I will now go back to the Arithmetic lesson. During the years in which the children in elementary schools were examined individually in reading, writing, and arithmetic, the one virtue which was inculcated while the arithmetic lesson was in progress was that of obedience to the formulated rule. On the yearly examination day it was customary to give each child four questions in arithmetic, of which only one was a "problem." Two sums correctly worked secured a "pass"; and it was therefore possible for the child to achieve salvation in arithmetic by blindly obeying the various rules with which his teacher had equipped him. He had, indeed, to decide for himself in each case which rule was to be followed; but he did this (in most schools), not by thinking the matter out, but by following certain by-rules given him by his teacher, which were based on a careful study of the wording of the questions set by the inspector, and which held good as long as that wording remained unchanged. For example, if a subtraction sum was to be dictated to "Standard II," the child was taught that the number which was given out first was to be placed in the upper line, and that the number which came next was to be subtracted from this. He was not taught that the lesser of the two numbers was always to be subtracted from the larger; for in order to apply that principle he would have had to decide for himself which was the larger of the two numbers, and the consequent mental effort was one which his teacher could not trust him to make. It is true that in his desire to save the child from the dire necessity of thinking, the teacher ran the risk of being discomfited by a sudden change of procedure on the part of an inspector. The inspector, for example, who, having been accustomed to say "From 95 take 57," chose to say, for a change, "Take 57 from 95," would cause widespread havoc in the first two or three schools that were the victims of his unlooked-for experiment. But the risks which the teacher ran who taught his pupils to rely on trickery rather than thought were worth running; for the inspectors, like the teachers and the children, were ever tending to become creatures of routine, and the vagaries of those who had the reputation of being tiresomely versatile could be provided against—largely, if not wholly—by increased ingenuity on the part of the teacher, and increased attention to tricky by-rules on the part of the child.
The number of schools in which arithmetic is intelligently and even practically taught is undoubtedly much larger than it was in the days of payment by results; but there are still thousands of schools in which obedience to the rule for its own sake is the basis of all instruction in arithmetic. Now to live habitually by rule instead of by thought is necessarily fatal, in every field of action, to the development of that sense or perceptive faculty, on which right action ultimately depends. Following his reputed guide blindly, mechanically, and with whole-hearted devotion, the votary of the rule never allows his intuition, his faculty of direct perception and subconscious judgment, to play even for a moment round the matters on which he is engaged; and the result is that the faculty in question is not merely prevented from growing, but is at last actually blighted in the bud. This is but another way of saying what I have already insisted upon,—that to forbid self-expression on the part of the child is to starve his perceptive faculties into non-existence.
There is no folly perpetrated in the elementary school of to-day for which there are not authoritative precedents to be found in the conduct of one or other of the two great schools which the God of Western theology is supposed to have opened for the education of Man. And it is in that special development of the Legal School which is known as Pharisaism that we shall look for a precedent for the conventional teaching of arithmetic in our elementary schools. The ultra-legalism of the Pharisee in the days of Christ finds its exact counterpart in the ultra-legalism of the child who has been taught arithmetic by the methods which the yearly examination fostered, and which are still widely prevalent. In the one case there was, in the other case there is, an entire inability on the part of the zealous votary of the rule to estimate the intrinsic value of the results of his blind and unintelligent action. The sense of humour, which is a necessary element in every other healthy sense, and which so often keeps us from going astray, by suddenly revealing to us the inherent absurdity of our proposed action, is one of the first faculties to succumb to the blighting influence of an ultra-legal conception of life. As an example of the unwavering seriousness of the Pharisee in the presence of what was intrinsically ridiculous, let us take his attitude towards the problem of keeping food warm for the Sabbath day. "According to Exodus xvi. 23, it was forbidden to bake and to boil on the Sabbath. Hence the food, which it was desired to eat hot on the Sabbath, was to be prepared before its commencement, and kept warm by artificial means. In doing this, however, care must be taken that the existing heat was not increased, which would have been 'boiling.' Hence the food must be put only into such substances as would maintain its heat, not into such as might possibly increase it. 'Food to be kept warm for the Sabbath must not be put into oil-dregs, manure, salt, chalk, or sand, whether moist or dry, nor into straw, grape-skins, flock, or vegetables, if these are damp, though it may if they are dry. It may, however, be put into clothes, amidst fruits, pigeons' feathers, and flax tow. R. Jehudah declares flax tow unallowable and permits only coarse tow.'"[10] Following his rule out, step by step, with unflinching loyalty, into these ridiculous consequences, the Pharisee had entirely lost the power of seeing that they were ridiculous, and was well content to believe, with Jehudah, that the difference between keeping food warm in coarse tow and in flax tow was the difference between life and death. This reductio ad absurdum of legalism is exactly paralleled, in many of our elementary schools, in the answers to arithmetical questions given by the children. The "Fifth Standard" boys who told their inspector, as an answer to an easy problem, that a given room was five shillings and sixpence wide, had followed out their rule—they had unfortunately got hold of a wrong rule—step by step, till it led them to a conclusion, the intrinsic absurdity of which they were one and all unable to see.[11] There are many elementary schools in England in which a majority of the answers given to quite easy problems would certainly be wrong, and a respectable minority of them ludicrously wrong. Nor is this to be wondered at; for though the types of problems that can be set in elementary schools are not numerous, to provide his pupils with the by-rules which shall enable them in all, or even in most cases, to determine which of the recognised rules are appropriate to the given situation, passes the wit of the teacher. But if the helplessness of so many elementary scholars in the face of an arithmetical problem is lamentable, still more lamentable is the fact that the scholar is seldom met with who, having given an entirely wrong answer to an easy problem, is able to see for himself that, whatever the right answer may be, the answer given is and must be wrong. So fatal to the development of the arithmetical sense is the current worship of the rule for its own sake, and so deadly a narcotic is the conventional arithmetic lesson to all who take part in it!
