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WILLIAM RICE, THREE LUDGATE BROADWAY, E.C. 4. I Work and Play Out of School I.-INTRODUCTION By the Rev. C. A. ALINGTON, D.D., Headmaster of Eton. AM glad to have the opportunity of writing an introduction to the series of articles on Work and Play out of School which The Journal of Education proposes to publish, for I think that they will introduce to the public a side of school life which has as yet received insufficient attention. The critics of public schools base many of their criticisms on a view of their activities which is hopelessly out of date it is not only that they often assume that the work done there is still predominantly classical an illusion which a brief study of time-tables would dispelbut that they draw an absolute distinction between the hours spent in school and those in which a boy is left to himself. These latter hours they suppose to be entirely devoted to some form of athletics, and they constantly appeal for some opportunity for a boy to follow his own tastes. I am far from wishing to deny that athletics claim more time than they deserve, or that they occupy more of the average boy's thoughts than could be wished: on the other hand, it has to be remembered that the average boy is not wiser than most of his parents and some of his teachers, and that large numbers of both these classes, being English, do in fact devote a good deal of attention to games of one kind or another. It may be added in his defence that his interest is in the games which he actually plays and not primarily in those he never sees, and that there are plenty of worse subjects than games for a boy to think and speak about. But if there are many worse subjects it is equally true that there are very many better, and what the critics fail to realize is that these other subjects do in point of fact occupy much of the attention of the average boy. I value the title of this series of articles Work and play out of School," for boys do work very hard at things out of school, and if they enjoy doing so, the work they do is not likely to be the worse for it. I am continually impelled to state my opinion that the two English institutions which are most frequently attacked for a stupid conservatism-the public schools and the Church of England-are in point of fact the two which are most constantly changing, and there can be no doubt of the great growth of facilities for outof-school activities of the kind of which I speak. When I was at school some of them of course existed, for in public schools, at any rate for the last fifty or sixty years, there have never been lacking masters capable and desirous of sharing their own interests with boys: but we were, unless I am greatly mistaken, infinitely more conventional than boys of the present day. I have never ceased to regret that a conventional athleticism prevented me from taking the glorious chances which the Marlborough country afforded of learning a little natural history and acquiring the rudiments of archaeology. But even then the fault was mine, and it was a fault which some of my contemporaries avoided. To-day, I fancy, it would be even less excusable. I am not qualified to discuss in detail the various subjects to be dealt with in particular articles, and that would not be the function of an introduction: I am only concerned to point out the wealth of opportunity which at present exists, and the readiness to take advantage of it which the modern boy displays. If I may be allowed to quote a personal experience, it is not long since I spent an illuminating evening. I was first invited to attend a meeting of a Plain-song society, founded by some boys who were interested in that type of music. My own tastes do not lead me in that direction, and I was not sorry to plead a previous engagement with the society of Fine Art. There I listened uncomprehendingly to a discussion of modernist French art, but, little as I could understand the technical points at issue between two boys who assailed one another with passion, I could at least appreciate the genuineness of their feeling. I returned, somewhat battered, to my own study, where I found a French debating society discussing with a vigour, which was refreshing, though perhaps not very idiomatic, the future of automobilism. I do not pretend that this evening was typical: I only record that it was real, and that it would never have occurred to any of the three sets of boys to doubt the right of the others to their choice of an evening's entertainment. The activities which later articles are to discuss differ greatly in their range and in their width of appeal. I will only speak of a few of them and in no case with expert knowledge. With regard to games as a whole there is only one thing which I wish to say, and that is that a school gains greatly when its athletic eggs, if I may so speak, are not all in one basket. Concentration on one game tends to develop a single type of athlete, and that is not infrequently disastrous whether to a house or to a school. That is one reason why, though I am myself in no sense a wetbob," I rejoice that my lot has been thrown in schools where a totally different type of sport brings to the front boys of a type who often fail to excel at any ball game. I do not wish to compare the types, but to welcome the variety. The O.T.C., again, often brings into prominence boys who might otherwise linger in obscurity. No doubt the school heroes tend to become officers automatically, but there always are some boys, undistinguished in other ways, to whom the O.T.C. gives the welcome opportunity of displaying competence