CHAPTER XVTHE SCHOOL CURRICULUM BEFORE FOURTEEN
Thequestions: what should be taught? and how should it be taught? are intimately connected, because, if better methods of teaching are devised, it is possible to learn more. In particular, more can be learnt if the pupils wish to learn than if they regard work as a bore. I have already said something about methods, and I shall say more in a later chapter. For the present, I shall assume that the best possible methods are employed, and I shall consider what ought to be taught.
When we consider what an adult ought to know, we soon realize that there are things which everybody ought to know, and other things which it is necessary that some should know, though others need not. Some must know medicine, but for the bulk of mankind it is sufficient to have an elementary knowledge of physiology and hygiene. Some must know higher mathematics, but the bare elements suffice for those to whom mathematics is distasteful. Some should know how to play thetrombone, but mercifully it is not necessary that every school-child should practise this instrument. In the main, the things taught at school before the age of fourteen should be among those that every one ought to know; apart from exceptional cases, specialization ought to come later. It should, however, be one of the aims of education before fourteen to discover special aptitudes in boys and girls, so that, where they exist, they may be carefully developed in the later years. For this reason, it is well that everybody should learn the bare beginnings of subjects which need not be further pursued by those who are bad at them.
When we have decided what every adult ought to know, we have to decide the order in which subjects are to be taught; here we shall naturally be guided by relative difficulty, teaching the easiest subjects first. To a great extent, these two principles determine the curriculum in the early school years.
I shall assume that, by the time a child is five years old, he knows how to read and write. This should be the business of the Montessori school, or whatever improvement upon it may hereafter be devised. There, also, the child learns a certain accuracy in sense-perception, the rudiments of drawing and singing and dancing, and the power to concentrate upon someeducational occupation in the middle of a number of other children. Of course the child will not be very perfect in these respects at five years old, and will need further teaching in all of them for some years to come. I do not think that anything involving severe mental effort should be undertaken before the age of seven, but by sufficient skill difficulties can be enormously diminished. Arithmetic is a bugbear of childhood—I remember weeping bitterly because I could not learn the multiplication table—but if it is tackled gradually and carefully, as it is by means of the Montessori apparatus, there is no need of the sense of blank despair which its mysteries used to inspire. In the end, however, there must be a good deal of rather tiresome mastering of rules if sufficient facility is to be acquired. This is the most awkward of early school subjects to fit into a curriculum intended to be interesting; nevertheless, a certain degree of proficiency is necessary for practical reasons. Also, arithmetic affords the natural introduction to accuracy: the answer to a sum is either right or wrong, and never “interesting” or “suggestive”. This makes arithmetic important as one element in early education, quite apart from its practical utility. But its difficulties should be carefully graded and spread out thin; not too much time at a stretch should be devoted to them.
Geography and history were, when I was young, among the worst taught of all subjects. I dreaded the geography lesson, and if I tolerated the history lesson it was only because I have always had a passion for history. Both subjects might be made fascinating to quite young children. My little boy, though he has never had a lesson, already knows far more geography than his nurse. He has acquired his knowledge through the love of trains and steamers which he shares with all boys. He wants to know of journeys that his imaginary steamers are to make, and he listens with the closest attention while I tell him the stages of the journey to China. Then, if he wishes it, I show him pictures of the various countries on the way. Sometimes he insists upon pulling out the big Atlas and looking at the journey on the map. The journey between London and Cornwall in the train, which he makes twice a year, interests him passionately, and he knows all the stations where the train stops or where carriages are slipped. He is fascinated by the North Pole and the South Pole, and puzzled because there is no East Pole or West Pole. He knows the directions of France and Spain and America over the sea, and a good deal about what is to be seen in those countries. None of this has come by way of instruction, but all inresponse to an eager curiosity. Almost every child becomes interested in geography as soon as it is associated with the idea of travel. I should teach geography partly by pictures and tales about travellers, but mainly by the cinema, showing what the traveller sees on his journey. The knowledge of geographical facts is useful, but without intrinsic intellectual value; when, however, geography is made vivid by pictures, it has the merit of giving food for imagination. It is good to know that there are hot countries and cold countries, flat countries and mountainous countries, black men, yellow men, brown men, and red men, as well as white men. This kind of knowledge diminishes the tyranny of familiar surroundings over the imagination, and makes it possible in later life tofeelthat distant countries really exist, which otherwise is very difficult except by travelling. For these reasons, I should give geography a large place in the teaching of very young children, and I should be astonished if they did not enjoy the subject. Later on, I should give them books with pictures, maps, and elementary information about different parts of the world, and get them to put together little essays about the peculiarities of various countries.
What applies to geography applies even more strongly to history, though at a slightly moreadvanced age, because the sense of time is rudimentary at first. I think history can profitably be begun at about five years old, at first with interesting stories of eminent men, abundantly illustrated. I myself had, at that age, a picture-history of England. Queen Matilda crossing the Thames at Abingdon on the ice made such a profound impression upon me that I still felt thrilled when I did the same thing at the age of eighteen, and quite imagined that King Stephen was after me. I believe hardly any boy of five years old would fail to be interested by the life of Alexander. Columbus perhaps belongs more to geography than to history; I can testify that he becomes interesting before the age of two, at least to children who know the sea. By the time a child is six years old, he ought to be ripe for an outline of world history, treated more or less on Mr. Wells’s or Mr. Van Loon’s lines, with the necessary simplifications, and with pictures, or the cinema if possible. If he lives in London, he can see the strange beasts in the Natural History Museum; but I should not take him to the British Museum before the age of ten or thereabouts. It is necessary to be careful, in teaching history, not to obtrude aspects which are interesting to us until the child is ripe for them. The two aspects which are first interesting are: the generalpageant and procession, from geology to man, from savage man to civilized man, and so on; and the dramatic story-telling interest of incidents which have a sympathetic hero. But I think we should keep in our own minds, as a guiding thread, the conception of gradual chequered progress, perpetually hampered by the savagery which we inherit from the brutes, and yet gradually leading on towards mastery of ourselves and our environment through knowledge. The conception is that of the human race as a whole, fighting against chaos without and darkness within, the little tiny lamp of reason growing gradually into a great light by which the night is dispelled. The divisions between races, nations and creeds should be treated as follies, distracting us in the battle against Chaos and Old Night, which is our one truly human activity.
I should give first the illustrations of this theme, and only afterwards, if ever, the theme itself. I should show savage man cowering in the cold, gnawing the raw fruits of the earth. I should show the discovery of fire, and its effects; in this connection, the story of Prometheus would be in place. I should show the beginnings of agriculture in the Nile Valley, and the domestication of sheep and cows and dogs. I should show the growth of ships fromcanoes to the largest liners, and the growth of cities from colonies of cave-dwellers to London and New York. I should show the gradual growth of writing and of numerals. I should show the brief gleam of Greece, the diffused magnificence of Rome, the subsequent darkness, and the coming of science. The whole of this could be made interesting in detail even to very young children. I should not keep silence about wars and persecutions and cruelties, but I should not hold up military conquerors to admiration. The true conquerors, in my teaching of history, should be those who did something to dispel the darkness within and without—Buddha and Socrates, Archimedes, Galileo and Newton, and all the men who have helped to give us mastery over ourselves or over nature. And so I should build up the conception of a lordly splendid destiny for the human race, to which we are false when we revert to wars and other atavistic follies, and true only when we put into the world something that adds to our human dominion.
In the early years at school, there should be a time set apart for dancing, which is good for the body and a training for the æsthetic sense, besides being a great pleasure to the children. Collective dances should be taught after the elements have been learnt; this is a form ofco-operation which young children easily appreciate. Similar remarks apply to singing, though it should begin a little later than dancing, both because it does not afford the same muscular delight, and because its rudiments are more difficult. Most children, though not all, will enjoy singing, and after nursery rhymes they should learn really beautiful songs. There is no reason to corrupt their taste first and try to purify it afterwards. At the best, this makes people precious. Children, like adults, differ enormously in musical capacity, so that the more difficult singing classes would have to be reserved for a selection among the older children. And among them singing ought to be voluntary, not enforced.
