Methods of Instruction.—Children at the present day can be educated by any of the following methods: (a) The parents themselves instruct their children; (b) they have their children taught by a tutor or a governess in their own homes; (c) they combine to carry on special schools for their own children (family schools); (d) they send their children either to a governmental or to a private school. In former days there[186] existed no public schools. Parents either educated their own children, or had them educated by a tutor or governess. As time goes on the number of parents increases who are competent to teach their children all that they learn at the public elementary school; but most parents have neither leisure nor desire to undertake this. Consider, for example, the case of the father of a family whose whole day is spent at work. Most fathers of families make a better use of their time by devoting all their energies to their trade or profession, instead of themselves attempting the education of their children. Thus here also the principle of the division of labour comes more and more fully into application. The parent gives his whole time to his work for a livelihood, and the profession of teacher becomes more and more exclusively that of a specialist. The children of the proletariat are in need of education, and in their case, apart from the question of leisure or desire, the parents lack the necessary aptitude to instruct their own children. The public elementary schools of to-day have come into existence for the children of these lower strata of the population, and the curriculum of such schools has been determined mainly by the decision of the upper classes as to what it is expedient that the lower classes should be taught.
Education at home by a tutor or governess is in certain respects superior, and in other respects inferior, to that obtainable at the public elementary school. The advantages of home instruction are, first, that it has a more individual character, since the tutor or governess is more intimately acquainted with the child, and each individual child receives a comparatively larger share of the teacher’s attention; secondly, in the case of a large family, we have the best possible type of co-education; thirdly, the unhygienic influences of the public elementary school can be avoided. The disadvantages are: a really good tutor or governess is by no means easy to find, and in the absence of such a one, the education is most inefficient; the domestic instructor is but a single person, whereas in the public elementary school there are a number of teachers, and the defects of one will be compensated by the good qualities of another; we may even say that the defects of the teachers are more than compensated[187] by the other influences of the public elementary school. Education by a domestic instructor can never make good for the child the lack of the multiform life of the school, which affords so admirable a preparation for later life. In the school there are many children who compete with one another, but also form friendships with one another. However questionable it may be, on grounds of principle, whether for the purposes of instruction and education it is proper to appeal to the ambition, competitive zeal, and envy of children, yet we have to admit that so long as the present order of society continues, based upon individualism and free competition, it is absolutely essential that children should be prepared for individualism and free competition. If the domestic instructor gets on friendly terms with the child, his authority is apt thereby to be undermined; but if he remains on purely formal terms, he risks the repression of the child’s individuality. Friction between parents and domestic instructors is almost inevitable. Education in the public elementary school costs far less per child than domestic instruction, and this saving is advantageous, not to the individual only, but from the standpoint of public economy. It is altogether opposed to the interest of public economy that each child should have a separate teacher; that certain work, which can be properly performed by a certain number of teachers, should be done in such a way as to need ten times that number of teachers. To do this is to waste time and energy which in the interest of public economy might be much better employed. When some children are educated at home and others in the public elementary school, the two classes of children have entirely a different education, and this can only tend to accentuate class contrasts, which are already excessive.
The General Obligation of School Attendance.—The economic order of to-day, based as it is upon free competition, should impose like conditions upon all the competitors in the economic struggle. We cannot speak of free competition unless all the competitors start from scratch; in a system of free competition all should start with the same educational opportunities. As time goes on the desire becomes ever more general that every member of the community should secure a certain minimum[188] of education; and it is felt that the State is not merely justified but obliged to secure this minimum for all. Thus it becomes continually more important that every adult should have this elementary minimum of education. The existing economic order is based upon a general knowledge of writing and reading. One unable to read or write is hardly in a position to safeguard his most elementary interests. He should also know the first principles of arithmetic, inasmuch as to-day the value of all commodities is expressed in multiples of the monetary unit. The State is well aware that compulsory education involves a limitation of personal freedom and an interference with family life; but none the less the modern State finds it necessary to insist that every child shall receive a minimum of education.
The State imposes the duty upon those responsible for the care of the child, of sending this child to the public elementary school from the age of six to the age of fifteen, or, in default of this, of giving the child an equivalent education at home. On the one hand, the State itself institutes public elementary schools; and, on the other hand, the State gives to the various religious organisations, to the local authorities, and to private individuals, the right to found and carry on elementary schools, with the proviso that in these schools children shall receive the same education (neither more nor less) as in the State schools. Thus, the State has no concern as to what education the child’s relatives may think desirable, but exercises compulsion to secure the adoption of its own educational standard, either by inflicting penalties if the child does not attend school, or even by removal of the child for compulsory education away from home.
But the so-called general obligation of school attendance is not really general, and applies exclusively, or almost exclusively, to the lower classes of the population. The other classes can evade the obligation of school attendance by having their children educated at home. The proletarian parents are well aware that the elementary school teaches neither in matter nor in manner in accordance with proletarian conceptions; but at present they have to submit. The duty of universal school attendance is not very strictly enforced.[189] Even in the most highly civilised countries, a certain proportion of children of school age receive no elementary education. In many countries the universal obligation of school attendance exists only on paper. The conditions in this respect are especially bad, on the one hand, in the country districts (where, therefore, the proportion of illiterates is much greater than in the towns), and, secondly, in districts where there is a great demand for labour. The principle of universal compulsory school attendance is not accepted without opposition. It is resisted by many proletarian parents who wish their children to engage in wage-labour at an early age, and it is resisted also by many capitalists who think they could make larger profits with cheaper labour.
The Purpose of the Elementary School.—To enable us to answer the question, what is the purpose of the public elementary school, it is necessary that we should first be able to decide what is the purpose of education. This question is not educational merely, but also social and political. The purpose of the public elementary school is dependent at any particular period upon the general characteristics of that period; for, first, one learns, not at school, but in life; secondly, the dominant authority in the State in any epoch wishes to instil in the minds of the young whatever “virtues” are considered essential to the maintenance of the power of the dominant caste. All political parties consider the public elementary school to be extremely important, and each one of them wishes to use this institution for its own purposes. They all recognise that the future belongs to the young, that the public elementary school plays the leading part in the education of the young; and each party sees that its special aims can be attained only by the education of individuals to consider that these aims are sacred and desirable. The adherents of a particular political tendency therefore oppose the inculcation in the public elementary schools of any tendency adverse to their own, but they regard it as self-evident that their own views ought to be inculcated in the elementary school.
