CHAPTER XIVGENERAL PRINCIPLES
Thebuilding up of character, which has been our theme hitherto, should be mainly a matter for the earlier years. If rightly conducted, it ought to be nearly complete by the age of six. I do not mean that a character cannot be spoilt after that age; there is no age at which untoward circumstances or environment will not do harm. What I mean is that, after the age of six, a boy or girl who has been given the right early training ought to have habits and desires which will lead in the right direction if a certain care is taken with the environment. A school composed of boys and girls rightly brought up during their first six years will constitute a good environment, given a modicum of good sense in the authorities; it ought not to be necessary to give much time or thought to moral questions, since such further virtues as are required ought to result naturally from purely intellectual training. I do not mean to assert this pedantically as an absolute rule, but as a principle guiding school authoritiesas regards the matters upon which they ought to lay emphasis. I am convinced that, if children up to the age of six have been properly handled, it is best that the school authorities should lay stress upon purely intellectual progress, and should rely upon this to produce the further development of character which is still desirable.
It is a bad thing for intelligence, and ultimately for character, to let instruction be influenced by moral considerations. It should not be thought that some knowledge is harmful and some ignorance is good. The knowledge which is imparted should be imparted for an intellectual purpose, not to prove some moral or political conclusion. The purpose of the teaching should be, from the pupil’s point of view, partly to satisfy his curiosity, partly to give him the skill required in order that he may be able to satisfy his curiosity for himself. From the teacher’s point of view, there must also be the stimulation of certain fruitful kinds of curiosity. But there must never be discouragement of curiosity, even if it takes directions which lie outside the school curriculum altogether. I do not mean that the curriculum should be interrupted, but that the curiosity should be regarded as laudable, and the boy or girl should be told how to satisfy it after school hours, by means of books in the library for example.
But at this point I shall be met by an argument which must be faced at the outset. What if a boy’s curiosity is morbid or perverted? What if he is interested in obscenity or in accounts of tortures? What if he is only interested in prying into other people’s doings? Are such forms of curiosity to be encouraged? In answering this question, we must make a distinction. Most emphatically, we are not to behave so that the boy’s curiosity shall continue to be limited to these directions. But it does not follow that we are to make him feel wicked for wishing to know about such things, or that we are to struggle to keep knowledge of them away from him. Almost always, the whole attraction of such knowledge consists in the fact that it is forbidden; in a certain number of cases, it is connected with some pathological mental condition which needs medical treatment. But in no case is prohibition and moral horror the right treatment. As the commonest and most important case, let us take an interest in obscenity. I do not believe that such a thing could exist in a boy or girl to whom sex knowledge was just like any other knowledge. A boy who obtains possession of indecent pictures is proud of his skill in having done so, and of knowing what his less enterprising companions have failed to find out. If he had been told openly and decently all about sex, he wouldfeel no interest in such pictures. If, nevertheless, a boy were found to have such an interest, I should have him treated by a doctor skilled in these matters. The treatment should begin by encouraging him to utter freely even his most shocking thoughts, and should continue with a flood of further information, growing gradually more technical and scientific, until the whole matter bored him to extinction. When he felt that there was nothing more to know, and that what he did know was uninteresting, he would be cured. The important point is that the knowledge in itself is not bad, but only the habit of brooding on one particular topic. An obsession is not cured, at first, by violent efforts to distract attention, but rather by a plethora of the subject. Through this, the interest can be made scientific instead of morbid; and when that has been achieved, it takes its legitimate place among other interests, and ceases to be an obsession. This, I am convinced, is the right way to deal with a narrow and morbid curiosity. Prohibition and moral horror can only make it worse.
