Except in very rare cases, the teacher, even at an early age (i.e., after four, say) should not be either parent. Teaching is work requiring a special type of skill, which can be learnt, but which most parents have not had the opportunity of learning. The earlier the age of the pupil, the greater is the pedagogical skill required. And apart from this, the parent has been in constant contact with the child before formal education began, so that the child has a set of habits and expectations towards the parent which are not quite appropriate towards a teacher. The parent, moreover, is likely to be too eager and too much interested in his child’s progress. He will be inordinately pleased by the child’s cleverness and exasperated by his stupidity. There are the same reasons for not teaching one’s own children as have led medical men not to treat their own families. But of course I do not mean that parents should not give such instruction as comes naturally; I mean only that they are, as a rule, not the best people for formal school lessons, even when they are well qualified to teach other people’s children.
Throughout education, from the first day to the last, there should be a sense of intellectual adventure. The world is full of puzzling things which can be understood by sufficient effort. The sense of understanding what had been puzzling is exhilarating and delightful; every good teacher should be able to give it. Madame Montessori describes the delight of her children when they find they can write; I remember a sense almost of intoxication when I first read Newton’s deduction of Kepler’s Second Law from the law of gravitation. Few joys are so pure or so useful as this. Initiative and individual work give the pupil the opportunity of discovery, and thus afford the sense of mental adventure far more often and more keenly than is possible where everything is taught in class. Wherever it is possible, let the student be active rather than passive. This is one of the secrets of making education a happiness rather than a torment.
CHAPTER XV
THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM BEFORE FOURTEEN
The questions: what should be taught? and how should it be taught? are intimately connected, because, if better methods of teaching are devised, it is possible to learn more. In particular, more can be learnt if the pupils wish to learn than if they regard work as a bore. I have already said something about methods, and I shall say more in a later chapter. For the present, I shall assume that the best possible methods are employed, and I shall consider what ought to be taught.
When we consider what an adult ought to know, we soon realize that there are things which everybody ought to know, and other things which it is necessary that some should know, though others need not. Some must know medicine, but for the bulk of mankind it is sufficient to have an elementary knowledge of physiology and hygiene. Some must know higher mathematics, but the bare elements suffice for those to whom mathematics is distasteful. Some should know how to play the trombone, but mercifully it is not necessary that every school-child should practise this instrument. In the main, the things taught at school before the age of fourteen should be among those that every one ought to know; apart from exceptional cases, specialization ought to come later. It should, however, be one of the aims of education before fourteen to discover special aptitudes in boys and girls, so that, where they exist, they may be carefully developed in the later years. For this reason, it is well that everybody should learn the bare beginnings of subjects which need not be further pursued by those who are bad at them.
When we have decided what every adult ought to know, we have to decide the order in which subjects are to be taught; here we shall naturally be guided by relative difficulty, teaching the easiest subjects first. To a great extent, these two principles determine the curriculum in the early school years.
I shall assume that, by the time a child is five years old, he knows how to read and write. This should be the business of the Montessori school, or whatever improvement upon it may hereafter be devised. There, also, the child learns a certain accuracy in sense-perception, the rudiments of drawing and singing and dancing, and the power to concentrate upon some educational occupation in the middle of a number of other children. Of course the child will not be very perfect in these respects at five years old, and will need further teaching in all of them for some years to come. I do not think that anything involving severe mental effort should be undertaken before the age of seven, but by sufficient skill difficulties can be enormously diminished. Arithmetic is a bugbear of childhood—I remember weeping bitterly because I could not learn the multiplication table—but if it is tackled gradually and carefully, as it is by means of the Montessori apparatus, there is no need of the sense of blank despair which its mysteries used to inspire. In the end, however, there must be a good deal of rather tiresome mastering of rules if sufficient facility is to be acquired. This is the most awkward of early school subjects to fit into a curriculum intended to be interesting; nevertheless, a certain degree of proficiency is necessary for practical reasons. Also, arithmetic affords the natural introduction to accuracy: the answer to a sum is either right or wrong, and never “interesting” or “suggestive”. This makes arithmetic important as one element in early education, quite apart from its practical utility. But its difficulties should be carefully graded and spread out thin; not too much time at a stretch should be devoted to them.