Instruction versus Education.—Many persons contend that the aim of the school is not so much education as instruction.[190] They consider that the main factor in education is not the school, but the family. But this is certain, that even in the school which thinks only of instructing its pupils, education in the wider sense is effected. In school life, in school friendships, in the sense of solidarity, in the friendly competition between schoolfellows, in the necessity to learn, are embodied powerful educative influences. It is, in fact, essential that the school should educate as well as instruct. The public elementary school of to-day makes therefore a very great mistake if it insists on intellectual rather than on moral education, and upon instruction rather than upon education.
Moral Instruction.—According to the views of educationalists, it is the aim of the public elementary school to educate children to be, (a) religious, (b) patriotic, (c) obedient, (d) humble, (e) subordinate citizens. The elementary school of to-day does in fact mainly subserve these ends.
(a) Religious instruction and the inculcation of the fear of God are no proper part of the work of the public elementary school. Among all the factors of education, it is certainly not the public elementary school which should undertake this branch of instruction.
(b) The public elementary school has to teach children to love their country; but this should on no account be done in such a way as to inspire hatred for other countries.
(c) The old elementary schools taught obedience and subordination. But to-day, when the conditions are quite different from those of the Middle Ages, the public elementary school should do nothing of the kind, but should rather teach independent judgment, promptness of action, and soundness of decision. The public elementary school is a public institution like the (State) railway and the post office, and compulsory school attendance is a civic duty analogous to the duty of military service. But it is necessary to protest most energetically against the inference sometimes drawn from the analogy between the two last-named duties, that the elementary school should be the preparatory school to the barrack, and the barrack a sort of continuation school to the elementary school—against the doctrine that children should be disciplined to a blind obedience. We must carefully avoid overestimating[191] the importance of discipline. The school must and does use compulsion. Discipline is an important means of elementary school education, and such education is unthinkable without discipline. But children are sufficiently disciplined by mere attendance at school for a certain time.
(d) The following idea is very generally diffused, that it is the aim of the school to prepare children for the life they will have to lead when they are grown up. Most of the children attending the public elementary schools will become proletarians, wage-workers. Since the proletarian must be diligent, thrifty, humble, disciplined, it is regarded as the duty of the elementary school to inculcate these virtues. But these so-called virtues are not virtues at all. The greatest obstacle to any improvement in the lot of the average wage-earner is that he should be content with things as they are. The labourers’ wage represents the minimum that he finds requisite to the satisfaction of his needs; when his needs increase, his wages rise. Every friend of social progress should endeavour to secure that the elementary school should arouse in the children certain needs and desires.
(e) Many persons wish to utilise the public elementary school to turn children away from socialist ideas. This is to be done by making the children acquainted with the dangers which the realisation of socialist theories would involve, and in addition by inculcating in the children the afore-mentioned virtues. But the attainment of this end is less easy than such persons imagine. The public elementary school exercises a certain influence. The workman who has received at school education and instruction of the suggested type will doubtless less readily become an enthusiastic adherent of the socialist party than the workman who has never attended an elementary school, and who was an illiterate until he first came under the influence of his trade union. But the notions inculcated in the public elementary school in respect of obedience, humility, and the like are readily eradicated by a short experience of socialist comradeship, and replaced by social-democratic ideas.
General Culture.—It is by no means one of the aims of the public elementary school to provide general culture. Even less is this the aim of education than it is the aim of the[192] public elementary school—and the provision of general culture by the latter would appear to be entirely out of the question. During the few years a child spends at the public elementary school, it is impossible to attempt to impart all that is included in the wide field of general culture.
Individuality.—A large proportion of those pupils with a well-marked individuality can develop their personality even in the school. The tendency of the school is in many cases to rub off the edges and corners of individuality. But it is impossible to approve of the extent to which, in the public elementary school of to-day, the children’s individuality is repressed. Our present elementary schools do not individualise enough. Their principal aim is, not so much to provide a sound education, as to force all the pupils through the same rigid curriculum, without making any allowance for their various special aptitudes. (For what good end is it that the modern educational authority should regulate every detail of school-life, down to the quality and price of the articles used in class, and even to the colour of the manuscript books and the precise number of pages they are to contain?) In the elementary school of to-day, owing to the large size of the classes and the small number and defective training of the teachers, individualisation is impossible.
Beauty.—The school must not indeed attempt to make all the children into artists; but the children must most certainly be taught to understand and appreciate beauty—that is, the arts. Our present public elementary schools are extremely defective from this point of view.
Knowledge.—Knowledge gives the individual power, and provides him with a powerful weapon in the struggle for existence. The dominant classes, for the protection of their own egoistic interests, keep knowledge for themselves, and refuse to provide the lower classes with the means and weapons for their liberation. The State insists upon a minimal quantity of knowledge for every one of its members, because this is to the interest of the community and of the upper classes. But since to impart to the common people anything beyond this minimum of knowledge would threaten the dominance of the upper classes, or would at any rate involve[193] pecuniary sacrifices on the part of the latter, and since it might even lead to the liberation of the lower classes, the functional activity of the public elementary schools is kept at as low a level as possible, and is limited as much as possible both intrinsically and extrinsically. The State and the upper classes devote to popular education only such an amount as is found to be absolutely essential. They are well aware that much more could be done than is done in the way of popular education; but since they know also that this would redound chiefly to the advantage of the lower classes, they propose no advance upon the present system. This affords a satisfactory explanation of the fact that the modern State spends so much less upon elementary schools than upon middle or high schools—that is, upon institutions for the upper classes, and why the State spends so much less upon education in general than upon other things. The budget of any modern State would exemplify the fact that the individualist State spends at least five times as much for military purposes as upon elementary education. The more complete the division of labour, the more do employers tend to utilise the services of unskilled labourers—that is, the services of those whose work is of such a character that all they need know to enable them to perform it is at most a little reading, writing, and arithmetic. The capitalists have no use for workmen with more knowledge than this, for the unskilled workers are cheaper. The owning class are not inclined to make sacrifices to enable the children of workpeople to learn more in the elementary school. They know very well that to do this would merely be to do themselves harm, for the more the workman knows the more readily does he think independently, the more critical is he, and the more readily does he recognise the defects of the existing social order.