Although improvement of character should not be the aim of instruction, there are certain qualities which are very desirable, and which are essential to the successful pursuit of knowledge; they may be called the intellectual virtues. These should result from intellectualeducation; but they should result as needed in learning, not as virtues pursued for their own sakes. Among such qualities the chief seem to me: curiosity, open-mindedness, belief that knowledge is possible though difficult, patience, industry, concentration and exactness. Of these, curiosity is fundamental; where it is strong and directed to the right objects, all the rest will follow. But perhaps curiosity is not quite so active as to be made the basis of the whole intellectual life. There should always also be a desire todosomething difficult; the knowledge which is acquired should appear in the pupil’s mind as skill, just like skill in games or gymnastics. It is, I suppose, unavoidable that the skill should be in part merely that required for artificial school tasks; but wherever it can be made to appear necessary for some non-scholastic purpose which appeals to the pupil, something very important has been accomplished. The divorce of knowledge from life is regrettable, although, during school years, it is not wholly avoidable. Where it is hardest to avoid, there should be occasional talks about the utility of the knowledge in question—taking “utility” in a very broad sense. Nevertheless, I should allow a large place to pure curiosity, without which much of the most valuable knowledge (for instance, pure mathematics) would never have been discovered. There ismuch knowledge which seems to me valuable on its own account, quite apart from any use to which it is capable of being put. And I should not wish to encourage the young to look too closely for an ulterior purpose in all knowledge; disinterested curiosity is natural to the young, and is a very valuable quality. It is only where it fails that I should appeal to the desire for skill such as can be exhibited in practice. Each motive has its place, but neither should be allowed to push the other aside.
I am aware that I have been assuming that some knowledge is desirable on its own account, not merely on account of its utility. This view is often challenged. I find it said by Professor O’Shea[20]that in European and Oriental schools “a person is not regarded as educated, or at least not cultured, unless he has amassed a considerable body of knowledge of ancient flavour. But in our country we are rapidly coming to the view that culture does not depend upon the mere possession of facts, whether ancient or modern. The cultured individual is one who has acquired knowledge and skill which make him of service to society, and habits of conduct which make him agreeable in association with his fellows.[21]Knowledge which does not function in the life of the individual in his relationswith others, to-day is not regarded by American teachers as of value for culture any more than for disciplinary purposes.”
Of course this account of how the Old World regards culture is a caricature. No one would maintain thatmereknowledge of facts confers culture. But it would be argued that culture implies a certain freedom from parochialism, both in space and time, and that this involves a respect for excellence even if it is found in another country or another age. We are apt to exaggerate our superiority not only to foreigners, but to the men of former times, and this makes us contemptuous of everything in which they were better than we are, which includes the whole æsthetic side of life. And I should say that culture involves a certain power of contemplation, for thinking or feeling without rushing headlong into energetic action. This leads me to a certain hesitation in adopting the theory of what is called “dynamic” education, which “requires pupils actually todowhat they are learning” (ib. p. 401). Undoubtedly this method is right with young children, but education is not complete until more abstract and intellectual methods have become possible. To “do” the nebular hypothesis or the French Revolution would take a long time, not to mention danger from the guillotine. A person who has been adequately educated has learned toextract the meaning from abstractions when necessary, and to manipulate them as abstractions so long as that will serve his purpose. A mathematician who had to stop to realize the meaning of each step in his transformations would never get through his work; the essential merit of his instrument is that it can be used without this labour. In higher education, therefore, the dynamic method seems inadequate. I cannot help thinking that its popularity in America is partly due to the notion that all excellence consists in doing, rather than in thinking and feeling. This notion is implicit in the definition of culture which I quoted just now, and is natural in a mechanical age, since a machine can only do, and is not expected to think or feel. But the assimilation of men to machines, whatever may be thought of it metaphysically, is hardly likely to give us a just standard of values.
Open-mindedness is a quality which will always exist where desire for knowledge is genuine. It only fails where other desires have become entangled with the belief that we already know the truth. That is why it is so much commoner in youth than in later life. A man’s activities are almost necessarily bound up with some decision on an intellectually doubtful matter. A clergyman cannot be disinterested about theology, nor a soldier about war. Alawyer is bound to hold that criminals ought to be punished—unless they can afford a leading lawyer’s fee. A schoolmaster will favour the particular system of education for which he is fitted by his training and experience. A politician can hardly help believing in the principles of the party which is most likely to give him office. When once a man has chosen his career, he cannot be expected to be perpetually considering whether some other choice might not have been better. In later life, therefore, open-mindedness has its limitations, though they ought to be as few as possible. But in youth there are far fewer of what William James called “forced options”, and therefore there is less occasion for the “will to believe”. Young people ought to be encouraged to regard every question as open, and to be able to throw over any opinion as the result of an argument. It is implied in this freedom of thought that there should not be complete freedom of action. A boy must not be free to run off to sea under the influence of some story of adventure in the Spanish Main. But so long as his education continues, he should be free tothinkthat it is better to be a pirate than a professor.