The teaching of literature is a matter as to which it is easy to make mistakes. There is not the slightest use, either for young or old, in being well-informedaboutliterature, knowing the dates of the poets, the names of their works, and so on. Everything that can be put into a handbook is worthless. What is valuable is great familiarity with certain examples of good literature—such familiarity as will influence the style, not only of writing, but of thought. In old days the Bible supplied this to English children, certainly with a beneficial effect upon prose style; but few modern children know theBible intimately. I think the good effect of literature cannot be fully obtained without learning by heart. This practice used to be advocated as a training for the memory, but psychologists have shown that it has little, if any, effect in this way. Modern educationists give it less and less place. But I think they are mistaken, not because of any possible improvement of memory, but on account of the effect upon beauty of language in speech and writing. This should come without effort, as a spontaneous expression of thought; but in order to do so, in a community which has lost the primitive æsthetic impulses, it is necessary to produce a habit of thought which I believe is only to be generated by intimate knowledge of good literature. That is why learning by heart seems to me important.
But mere learning of set pieces, such as “the quality of mercy” and “all the world’s a stage”, seems tedious and artificial to most children, and therefore fails of its purpose. It is much better that learning by heart should be associated with acting, because then it is a necessary means to something which every child loves. From the age of three onwards, children delight in acting a part; they do it spontaneously, but are overjoyed when more elaborate ways of doing it are put in their way. I remember the exquisiteamusement with which I acted the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius, and declaimed:
I had rather be a dog and bay the moonThan such a Roman.
I had rather be a dog and bay the moonThan such a Roman.
I had rather be a dog and bay the moon
Than such a Roman.
Children who take part in performingJulius CæsarorThe Merchant of Veniceor any other suitable play will not only know their own parts, but most of the other parts as well. The play will be in their thoughts for a long time, and all by way of enjoyment. After all, good literature is intended to give pleasure, and if children cannot be got to derive pleasure from it they are hardly likely to derive benefit either. For these reasons, I should confine the teaching of literature, in early years, to the learning of parts for acting. The rest should consist of voluntary reading of well-written stories, obtainable in the school library. People nowadays write silly sentimental stuff for children, which insults them by not taking them seriously. Contrast the intense seriousness of “Robinson Crusoe”. Sentimentality, in dealing with children and elsewhere, is a failure of dramatic sympathy. No child thinks it charming to be childish; he wants, as soon as possible, to learn to behave like a grown-up person. Therefore a book for children ought never to display a patronizing pleasure in childish ways. The artificial silliness of many modern children’sbooks is disgusting. It must either annoy a child, or puzzle and confuse his impulse towards mental growth. For this reason, the best books for children are those that happen to suit them, though written for grown-up people. The only exceptions are books written for children but delightful also to grown-up people, such as Lear and Lewis Carroll.
The question of modern languages is one which is not altogether easy. In childhood it is possible to learn to speak a modern language perfectly, which can never be achieved in later years; there are therefore strong grounds for teaching languages at an early age, if at all. Some people seem to fear that knowledge of one’s own language suffers if others are learnt too soon. I do not believe this. Tolstoy and Turgenev were quite competent in Russian, though they learnt English, French and German in infancy. Gibbon could write in French as easily as in English, but this did not spoil his English style. All through the eighteenth century, all English aristocrats learnt French in early youth as a matter of course, and many also learnt Italian; yet their English was vastly better than that of their modern descendants. A child’s dramatic instinct prevents it from confusing one language with another, provided it speaks them to different people. I learnt German at the same time as English, and spokeit to nurses and governesses up to the age of ten; then I learnt French, and spoke it to governesses and tutors. Neither language ever confused itself with English, because it had different personal associations. I think that if a modern language is to be taught, it should be taught by a person whose native language it is, not only because it will be better taught, but because children feel less artificiality in talking a foreign language to a foreigner than in talking it to a person whose natural language is the same as their own. I think, therefore, that every school for children ought to have a French mistress, and if possible a German mistress too, who should not formally instruct the children in her language, except quite at first, but should play games with them and talk to them, and make the success of the games depend upon their understanding and answering. She could start withFrère JacquesandSur le pont d’Avignon, and go on gradually to more complicated games. In this way the language could be acquired without any mental fatigue, and with all the pleasure of play-acting. And it can be acquired then far more perfectly and with less waste of valuable educational time than at any subsequent period.
