Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

The

“TEACHING OF ENGLISH"

Series

THE FIRST FIFTY TITLES

Section I-ENGLISH LANGUAGE, GRAMMAR, COMPOSITION, &c.

No. 5.

Nos. 1-4. ENGLISH, SPOKEN AND WRITTEN. By RICHARD WILSON, B.A., D.Litt. A Graduated Four Years Course, leading up to General School and Matriculation Examinations. Part I. Is. 6d. (Fifth Edn). Part II. Is. 6d. (Third Edn.). Part III. 1s. 9d. (Third Edn.). Part IV. 2s. (Third Edn.). OUR LIVING LANGUAGE. By J. H. G. GRATTAN and P. GURREY. Experimental English Grammar for Pupils of 14 to 16. Price 3s. 6d.

No. 47.

TAYLOR'S “WORDS AND PLACES." Edited by BEATRICE SAXON SNELL, M.A. Abridged, revised, and annotated. Price Is. 9d. (Second Edn.).

No. 50.

Section II-JUNIOR LITERATURE

1s. 6d. each

PRÉCIS, NOTES, AND SUMMARIES. (Third Edn.) By RICHARD WILSON, B.A., D.Litt. Price 1s. 9d.

Section III-SENIOR LITERATURE

1s. 9d. each

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

No. 31.

THE WORLD REVEALED-AUSTRALASIA.
TREASURE ISLAND. By R. L. STEVENSON. Exercises.
MIDWINTER. By JOHN BUCHAN. Exercises.

RICHARD II. Edited by Sir HENRY NEWBOLT.
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Edited by
EVELYN SMITH, Β.Α.

No. 33. HENRY IV-PART I. Edited by EVELYN SMITH, В.А.
Nos. 34-37. NOBLE ENGLISH. Edited by Sir H. NEWBOLT.
Selections from leading Prose Writers from Mandeville
to Johnson.

No. 39.

No. 46.

THE MAN AND THE BOOK-SCOTT. By JOHN
BUCHAN.

A SHORTER BOSWELL. Edited by JOHN BAILEY.
THE GREENWOOD. By Sir H. NEWBOLT. Containing
Maid Marian, by T. L. PEACOCK. and cognate material
on Robin Hood.

THE ENGLISH STORY IN PROSE. Edited by PHYLLIS
BISHOP. A guide to the English novel.

THE ENGLISH STORY IN VERSE. Edited by PHYLLIS
BISHOP. Story Poems.

THE WORLD REVEALED-SOUTHERN AFRICA.
THE WORLD REVEALED-NORTHERN AFRICA.
TENNYSON AND BROWNING. Contrasted by Guy
BOAS, M.A.

THE SEA IN LITERATURE. By Sir H. NEWBOLT.
A PRIMER OF LITERATURE. By Dr. A. СOMPTON
RICKETT.

THE TOWN IN LITERATURE. By L. S. WOOD and
H. L. BURROWS.

WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE. Contrasted by
GUY BOAS, M.Α.

THE PATH OF THE KING. By JOHN BUCHAN.
Exercises.

THOMAS NELSON & SONS, LTD., 35 & 36 Paternoster Row, E.C. 4

No. 28.

No. 29.

No. 30.

No. 32.

No. 38.

No. 40.

No. 41.

No. 42.

No. 43.

No. 44.

No. 45.

No. 48.

No. 49.

No. 51.

No. 52.

[ocr errors]

instrument for all school offences. Spare the rod, spoil the child" was the schoolmaster's unquestioned text. Nowadays the pendulum has swung round: many people regard caning as a relic of barbarism, and favour its entire abolition. I believe this to be a mistake, and that the discrediting of the cane is due to a misunderstanding of its proper function. The cane is a sound and serviceable means of punishment; but its justification depends entirely on how and when it is used. The idea that caning is a brutalizing proceeding, and that it tends to destroy the self-respect of both parties to it, is either sheer sentimentality, or is due to the by no means uncommon misapplication of the principle that should govern caning.

Exceptions can discredit any principle; and it is quite true that there are certain boys who should never be caned, and, likewise, there are certain masters who should never cane. In all education temperament must be taken into account. But the cardinal error in the matter of caning is its reservation mainly for moral offences. It is precisely here that the charge of brutalization, and the danger of destroying a boy's self-respect are most likely to be realized. A boy has yielded to temptation; he has, if only temporarily, descended a stage morally; and there is no external power on earth that can force him back to his previous moral standpoint. He alone can retrace his steps.

