THE CHILD IN THE STATE SCHOOL
I. THINGS AS THEY ARE
CHAPTER XIV
CERTAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF GROWTH
Early in the nineteenth century two men, moved by very different impulses, founded what might be considered the beginnings of the Infant School. For nearly fifty years their work grew separately, but now they are merged together into something that seems to be permanent.
In a bleak Lanarkshire factory village in the south of Scotland, Robert Owen, millowner, socialist and Welshman, found that unless he could provide for the education of the children of his factory hands, no parents would consent to settle in the district and he would be without workers in his mill. As a consequence Owen found himself in the position of education authority, privy purse and organiser, and he did not flinch from the situation; he imposed no cheap makeshift, because he believed in education as an end and not as an economic means; a twofold institution was therefore established by him in 1816, one part for the children of recognised school age, presumably over six, and one for those under school age, whose only entrance test was their ability to walk. It is with the latter that we are concerned.
The instructions given by Owen to the man and the women he chose for his Infant School may serve to show his general aim; the babies under their care were above all to be happy, to lead a natural life, outdoor or indoor as weather permitted; learning their surroundings, playing, singing, dancing, "not annoyed with books," not shadowed by the needs of the upper school, but living the life their age demanded. In the light of the 1918 Education Bill this seems almost prophetic.
Their guardians were selected solely on the grounds of personality, and expected to work in the spirit in which Owen conceived the school. They were gentle, without personal ambition, fond of children, caring only for their welfare; but the sole guiding principle was Owen, and this was at once the success and doom of the school, for the personality of Owen was thus made the pivot round which the school revolved; without him there was nothing to take hold of.
Very soon the experiment became known: persons with the stamp of authority came to see it, and even official hearts were moved by the reality of the children's happiness and their consequent development. The visitors felt, rather than knew, that the thing was right. Arrangements were made to establish similar institutions in London, and after one or two experiments, a permanent one was founded which was under the control of a man named Wilderspin.
Wilderspin's contribution to education is difficult to estimate; certainly he never caught Owen's spirit, or realised his simple purpose: he had ambitions reaching beyond the happiness of the children; and far from trying to make their education suit their stage of growth, he sought to produce the "Infant Prodigy," just as a contemporary of his sought to produce the "Infant Saint." From what we can see, his aim was what he honestly believed to be right, as far as his light went; but he sought for no light beyond his own; and his outlook was not so narrow as his application was unintelligent. Owen was still in Lanarkshire to be consulted; Rousseau had already written Émile, Pestalozzi's work was by this time fairly well known in England, the children were there to be studied, but Wilderspin pursued his limited and unenlightened work, until the Infant School was almost a dead thing in his hands and in the hands of those who followed. The following is Birchenough's account: