“That is interesting, and it touches on a point to which I want to call your attention; have you noticed that in certain districts you come across, not only the spots associated with critical events, but monuments of the leading idea of centuries? Such as these are the ruined abbeys which still dominate every lovely dale in Yorkshire; the twelfth-century churches, four or five of which—in certain English counties—you come across in the course of a single day’s tramp, and of which there is hardly a secluded out-of-the-way nook in some counties that has not its example to show; such, again, are the endless castles on the Welsh border, the Roman camps on the downs, each bearing witness to the dominant thought, during a long period, whether of war, or, of a time when men had some leisure from fighting.”
“And not only so. Think of how the better half of English literature has a local colouring; think of the thousand spots round which there lingers an aroma of poetry and of character, which seems to get into your brain somehow, and leave there an image of the man, a feeling of his work, which you cannot arrive at elsewhere. The Quantocks, Grasmere, Haworth Moors, the Selborne ‘Hanger,’ the Lincolnshire levels—it is needless to multiply examples of spots where you may see the raw material of poetry, and compare it with the finished work.”
“All this is an inspiring glimpse of the possible; but surely, gentlemen, you do not suppose that a family party, the children, say, from fifteen downwards, can get in touch with such wide interests in the course of a six weeks’ holiday? I doubt if, even amongst ourselves, any but you, Mr. Meredith, and Mr. Clough, have this sort of grasp of historical and personal associations.”
“We must leave that an open question, Mrs. Henderson; but what I do contend for is, that children have illimitable capacity for all knowledge which reaches them in some sort through the vehicle of the senses: what they see and delight in you may pin endless facts, innumerable associations, upon, and children have capacity for them all: nor will they ever treat you to lack-lustre eye and vacant countenance. Believe me ‘’tis their nature to’ hunger after knowledge as a labouring man hungers for his dinner; only, the thing must come in the first, the words which interpret it in the second place.”
“You mean that everything they see is to lead to a sort of object lesson?”
“Indeed I do not! Object lesson! talkee, talkee, about a miserable cut-and-dried scrap, hardly to be recognised by one who knows the thing. I should not wonder if it were better for a child to go without information than to get it in this unnatural way. No, let him see the thing big and living before him, behaving according to its wont. Specimens are of infinite use to the scientist whose business it is to generalise, but are misleading to the child who has yet to learn his individuals. I don’t doubt for a minute that an intelligent family out for a holiday might well cover all the ground we have sketched out, and more; but who in the world is to teach them? A child’s third question about the fowls of the air or the flowers of the field would probably floor most of us.”
“That’s coming to the point. I wondered if we ever meant to touch our subject again to-night. To skim over all creation in an easy, airy way is exciting, but, from an educational standpoint, ’tis comic to the father with a young swarm at home who care for none of these things.”
“Of course they don’t, Withers, if they have never been put in the way of it; but try ’em, that’s all. Now, listen to my idea; I shall be too glad if any one strikes out a better, but we must come to a point, and pull up the next who wanders off on his own hobby. Each of us wishes to cover all, or more, or some of, the ground suggested in our desultory talk. Difficulty, we can’t teach because we don’t know. We are in a corner with but one way out. We must learn what we should teach. How? Well, let us form ourselves into a college, or club, or what you like. Now, it’s simply the A B C of many things we wish to learn. Once organised, we shall see our way to the next step. Even in the small party here to-night, some know something of geology, some are at home in the byways of history; what we cannot evolve from our midst we must get from outside, and either amateur recruits or professional folk must be pressed into service; recruits would be much the best, for they would learn as well as teach. Then, when we are organised, we may consider whether our desire is to exhaust a single district in the way suggested, or to follow some other plan. Only, please, if it be a district, let it be a wide one, so that our intercourse be confined to ‘speaking’ in passing, like ships at sea. Don’t, for pity’s sake, let it be a social thing, with tennis, talk, and tea!”
“Suppose we do enrol ourselves, how frequent do you think should be our meetings?”
“We’ll leave that question; in the meantime, those in favour of Mr. Morris’s motion that we form ourselves into a society for the consideration of matters affecting the education of children—the parents’ part of the work, that is—will signify the same in the usual way.”