The effect of a caning on a boy who has committed a moral offence is nearly always hardening. If a man can so lose his sense of values as to consider he can estimate and rectify a dishonourable deed by the physical application on the offender of so many strokes of the rod, can we be surprised if the boy fails to recognize his ameliorative intentions? The only conclusion the culprit can draw (if he draws any) is that in some mysterious manner (recognized by adults, but a puzzle to him) he has, by suffering physical pain, atoned for his moral misdemeanour.

Some headmasters, while allowing to their staff free use of the cane on all other counts, reserve for their own consideration such offences as constitute a breach of morals or honour. This is a sound practice, and throws the heavy responsibility of saving a boy's character on the man who by his position and experience should best be able to meet it. If the school is larger than it ought to be, and the headmaster's knowledge of the individual character of his boys is inadequate, he may have to supplement it by conferring with the boy's housemaster or form-master. But whatever measures are taken, it is only fair to the boy, as well as being the policy most likely to achieve good result, that the matter be treated with a minimum of publicity. With no common index to circumstance and character, it is obviously not possible to lay down precise positive methods of dealing with moral offences, any more in school than in the world outside. The general question will be discussed later. All that I maintain here is that caning is generally the worst remedy in such cases.

The moral sphere is, however, the only sphere (under our present school system) in which I deprecate the use of the cane. In fact, where schools are ruled by punishment, as most schools still are, I believe it to be the most efficient means of coping with the normal schoolboy's mischievousness. It is short, sharp, and soon over; and it therein corresponds with the majority of school misdeeds. The average boy has little malice aforethought, and little malice afterthought (provided the master treats the matter in the same casual spirit); he does something he should not do, or he has left undone something he should have done; he has a sportman's sense; he has staked the hazard, lost, and must take the consequences. Perhaps, better luck next time; it's all in the game. Most other punishments are mentally demoralizing through their futility, or temperamentally demoralizing through their postponement, or both. I often think that if modern invention could devise a means of testing the actual effect

of various punishments, there would be some very startling revelations.

As a matter of fact the influence of an outworn educational tradition in the matter of punishment is far too prevalent under the changed conditions of our schools. And, though in discussing our existing system of punishment I have dwelt on the advantages of the cane over other methods, I, personally, have a strong bias in favour of a non-penal basis of education. Put briefly the case for it is this: there is an entire change in the atmosphere of the class-room; the boys are put in a right relation to their work, and to their teacher; the work of the enthusiastic boys gains much from this new and healthier attitude; the idlers at worst slack just as before, or at best are influenced by a general feeling of good form" and common decency to exert themselves; while the

square peg in a round hole"- in other words, the boy who has energy and talents of a kind but is mentally unsuited to academic class-work - escapes the embitterment and demoralization of continual punishment.

In the course of over thirty years experience I have seen many methods in various schools. I once worked in a Lancashire grammar school for six years under a detention system; this was then abolished, and for another six years I continued in the same school under its non-detention régime; and it was the universal opinion that the innovation was a success.

Of course, schools and circumstances vary, and it is only fair to state that the said school had a good tradition of work behind it. But the fact remains that punishment very easily becomes a habit both to the master and to the boy, and once it becomes a matter of routine, its effectiveness is gone. I have recently come under the opposite experience, the introduction of a detention system into a school previously without it. As a novelty it has undoubtedly proved effective; but it is now rapidly developing its quota of regular clients, masters and boys reciprocally, the latter tending to regard it as a normal addition to their school hours of boredom.

As a boy gets older, the question of punishment in general, and of caning in particular, assumes a different aspect. An older boy's misdeeds can no longer be attributed to irresponsible mischievousness, and therefore the light-hearted application of the cane ceases to be a consequent remedy. And, as I regard it as an abuse of the cane to employ it for any but superficial offences, so I maintain that its general use should be limited to boys below the age of puberty, and should cease when they emerge into the sphere of responsible rational being.

