The Education of Catholic Girls

by Janet Erskine Stuart

Perhaps in one way the elementary schools with their large classes have a certain advantage in this, because the pressure is more self-adjusting than in higher class education, where the smaller numbers give to each child a greater share in the general work, for better or for worse. In home education this share becomes even greater when sometimes one child alone enjoys or endures the undivided attention of the governess. In that case the pressure does not relax. But out of large classes of infants in elementary schools it is easy to see on many vacant restful faces that after a short exertion in "qualifying to their teacher" they are taking their well-earned rest. They do not allow themselves to be strung up to the highest pitch of attention all through the lesson, but take and leave as they will or as they can, and so they are carried through a fairly long period of lessons without distress. As they grow older and more independent in their work the same cause operates in a different way. They can go on by themselves and to a certain extent they must do so, as o n account of the numbers teachers can give less time and less individual help to each, and the habit of self-reliance is gradually acquired, with a certain amount of drudgery, leading to results proportionate to the teacher's personal power of stimulating work. The old race of Scottish schoolmaster in the rural schools produced—perhaps still produces—good types of such self-reliant scholars, urged on by his personal enthusiasm for knowledge. Having no assistant, his own personality was the soul of the school, both boys and girls responding in a spirit which was worthy of it. But the boys had the best of it; "lassies" were not deemed worthy to touch the classics, and the classics were everything to him. In America it is reported that the best specimens of university students often come from remote schools in which no external advantages have been available; but the tough unyielding habit of study has been developed in grappling with difficulties without much support from a teacher.

With those who are more gently brought up the problem is how to obtain this habit of independent work, that is practically—how to get the will to act. There is drudgery to be gone through, however it may be disguised, and as a permanent acquisition the power of going through it is one of the most lasting educational results that can be looked for. Drudgery is labour with toil and fatigue. It is the long penitential exercise of the whole human race, not limited to one class or occupation, but accompanying every work of man from the lowest mechanical factory hand or domestic "drudge" up to the Sovereign Pontiff, who has to spend so many hours in merely receiving, encouraging, blessing, and dismissing the unending processions of his people as they pass before him, imparting to them graces of which he can never see the fruit, and then returning to longer hours of listening to complaints and hearing of troubles which often admit of no remedy: truly a life of labour with toil and fatigue, in comparison with which most lives are easy, though each has to bear in its measure the same stamp. Pius X has borne the yoke of labour from his youth. His predecessor took it up with an enthusiasm that burned within him, and accepted training in a service where the drudgery is as severe though generally kept out of sight. The acceptance of it is the great matter, whatever may be the form it takes.

Spurs and bait, punishment and reward, have been used from time immemorial to set the will in motion, and the results have been variable—no one has appeared to be thoroughly satisfied with either, or even with a combination of the two. Some authorities have stood on an eminence, and said that neither punishment nor reward should be used, that knowledge should be loved for its own sake. But if it was not loved, after many invitations, the problem remained. As usual the real solution seems to be attainable only by one who really loves both knowledge and children, or one who loves knowledge and can love children, as Vittorino da Feltre loved them both, and also Blessed Thomas More. These two affections mingled together produce great educators—great in the proportion in which the two are possessed—as either one or the other declines the educational power diminishes, till it dwindles down to offer trained substitutes and presentable mediocrities for living teachers. The fundamental principle reasserts itself, that "love feels no labour, or if it does it loves the labour."

Here is one of our Catholic secrets of strength. We have received so much, we have so much to give, we know so well what we want to obtain. We have the Church, the great teacher of the world, as our prototype, and by some instinct a certain unconscious imitation of her finds its way into the mind and heart of Catholic teachers, so that, though often out of poorer material, we can produce teachers who excel in personal hold over children, and influence for good by their great affection and the value which they set on souls. Their power of obtaining work is proportioned to their own love of knowledge, and here—let it be owned—we more often fail. Various theories are offered in explanation of this; people take one or other according to their personal point of view. Some say we feel so sure of the other world that our hold on this is slack. Some that in these countries we have not yet made up for the check of three centuries when education was made almost impossible for us. And others say it is not true at all. Perhaps they know best.