The teaching of mathematics and science can only be begun towards the end of the years that we are considering in this chapter—say at theage of twelve. Of course I assume that arithmetic has already been taught, and that there have been popular talks about astronomy and geology, about prehistoric animals, famous explorers, and such naturally interesting matters. But I am thinking now of formal teaching—geometry and algebra, physics and chemistry. A few boys and girls like geometry and algebra, but the great majority do not. I doubt if this is wholly due to faulty methods of teaching. A sense for mathematics, like musical capacity, is mainly a gift of the gods, and I believe it to be quite rare, even in a moderate degree. Nevertheless, every boy and girl should have a taste of mathematics, in order to discover those who have a talent for it. Also, even those who learn little profit by the knowledge that there is such a subject. And by good methods almost everybody can be made to understand the elements of geometry. Of algebra I cannot say the same; it is more abstract than geometry, and essentially unintelligible to those whose minds are incapable of detachment from the concrete. A taste for physics and chemistry, properly taught, would probably be found to be less rare than a taste for mathematics, though still existing only in a minority of young people. Both mathematics and science, in the years from twelve to fourteen, ought only to be pursued to the point at which it becomes clear whether a boy or girlhas any aptitude for them. This, of course, is not immediately evident. I loathed algebra at first, although afterwards I had some facility in it. In some cases, it would still be doubtful at the age of fourteen whether there was ability or not. In these cases, tentative methods would have to be continued for a while. But in most cases a decision could be made at fourteen. Some would definitely like the subjects and be good at them, others would dislike them and be bad at them. It would very seldom happen that a clever pupil disliked them or a stupid pupil liked them.
What has been said about mathematics and science applies equally to the classics. Between twelve and fourteen, I should give just so much instruction in Latin as would suffice to show which boys and girls had a love of the subject and facility for it. I am assuming that at fourteen education should begin to be more or less specialized, according to the tastes and aptitudes of the pupil. The last years before this moment arrives should be spent in finding out what it will be best to teach in subsequent years.
All through the school years, education in outdoor things should continue. In the case of well-to-do children, this can be left to the parents, but with other children it will have to be partly the business of the school. When Ispeak of education in outdoor things, I am not thinking of games. They, of course, have their importance, which is sufficiently recognized; but I am thinking of something different: knowledge of agricultural processes, familiarity with animals and plants, gardening, habits of observation in the country, and so on. I have been amazed to discover that town-bred people seldom know the points of the compass, never know which way the sun goes round, cannot find out which side of the house is out of the wind, and are generally destitute of knowledge which every cow or sheep possesses. This is the result of life exclusively in towns. Perhaps I shall be thought fanciful if I say that it is one reason why the labour party cannot win rural constituencies. But it certainly is the reason why town-bred people are so utterly divorced from everything primitive and fundamental. It has to do with something trivial and superficial and frivolous in their attitude to life—not of course always, but very often. The seasons and the weather, sowing and harvest, crops and flocks and herds, have a certain human importance, and ought to be intimate and familiar to everybody if the divorce from mother earth is not to be too complete. All this knowledge can be acquired by children in the course of activities which are of immense value tohealth, and deserve to be undertaken for that reason alone. And the pleasure of town children in the country shows that a profound need is being satisfied. So long as it is not satisfied, our educational system is incomplete.