Geography and history were, when I was young, among the worst taught of all subjects. I dreaded the geography lesson, and if I tolerated the history lesson it was only because I have always had a passion for history. Both subjects might be made fascinating to quite young children. My little boy, though he has never had a lesson, already knows far more geography than his nurse. He has acquired his knowledge through the love of trains and steamers which he shares with all boys. He wants to know of journeys that his imaginary steamers are to make, and he listens with the closest attention while I tell him the stages of the journey to China. Then, if he wishes it, I show him pictures of the various countries on the way. Sometimes he insists upon pulling out the big Atlas and looking at the journey on the map. The journey between London and Cornwall in the train, which he makes twice a year, interests him passionately, and he knows all the stations where the train stops or where carriages are slipped. He is fascinated by the North Pole and the South Pole, and puzzled because there is no East Pole or West Pole. He knows the directions of France and Spain and America over the sea, and a good deal about what is to be seen in those countries. None of this has come by way of instruction, but all in response to an eager curiosity. Almost every child becomes interested in geography as soon as it is associated with the idea of travel. I should teach geography partly by pictures and tales about travellers, but mainly by the cinema, showing what the traveller sees on his journey. The knowledge of geographical facts is useful, but without intrinsic intellectual value; when, however, geography is made vivid by pictures, it has the merit of giving food for imagination. It is good to know that there are hot countries and cold countries, flat countries and mountainous countries, black men, yellow men, brown men, and red men, as well as white men. This kind of knowledge diminishes the tyranny of familiar surroundings over the imagination, and makes it possible in later life to feel that distant countries really exist, which otherwise is very difficult except by travelling. For these reasons, I should give geography a large place in the teaching of very young children, and I should be astonished if they did not enjoy the subject. Later on, I should give them books with pictures, maps, and elementary information about different parts of the world, and get them to put together little essays about the peculiarities of various countries.
What applies to geography applies even more strongly to history, though at a slightly more advanced age, because the sense of time is rudimentary at first. I think history can profitably be begun at about five years old, at first with interesting stories of eminent men, abundantly illustrated. I myself had, at that age, a picture-history of England. Queen Matilda crossing the Thames at Abingdon on the ice made such a profound impression upon me that I still felt thrilled when I did the same thing at the age of eighteen, and quite imagined that King Stephen was after me. I believe hardly any boy of five years old would fail to be interested by the life of Alexander. Columbus perhaps belongs more to geography than to history; I can testify that he becomes interesting before the age of two, at least to children who know the sea. By the time a child is six years old, he ought to be ripe for an outline of world history, treated more or less on Mr. Wells’s or Mr. Van Loon’s lines, with the necessary simplifications, and with pictures, or the cinema if possible. If he lives in London, he can see the strange beasts in the Natural History Museum; but I should not take him to the British Museum before the age of ten or thereabouts. It is necessary to be careful, in teaching history, not to obtrude aspects which are interesting to us until the child is ripe for them. The two aspects which are first interesting are: the general pageant and procession, from geology to man, from savage man to civilized man, and so on; and the dramatic story-telling interest of incidents which have a sympathetic hero. But I think we should keep in our own minds, as a guiding thread, the conception of gradual chequered progress, perpetually hampered by the savagery which we inherit from the brutes, and yet gradually leading on towards mastery of ourselves and our environment through knowledge. The conception is that of the human race as a whole, fighting against chaos without and darkness within, the little tiny lamp of reason growing gradually into a great light by which the night is dispelled. The divisions between races, nations and creeds should be treated as follies, distracting us in the battle against Chaos and Old Night, which is our one truly human activity.
I should give first the illustrations of this theme, and only afterwards, if ever, the theme itself. I should show savage man cowering in the cold, gnawing the raw fruits of the earth. I should show the discovery of fire, and its effects; in this connection, the story of Prometheus would be in place. I should show the beginnings of agriculture in the Nile Valley, and the domestication of sheep and cows and dogs. I should show the growth of ships from canoes to the largest liners, and the growth of cities from colonies of cave-dwellers to London and New York. I should show the gradual growth of writing and of numerals. I should show the brief gleam of Greece, the diffused magnificence of Rome, the subsequent darkness, and the coming of science. The whole of this could be made interesting in detail even to very young children. I should not keep silence about wars and persecutions and cruelties, but I should not hold up military conquerors to admiration. The true conquerors, in my teaching of history, should be those who did something to dispel the darkness within and without—Buddha and Socrates, Archimedes, Galileo and Newton, and all the men who have helped to give us mastery over ourselves or over nature. And so I should build up the conception of a lordly splendid destiny for the human race, to which we are false when we revert to wars and other atavistic follies, and true only when we put into the world something that adds to our human dominion.