and thereby acquiring self-confidence. The work done for Certificate A may be, and often is, of real educational value. A word should perhaps be said of the absurd theory that an O.T.C. is a nursery of militarism. School corps are certainly far more efficient than they were before the War and have remained (to the surprise of some schoolmasters) a more normal part of Theorists have even been found to detect the lurking vices of militarism in the boy scout movement. Any one who has seen (as I happen to have seen this afternoon) groups of small boys digging holes for their fires in the ground, and eagerly discussing whether bacon could be profitably cooked or whether it was safer to offer some less ambitious dish for a house competition, will have no fears on that score. In this matter I speak as a complete convert. I had great doubts whether such a movement could succeed in a public school, especially in one not without a strong conservative tradition. My doubts have proved completely without foundation, and the perfect absence of self-consciousness with which boys from the very first have worn their distinguishing garb (even, on necessary occasions, in chapel) has shown me, what I am very glad and very ready to believe, that the modern boy is far more sensible, as well as far more ingenious, than I was at a similar age. It is impossible to question the value of what they learn, and I look forward to the establishment of a special class for scout masters, in the belief that what boys willingly learn of such craft in their spare time will be of benefit both to themselves and to others in the future. In the matter of the study of local history, whether natural" or other, schools differ greatly in their opportunities, but it may safely be said that these opportunities are never absent and should be used to the full. Historians have come to recognize the supreme value of local research, and in a country so packed with history as this island it can never be difficult to find matter of interest. Many schools (notably Winchester) have done good work by means of school societies in encouraging the exploration of local antiquities, and there can be no better training for a budding historian: nor, though on this point I am ill qualified to speak, can it be doubted that the flora and fauna of every district provide problems as various and as interesting. A little research done by and for oneself is in any subject of the highest educational value and I hope that this is a truism which schoolmasters are coming to realize more and more. When we pass to more strictly scientific matters I am completely out of my depth. I can only say that the displays now so frequently given by school scientific societies reveal a width of apparent knowledge and unquestionable interest which puts the ignorant elder to shame. He will no doubt find some boys as ignorant as himself, but he cannot fail to be impressed by the number who deal cleverly and happily with matters and machinery too high and too delicate for him. The amount of knowledge of motor machinery possessed by small boys has long been the despair of schoolmasters who incautiously set a question on the subject: it seriously competes with the knowledge of the careers of professional cricketers which used to form their self-chosen intellectual nourishment, and it is difficult to doubt that it is more profitable. Wireless societies are a modern growth, but they elicit a keenness which astonishes those who are content to accept the results of science without venturing to inquire how they are attained in any case their existence shows that schools have not been slow to encourage activities a long way outside their ordinary curriculum. The only criticism which I should venture to make on the list of subjects proposed is that in coupling Photography and Art together it imposes a very severe burden on the author of that article. I feel myself that art in its widest sense deserves a long article to itself. It is generally agreed that it is a wrong principle that music should be regarded " as an "extra subject, to be pursued entirely in a boy's own time and at some additional expense to his parents. I am personally as ignorant of music as I am of science, but it seems to me obvious that for boys who have any taste in that direction (and good judges believe them to be a very considerable proportion of the whole) music should be a regular part of the school curriculum. If I were to hazard a suggestion it would be that, while possibly too many boys attempt to master an instrument, too few are taught, as they can be taught, to appreciate good music. The function of a musical director should be not necessarily to encourage more performers and if music is included in the general school fees like any other school subject, no financial questions will arise to complicate matters-but by the wise provision of concerts, preceded by explanations, to awaken in as many as possible the power to realize what is good, and the desire to listen to it. It is difficult to set a limit to the possibilities of such teaching, especially in days when science has come so generously to the aid of music and renders the reproduction of any melody so easy. But I should wish to urge very strongly that art has claims to treatment at least as good. If it is possible to train boys to appreciate what is good in music it is surely at least as easy to train them to appreciate what is beautiful to the eye, and I can see no reason why this should not be more generally attempted. Here again the primary purpose would not be to encourage creation (though it must be said that attempts at artistic