Other points discussed were the training of teachers, a subject on which Miss Beale had much to say. She insisted on the advantages of associating training colleges with large schools: ‘If students get simply lectures, and ideas which they have not an opportunity of carrying into practice, they become unpractical, and they have to learn the practical parts of their profession when they become teachers.’ The question of scholarships was introduced; Miss Beale enunciated her theory that they should be given irrespective of place. It ought not to be possible for one institution to buy up scholars from another. She admitted that she would like to make necessity a condition of holding a scholarship. ‘Would not that,’ asked Dr. Fairbairn, I carry with it to a large extent what one may term a social distinction,—even a stigma in certain cases?’ ‘I think,’ was the reply, ‘if people are ashamed of being poor, they ought to be ashamed of being ashamed of it.’
Some points there were on which the Commissioners desired enlightenment from Miss Beale’s experience, but got little help. One of these was by what means a passage might be effected from primary to secondary schools and the universities. Miss Beale, who disliked free education, had in 1895 even less sympathy with elementary teaching than she had a few years later, when she undertook to train students for it. The indication she gave the Commission was a suggestion that to meet the needs of the prize pupils of the elementary schools, it would be best to found higher schools of the same class, as she maintained that, owing largely to the influences of their homes, children coming from primary schools could not profit by the kind of education existing in secondary schools as they are.
Three or four times the chairman also sought to obtain an opinion from her on the difference between boys and girls, but was always met by some such answer as, ‘I do not profess to say much about boys.’
It was an excellent thing that Miss Beale was asked by Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co. to put forth her own original ideas, and state something of her long experience concerning education, in the volume which appeared in 1898 under the title Work and Play in Girls’ Schools. Designed primarily for the enlightenment of the generation which first received it, the book will remain as an historical record of methods actually in use at the Ladies’ College.
With the two last sections of this work Miss Beale had nothing to do: that on the ‘Moral Side of Education’ was written by Miss Soulsby, the concluding chapter on the ‘Cultivation of the Body’ was from the pen of Miss Dove. Yet it is worthy of notice that both these able and original-minded head-mistresses were for a time teachers at Cheltenham. Miss Beale felt that Miss Soulsby’s chapter should have been first in the book; but as her own section is so very much the longest, and as it would have been impossible to her to treat of education from the intellectual side only and apart from its bearing on character, there is nothing to be regretted in the arrangement. One of Miss Beale’s chapters is, moreover, devoted to the question of Philosophy and Religion.
A letter she wrote to Miss Strong on this subject is interesting:—
‘January 1897.
‘I have ventured to accept Mr. Longmans’ proposal. I am afraid it is rather rash, and I hope I shall find that he gives me the Midsummer holidays. This is what he puts in his programme. “Order of importance. Cultivation of the body, cultivation of the moral character, cultivation of the mind,” and so he arranges the subjects in that order. You see what I have said, it makes me so vexed to hear people say, “Of course health is the first thing,” when I know they mean to put pleasure before duty. In order of importance, of course, Miss Soulsby is first.’
This book, the most important of Miss Beale’s mature age—she was verging on sixty when it was published—was written with all the enthusiasm of youth. The hopefulness and freshness of a young teacher, heightened rather than restrained by the experience of years, glow on every page. Nor is the idealism of the student missing. Notice specially for this the passage on astronomy on page 254:[86] ‘Thus [is] the mathematical passion awakened; surely most of us can remember the first time that our soul really ascended into the seventh heaven.’ The chapter entitled Psychological Order of Study,’ in which this passage occurs, is perhaps the most suggestive in the book, which abounds in the results of ripened thought and knowledge. But that on the ‘Relation of School to Home’ was most impressive to those who did not already know the writer’s views on the subject. In ‘A Few Practical Precepts’ occur one or two phrases which might well pass into scholastic proverbs, as for instance this: ‘It is a worse fault to teach below than above the powers of a child.’
Miss Beale did not write the whole of that part of the book for which she made herself responsible. Some parts were given to specialists upon the College staff, in order that all the subjects might be treated with expert knowledge.