all repeating, "•whdß^sdme feVieWer-in'vogy^ told them, v?as*4b,6 'trWe tie^; that"th# reviewer was by "ho mean's fortunate- A ih mV verdict,' and that the gehuirie >l imp'ressi6ft' which he was too shy to., utter Mas ,'more Valuable than, the verdict^c-;' t)ie corner of society in which he 'moves., . "This is' ( one of. the ..train* of thought which make us , ask the' schoolmasters Whether their ideal ought not to be to enable each boy to attain to the supreme distinction of being himself, the person he was born -to be, instead of a copy, of one of the masters, of sdme other boy, oi- 6l some ideal boy who' never existed except in a sophisticated imagination. 1 '