Science.—The modern public elementary school professes to teach children science. But they must first of all give their pupils desire and capacity for the acquirement of science. It should not be their aim to impart to the child the elements of any particular science, but rather to develop a capacity for a speedy acquisition of the knowledge it will find necessary in the course of its life. The procedure of the older elementary[194] school which laid stress only upon memory is almost completely a thing of the past. But even to-day the elementary schools of Europe lay most emphasis upon the exhibition by their pupils of extensive knowledge, and this involves an overtaxing of the memory at the expense of the powers of thought. The elementary schools of the United States of America, on the other hand, do not so much endeavour to secure that a certain quantity of knowledge should be imparted, they do not so much insist upon thorough instruction, and strict concentration in the narrower sense of the term, as endeavour to effect a stimulated interest and a certain degree of orientation in all departments of knowledge. The latter system is the sounder. But a certain foundation of positive knowledge is absolutely essential, for upon this foundation is based the acquirement of all the knowledge subsequently gained, and necessary for the purposes of life. The modern elementary school teaches much and many things, including much that is altogether superfluous, but what the children will really need in life is either not taught at all, or taught defectively and inefficiently. Great emphasis is laid upon religion, grammar, and history; modern science is comparatively ignored; technical instruction, drawing, natural history, the principles of morals, political economy, and legislation, are neglected. (It is through the neglect of the last-mentioned that it results that man is perhaps able to understand his responsibilities towards his Heavenly Judge, but certainly not towards any earthly one.) When we examine the teaching of history in the modern elementary school, we find that the pupils, instead of acquiring some general ideas upon universal history, and the history of civilisation, have their minds crammed with a jingo record of wars and dynasties, a mass of dates of battles and other trivial incidents, patriotic anniversaries, and a biassed selection of anecdotes—all this having no other object than to bring the children up as jingoes and anti-socialists.
Home Work.—The idea that children must have no home work to do, and that they should do all their work at school, is an exaggerated one. But the fact remains that the tendency of the modern elementary school is to overburden children[195] with home work. This is all the worse because the work at school is often too much for the pupils, and to add home work is then sheer cruelty. The domestic arrangements in the majority of proletarian homes are so exiguous, that it is impossible for children to find the necessary conveniences and the necessary order and quiet for any considerable amount of home work.
The Exclusion of Certain Children.—In the public elementary schools we find many children who ought not to be there—children, for example, with arrested development, abnormal, neglected, &c. If in any class there are many children suffering from arrest of mental development, one of two things may happen—the teacher may devote special attention to them, or he may not. In the former case, the progress of the whole class is hindered; in the latter case, the unfortunate backward children fall yet farther behind. Morally neglected children, and children with criminal tendencies, should be removed from the school, or they will corrupt the other children. But if they are excluded, we have to fear that we are depriving them of their last chance of improvement, and that they will become more neglected than ever. To-day we find that there is a most deplorable increase, above all in the large towns and manufacturing centres, in the number of children who habitually evade school attendance or play truant from school, idle about through the days, and then, after school hours, and in fear of punishment, keep also away from home. It has been proved that the great majority of these habitual truants are feeble-minded to a degree, and for this reason tend to adopt a vagabond life. If such a child is excluded from school, it legally attains the condition of liberation from the obligation of school attendance which it had previously attained illegally though in actual fact. Chiefly in consequence of the inadequate psychological training of the teachers, feeble-mindedness and other mental and moral abnormalities in children are apt to be overlooked. It is desirable that all teachers should receive a far more thorough training in the psychology of education than has hitherto been customary. It is necessary that for weak-minded children, or for those who are in other respects backward or[196] abnormal, special schools, or in great educational institutions, special classes (disciplinary classes), should be founded. Of late years a start has been made in this direction.
Rewards and Punishments.—In the public elementary school of to-day, sound methods and principles in the matter of rewards and punishments find but little application. Corporal punishment is freely used, and in many cases the children are grossly ill-treated. In the United States of America, the general experience has been that in schools in which corporal punishment is unknown, better results are obtained and a higher general level is reached than in schools in which corporal punishment is customary. The mere knowledge that they are liable to such degrading punishment suffices to lower the children’s morale, whereas, when they feel themselves absolutely secure from the risk of such punishment, they feel themselves from the first to be honoured and respected. In the better elementary schools of the United States corporal punishment is in fact unknown.
The Constitutional Element.—In the order of the modern school no constitutional element is recognised; the teacher is an absolute ruler, and the pupils are subjects without rights. But this system is not one fitted to prepare the children for democratic social and political life. In the United States of America some of the elementary schools have a method of government which is quasi-parliamentary in character. It is desirable to introduce this system into Europe, although certain modifications may be necessary. The relationship between teacher and pupil should be as follows. The teacher does not work solely by authority. He explains in all cases the reasons for his commands and prohibitions; he recognises and admits his own mistakes, treats his pupils as equals, and makes common cause with the well-behaved children to keep the ill-behaved in order; just as in the education of the individual we counteract the morbid elements in the disposition by cultivating the healthy elements, so in his school the teacher uses the good elements to counteract the bad ones. By making common cause with the well-behaved children against the ill-behaved, he induces the former to become unconsciously the instructors and educators of the[197] latter. He endeavours to effect the growth among the children of a public opinion, which shall warn transgressors and prescribe their punishment. He must also utilise free discussion among his pupils as a means of stimulation and instruction. (Parents should employ much the same methods in the upbringing of their own children.)
