The Century of the Child

by Ellen Key

And the education which will make the training aim at this end will be diametrically opposed to that given by the teacher of the present day. The teacher will be required to make his own observations, he will guide the scholar in the choice of books, and show him how to work. But he will not give first his own observation, judgment, and knowledge in the form of lectures, preparations, and experiments. Occasionally he will without giving notice ask for an oral or written account of work, and so ascertain how thoroughly the scholar has gone into the subject. At another time, when he knows that the scholar is prepared for it, he will give a general treatment, a comprehensive review of the subject, a stimulating and stirring impression, as a reward for independent work. Finally, when the scholar wishes it, he will examine him formally, but his real work will be to teach the scholar to make his own observations, to solve his own problems, to find his own aids to study in books, dictionaries, maps, etc., to fight his way through his own difficulties to victory and so reach the only moral reward for his trouble with broadened insight and increased strength.

The scholar who sits down and listens to, or looks at, the demonstration or experiment of the teacher does not learn to observe, nor does he whose exercise book is corrected with painful accuracy learn to write; nor does the one who pedantically carries out the system of models in the sloyd system learn to make articles fit for every-day use. The student must make his investigations himself, he must find the mistakes himself when their presence is indicated to him, he must himself think out the objects brought before him. Above all, the separate errors must not be corrected except when they are so constant and serious that they waste time. But the scholar himself must try to find out the correct and complete method of work and of expression. This is what training, what education is.

Text-books will be attractive and virile, the "Reader" will disappear, the complete books in the original (the text may be revised if it is filled with confusing details) will be placed in the hands of children. The school library will be the largest, most beautiful, and important room; lending books in the schools will be an essential part of the curriculum.

The future school of my dreams will be surrounded by large gardens, where, as in already-existing schools in some places, the feeling for beauty will be directly encouraged. The individual scholars will arrange the flowers in the school and at home. They will take them home in order to adorn the window garden, and every schoolroom in winter will have a garden of this kind. This will be the natural method of making the simplest of all esthetic enjoyments a universal need. But taste must not be developed by instruction in the art of arranging flowers; this is to be attained only by pointing out those that have been arranged in the most beautiful way. In this as in all other things, self-help is essential.

Natural dexterity will be attained by book-binding, turning, and other kinds of handwork, also by gardening and play. Such training has far greater educational value than the systematic types. The purposelessness and the uniformity of these are the terror of youth. Gymnastics should only be used on days when the weather makes bodily exercise in the open air impossible; they can certainly be made more living by being connected with physiology and hygiene, just as mathematics can be made real by being combined with handwork and drawing. But nothing can equal the value of movement in the open air.

Besides its garden, the future school will have its hall. Outside it will have a playground for dancing and really free play—I mean the kind of play where children, after they have learnt the game, are left to themselves. Games constantly accompanied by a teacher make play a parody.

The development of beauty will become the aim of physical instruction as it once was with the Greeks, not simply physical strength.

Through different kinds of hand and garden work, the child will be spared from a number of requirements in mathematics and physics, because he will in many things make discoveries himself. In the methods of school drudgery the child learns that a seed grows by warmth and moisture. In real training, the child himself sows the seed and sees what happens to it; this system is followed I believe in many schools, but only as proofs of a given abstract statement. The mistake of the modern school is really just here; it illustrates its course of instruction by, as it were, over-charging the child's attention, instead of giving him time and opportunity to originate for himself.

In the future school-building, there will be no class-rooms at all, but different halls with ample material provided for different subjects, and, by the side of them, rooms for work where each scholar will have a place assigned to him for private study. Common examinations will only take place when several scholars are ready and willing, anxious to be examined on the same subject; and each student can ask for the examination independent of the rest.

In every room, on the outside of the building, architecture and decoration will form a beautiful whole; and the artistic objects, detached from the building, for the adornment of the school will be partly originals, partly casts and copies of famous originals.