Next to the personal power of the teacher to influence children in learning lessons comes an essential condition to make it possible, and that is a simple life with quiet regular hours and unexciting pleasures. Amid a round of amusements lessons must go to the wall, no child can stand the demands of both at a time. All that can be asked of them is that they should live through the excitement without too much weariness or serious damage. The place to consider this is in London at the children's hour for riding in the park, contrasting the prime condition of the ponies with the "illustrious pallor" of so many of their riders. They have courage enough left to sit up straight in their saddles, but it would take a heart of stone to think of lesson books. This extreme of artificial life is of course the portion of the few. Those few, however, are very important people, influential in the future for good or evil, but a protest from a distance would not reach their schoolrooms, any more than legislation for the protection of children; they may be protected from work, but not from amusement. The conditions of simple living which are favourable for children have been so often enumerated that it is unnecessary to go over them again; they may even be procured in tabular form or graphical representation for those to whom these figures and curves carry conviction.

But a point that is of more practical interest to children and teachers, struggling together in the business of education, and one that is often overlooked, is that children do not know how to learn lessons when the books are before them, and that there is a great waste of good power, and a great deal of unnecessary weariness from this cause. If the cause of imperfectly learned lessons is examined it will usually be found there, and also the cause of so much dislike to the work of preparation. Children do not know by instinct how to set about learning a lesson from a book, nor do they spontaneously recognize that there are different ways of learning, adapted to different lessons. It is a help to them to know that there is one way for the multiplication table and another for history and another for poetry, as the end of the lesson is different. They can understand this if it is put before them that one is learnt most quickly by mere repetition, until it becomes a sing-song in the memory that cannot go wrong, and that afterwards in practice it will allow itself to be taken to pieces; they will see that they can grasp a chapter of history more intelligently if they prepare for themselves questions upon it which might be asked of another, than in trying by mechanical devices of memory to associate facts with something to hold them by; that poetry is different from both, having a body and a soul, each of which has to be taken account of in learning it, one of them being the song and the other the singer. Obviously there is not one only way for each of these or for other matters which have to be learnt, but one of the greatest difficulties is removed when it is understood that there is something intelligible to be done in the learning of lessons beyond reading them over and over with the hope that they will go in.

The hearing of lessons is a subject that deserves a great deal of consideration. It is an old formal name for what has been often an antiquated mechanical exercise. A great deal more trouble is expended now on the manner of questioning and "hearing" the lessons; but even yet it may be done too formally, as a mere function, or in a way that kills the interest, or in a manner that alarms—with a mysterious face as if setting traps, or with questions that are easy and obvious to ask, but for children almost impossible to answer. Children do not usually give direct answers to simple questions. Experience seems to have taught them that appearances are deceptive in this matter, and they look about for the spring by which the trap works before they will touch the bait. It is a pity to set traps, because it destroys confidence, and children's confidence in such matters as lessons is hard to win.

The question of aids to study by stimulants is a difficult one. On the one hand it seems to some educators a fundamental law that reward should follow right-doing and effort, and so no doubt it is; but the reward within one's own mind and soul is one thing and the calf-bound book is another—scarcely even a symbol of the first, because they are not always obtained by the same students. This is a fruitful subject for discourse or reflection at distributions of prizes. Those who are behind the scenes know that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, and the children know it themselves, and prize-winners often become the object of the "word in season," pointing out how rarely they will be found to distinguish themselves in after life; while the steady advance of the plodding and slow mind is dwelt upon, and those who have failed through idleness drink up the encouragement which was not intended for them, and feel that they are the hope of the future because they have won no prizes. It is difficult on those occasions to make the conflicting conclusions clear to everybody.

Yet the system of prize distributions is time honoured and traditional, and every country is not yet so disinterested in study as to be able to do without it; under its sway a great deal of honest effort is put out, and the taste of success which is the great stimulant of youth is first experienced.

There is also the system of certificates, which has the advantage of being open to many instead of to one. It is likewise a less material testimonial, approaching more nearly to the merited word of approval which is in itself the highest human reward, and the one nearest to the heart of things, because it is the one which belongs to home. For if the home authorities interest themselves in lessons at all, their grown-up standard and the paramount weight of their opinion gives to one word of their praise a dignity and worth which goes beyond all prizes. Beyond this there is no natural satisfaction to equal the inner consciousness of having done one's best, a very intimate prize distribution in which we ourselves make the discourse, and deliver the certificate to ourselves. This is the culminating point at which educators aim; they are all agreed that prizes in the end are meant to lead up to it, but the way is long between them. And both one and the other are good in so far as they lead us on to the highest judgment that is day by day passed on our work. When prizes, and even the honour of well-deserved praise, fail to attract, the thought of God the witness of our efforts, and of the value in His sight of striving which is never destined to meet with success, is a support that keeps up endurance, and seals with an evident mark of privilege the lives of many who have made those dutiful efforts not for themselves but in the sight of God.