The Century of the Child

by Ellen Key

As to the four principal subjects, history, geography, natural science, and mathematics, they should not be studied at the same time. The shallow multiplicity of the present system is a burden to all; it works like the "water torture" on talented individuals. It wears out their desire to learn, their initiative, their individuality, their joy of living. Those under this torture never get a breathing spell, are never able to do thorough work, and so become superficial.

In my ideal school, mathematics will be learnt in winter, as it is suitable for the cold and clear winter air. In spring and in autumn, nature, out of doors, in nature itself, will be studied, not each department of nature as a special subject. An insight into geology, botany, and the animal world will be attained in their close natural union. The scholar will learn separate objects through the actual observation of life. In the text-book of life they will gain in its broad outlines a combined sketch of what they have acquired through intellectual processes. On rainy days they will construct for themselves in writing and in drawing a general sketch of what they have seen. General culture does not mean knowing the number of stamens or the number of articulations of a hundred flowers or skeletons. What educates and acts on the feelings and imagination, on thought and character, too, for that matter, is observing and combining natural phenomena; the ability to follow the laws of life and development in the natural world about us. The last member in the scheme of development is man. So the study of man from the standpoint of physiology and hygiene, should come last; consideration for the psychology of the child, urges too, that the foundation for the knowledge of organic nature, physics, and chemistry, should complete the educational structure.

As in natural sciences we are beginning to give up false methods, and make the student return to the same subject, with a broader point of view, in the same way the child should at certain periods devote his attention to history and geography, and then leave them entirely alone. The endless circle, the drudgery, the repetitions, all looking to examinations as the end, will with the examinations be abolished. It is a matter of experience that the small details of all subjects slip from the memory two months after examinations. Most educated men have no recollection of the detailed knowledge they acquired in school, while the general impressions of that period still influence soul, heart, character, and will. This experience will be used, not as is done now, simply recognised as a common one.

In my school the scholar interested in history will apply himself to it in the winter months; will read works about it, while others are devoting themselves to mathematics or geography. In spring these two classes of students can share in the excursions without active participation in the studies, while those who are inclined to natural science will draw, make collections, and use the microscope. One group can by studying geography bring themselves into contact with the life of nature and the life of man. So they will be led next year to study history in winter and to take part in science study during the spring and autumn. All these different combinations are to be thought out by parents, teachers, and scholars; they can only be indicated here. The final principle is that only two subjects can be studied at the same time. After the scholar has acquired from these all the education he can absorb at this stage, these subjects will be dismissed and taken up again by those who wish to specialise in one direction or the other. Instead of the separation of subjects that divides interest and strength in our present schools, in the new ones the chief aim will be concentration. In history, the space devoted to work will be limited to the amount demanded by present-day culture. History will then be the only subject suitable for general intellectual training,—the history of man's development. It will bring out the great principles of ethnography and sociology, of political economy, the lives of great men, the history of the church, art, and literature. In scientific study and in teaching mathematics, the men prominent in science and in discovery will find a place. Geography brings up points of view related to almost every study, and experience already acquired gives good reason for making this subject the centre of all instruction.

What are the results of the present-day school? Exhausted brain power, weak nerves, limited originality, paralysed initiative, dulled power of observing surrounding facts, idealism blunted under the feverish zeal of getting a position in the class—a wild chase in which parents and children regard the loss of a year as a great misfortune. After the examinations have been passed and the year gone by, the best students realise the need of beginning their studies in a living way at almost every point. The majority of students are unable to read even a paper with any real profit, and those who are given a book in a foreign language to which they have devoted innumerable hours, very seldom understand it completely, unless the language instruction of the school has been supplemented at home. The incapacity to observe for one's self, to get at the bottom of what is observed and reflect upon it, is constantly more remarkable, as a result of the preparation system at school, even when this is aided by the mothers hearing lessons at home. The late Professor Key said that it was his experience, as teacher in a medical institution, that scholars in school were incapable of seeing, thinking, or working. I have heard the same observation made in Stockholm lately in a government office, that the young men were incapable of taking up practical duties in which they should have shown the knowledge they were supposed to have after the fine examination they had passed. The system then does not serve even secondary ends; to all the higher aims of human existence it is directly opposed.