Parents and the School.—The view that the teacher need concern himself about the child only so long as the latter is within the four walls of the school, and that he is justified in completely ignoring all that happens to the child outside the school, is utterly false, and must be abandoned. To-day a question which attracts much attention is how parents may be induced to support the teacher. In this respect the conditions in Europe are worse than those in the United States of America. In Europe parents commonly rejoice when the school takes the burden of children off their hands. Many teachers, on the other hand, are instinctive bureaucrats, who regard it as wrong for the parents to exert any influence whatever upon the teacher’s relationship to his pupils. Quite recently the following view has begun to prevail—that it is the duty of the parents to send their children to the lowest class of the elementary school with such a grounding that the teacher may readily proceed to build thereon; the parents should remain throughout in contact with the teachers. This contact may be of a manifold kind: the teachers keep the parents acquainted with all the important details of the course of instruction, and at voluntary evening reunions explain to the parents the concrete problems of education. We can approve the conduct neither of those parents who always uphold the teacher against their children, nor of those, on the other hand, who always abuse the teacher to the child. The former procedure brings the children up as slaves, the latter undermines the foundations of the respect which every teacher should inspire in his pupils.
Sexual Education.—A thorough reform of sexual education is absolutely essential. 1. The question of co-education does not properly belong to this work, and can be touched on merely in passing. In the public elementary schools almost all over the world co-education is the rule; elementary[198] schools for one sex only are exceptional.[5] 2. The Church regards the sexual life as something essentially immoral, of which the child is to know nothing whatever. Its motto is: Silence. The earlier elementary schools, owing to their intimate dependence on the Church, shared this view. The sexual enlightenment of children is recommended especially by the advocates of the emancipation of women. The question is even more important to women than it is to men, since the right solution of the sexual problem will entail for women greater advantages than for men.
The sexual enlightenment of children is absolutely necessary for the following reasons. (a) The sexual life conceals many dangers for the child, and the latter will better be able to guard against those dangers if he is aware of their existence. No one has the right to put a sharp knife in a child’s hand without pointing out the dangers of the weapon. But the forces of the sexual life, when ill-understood and ill-controlled, are far more powerful and far more dangerous than the sharpest knife. He who will learn to walk and to run must risk stumbling and falling, and no one can learn to swim without swallowing a little water. (b) That which is half-concealed is far more stimulating than that which is revealed. If children are not properly enlightened concerning the sexual life, they become accustomed to regard matters of sex solely from the standpoint of personal desire and personal enjoyment, and to regard the sexual life and the other sex as something hateful and despicable. (c) If the child receives no enlightenment concerning the sexual life, its confidence in its teacher and its relatives is necessarily undermined. How shall a child retain confidence in those who give it no advice in a matter in which the need of advice is so urgently felt? Can the child be expected to follow their advice in other departments of life, when in this department it receives bad advice or none at all? Can a child give confidence to its elders in other matters, when in this matter it is fobbed off with lies and fables?
The following arguments are adduced against the sexual[199] enlightenment of children. (a) It is better, supposing that the sexual impulse has not yet awakened in a child, that nothing should be done to direct its attention to the sexual life. (b) The enlightenment of children is a very difficult matter, and is, in fact, hardly practicable.
The former of these arguments is not altogether groundless. But in present conditions silence is impossible, and it is better that the child should obtain its information from a pure and trustworthy source. With regard to the alleged difficulty of effecting the sexual enlightenment, recent experience shows that the requisite instruction can be suitably and inconspicuously introduced into the natural history lessons, and adapted to the age and intelligence of the child, without any excessive detail being attempted. The stress has to be laid, not upon enlightenment as to the processes of sexual conjugation, nor upon detailed instruction as to the development of the human embryo, but rather upon a mainly hygienic enlightenment concerning the dangers attendant upon sexual intercourse.
Should the sexual enlightenment of children be the work of the school, or should it be, as many insist, the duty either of the parents or the medical adviser? The co-operation of parents and medical adviser is certainly indispensable, but the principal part in the work of enlightenment belongs to the school. One of the main difficulties in sexual enlightenment by the parents depends upon the fact that the majority of parents lack the requisite ability and the requisite biological knowledge. Of late the schools have actually begun to undertake this work of the sexual enlightenment of children. It is unquestionably the tendency of evolution that the sexual enlightenment of children up to a certain point should be effected in the school.
Religious and Moral Instruction.—It remains undecided whether the public elementary school of to-day was of ecclesiastical origin. But it is an unquestionable fact that from the first the Church exercised a great influence upon the public elementary school, and that the Church continues to struggle for the spread of its own ideas through the intermediation of the schools. The influence of the Church secures, not merely that religion shall be taught in the[200] schools, but, in addition, that in the teaching of other matters, the ecclesiastical spirit shall have free play. This explains the fact that the teaching of natural science has been neglected in the schools, on the ground that it is antagonistic to religion. The alleged necessity of religious teaching is based upon the assertion that by such teaching children are guided in the paths of morality. But as religious instruction as at present administered, it is by no means adapted to produce this effect. To teach children difficult ethical concepts in an abstract form, and to make them commit these abstract formulations to memory, is a mode of ill-usage. We cannot teach a child to be moral by preaching to it a great deal, and by telling it many moral and religious stories and drawing for it many moral and religious conclusions, unless we take pains at the same time to find associations within the child’s own circle of interests for the ideas we are endeavouring to impart. It is impossible to induce in a child the habit of moral conduct by purely intellectual demonstrations, in connection with which the child’s interest in the processes and situations of the relation is perhaps wilfully mistaken for a desire to imitate the actions that are described. Moreover, in the religions that are taught in the modern public elementary schools, we find reflected the moral conceptions of days long past—conceptions whose interest is now historical merely. These religions deal only with the morals of adult persons—their examples relate only to adults; whereas the sound moral instruction of young people must pay attention above all to the numerous little needs and passions of the child. Religion and morality are two altogether different things. A knowledge of Bible history and of religious dogmas cannot make anyone more moral. There are many countries in which we find that the extent of immorality is directly proportional to the extent to which, in the various areas, a religious spirit prevails. Our general conclusion, therefore, is that the public elementary school should not be founded upon a religious basis, and that it should not undertake to give religious instruction. The standpoint of France, formerly so religious a country, is thoroughly sound. The principle of religious liberty allows[201] everyone to profess whatever religion he pleases. It is a logical corollary of this principle that the public elementary school, which is open to all, should be neither religious nor anti-religious; that is to say, that it should be a secular, lay, neutral school, and that religious instruction should be left to the parents.
