Education: How Old The New

by James J. Walsh

We have another form of evidence that is extremely interesting. Out of these old mystery plays, dramas of the Nativity and of the Passion with the introductions and interludes to these central facts of creation, there developed first the morality plays and then the drama of the modern time. Twice in the history of the world, each time quite independent of the other, the drama has originated anew out of religious ceremonials. In old Greece this is the origin of the drama; in the Middle Ages exactly the same thing happened. Nor was this origin unworthy in any way of the great development that came. Some of the old [{180}] mystery plays were written with wonderful dramatic insight and with a capacity to bring out dramatic moments that is very admirable. As for the morality plays we have had one of them repeated to us in recent years, "Everyman," and well it has served to show how able was the genius of these old dramatic writers. People of the modern sordid time listened for two hours enraptured and then went away, paying the tribute of silence to this wonderful arrangement of the ideas connected with such a familiar theme as the four last things to be remembered--death, judgment, heaven and hell. Fine as is "Everyman," there are some critics who think the "Castle of Perseverance," written about the same time, the latter part of the fifteenth century, an even greater play.

The most important feature of this work in dramatics of the old gilds was not the entertainment, though with what we know of how low entertainment can sink and how much it can mean for degradation, surely that would be sufficient, but the fact that all of the workmen and their families in the towns were occupied with the high thoughts and the beautiful phrases and the uplifting motives and the deep significance of the Bible stories. These are so simple that no one could fail to understand. They are written so close to the heart of human nature that even the simplest child can appreciate their meaning. They are full of the most precious lessons, yet without [{181}] any of that moralizing that is often so sterile and so characteristic of what we call mere preaching. All the townspeople were occupied for months beforehand with these stories. They got ever closer and closer to the heart of the mystery in them. They got closer thus to the heart of the mystery of life. They were made to feel the presence of the Creator and of Providence while occupying themselves with thoughts that are the essence of deepest poetry. What would one not give to be able to occupy a great number of people, for many hours every winter, with such thoughts, not alone for their moral effect but their real educational value. They did not add useless information to useless information, but they did bring development of mind and, above all, heart. In my book "The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries," [Footnote 14] I tell the story of how the various trades gilds in the towns divided these phases of the mystery plays among themselves. Every one had an opportunity to do something. They were the tanners and the plasterers, the cardmakers and the fullers, the coopers, the armorers, the gaunters and glovers, the shipwrights, the pessners, fishmongers and mariners, the parchment-makers and bookbinders, the hosiers, the spicers, the pewterers and founders, the tylers and smiths, the chandlers, the orfevers, the goldsmiths, the goldbeaters, the money-makers, and then many other trades whose names sound curious to us of [{182}] the modern time. The bowyers or makers of bows; the fletchers or arrow featherers; the hay-resters or workers in horsehair, the bowlers or bowlmakers, the feystours, makers of saddle-trees; the verrours, glaciers; the dubbers, refurbishers of clothes; the lumniners or illuminators, the scriveners or public writers; the drapers, the mercers; the lorymers or bridle-makers; the spurriers, makers of spurs; the cordwaners; the bladesmiths; the curriers; the scalers, and many others, all had their chances to take part in these old plays.

[Footnote 14: Catholic Summer School Press, New York, 1907.]

They were not being entertained, but were themselves active agents in the doing of things for themselves and for others. This is what brings real contentment with it. Superficial entertainment that occupies the surface of the mind for the moment means very little for real recreation of mind. What men need is to have something that makes them think along lines different to those in which they are engaged in their daily work. This gives real rest. The blood gets away from parts of the brain where it has been all day, flows to new parts, and recreation is the result. Such entertainment, however, must occupy the very centre of interest for the moment and not be something seen in passing and then forgotten. The modern psychotherapeutist would say, that no better amusement than this could possibly be obtained since it brought real diversion of mind. Above all, we of the modern time who know how vicious, how immoral in its tendencies, how [{183}] suggestive of all that is evil, how familiarizing with what is worst in men until familiarity begets contempt, commercial entertainment in the shape of dramatics, so-called at least, may be, cannot help but admire and envy and would emulate, if we could, this fine solution of a very pressing social problem that the gilds found in an educational feature that is of surpassing value.

There are three post-graduate courses in modern life that are quite beyond the control of our educational authorities, though we talk much of our interest and our accomplishments in education. These three have more influence over the people than all of our popular education. They are the newspaper, the library and the theatre. Some of us who know what the library is doing are not at all satisfied with it. We are spending an immense amount of money mainly to furnish the cheapest kind of mere superficial amusement to the people of our cities. In so doing we are probably hurting their power of concentration of mind instead of helping it, and it is this concentration of mind that is the best fruit of education. This is, however, another story. Of the newspaper, as we now have it, the less said the better. It is bringing our young people particularly into intimate contact with many of the vicious and brutalizing things of life, the sex crimes, brutal murders and prize-fights, so that uplift and refinement almost become impossible. As for the theatre, no one now thinks of it as [{184}] educationally valuable. Our plays are such superficial presentations of the life around us that once they have had their run no one thinks of reviving them. This is the better side of the theatre. The worst side is absolutely in the hands of the powers of evil and is confessedly growing worse all the time.