It is not in the arithmetic lesson, then, that provision is ordinarily made for the development of a sense, or perceptive faculty, through the medium of self-expression on the part of the child. On the contrary, the very raison d'être of the arithmetic lesson, as it is still given in many schools, is to destroy the arithmetical sense, and make the child an inefficient calculating machine, which, even when working, is too often inaccurate and clumsy, and which the slightest change of environment throws at once and completely out of gear.
After the arithmetical lesson come, as a rule, lessons in "Reading" and "Writing"—in reading in some classes, in writing in others. The first thing that strikes the visitor who enters an ordinary elementary school while a reading lesson is in progress, is that the children are not reading at all, in the accepted sense of the word. They are not reading to themselves, not studying, not mastering the contents of the book, not assimilating the mental and spiritual nutriment that it may be supposed to contain. They are standing up, one by one, even in the highest class of all, and reading aloud to their teacher.
Why are they doing this? Is it in order that their teacher may show them how to master the more difficult words in their reading lesson? This may be the reason, in some schools; but there are others, perhaps a majority, in which the teacher tells his pupils the words that puzzle them instead of helping them to make them out for themselves. Besides, if reading were properly taught in the lower classes, the children in the upper classes would surely be able to master unaided the difficulties that might confront them.
Or is it in order that elocution may be cultivated? But elocution is seldom, if ever, cultivated in the ordinary elementary school, the veriest mumbling on the part of the child being accepted by his teacher (who follows him with an open book in his hand), provided that he can read correctly and with some attempt at "phrasing." Indeed, the indistinct utterance of so many school children may be attributed to the fact that they have read aloud to their teachers for many years, and that during the whole of that time a very low standard of distinctness has been accepted as satisfactory.
Or is it in order that the teacher may help his pupils to understand what they are reading? This may be one of his reasons for hearing them read aloud; but so far as the higher classes are concerned it is a bad reason, for the older the child the more imperative is it that he should try to make out for himself the meaning of what he reads; and the teacher who spoon-feeds his pupils during the reading lesson is doing his best to make them incapable of digesting the contents of books for themselves.
No, there are two chief reasons why the teacher makes children of eleven, twelve, thirteen and fourteen years of age read aloud to him as if they were children of six or seven. The first reason is that the unemancipated teacher instinctively does to-day what he did twenty years ago, and that twenty years ago, when children were examined in reading from their own books, the teacher heard them read aloud, day after day in order that he might make sure that they knew their books well enough to pass the inspector's test. The second reason, which is wider than the first, and may be said to include and account for it, is that the reading-aloud lesson fits in with the whole system of Western education, being the outcome and expression of that complete distrust of the child which is, and always has been, characteristic of the popular religion and philosophy of the West. If you ask the teacher why the children, even in the highest classes, are never allowed to work at such subjects as history and geography by themselves, he will tell you frankly that he cannot trust them to do so, that they do not know how to use a book. And he cannot see that in giving this excuse he is condemning himself, and making open confession of the worthlessness of the training that he has given to his pupils.
Whatever else the reading-aloud lesson may be, it is a dismal waste of time. Child after child stands up, reads for a minute or so, and then sits down, remaining idle and inert (except when an occasional question is addressed to him) for the rest of the time occupied by the so-called lesson. In this, as in most oral lessons, the elementary school child passes much of his time in a state which is neither activity nor rest,—a state of enforced inertness combined with unnatural and unceasing strain. Activity is good for the child, and rest, which, is the complement of activity, is good for the child; but the combination of inertness with strain is good for neither his body nor his mind. Indeed, it may be doubted if there is any state of mind and body which is so uneducational as this, or so unfavourable to healthy growth.