In the course of a hundred years or so, experience of this sort will cause the downfall of the system. Then, perhaps, these dreamed-of schools will arise. In them, the youth will learn first of all to observe and to love life, and their own powers will be consciously cultivated as the highest values in life. By mixing children of all classes together, the upper class, provided it still exists, will get that "colouring of earnest character which it now lacks," as Almquist said long ago; the lower classes will get the polish, that general cultivation they now lack. Through these schools, where common training is given to all, the natural circulation between all classes will be furthered. The aristocrat's son and the workingman's son will change places, if nature has made the first adapted for the position of the second, and vice versa. Through these schools the country child will always be able to grow up in the country, and need not be sent for educational purposes into the city, provided there are still great cities. Finally boys and girls will enjoy in them all the advantages of co-education, without the particular capacities of each being forced into the uniformity of a common examination system.

After the children all over the country have been educated to about fifteen years of age, in such real common schools, some working more with the brain, others with their hands, the application schools will begin—schools for classical studies, for exact, for social or æsthetic sciences; for handicrafts and handwork; for different professions and state positions; schools with different principles and methods, schools which can produce manifold differing forms of training and individuality. Education then, instead of being as now, the creator of servile souls, the devotees of formalism, or of characters who hate all forms in a spirit of revolt, will bring fresh personal powers to intellectual and material culture alike, to the sciences and the inventive faculties, to artistic talent and to the whole art of life. It will awaken and encourage capacity to find out new scientific methods, to think youthful thoughts, to make clever discoveries. Educated human beings will apply to the whole sphere of culture their experience in their own experiments, their own activity, their own efforts; for all of which the school and the home will have already laid the foundation.

In the school, the painful restlessness of the present "to get somewhere" will disappear entirely. In the calm, profound atmosphere of my school, the young generation will be trained to believe that the most important thing for man is not to do something, but to be something. It may be harsh to say that common natures are reckoned by what they do, noble natures by what they are; yet it is a deep truth, forgotten in this century of activity, in this age of woman. But it is bound to be remembered in the century of contemplation, in the century of the child.

These principles will be applied, too, perhaps, in the field of practical work. Machines and electricity accomplish work that can give no creative enjoyment; handwork will be again a portion of man's happiness; we shall live through a second Renaissance, the renewal of the personal joy which the man of earlier times experienced when the artistic moulding, when the rich, coloured tapestry, the beautiful piece of carving came from his own hand. The present school system leads to the fabrication of unnecessary articles by the dozen. It does not lead to a true love and appreciation of professional work, that love and appreciation from which, in the great period of art, artistic production organically arose.

The present system, in all fields of study, limits the natural capacity of the child in the concentration, the combination, and development of its powers. When it produces its best results, it turns children at the close of their school years into pocket encyclopedias, representing humanity's progress and knowledge. Only when such results as these cease to be called a harmonious development, will it be conceded that the school can and should have no other meaning than to give the child a preparation for continuing, through his whole life, the work of training and education. Only then will the school become a place where individuals get learning to last a lifetime, not as now, even when the best face is put upon it—where they are impoverished for life. Through the victory of these convictions alone will each individual get his rights at school; both the person who does not want to study, as well as the one who does. Consideration will be given to the individual who has to have books as means of training and to the other case where the activity of the eye and hand is required as a means to the same end. It will be a place for the person with practical talent and for the theorist, for the realist as well as for the idealist. Both classes can freely do what they can do best; the members of each class will often feel tempted to test their powers by doing what the other class is able to do. One-sidedness will be corrected naturally, not, as it is now, mercilessly flattened out through the steam-roller methods of the "harmonious ideal of training."