But, in view of these considerations, it is all the more necessary to provide for special moral instruction in the public elementary school. It is not a valid objection to say that ethics are too difficult for children; in this matter everything depends upon how they are taught. Evidently moral teaching will be effective only if the right educational methods are employed, and it cannot be said that this has hitherto been the case to any considerable extent. Moral instruction must not consist in mere repetition of ethical principles, but must be a lesson of a very practical order; it must not be a dry enumeration of duties, but an introduction to the realities of social life, the aim of moral instruction being to teach the pupil sound views of life, and to lead him to regulate all his thoughts and all his activities with reference to their “social reaction.” The introduction of ethical problems and moral outlooks into the instruction given in other branches of study is also necessary, and may indeed begin at once, for this offers no difficulties. But it is also absolutely essential that moral questions should receive a comprehensive and connected consideration in a special course of lessons. For more than a quarter of a century moral instruction has been given in the elementary schools of the United States and of France. In France this course of lessons is used, not merely as an instrument in the campaign against clericalism and monarchism, but also, quite wrongly, as a means for the cultivation of jingoism.
Physical Education.—The modern public elementary school, in pursuit of mental education, neglects not moral education only, but physical education also, by condemning the child to prolonged physical inactivity. As soon as a child is barely six years of age, it is forced to sit, day by day for many hours, stiff and quiet, on the narrow benches in the class-rooms, although such repression of the childish instinct towards[202] incessant activity is injurious to the health. The child is overburdened mentally, the school curriculum being overloaded with subjects, and a bad system of instruction being employed. The gymnastic lesson of to-day consists mainly of the comparatively useless exercises of the parade-ground type, and in the country schools even these are neglected. Well-grounded complaints about all these defects are incessantly heard. The results are disastrous. Imbecility and mental hebetude may ensue; there even exist special diseases of school life, such as nervous debility, headache, lateral curvature of the spine, short-sightedness, jaundice, &c. Bad air, dust in the class-rooms, interference with free breathing consequent upon long-continued sitting, and catching cold on the way home from school, favour the acquisition of tuberculosis.
Of late satisfactory efforts for the reform of school hygiene have been initiated. On the one hand, the attempt is made to secure that school life should not entail any dangers to the child’s health; on the other hand, efforts are made to provide proper treatment for the various disorders that prevail among the children, and especially among the younger ones; the physical energies and adroitness of the children are stimulated by technical instruction, gymnastics, and free movement in the open air. It is recognised that the education of children should take place mainly in the open; that not natural history only, but most other subjects, should be taught in connection with open-air walks and excursions. More and more stress is laid upon the provision of playgrounds, school gardens, and the like. School gardens are already to be found in many towns, where the children can do bodily work in the fresh air—dig, for instance, tend flowers, &c., occupations which have an excellent influence upon their health. Quite recently baths have been provided in many schools, and sometimes even the use of these baths is compulsory. This is especially valuable where the school children are very poor, for in the case of the very poor, as is well known, not much attention is paid to cleanliness in the children’s homes.
In every progressive State, school doctors have now been appointed. It is a sound principle that the school doctor should not be engaged in private practice, but that he should[203] also be physician to the poor-law authority. The institution of the school physician is, however, of value only if a skilled and detailed examination of the individual children is undertaken, and if steps are taken to secure that the medical advice given in individual cases is actually carried out. In many German schools provision is made that sick children without means shall be sent by the school authorities directly to the town physicians for treatment. In some of these schools, school nurses have been appointed, who supervise the carrying out of medical instructions, and, when necessary, accompany the children in their visits to the doctor. The tendency of evolution is that necessary treatment should be carried out by the school doctor. For some years past, in many towns in Germany, dental clinics have been instituted in connection with the schools. They are necessary in view of the fact that a very large proportion of children attending the public elementary schools have diseased teeth; those whose parents are poor would otherwise receive no dental treatment, and the proper treatment of these disorders of the teeth constitutes an important adjuvant in the campaign against the infectious diseases and in the prevention of tuberculosis. Very recently the question has been discussed whether tubercular children ought not to be excluded from the schools.
Among more recent movements tending towards the destruction of the hegemony of the towns, we find an attempt to remove the schools from the towns, and to give them the form of boarding-schools, with an attempt to provide a sort of family life, much stress being laid upon the physical education of the children. Such schools are to be found in England and in the United States of America and here and there in Germany. They are more costly than the others, and the attempt to reproduce in them a kind of family life is apt to be a failure. For children suffering from physical debility they are extremely useful, and they offer a valuable field of experiment for teachers who wish to apply exceptional educational ideas. Of late, also, the attempt has been made to utilise the school in the campaign against tuberculosis, alcoholism, and the venereal diseases. It is declared to be absolutely necessary that the children should receive far more hygienic instruction[204] than has hitherto been customary—of course, merely as an adjunct to the other branches of education.
Manual Training.—Loud complaints are heard to the effect that the elementary school fails to secure a general and harmonious development of the bodily and mental capacities of the child—that it merely crams the child with certain information, without endeavouring to secure that it shall acquire knowledge by its own experience. It is recognised that that knowledge only is permanent and possesses serious moral influence which constitutes an indispensable constituent of general culture; and it is understood that the recognised defects of our school children cannot be avoided unless we include as a part of the school curriculum a sufficiency of manual training. At first sight it may seem quite impossible for the educationalist, by training the child to perform certain suitable bodily movements, constituting the elements of some particular handicraft, to influence that child’s mental or moral development; it seems impossible, that is to say, that to teach the child a handicraft can subserve a profoundly important educational end.
The impulse to physical activity is deep-seated in human nature, and is irresistible. It is present in every healthy child. It is an aim of education to cultivate the proper manifestations of this impulse; otherwise it is very apt to take the form of some bad habit, of passionate outbursts, or of destructiveness. In earliest childhood the impulse to activity finds complete satisfaction in the games of which young children are so fond. The irregular and mutable activity of games must gradually, and without obvious compulsion, be transformed into a regular and orderly activity. (Many physicians insist that children should not begin to learn to read and write until they are nine or ten years old, and that below this age their only instruction should be manual. The reason they give for this demand is that it is during the first seven years of life that the human brain grows most rapidly, that this organ should receive very gentle treatment during this period of life, and that all risk of its overstrain by one-sided stimulation of the intelligence must be carefully avoided.)