Power of concentration is a very valuable quality, which few people acquire except through education. It is true that it grows naturally, to a considerable extent, as young peopleget older; very young infants seldom think of any one thing for more than a few minutes, but with every year that passes their attention grows less volatile until they are adult. Nevertheless, they are hardly likely to acquire enough concentration without a long period of intellectual education. There are three qualities which distinguish perfect concentration: it should be intense, prolonged, and voluntary. Intensity is illustrated by the story of Archimedes, who is said to have never noticed when the Romans captured Syracuse and came to kill him, because he was absorbed in a mathematical problem. To be able to concentrate on the same matter for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement, and even to the understanding of any complicated or abstruse subject. A profound spontaneous interest brings this about naturally, so far as the object of interest is concerned. Most people can concentrate on a mechanical puzzle for a long time; but this is not in itself very useful. To be really valuable, the concentration must also be within the control of the will. By this I mean that, even where some piece of knowledge is uninteresting in itself, a man can force himself to acquire it if he has an adequate motive for doing so. I think it is above all the control of attention by the will that is conferred by higher education. In this one respect, an old-fashioned educationis admirable; I doubt whether modern methods are as successful in teaching a man to endure voluntary boredom. However, if this defect does exist in modern educational practice, it is by no means irremediable. The matter is one to which I shall return later.
Patience and industry ought to result from a good education. It was formerly thought that they could only be secured, in most cases, by the enforcement of good habits imposed by external authority. Undoubtedly this method has some success, as may be seen when a horse is broken in. But I think it is better to stimulate the ambition required for overcoming difficulties, which can be done by grading the difficulties so that the pleasure of success may at first be won fairly easily. This gives experience of the rewards of persistence, and gradually the amount of persistence required can be increased. Exactly similar remarks apply to the belief that knowledge is difficult but not impossible, which is best generated by inducing the pupil to solve a series of carefully graded problems.
Exactness, like the voluntary control of attention, is a matter to which educational reformers perhaps tend to attach too little importance. Dr. Ballard (op. cit.Chap. XVI) states definitely that our elementary schools, in this respect, are not so good as they were,although in most respects they are vastly improved. He says: “There is in existence a large number of tests given to school-children in the annual examinations of the ’eighties and early ’nineties, and the results of those tests were scheduled for purposes of grant.[22]When those same tests are set to-day to children of the same age the results are palpably and consistently worse. Account for it as we may, there can be no doubt whatever about the fact. Taken as a whole, the work done in our schools—our primary schools at least—is less accurate than it was a quarter of a century ago.” Dr. Ballard’s whole discussion of this subject is so excellent that I have little to add to it. I will, however, quote his concluding words: “After all deductions have been made, it [accuracy] is still a noble and inspiring ideal. It is the morality of the intellect: it prescribes what it ought to strive for in the pursuit of its own proper ideal. For the extent to which we are accurate in our thoughts, words, and deeds is a rough measure of our fealty to truth.”
The difficulty which is felt by the advocate of modern methods is that accuracy, as hitherto taught, involves boredom, and that it is an immense gain if education can be made interesting. Here, however, we must make a distinction.Boredom merely imposed by the teacher is wholly bad; boredom voluntarily endured by the pupil in order to satisfy some ambition is valuable if not overdone. It should be part of education to fire pupils with desires not easily gratified—to know the calculus, to read Homer, to perform well on the violin, or what not. Each of these involves its own kind of accuracy. Able boys and girls will go through endless tedium and submit willingly to severe discipline in order to acquire some coveted knowledge or skill. Those who have less native ability can often be fired by similar ambitions if they are inspiringly taught. The driving force in education should be the pupil’s wish to learn, not the master’s authority; but it does not follow that education should be soft and easy and pleasant at every stage. This applies, in particular, to the question of accuracy. The acquisition of exact knowledge is apt to be wearisome, but it is essential to every kind of excellence, and this fact can be made obvious to a child by suitable methods. In so far as modern methods fail in this respect, they are at fault. In this matter, as in many others, reaction against the old bad forms of discipline has tended to an undue laxity, which will have to give place to a new discipline, more internal and psychological than the old external authority. Of this new discipline, accuracy will be the intellectual expression.
