All these phases stand for both progress and arrest. The average person is readier to accept methods than investigate principles; but we must recognise that all struggles and searchings after truth have made the road of progress shorter for us by many a mile.
Perhaps the chief cause of stumbling lay in the fact that there was no clearly realised aim or policy except that of material results. There were many fine-sounding principles in the air, but they were unrelated to each other; and the conditions of teaching were likely to crush the finest endeavours, and to make impossible a teaching that could be called educative.
CHAPTER XV
THE INFANT SCHOOL OF TO-DAY
Taking neither the best nor the worst, but the average school of to-day, it will be profitable to review shortly where it stands, to consider how far it has learnt the lessons of experience, and what kind of ideal it has set before itself.
In externals there have been many improvements. Modern buildings are better in many ways; there is more space and light, and the surroundings are more attractive. Most of the galleries have disappeared, but the furniture consists chiefly of dual desks, fixed and heavy, so that the arrangement of the room cannot be changed. The impression given to a visitor is that it is planned for listening and answering, except in the Baby Room, where there are generally light tables and chairs, and consequently no monotonous rows of children, unless a teacher arranges them thus from sheer habit. In each room is a high narrow cupboard about one quarter of the necessary size for all that education demands; most education authorities provide some good pictures, but the best are usually hung on the class-room wall behind the children, and all are above the children's eye level. "Oh, teacher, my neck do ache!" was the only appreciative remark made by a child after a tour made of the school pictures, which were really beautiful.
As a rule the windows are too high for the children to see from, and the lower part is generally frosted. In a new school which had a view up one of the loveliest valleys in Great Britain, the windows were of this description; the head of the school explained that it was a precaution in case the children might see what was outside; in other words, they might make the mistake of seeing a real river valley instead of listening to a description of it.
In country schools of the older type the accommodation is not so good, but the newer ones are often very attractive in appearance, and have both space and light. The school garden is a common feature in the country, and it is to be regretted so few even of the plot description are to be found in town schools.
Of late years the apparatus has improved, though there is still much to be done in this direction. Instead of the original tiny boxes of gifts we have frequently real nursery bricks of a larger and more varied character, and many other nursery toys. One of the best signs of a progressive policy is that large numbers of little toys have taken the place of the big expensive ones that only an occasional child could use. It is a pity that the use of toys comes to so sudden an end, and that learning by this method does not follow the babies after they have officially ceased to be babies, as is the custom in real life.
One of the most striking changes for the better is the evidence of care of the children's health, of which some of the external signs are doctor, nurse and care committee. A sense of responsibility in this respect is gradually growing in the schools; a fair number provide for sleep, a few try to train the children to eat lunch slowly and carefully, and some try to arrange for milk or cod-liver oil in the case of very delicate children. Though these instances are very much in the minority, they represent a change of spirit. This is one of the striking characteristics of the new Education Bill. A legacy from the old formalism lies in the fact that every room has a highly organised time-table, except perhaps in the Babies' Room, where the children's actual needs are sometimes considered first. The morning in most classes is occupied with Scripture, Reading, Arithmetic, Writing, and some less formal work, such as Nature lesson or Recitation; some form of Physical Exercise is always taken. The afternoons are mostly devoted to Games, Stories, Handwork and Singing: this order is not universal, but the general principle holds, of taking the more difficult and formal subjects in the morning. In the Babies' Room some preparation for reading is still too frequent. The lessons are short and the order varied, but in one single morning or afternoon there is a bewildering number of changes. Some years ago the unfortunate principle was laid down in the Code, that fifteen minutes was sufficient time for a lesson in an Infant School, and though this is not strictly followed the lessons are short and numerous, giving an unsettled character to the work; children appear to be swung at a moment's notice from topic to topic without an apparent link or reason: for example, the day's work may begin with the story of a little boy sent by train to the country, settled at a farm and taken out to see the cow and the sow: soon this is found to be a reading lesson on words ending in "ow," but after a short time the whole class is told quite suddenly, that one shilling is to be spent at a shop in town, and while they are still interested in calculating the change, paints are distributed, and the children are painting the bluebell. The whole day is apt to be of this broken character, which certainly does not make for training in mental concentration, or for a realisation of the unity of life. Some teachers still aim at correlation, but in a rather half-hearted way: others have entirely discarded it because of its strained applications, but nothing very definite has taken its place.