Manual work invariably represents an attempt to gain[205] some particular end. Every such end is made up of various components; we see this composite character most clearly when the aim of the work is to achieve some definite physical result, such as the putting together of some complex body made up of numerous parts. Such work as this, children usually undertake with pleasure. Since the final aim and the constituent aims are all obvious, the child sees at once that it is continually approaching more nearly to the attainment of the ultimate aim, and notes with delight the progressive steps achieved towards this end. (Self-esteem is essentially nothing more than the consciousness on the part of the individual of his capacity for producing some tangible result.) Manual work is interesting even to the naughtiest and most impatient of children. It arouses and increases will power and desire for work; satisfies the impulse to activity; forces the child to think independently, to use its perceptive faculties, to be practical. It is for this reason that manual work plays so great a part in the education of intellectually backward and neglected children. Manual training gives the child opportunity for productive work, and thus prepares it for its subsequent life. Manual training develops in the child precisely those faculties which it will most need in later life, namely, conscientiousness, precision, pleasure in its work, enterprise. It develops the hand and the eye, the two most important organs of the human body, to a fuller degree than can be effected by writing, drawing, or gymnastics; and in this way it provides the child with something which will be found valuable whatever trade or profession may ultimately be adopted. It thus gives the child the necessary preparatory training for every subsequent occupation. The idea that the growth of machine industry has rendered manual training superfluous is utterly erroneous. Manual training is good for the health and the physical strength of the child. At the period of the puberal development, manual training is of especial importance to children. It has a quieting influence upon the brain and the senses, and distracts the child from morbid and sensual impulses. Through bringing into play the physiological influence of fatigue, it hinders and delays the awakening of the sexual impulse, and[206] does nothing to direct the child’s attention towards the sexual life.
To-day much stress is laid upon training the perceptive faculties by means of object-lessons. Manual training affords the best training of the perceptive faculties, being even more valuable in this respect than the actual object-lesson. We learn to know an object fully not merely by looking at it, not even, in addition, by handling it, smelling it, tasting it, and listening to it. If we wish to know an object through and through, we must work upon it.
The child is always glad to engage in physical work. Both child and teacher soon learn to recognise for what the child has inclination and talent. The child will then choose for its life’s occupation that which it has already learned to understand, and which best corresponds to its own inclinations. In this way the mistakes, which are so common to-day, in the choice of an occupation will be avoided, and the almost morbid desire of children for a clerical or professional career will be mitigated. Opportunity is given for the recognition and cultivation of any special artistic faculty the child may possess. The aim of education, namely, to awaken and cultivate the child’s natural capacities and inclinations, can only be attained when the teacher recognises their existence, and is able to form a correct picture of the child’s mental life. But the teacher will not be able to do this unless he sees his pupil engaged in physical work as well as in mental. If at school young people are exclusively occupied in mental work, they acquire an antipathy to physical work. Manual training, on the other hand, teaches children to esteem physical labour and the proletariat. Anyone who has received a thorough manual training necessarily possesses mechanical knowledge and skill. Since such knowledge and skill are the first requisites of so many skilled handicrafts, one who possesses them is unlikely to become an unskilled labourer.
Whereas in former times various kinds of productive work formed part of the economy of domestic life, so that the child had opportunities for seeing and learning such occupations in its own home, to-day we find that not even[207] children’s toys are made at home, but are bought ready-made. Manual training is also advocated, on the ground that it is necessary to ensure that there shall be an adequate supply of skilled manual workers. This, we are told, may contribute to keep alive the lesser industries which tend to disappear before the great manufacturing industry. But the replacement of handwork by the work of machines is a tendency of evolution which no one has the power to arrest. It is not truly the aim of manual instruction to produce skilled adult manual workers; we advocate it simply as a means of education which has nothing whatever to do with technical education.
Manual training must be carefully adapted to the child’s age, and in the case of very little children must take the form rather of a game. Its character may be very various: the preparation of drawings and models, experimentation with tools, the construction of tools or other useful objects out of wood, clay, dough, iron, &c., garden work, and the like.
Although the results of manual training are so remarkably good, it is only quite recently that it has been utilised as a means of education. The explanation perhaps is that manual work being all done by slaves, serfs, body-servants, and wage-labourers, was despised by the upper classes, and for this reason its great educational value was so long overlooked. Ethical and educative influences are so completely lacking to wage-labour, that the child should not be occupied in wage-labour, but only in manual work of an educative influence and tendency. Instruction in productive work, involving an explanation of the fundamental methods of the production of commodities and habituation to the use of the simpler tools must form a part of education. The attempt to extend manual training expresses the general tendency of evolution. The elementary schools of most civilised countries show that manual training can be readily introduced into the elementary school curriculum. Indeed, in the public elementary schools of many countries, manual training is now compulsory, especially as regards instruction in feminine manual occupations. But manual training cannot[208] be developed to the fullest extent, nor can this method be expected to furnish the best possible results, until capitalist production for profit has been replaced by social production for use.
Preparatory Schools.—What we said about crèches applies, though with some differences, to preparatory schools. Children go to the modern elementary school at a comparatively early age, and are subjected to the discipline of school without any preparatory initiation. Institutions whose aim it is to prepare children for the life of the public elementary schools are known as preparatory schools. The idea that before the age of school-attendance the child should be methodically employed for some hours daily, that the occupation should be physical, and that the work should be so arranged as to appear to the child as a kind of play, is not a new one. Alike on educational and on social grounds it is certainly desirable that the period of public education should begin earlier than the present age of compulsory school-attendance. Such is indeed the tendency of evolution, and in Hungary we have already advanced far in this direction.
Supervised Playgrounds for Children (Kinderhorte).—With the growth of capitalism there have come into existence (though somewhat later than the preparatory schools) supervised playgrounds for children (Kinderhorte) to provide care and training out of school hours for the school children whose parents work away from home. These institutions may be associated with the schools, or may exist independently; there may be separate playgrounds for boys and for girls, or the two sexes may play together. In the United States of America there exist “Children’s Clubs” for school-children, which differ from preparatory schools, inasmuch as their main purpose is to provide entertainment.
Increasing Importance of the Public Elementary School.—The family circle in which the proletarian child lives tends, as a rule, to counteract the beneficial effects of school life. Nor are the other elements in the environment of the proletarian child such as tend to exercise a good educational influence. For this reason quite recently the question has been mooted how the school may best counteract the evil influences of the[209] family and the environment. As time goes on the public elementary school becomes ever more important, its circle of duties becomes more comprehensive, and it undertakes many elements of education which formerly appertained to the parental home and the environment. The public elementary school and the associated institutions begin to exercise functions outside the domain of education in the narrower sense, and to absorb some of those formerly exercised by the poor-law authorities, inasmuch as the schools are coming to satisfy other needs of the proletarian child in addition to the need for education. Consider, for example, the association with the public elementary school of preparatory schools, supervised playgrounds, baths, gardens, workshops, savings-banks, &c.
Feeding of School Children.—The children of the lower classes are to-day quite unable to pay for their schooling. If every pupil had to pay school fees, a strict enforcement of compulsory school attendance would involve gross injustice to the poorer classes. If the State makes school attendance compulsory, the State must make it possible for every child to attend school. Many children fail to attend school because they lack proper clothing, and especially boots and shoes. Is it not the duty of the education authorities to provide for poor children of school age the clothing they need to make it possible for them to attend school? This is not as yet recognised as a public duty, but we see an unmistakable movement in its direction. In most countries public elementary education is already free, in some cases for all the children, in others only for the poorest; school materials and books are as yet supplied gratuitously only in France, Switzerland, and the United States of America.
Is it a part of the work of the public elementary school to provide food for the pupils? (Should it provide a dwelling? Even those whose demands are most extensive ask merely that the elementary schools should provide a home for the child during the day time, on the one hand during school hours, on the other during the intervals.) The question of the feeding of school children was first mooted by the teachers about thirty years ago. It was evident that a smaller[210] or larger proportion of the children attending urban schools (in wealthier towns from 3 to 10 per cent., in the suburbs of large towns even as many as 90 per cent.) were unable to derive adequate benefit from their teaching because they were underfed. The proletarian mother lacks sufficient time to prepare food for her children, especially the midday meal. Few workmen earn enough to provide a dietary in conformity with hygienic demands. The school is often far from the home, and the children have neither time nor desire to return home to dinner. The need is especially striking during the winter months, inasmuch as at this time there is more unemployment, whilst it is precisely at this season of the year that hot meals are most necessary. Moreover, whilst it is simply cruel to force half-fed children to learn, they hinder the progress of the others. It is objected that the feeding of school children conflicts with the principle of parental responsibility, and that it impairs the intimacy of family life, which demands, as all will admit, that the members of the family shall meet one another at least at meals. Our aim, we are told, should therefore be to do away with the poverty which is the cause of so many children coming to school underfed. But school feeding may be so arranged that the parents are charged for the meals at cost. Moreover, it is proposed to supply only breakfast and dinner—meals which many proletarian parents are in any case unable to take at home.
School feeding can be combined with instruction for the girls in cooking and domestic economy. The meals may be given in the school, which is the best plan, or in special institutions. The feeding of school children must be kept entirely in the hands of the education authorities; it has nothing to do with the poor-law, and it is absolutely necessary that it should be kept completely distinct from poor-law administration. (Who is to determine the children’s need—the poor-law authorities or the school? The latter, in my opinion; but this cannot always be done off-hand—in doubtful cases a house-to-house visitation will be necessary.)
Quite recently it has been claimed that the feeding of children in the public elementary schools should be entirely gratuitous—that is to say, that food should be provided for[211] well-to-do as well as for necessitous children. This claim is supported by the following arguments: (a) It is a logical consequence of universal free education; (b) if school meals are provided for necessitous children only, as if in relief of destitution, then, however tactfully this may be done, parents and children alike feel ashamed and suffer from a loss of self-respect. The following objections are made to these views: (a) Feeding satisfies a natural need, education a need peculiar to civilised man; (b) it is possible to provide a suitable diet in the family circle, but not to provide there a satisfactory education; (c) provided the feeding of the children is general, no one need be ashamed, if those parents able to pay have to pay, whilst the others are fed gratuitously. But these objections are not worth further consideration.
There is not as yet any uniform and generally accepted system for the feeding of school children; we find such feeding only in isolated schools, and meals are provided for necessitous children only. The actual results of the institution have been admirable. In England, a law providing for the feeding of school children was passed in the year 1906. But this did not introduce a general national system of school feeding; the law was permissive merely, empowering the poor-law authorities and education authorities to organise private benevolence for this purpose, and, in the event of this latter proving insufficient, allowing a limited expenditure of public funds. The tendency of evolution is unquestionably in the direction of the introduction of gratuitous and general school feeding. But in the future, when the upbringing of children will be altogether better than it is to-day, this institution will be unknown.
Care of Young Persons after they leave School.—The necessity and importance of supervising young persons after they leave school are obvious from the fact that the period of the puberal development, the period immediately after leaving the public elementary school, and after passing from the family life to a life of freedom, is the most dangerous of all periods in the life of children of the poorer classes. The means to be employed for this purpose are the following:—
(a) The institution of special homes for young persons,[212] where those with no regular homes of their own can board and lodge. Connected with these it is well that there should be employment bureaux and lists of recommended dwellings.
(b) The institution of places for the occupation and amusement of apprentices and young workpeople of both sexes during their hours of freedom.
(c) The arrangement of occupation for Sundays, amusing as well as instructive.
(d) The organisation of the young. There are associations for young people connected with the various religious bodies, also political associations, and others without either religious or political tendency; in addition, there are apprentices’ clubs. Within the ranks of the socialists we find two opposing tendencies. Some wish to found special socialist organisations for young people; others contend that better work can be done within the limits of existing organisations. The attempt is made to associate these movements with the continuation schools; that is, an attempt is made to secure that every large continuation school should have attached to it a young persons’ home or institute.
(e) Advice as to the choice of a profession, in newspapers, pamphlets, and books.