There are various kinds of accuracy, each of which has its own importance. To take the main kinds: There is muscular accuracy, æsthetic accuracy, accuracy as to matter-of-fact, and logical accuracy. Every boy or girl can appreciate the importance of muscular accuracy in many directions; it is required for the control of the body which a healthy child spends all its spare time in acquiring, and afterwards for the games upon which prestige depends. But it has other forms which have more to do with school-teaching, such as well-articulated speech, good writing, and correct performance on a musical instrument. A child will think these things important or unimportant according to his environment. Æsthetic accuracy is difficult to define; it has to do with the appropriateness of a sensible stimulus for the production of emotion. One way of teaching an important form of it is to cause children to learn poetry by heart—e.g., Shakespeare, for purposes of acting—and to make them feel, when they make mistakes, why the original is better. I believe it would be found that, where æsthetic sensibility is wide-spread, children are taught conventional stereotyped performances, such as dances and songs, which they enjoy, but which must be done exactly right on account of tradition. This makes them sensitive to small differences, which is essential to accuracy. Acting,singing, and dancing seem to me the best methods of teaching æsthetic precision. Drawing is less good, because it is likely to be judged by its fidelity to the model, not by æsthetic standards. It is true that stereotyped performances also are expected to reproduce a model, but it is a model created by æsthetic motives; it is copied because it is good, not because copying is good.
Accuracy as to matter-of-fact is intolerably boring when pursued on its own account. Learning the dates of the kings of England, or the names of the counties and their capitals, used to be one of the terrors of childhood. It is better to secure accuracy by interest and repetition. I could never remember the list of capes, but at eight years old I knew almost all the stations on the Underground. If children were shown a cinema representing a ship sailing round the coast, they would soon know the capes. I don’t think they are worth knowing, but if they were, that would be the way to teach them. All geography ought to be taught on the cinema; so ought history at first. The initial expense would be great, but not too great for governments. And there would be a subsequent economy in ease of teaching.
Logical accuracy is a late acquisition, and should not be forced upon young children. Getting the multiplication table right is, ofcourse, accuracy as to matter-of-fact; it only becomes logical accuracy at a much later stage. Mathematics is the natural vehicle for this teaching, but it fails if allowed to appear as a set of arbitrary rules. Rules must be learnt, but at some stage the reasons for them must be made clear; if this is not done, mathematics has little educative value.
I come now to a question which has already arisen in connection with exactness, the question, namely, how far it is possible or desirable to make all instruction interesting. The old view was that a great deal of it must be dull, and that only stern authority will induce the average boy to persist. (The average girl was to remain ignorant.) The modern view is that it can be made delightful through and through. I have much more sympathy with the modern view than with the old one; nevertheless, I think it is subject to some limitations, especially in higher education. I shall begin with what I think true in it.
Modern writers on infant psychology all emphasize the importance of not urging a young child to eat or sleep: these things ought to be done spontaneously by the child, not as a result of coaxing or forcing. My own experience entirely bears out this teaching. At first, we did not know the newer teaching, and tried the older methods. They were very unsuccessful,whereas the modern methods succeeded perfectly. It must not be supposed, however, that the modern parent does nothing about eating and sleeping; on the contrary, everything possible is done to promote the formation of good habits. Meals come at regular times, and the child must sit through them without games whether he eats or not. Bed comes at regular times, and the child must lie down in bed. He may have a toy animal to hug, but not one that squeaks or runs or does anything exciting. If the animal is a favourite, one may play the game that the animal is tired and the child must put it to sleep. Then leave the child alone, and sleep will usually come very quickly. But never let the child think you are anxious he should sleep or eat. That at once makes him think you are asking a favour; this gives him a sense of power, which leads him to demand more and more coaxing or punishment. He should eat and sleep because he wants to, not to please you.
This psychology is obviously applicable in great measure to instruction. If you insist upon teaching a child, he will conclude that he is being asked to do something disagreeable to please you, and he will have a psychological resistance. If this exists at the start, it will perpetuate itself; at a later age, the desirability of getting through examinations may becomeevident, and there will be work for that purpose, but none from sheer interest in knowledge. If, on the contrary, you can first stimulate the child’s desire to know, and then, as a favour, give him the knowledge he wants, the whole situation is different. Very much less external discipline is required, and attention is secured without difficulty. To succeed in this method, certain conditions are necessary, which Madame Montessori successfully produces among the very young. The tasks must be attractive and not too difficult. There must, at first, be the example of other children at a slightly more advanced stage. There must be no other obviously pleasant occupation open to the child at the moment. There are a number of things the child may do, and he works by himself at whichever he prefers. Almost all children are perfectly happy in this régime, and learn to read and write without pressure before they are five years old.
How far similar methods can advantageously be applied to older children is a debatable question. As children grow older, they become responsive to more remote motives, and it is no longer necessary that every detail should be interesting in itself. But I think the broad principle that the impulse to education should come from the pupil can be continued up to any age. The environment should be such as tostimulate the impulse, and to make boredom and isolation the alternative to learning. But any child that preferred this alternative on any occasion should be allowed to choose it. The principle of individual work can be extended, though a certain amount of class-work seems indispensable after the early years. But if external authority is necessary to induce a boy or girl to learn, unless there is a medical cause, the probability is that the teacher is at fault or that previous moral training has been bad. If a child has been properly trained up to the age of five or six, any good teacher ought to be able to win his interest at later stages.
If this is possible, the advantages are immense. The teacher appears as the friend of the pupil, not as his enemy. The child learns faster, because he is co-operating. He learns with less fatigue, because there is not the constant strain of bringing back a reluctant and bored attention. And his sense of personal initiative is cultivated instead of being diminished. On account of these advantages, it seems worth while to assume that the pupil can be led to learn by the force of his own desires, without the exercise of compulsion by the teacher. If, in a small percentage of cases, the method were found to be a failure, these cases could be isolated and instructed by different methods. But I believe that, given methods adapted to thechild’s intelligence, there would be very few failures.
For reasons already given in connection with accuracy, I do not believe that a really thorough education can be made interesting through and through. However much one may wish to know a subject, some parts of it are sure to be found dull. But I believe that, given suitable guidance, a boy or girl can be made to feel the importance of learning the dull parts, and can be got through them also without compulsion. I should use the stimulus of praise and blame, applied as the result of good or bad performance of set tasks. Whether a pupil possesses the necessary skill should be made as obvious as in games or gymnastics. And the importance of the dull parts of a subject should be made clear by the teacher. If all these methods failed, the child would have to be classified as stupid, and taught separately from children of normal intelligence, though care must be taken not to let this appear as a punishment.
Except in very rare cases, the teacher, even at an early age (i.e., after four, say) should not be either parent. Teaching is work requiring a special type of skill, which can be learnt, but which most parents have not had the opportunity of learning. The earlier the age of the pupil, the greater is the pedagogical skill required. And apart from this, the parent hasbeen in constant contact with the child before formal education began, so that the child has a set of habits and expectations towards the parent which are not quite appropriate towards a teacher. The parent, moreover, is likely to be too eager and too much interested in his child’s progress. He will be inordinately pleased by the child’s cleverness and exasperated by his stupidity. There are the same reasons for not teaching one’s own children as have led medical men not to treat their own families. But of course I do not mean that parents should not give such instruction as comes naturally; I mean only that they are, as a rule, not the best people for formal school lessons, even when they are well qualified to teach other people’s children.
Throughout education, from the first day to the last, there should be a sense of intellectual adventure. The world is full of puzzling things which can be understood by sufficient effort. The sense of understanding what had been puzzling is exhilarating and delightful; every good teacher should be able to give it. Madame Montessori describes the delight of her children when they find they can write; I remember a sense almost of intoxication when I first read Newton’s deduction of Kepler’s Second Law from the law of gravitation. Few joys are so pure or so useful as this. Initiativeand individual work give the pupil the opportunity of discovery, and thus afford the sense of mental adventure far more often and more keenly than is possible where everything is taught in class. Wherever it is possible, let the student be active rather than passive. This is one of the secrets of making education a happiness rather than a torment.