Incurable and dangerous moral delinquents must, as I have said, be expelled. For the rest, I consider that in the upper part of a school the boy's attitude to his work and to the function of the teacher, and the teacher's attitude to the boy and his work, should cease to be regulated by the principle of compulsion, and should be placed on the normal business footing of personal and contractual obligation that holds in the world outside.

By the time a boy has reached the upper school, he has passed the turning point, and is definitely looking from boyhood to manhood; and it is within his power to apprehend, and it is an important part of his education that he should be led to grasp the business and personal obligation which his position involves. This seems to me the only natural and healthy corollary of the comparative freedom and individual responsibility which is the keynote of modern school life.

Under the old-fashioned system of compulsion a master was master: he ruled his class; he was recognized as a taskmaster, who fulfilled his function by insisting on the accomplishment of certain set tasks, at no excessive expense of energy on his part once he had attained efficiency in (Continued on page 170)

COMMENTARIES AND QUESTIONNAIRES

IN

ENGLISH LITERATURE

PREPARED BY EXPERIENCED TEACHERS
OF HIGH ACADEMIC STANDING

The object of this new series is to guide students of English Literature to a fuller appreciation of the works to which they may for the time be devoting particular attention. An untrained reader may, and usually does, miss many beauties in writing: one author's delicacy or subtlety; the power or forcefulness of another.

These little books will be of real assistance to students. Many of the authors are, or have been, Examiners in English Literature for important examining bodies, and may therefore claim an unusually intimate acquaintance with examiners' requirements.

The standard of examinations for which the books are suitable is that of any University Matriculation Examination, the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations, both Senior and Junior, the College of Preceptors, and similar Examinations.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LTD., Parker Street, Kingsway, London, W.C. 2

the routine and discipline required. At the present day a teacher is regarded not so much as a master of his pupils, but as one placed at their service, to give of himself all that he can in helping them and furthering their welfare. To continue the old effete tradition, and to attempt

ered the headmaster's duty frankly to state the fact to their parents, and to suggest their removal.

Lastly, the question of occasional theft, and sundry social offences, to which I promised further reference, introduces the subject of internal jurisdiction. Many

to combine the system of compulsion with the modern | schools allow their prefects authority to punish both by

idea of the teacher's unlimited service is grossly unfair to the schoolmaster, and places him in a false position in the boys', and, often, their parents' eyes. To give of their best, as most schoolmasters of to-day do, and then to have to force its acceptance, is gall to the giver's spirit, and promotes little stimulating gratitude in the mind of the receiver.

I maintain that the working efficiency of, at any rate, the upper part of our schools should rest not on compulsion, but on the establishment of a tradition of mutual obligation between master and pupil. When a boy has reached the age of reason, compulsion is mutually degrading to master and boy and, under modern conditions, ought to be abolished. This, no doubt, will be hotly contested by the old type of efficient disciplinarian, who will maintain that it is an essential, however disagreeable, part of hi, duty to force the slacker to work. But, in the upper part of the school, the inveterate idler is in a very small minority; and, if he has not found the value of school work by that time, no amount of compulsion will change his attitude; and without change of attitude, no useful result can be obtained; and finally, the only right atmosphere and attitude to work of the whole upper school should not be sacrificed to the exigencies of this recalcitrant minority.

means of impositions and with the cane, The latter authority is open to grave objection and possibilities of abuse, and should be abolished. The former is a subsidiary aspect of the whole question of jurisdiction, and if it proves one of the necessary means of securing that jurisdiction it must be retained.

A school is a society; and I believe that the majority of social offences can best be dealt with by the society; and the tradition of social behaviour thus established may become the most valuable part of a boy's education. The prefectorial, or monitorial, system owed its inception to this idea. But the power of the prefect is too individual and autocratic for liberal jurisdiction. Prefects are a serviceable means of relieving the schoolmaster of the minor duties of supervision in the building, in the matter of general orderliness and observance of necessary rules. But, for the larger purposes of creating and maintaining a sound tradition of social conduct, there should be established in every school a representative assembly, composed, naturally, mainly of the prefects and monitors, but including also representatives from the rest of the school.