creation do not inflict such a burden on the outside world as the tentative efforts of would-be musicians) but to encourage a knowledge of what is beautiful and of the reasons why it has won that title. Loan exhibitions illustrating a particular type of art should be organized, and such exhibitions should by no means be limited to drawings or paintings. Manufacturers of beautiful fabrics would often be ready to co-operate, and much might be done to instruct taste. I know of some schools where such exhibitions are already held, just as I know of some which have experimented in the designing or making of stained glass, but the field is almost illimitable and calls for exploration. All schools possess literary and debating societies. The former depend very largely on the genius of the presiding master, but they perform an invaluable function in giving boys of some literary talent a motive for writing as well as they can, and in providing an audience capable of criticism and applause. School papers, if properly run, do much to stimulate the desire for authorship. If I may be allowed a personal reminiscence, few things gave me so much encouragement in my school days as the fact that some verses of mine published in a school magazine were favourably commented on by the editor of another. I am sure that the more boys are encouraged to write English verse the better: their results will seldom bear critical study, but at the least they encourage a knowledge of metre, which helps greatly towards the intelligent study of real poetry, and at the best they are, as a rule, curiously better than the early efforts of many celebrated poets. School debating societies are a harder problem. The fundamental, and indeed insuperable, difficulty under which they labour is that there are very few subjects of which boys know enough to be able to debate them with intelligent interest. Hence comes the lamentable cycle of such topics as Ghosts, Athletics, Corporal Punishment, and so on, which fill the hearts of their elders with "lamentation and mourning and woe." It is of great importance that every one should learn to face an audience without nervous prostration, and anything (such as Speeches" at Eton) which forces a boy to stand up before his fellows and try to speak so that they will understand has a great value, but I frankly believe that debating societies have an infinitely greater value at the universities than they can ever have at schools. They will, and should, exist, but too much must not be expected from them. Of the drama similarly I should not myself expect too much. Boys like acting and often act well, but they have a natural preference for what is light and humorous, and in this it is difficult to see an educational value sufficient to compensate for the great amount of time required. There is, further, the obvious difficulty of finding plays in which feminine parts are not so important as to put an undue strain on the impersonators, and the objections to putting them in the hands of those who are not members of the school are sufficiently clear. For my own part, I should prefer to keep to the old-fashioned Shakespeare society, and I know how great its power can be in the hands of a man of genius. " Finally we come to the almost endless subject of Books and Reading. It is impossible to exaggerate the value of a good school library. It will not, of course, make its appeal to all, but even a familiarity with the outsides of good books has some educational value, and for those who go further the results are incalculable. It is interesting to see how many of our great writers trace their earliest developments of taste to their having had the run of a good library. When Scott describes his early "appetite for books as being as ample and indiscriminating as it was indefatigable" he is narrating a common experience of boyhood, and the hero of Waverley who is represented in the first chapter as "driving through the sea of books, like a vessel without pilot or rudder" is certainly drawn from his own life. We may, no doubt, hope to do something to supply a pilot or a rudder, but that can best be done in a boy's own house, and in the school library we must, in the main, be content to let books do their own work for themselves. Anything we can do to stimulate the reading of good books we must attempt, but we must realize that our attempts will often fail. Holiday tasks, well meant as they are, are often alleged to promote a distaste for authors read under compulsion, and, though I personally believe this argument to be often overstated, I should not look for great results from them. Voluntary competitions for small prizes, involving the reading of some delightful book with which boys would otherwise probably never come in contact, are of greater value, and in every school there are many boys, who, even without this stimulus, will read good books if only they are given a chance. And nowadays the chance is generally given. I feel myself to have travelled discursively over a very wide field without having added much to the knowledge of my readers, and without having made any valuable contribution to my subject. My excuse must be that the width of the field is my difficulty and that this very width proves the point which I have been endeavouring to makethat it is a very great mistake, in considering the life of a modern schoolboy, to limit oneself to the subjects which he studies in school, and that a series of articles on Work and Play out of School may have, and I hope will have, a most valuable effect both in calling attention to what is being done already, and in suggesting fresh methods by which these activities can be further extended and more profitably guided. ADVANTAGES OF DECIMAL REFORM.