(f) The conduct of a campaign against harmful books and pictures. This campaign has of late years aroused interest and obtained support in wide circles. Of especial importance is the campaign against filthy and obscene literature, for such literature has of late years gained an extraordinarily wide diffusion, and effects the deliberate corruption of children. It stimulates their imagination unnaturally and leads it into false paths; it destroys their sense of truth and reality. The children’s taste is perverted; they no longer find pleasure in good literature, become inattentive in class, and out of school hours rough and brutal. In so far as children buy obscene books and pictures they waste their money. The most important measures in the conduct of this campaign are: 1. Criminal prosecutions; 2. The diffusion of really good books for young people; 3. The enlightenment of children and their parents concerning the worthless and injurious character of the bad literature; 4. The reasonable[213] regulation of the pupils’ activity out of schools hours, whereby the youthful impulse to adventure may be directed in the right channels.
(g) The most important of all means of caring for young persons after they leave school, and one which supports and reinforces all the others we have enumerated, is the continuation school. 1. Owing to the defective character of public elementary education, it is necessary that it should be supplemented by continuing the child’s education when it has passed the age of obligatory school attendance. 2. Before the child enters a free life, what it has learned at school, much of which will already have been forgotten, requires to be retaught; and this is all the more necessary in view of the fact that at the elementary school, where the child was still very young and lacked the faculty of full comprehension of many ideas, it could not receive true instruction and enlightenment. 3. The period of the passage from the family life and from the elementary school into a life of freedom must not come too early, and requires to be a period of transition, or the child is very apt to fall into poverty or crime. 4. Since apprenticeship is tending to pass away, it is necessary that children should be taught the elements of a handicraft at school. Wage-earning women have, as a rule, had neither apprenticeship nor technical training, so that they become unskilled workers, and receive even smaller wages than unskilled male labourers. 5. The training of working-class girls in domestic economy is extremely defective. Since these girls have to work for wages while still very young, they have neither time nor desire, nor even opportunity, to study cooking and housekeeping; in a working-class family possibilities for the study of domestic economy are of necessity extremely limited, because so much of what is bought is already prepared, and what is done at home is of an extremely simple character. The working-class mother, engaged throughout the day in arduous wage-labour, has neither time nor capacity for the instruction of her daughter, so that the girl becomes habituated to idleness. A special training both for wage-labour and for domestic economy is requisite for girls, and especially for those of the proletariat.
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All these arguments combine to reinforce the need for the institution of continuation schools. It is not the aim of these schools to prepare their pupils for work in special branches of industry, but their spirit is a much more practical one than that of the elementary schools. Almost without exception, they are purely secular, and give no religious instruction. They must lay great emphasis upon the need that the children should be habituated to care regularly for their bodies and their health. In addition to the general continuation schools, there exist industrial continuation schools or schools of apprenticeship. The former are mostly in the hands of the education authorities, whilst the latter are controlled by the boards supervising commerce and industry (Gewerbebeh?rden). In agricultural districts, schools of this latter order take the form of schools of agriculture.
The advocates of the emancipation of women demand the institution of continuation schools for girls in especial. Such schools must naturally give the first place to the teaching of domestic economy; but many consider that they should also give instruction in the main principles of education, and especially regarding the care of infants. (Special schools of domestic economy and of cooking already, of course, exist.) Many demand that these subjects should receive special attention in the public elementary schools; but it should suffice here if in the teaching of other subjects the bearing of these upon domestic economy and the conduct of life is explained, in so far as this comports with the main object of the course of instruction. Objections have been raised by many to the effect that the girls are too young to be taught domestic economy to any good purpose. But experience teaches the contrary. The results of teaching domestic economy have been so satisfactory that it is proposed to make it an essential part of the curriculum.
Continuation schools are not regarded with universal favour. In fact, their existence offers a certain hindrance to the exploitation of the working powers of the young, and this is disagreeable, not only to factory owners and manual workers, but for the time being is distasteful to many proletarian parents. These schools turn out workers who can[215] compete successfully with the older generation of unskilled labourers. In spite of these objections, continuation schools become ever more important and more widely diffused, tending more and more to become an invariable supplement to the public elementary school. Of late years, in many countries, attendance at continuation schools has been made compulsory, especially attendance at schools of apprenticeship in the case of children who fail to attend the middle schools. To make attendance at a continuation school obligatory is an unmistakable tendency of evolution.
The Tendency of Evolution.—The public elementary school becomes continually more uniform in character; it tends, that is to say, to become the common school for all children of a certain age, irrespective of the wealth or position of their parents, and to lay the foundation upon which will build all middle and higher educational institutions. Schools of this character are already to be found in Denmark and in the United States of America. The public elementary school need not necessarily give religious instruction. Since the schools administered by the religious organisations are of comparatively little value, it is necessary that the public elementary school should be open to all children, irrespective of their creed. A further step in development is for the public elementary school to abandon its inappropriate efforts to give religious instruction.
Private schools are only for the children of the well-to-do. In the majority of Gemeindeschulen a conservative and narrowly orthodox religious spirit prevails. A proportion of the local authorities are unwilling or unable to make the material sacrifices requisite for the proper carrying on of the elementary schools, and for this reason these schools vary greatly in efficiency. To prove this, it suffices, in various countries, to compare the State schools with the Gemeindeschulen, and the town schools with the village schools.
It is absolutely essential that it should be established on principle that every child, not excepting the children of the well-to-do, must attend a public elementary school, and that neither attendance at a private school nor private domestic instruction can be accepted in lieu of such attendance—if[216] only for the reason that not until this obligation is universally enforced will the richer classes acquire a genuine interest in the public elementary schools. To this it is objected that the elementary schools are already overcrowded, that their hygienic conditions are unsatisfactory, and that the society of the poorer children would not be good for the richer ones. But if all this is true, the only reasonable conclusion we can draw is, that it is time that these defects in the public elementary school were abolished. If, for the reasons given, the elementary school is unsuitable for the children of the well-to-do, it is no less unsuitable for the children of the poor. For the rest, each child is influenced by all the others. The rich child may learn much that is beautiful and good from the poor one, the latter often learns much that is evil and hateful from the former. The children of the well-to-do must learn in their earliest youth to know the people, for it is their mission to lead and they must accustom themselves to intercourse with the people.
The national system for elementary education must be extended so as to become as comprehensive and as actual as possible. The tendency of evolution is towards the institution of a public elementary school truly general, truly national, secular, and uniform in character. Such a school is the school of the future.