The establishment of this collective school authority will no doubt present initial difficulties, and it may take a generation or two for the school to acquire the new orien

Moreover, I believe that under such new conditions | tation of outlook necessary for its complete success. But

idling in the upper school would come to be regarded by the boys themselves as a foolish sacrifice of their own interests. And, should there still occur cases of boys who persist in wasting their time, and who are doing no good either to themselves or to the school, it should be consid

I firmly believe that the experiment will justify itself, and that this definite recognition of the school's responsibility for its own social behaviour will prove a more successful and salutary system than the present one, which confesses its failure again and again.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

between the old and the undiluted direct method. On the whole, modern French will be preferred though the classics will not be neglected, and the series will also include grammars and composition books, as well as several collections of a highly interesting and unique character.

[blocks in formation]

"The Secondary School Boy" is the title of an interesting article by Mr. H. C. Dent, which appeared in The Nineteenth Century for February. The writer indicates that the "secondary school looks like becoming shortly the dominant force in English education." We commend the article to all interested in education.

PIONEERING IN EDUCATION.---Five days which promise to be full of interest to all who care about education are to be spent in Stratford-on-Avon, at Easter, in discussions on the Philosophy of Pioneering, and Pioneers (living and dead), and on Educational Experiments. There will be a paper on the Edgeworths (father and daughter) as pioneers of the past, and Dr. Dewey of the present, with probably Miss Dewey as speaker. Speakers from the United States will give accounts of educational developments on the other side of the Atlantic, and M. Decroly, the Belgium pioneer will describe his schools. The Director of Education for Kent will speak on "County Library Movement in Kent." A discussion on the "Possibilities of Educational Broadcasting" will be opened by Mr. J. C. Stobart, Director of Education for the B.B.C. Accounts will be given also of pioneer work in the schools of this country including the working of the P.N.E.U. Literature Scheme in the Gloucestershire Schools, and one based on Dr. Rudolf Steiner's Art of Education. The Conference is being arranged by the Committee of the New Ideals in Education and will be informal and friendly. The Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare Festival will be held at the same time and Shakespeare enthusiasts will have the opportunity of seeing many plays. Full particulars of Conference, Shakespeare Festival, etc., can be obtained from Miss de Lissa, 44 The Avenue, London, S.E. 19.

HACHETTE'S NEW BOOKS

FRENCH GRAMMAR THROUGH THE TEXT

Lister. Grammatical Rule Indicator to Lazare's "Half Hours with Modern
Authors," Part I. 9d.

This booklet provides a new simple method of teaching French Grammar from the text. Twelve phrases are taken from each of the first go pieces in the Lazare “ Half Hours," Part I. -1,080 phrases. To each phrase two references are given :

1. The piece and line in the "Half Hours," I.

2. The page and sub-section in Lister, "Middle Index French Grammar," where the
rule exemplified by the phrase is given.

The examples have been selected so that every rule in the Grammar is illustrated several times.

"

The pupil possessing a Rule Indicator" can study, systematically and unaided, the grammatical points furnished by his text. Pupils can also be instructed to enter the phrases in the "Middle Index Cahier" (either in class or as homework) to impress the rules on the memory. Each " Cahier becomes a valuable grammar of phrases, giving, moreover, 1,500 words of essential but unfamiliar vocabulary.

[blocks in formation]

THE "CERTIFICATE" COURSE IN FRENCH

By E. G. LEGRAND, Officier d'Académie, Bradfield College,, Berkshire. Three volumes, covering the whole ground of the Lower Certificate" and School Certificate" French Examinations:

"CERTIFICATE" UNPREPARED FRENCH TRANSLATIONS.

[ocr errors]

Cloth, 3s.

A selection of Passages from French Authors of the seventeenth century to the present day. The extracts are in accord with the actual requirements of the Examinations, both for difficulty and length, and special care has been taken to provide suitable poetical selections. It will afford candidates much needed practice.

"CERTIFICATE" FREE COMPOSITION IN FRENCH.

Cloth, 3s. This volume provides two sets of Anecdotes, with Analysis to each (as given at the Examinations), Vocabularies of useful words, Idiomatic Phrases, and treats simply some grammatical difficulties. It affords much needed practice to Candidates, on the exact lines of the Examinations themselves.

"CERTIFICATE" FRENCH GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION.

Cloth, 4s.

Specially designed to cover the ground of the French Grammar and Composition sections of these Examinations.

LONDON: 18 KING WILLIAM STREET, CHARING CROSS, W.C.2

« AnteriorContinuar »