-While the campaign for decimal coinage is gaining increased support, Sir Richard Gregory, in his presidential address to the Decimal Association, stated that there was still need of extensive propaganda in order to impress the Government. In support of the Association's programme, it was stated that great retailers are becoming keenly alive to the advantage of the proposal of ten pence to the shilling. One large firm has calculated that the ability to use ordinary calculating machines would mean an economy of many thousands of pounds a year, and the head of another firm has stated that decimal coinage would mean an economy of £2,000 per annum in one single department of his business. The need for a change to the metric weights and measures is also urgent, if the United States (practically the only nation besides the British Commonwealths who have not made the reform) are not to move first. Correspondence REPRESSION OF PRIVATE EFFORT IN EDUCATION There have appeared recently in The Times many laments over the disappearance of the country grammar-school, caused by the rise of the county secondary schools, which are subventioned by the rates. This is not the only sign that the State wishes to make it impossible for any private person to teach. Before the War there were several excellent coaching establishments both in London and in the country. Some of these prepared for the Diplomatic Service and Foreign Office, others for the Home and Indian Civil Service, others again for the Army and Navy, while many were of a miscellaneous character preparing for the entrance examinations of the Universities and professions. All the well-conducted establishments did useful work, which is still necessary in view of the crowded condition of the public schools which renders it difficult for the masters to attend to backward or slow boys. Now, however, many of these establishments have disappeared. The Universities now prepare for the Indian and Home Services although the Diplomatic candidates usually prepare in London. The Army examinations are now so easy, through lack of competition, that most candidates pass straight from school. This has been aided by the new regulations which were drawn up by a Committee, presided over by Lord Haldane, whose aim appears to be to do away with individual effort and to turn out all students as alike as chocolate creams. Considering that a boy will do as much in a year with a coach as he does in five years at school, it is evident that the disappearance of these useful aids to the backward is to be deplored. Public money should not be spent on work that can be done as well or better without it. A man whose income depends entirely on his own efforts will work better than one who is paid the same whatever he does. BIOLOGY THROUGH LATIN VETERAN. According to a letter in The Times of November 15, it is a matter of congratulation to the Chairman of the Classical Association that so many pupils in public schools are now studying Latin. As an examiner in English, I viewed the matter from a different standpoint this summer, when I had to correct scores, if not hundreds, of essays on bees, one of the subjects set, which, to my surprise, proved most popular. What a farrago of nonsense I had to wade through! Not having read the Georgics, I had at first no clue to the source of information of the candidates, and thought that some writer on natural history in a popular newspaper must have gone mad. Dozens of boys and girls told me, apparently without a suspicion that anything had been discovered about bees since the time of Vergil, that: 1. When the day is windy, bees carry pebbles into the air with them to steady their flight. 2. There are two kinds of bees-one ablaze with glory, its body covered with golden spots. Each kind has a king of its own. 3. They sharpen their stings and fight in mid-air with battlecries. Then they collect in a ball and fall headlong to earth. 4. They do not marry or produce offspring, but collect their young from the foliage about them. Now I was not concerned with the matter, but the manner of their essays. Still I could not help deploring the fact that these adolescents should be leaving school without any knowledge of biology, though they might be well read in Latin poetry; but perhaps there is scarcely time for both. AN EXAMINER. SUPPLY AND TRAINING OF TEACHERS The following matters seem to me essential if you are to get a properly qualified set of teachers in this country worthy of the salaries which are now being paid to them. 1. That the standard for admission to training colleges be raised considerably. At present it is ridiculously low. I am aware that the majority of training colleges pay no attention to this standard and have standards of their own. Westminster College and some others, for instance, insist on candidates having already passed the London Matriculation as the minimum qualification for acceptance. But the existence of so low a standard raises false hopes in many and inundates the colleges with hundreds of applicants quite unfit for the profession. The same standard, possibly, might not be exacted from those who are preparing to be infant teachers, but for those who are preparing to be teachers in general we have a right to demand higher qualification. 