The Century of the Child

by Ellen Key

I never read a pedagogical discussion without the fine words "self-activity, individual development, freedom of choice," suggesting to me the music which accompanies the sacrificial feasts of cannibals. The moment these words are used, limitations and reservations are introduced by their advocates. Their proposed application is ludicrously insignificant, in contrast with the great principle in the name of which they urge these changes. And so the pupil continues to be sacrificed to educational ideals, pedagogical systems, and examination requirements, that they refuse to abandon. The everlasting sin of the school against children is to be always talking about the child.

The sloyd system (manual dexterity, handwork, artistic production) has certain good results on children. Accordingly the sloyd must be introduced into the school, and all must be made to share the advantages of this training; but there are children for whom the sloyd is as inappropriate and as useless a requirement as learning Latin. The child who wants to devote himself to his books should be no more forced to take up the sloyd, than the child who is happy with his planing table should be dragged to literature.

All talk about "harmonious training" must be given the place where it belongs—in the pedagogical culinary science. Certainly harmonious development is the finest result of man's training, but it is only to be attained by his own choice. It implies a harmony between the real capacities of the individual, not a harmony worked up from a pedagogical formula. The results from the school kneading trough with its mince-meat processes are something quite different.

Isolated reforms in the modern school have no significance; they will continue to have none, until we prepare for the great revolution, which will smash to pieces the whole present system and will leave not one stone of it upon another. Undoubtedly a "Deluge" of pedagogy must come, in which the ark need only contain Montaigne, Rousseau, Spencer, and the modern literature of the psychology of the child. When the ark comes to dry land man need not build schools but only plant vineyards where teachers will be employed to bring the ripe grapes to the children, who now get only a taste of the juice of culture in a thin watery mixture.

The school has only one great end, to make itself unnecessary, to allow life and fortune, which is another way of saying self-activity, to take the place of system and method.

From the kindergarten period on the child is now, as has been said, a material moulded, sometimes by hostile, sometimes by friendly hands. The mildest, the apparently freest methods produce uniformity by insisting on the same work, the same impression, the same regulations, day by day, year by year. Besides in the school, classes are never arranged according to the child's temperament and tendency, but according to his age and knowledge. So he is condemned in deadly tediousness to waste an infinite amount of time while he is waiting for others.

The very earliest period of instruction should use the power the child has for observation and work. These capacities should be made the means of his education, the standard for using his own observation. If the power of observation is vigorous, no general rules are to be drawn, but only particular ones. One child must read, play, or do handwork in a different degree to another. One can at an early age, the other only at a later period, take advantage of the education to be obtained from going to museums or from travel (the best of all travel is tramping). The indispensable elements will be reduced to their lowest measure; for what any one man needs to be able to do, in order to find himself at home in life, is not considerable. The minimum is to read well, to spell properly, to write with both hands, to copy simple objects, so that one learns picture writing just as alphabet writing. This skill is quite different from artistic gifts. Besides there must be instruction in looking at things geometrically, the four simple rules of arithmetic and decimal fractions, as much geography as will help one to use a map and a time-table, as much knowledge of nature as will give one a fundamental conception of the simplest requirements of hygiene; and finally, the English language, in order to put one in touch with the increasing intercourse in the great world. Through these requirements the child will be endowed with what he needs, in order to find himself at home in the world of books and of life. Let there be added to these the ability to darn a stocking, sew on a button, and thread a needle.

Only the indispensable should be the obligatory foundation of further culture, which is only the trimming on a simple garment. The trimming receives its entire value because the individual has prepared it himself; it must not be made by a machine according to a model prepared in a factory.

What is mentioned here supplies the same basis for all, but children should be able to throw themselves into the pastoral life of the Old Testament, into the life of the Greek and Scandinavian gods and heroes, into the life of popular legends and national history; but this should be done only through the books which they get for their amusement. At the present time all of these things are made pure subjects of study!

Assume, then, that this foundation is laid. The school of the future, which will be a school for all, will advance general education, but the plan it follows will be adapted to every individual. In the school of my dreams there will be no report books, no rewards, no examinations; at graduation time examinations will be arranged for but they will be oral. In them detailed knowledge will not be considered; education as a whole will determine the decision of the examiners, who will personally accompany the children in the open air in order to become quietly acquainted with what they know of mankind, of past and present history.