Besides these indirect educational features the gilds encouraged certain formal educational institutions that are of great interest, and that have been misunderstood for several centuries until recent years. In many places they maintained grammar schools and these grammar schools were eminently successful in helping to make scholars of such of the sons of the members of the gilds as wanted to lift themselves above their trades into the intellectual life. We know more about the grammar school at Stratford-on-Avon than of any of the others. The reason for this is that we have been interested in the antiquities of Shakespeare's town and the conditions which obtained in it, before as well as during his lifetime. The Gild of the Holy Cross of Stratford maintained a grammar school in which many pupils were educated. That this was not a singular feature of gild work is evident from what we know of many other gilds. These gild schools were suppressed in the reformation time and then later had to be replaced by the so-called Edward VI grammar schools, in one of which it is usually said that Shakespeare was educated. As the English [{185}] historian Gairdner declared not long since in his "History of the Pre-Reformation Times in England," Edward has obtained a reputation for foundations in charity and in education that he by no means deserved. The schools founded by him particularly were nothing more than re-establishments of popular schools of the olden time whose endowment had been confiscated. The new foundations were makeshifts to appease popular clamor.

The old gilds did not believe in devoting all the early years of children to mere book-learning. Some few with special aptitudes for this were provided with opportunities. The rest were educated in various ways at home until their apprenticeship to a trade began, and then their real education commenced. Our own experience with education in the early years from six to eight or nine is not particularly favorable. Children who enter school a little later than the legal age graduate sooner and with even higher marks than those who begin at the age of six. This has been shown by statistics in England in many cities. What is learned with so much fuss and worry and bother for the children and the teachers from six to eight, is rapidly picked up in a few months at the age of eight or nine, and then is better assimilated. The grammar schools of the gilds took the children about the age of nine or ten and then gave them education in letters. That education, by the way, began at six in the morning and, [{186}] with two hours of intervals, continued until four in the afternoon. They believed in the eight-hour day for children, but they began it good and early so that artificial light might not constitute a problem.

The best schooling, however, afforded by the gilds, after that in self-help of course, was that in mutual aid. We are establishing schools of philanthropy in the modern time and we talk much about the organization of charity and other phases of mutual aid. In this as in everything else we map out, as George Eliot once said, our ignorance of things, or at least our gropings after solutions of problems, in long Greek names, which often serve to produce the idea that we know ever so much more about these subjects than we really do. The training in brotherly love and helpfulness in the old gilds was a fine school. Those who think that it is only now that ideas of mutuality in sharing responsibilities, of co-operation and co-ordination of effort for the benefit of all, of community interests, are new, should study Toulmin Smith's work on the gilds, or read Brentano on the foreign gilds. There is not a phase of our organization of charity in the modern time that was not well anticipated by the members of the gilds, and that, too, in ways such as we cannot even hope to rival unless we change the basis on which our helpfulness is founded. Theirs was not a stooping down of supposed better, or so-called upper classes, to help the lower, [{187}] but organization among the people to help themselves so that there was in no sense a pauperization.

Every phase of human need was looked to. We are just beginning to realize our obligations to care for the old, and the last twenty years has seen various efforts on the part of governments to provide old-age pensions. In the Middle Ages according to the laws of the gilds the man who had paid his dues for seven years would then draw a weekly pension equal to something more than five dollars now, for all the rest of his life if he were disabled by injury, or had become incapacitated from old age or illness. Then there were gilds to provide insurance against loss by fire, loss by robbery on land and also on sea, loss by shipwreck, loss even by imprisonment and all other phases of human needs. If the workman were injured his family nursed him during the day but a brother member of the gild, as we have said, was sent to care for him at night, and a good portion of his wages went on, paid to him out of the gild chest. If he died his widow and orphans were cared for by a special pension. The widow did not have to break up the family and send the children to orphan asylums. There were practically no orphan asylums. The gilds cared for the children of dead members. As the boys grew up special attention was given them so as to provide a trade for them, and they were given earlier opportunities than others to get on in life. [{188}] The orphans were the favorite children of the gilds, and instead of a child being handicapped by the loss of his parents when he was young, it sometimes happened that he got better opportunities than if his parents lived.

These gilds provided opportunities for social entertainment and friendly intercourse and for such acquaintanceship as would afford mutual pleasure and give opportunities for the meeting of the young folks,--sons and daughters of the members of the gild. They had their yearly benefit at which the wives of the members and their sweethearts were supposed by rule to come, and then they had other meetings and social gatherings--picnics in the country in the summer, dances in the winter time and all in a circle where every one knew every one else, and all went well. These are some social features of these gilds educational in the highest sense that we can well envy in the modern time, when we find it so difficult to secure innocent, happy pleasures for young people that will not leave a bad taste in the mouth afterwards. When a member of the gild died his brother members attended the Mass which was said for him and gave a certain amount in charity that was meant to be applied for his benefit. The whole outlook on life was eminently brotherly. There has never been such a teaching of true fraternity, of the brotherhood of man, of the necessity for mutual aid and then of such practice of it as makes it easy, as among these old gilds.