2. The student-teacher year should be abolished. It is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring, and makes a sad break in training. There are some schools, it is true, in which a boy or girl learns something of the art of teaching, but in the majority they learn little to compensate for the year's loss of study and of study habits at a critical time in their life. 3. If this were done there is no doubt that the training colleges would run some risk of taking in candidates who would prove to be failures. I do not think the percentage would be great. After all, teaching is a matter more of personality than anything else, and the heads of secondary schools are perhaps the best judges of this and their views of this would still continue to be at the disposal of the college authorities. Nevertheless it would be well if more drastic powers of weeding out unsuitable candidates in their first year were given to the colleges. 4. The colleges should be allowed to develop more and more their own individuality and any attempt to make all of one uniform pattern should be given up. This will apply to any endeavour to link the training colleges with the university. At present there is a movement for an artificial linking from which in my judgment little good can come unless it is recognized from the first that the association between university and colleges must be very varied indeed, dependent upon the types of colleges with which they are associated. Everything English, from Parliaments downwards, has always grown up without any very special design or plan. Things which have been planned out elaborately have usually come to little. There is at present far too much artificial planning for the future of colleges and too little is being left to natural growth. 5. Above all every endeavour should be made to prevent localism. Nothing can be worse for the education of a teacher than to go from a local school to a local college and pass into local employment. The essential width of outlook can only be obtained by a larger association. H. B. WORKMAN. Westminster Training College. Your leader of November calls attention to some of the many difficulties surrounding the new proposals for the training of teachers, and emphasizes the dangers of attempting even a small scale revolution without adequate preparation. It is quite evident that now and in the future the teacher is to be one of the great inspirational forces of this country, and for this reason must be a person of wide culture, especially trained in the art of directing little children and young people in their individual adjustment to life. It therefore appears necessary that the teacher's own education shall be generous and continuous, and that this student life shall be lived in a university or in a training college attached to a university and enjoying equal facilities for a wide and generous culture and for a full social and communal life. The dual function of the training college has seriously hindered its full usefulness, both as an institution for academic and for professional training. It is obvious that a staff expert in giving academic instruction may not be expert in giving training for practical teaching; indeed the conditions necessary to make an expert in the one direction almost preclude the possibility of becoming at the same time an expert in the other. The time seems to have arrived when the first preparation for a change in the method of training shall be a survey of the training colleges with a view to the complete separation of the academic and professional part of the training. The colleges best suited by size and by proximity to a university or other centre of culture could be used to supplement the existing accommodation of the universities, and should give an education culminating in the attainment of a university degree or of a diploma of equivalent value indicating the conclusion of a course particularly directed to the future calling of the teacher. The smaller training colleges could then be devoted to providing a one-year (or longer) course of specialized professional training combined with practical and experimental work in the schools. These should be staffed by people who are experts in the art of teaching, with a first-hand knowledge of little children and of the actual conditions of the schools. Such a year of training should do much more for the embryo teacher than the student teacher year and the isolated periods now sandwiched between other parts of the training college courses. Your editorial on the supply and training of teachers is an admirable summary of the problems that Local Authorities have to face. In my view, good candidates for the teaching profession will profit most by an unbroken course at a secondary school, but candidates whose capacity is in doubt will be ill served if they are allowed to pass on to a training college without being given opportunity of proving, under some practical test such as the student year provides, whether or not they have aptitude for teaching. At the same time, I am of the opinion that the reports on the work done by a student-teacher should be considered much more rigorously than has usually been the case. I do not think it would be disputed, that a great many student-teachers have been passed" by Authorities in the charitable hope that they would ultimately make good, without any substantial grounds for believing they would do so. My Authority has requested the Board to give it permission to appoint candidates for the teaching profession as student-teachers when it deems that individual circumstances make that course desirable. In general, it proposes to arrange that candidates of unquestioned ability will continue at a secondary school until they are ready to proceed to a training college, but candidates whose reports are not quite satisfactory will be granted student teacherships, at the expiry of which, their position will be very carefully reviewed. J. COMPTON, Director of Education, Barking. I have read with much interest your leading article on The Supply and Training of Teachers." I notice you suggest that the number of intending teachers who are weeded out during the student teacher year is " 5% or even less" and I think that many would be interested to see the statistics on which this statement is based. It would be unfortunate if parents were led to believe that the successful completion of a student teacher year gave any guarantee of success in the remaining stages of preparation for the profession. Table 160 of the recently published "Statistics of Public Education" gives some information on this point. It is shown that, of 4,602 students who finished their training for teaching in elementary schools in 1925, 394 or 8.5 per cent failed to obtain the certificate. If the figures are modified by the addition of the numbers of students re-examined in that year these numbers become 5,301 and 754 or 14 per cent. This is certainly not a high percentage of failures, but there is nothing to indicate that the hardships which such failure entails will be limited to any one section of the community. It will further be remembered that the Departmental Committee on the Training of Teachers commented on the over supply of certificated teachers which had existed since 1922, and found ground for satisfaction in the fact that in December, 1924, only 12 per cent of the students who completed a college course in the July of that year were still without posts. I have no figures to show the position in 1925 and 1926, but there are still unpleasant rumours which indicate that a number of qualified teachers are without posts. The poorer parent, and he is the rule rather than the exception, who has faced the sacrifice necessary to keep a child at a secondary school until the age of 16 is reached, is not unwilling to continue the struggle. It is reasonable that he should wish to know that his child is fitted for the profession, likely to complete the course successfully, and, this done, to obtain a post at the end. As matters are, it does not appear that the student teacher year can give him more information in regard to the first and second points than could be given by the head and staff of the school in which at least four years have been spent. In regard to the third, he is at the mercy of those economic and political movements which continue to limit the development of educational facilities in this country. U. GORDON-WILSON, Secretary, Association of Assistant Mistresses. Your November leading article deals admirably with a great social problem. England is neither prosperous nor happy, and one fundamental source of unhappiness is the condition of her elementary education. Inadequate and ineffective, it gives the impression of a costly futility. Matthew Arnold's remark on the pupil teacher system needs precise dating. After all, he died thirty-eight years ago, and never really cared for that part of his work which brought him into the schools of the people. In many country districts the teachers are disliked, despised, and yet envied by the local tradesmen and farmers. A branch of the Farmers' Union has even been known to make public official protest against the over-payment of the teachers. The same feeling is vaguely current elsewhere. You, sir, truly say that "we have bribed young people into the teaching profession by offering them help at the initial stages instead of good conditions later on," and you rightly describe this as "immoral." Yet this immorality continues. Why? And what are the bad conditions you refer to ? I venture to think that you, as editor of this paper, might do a public service by holding a dispassionate investigation of the whole matter. Could you not select a small voluntary committee of experienced and impartial men and women to inquire far and wide over England, by means of interviews, questionnaires, and confidential reports, as to the defects in the system as felt by the persons working it? Under a suitable chairman, this informal body might produce a most valuable report and add suggestions for remedies, for publication in this Journal. I have no sympathy with grumblers, or with young people who carp at the irksomeness of daily toil. But I also know some of the preventable and uncured evils under which many an elementary teacher suffers, and I cannot help seeing, too, how poorly equipped many of the present teachers are, and how little the children seem to gain from their ten years at a school. I watched the death-struggles of the pupil-teacher system, and welcomed the birth and growth of the student-teacher scheme, and I confess I found the newer system little better than the old. You speak frankly and suggestively, but you seem to me too considerate of the feelings of the Association of Education Committees, and not nearly hard enough on the fumbling policy of "the Board." Let me set down at random a few of the matters about which inquiries might be made, and plain-spoken replies invited. I. How far are the supply and quality of the teachers affected by: (1) the foul air in many class-rooms, due to the ill-washed bodies and dirty clothing of the children; (2) the toleration of a standard of cloakroom and lavatory accommodation far below that required in secondary schools; (3) the lack of proper room for the compulsory physical exercises; (4) the fact that the young elementary teacher has no social status ? II. Is it conceivable that a better kind of teacher and in sufficient numbers would be attracted to the work without any of |