Arthur approached my scheme in a sceptical spirit. He shook his head over psychology as being only a grand name for common sense. ‘As for boys,’ said he, ‘there’s nothing like a good caning all round on a Monday morning, whether they deserve it or not. It steadies them.’ But he was willing to admit that the teachers of girls might possibly attain some common sense by means of a little logic and psychology, if the lectures were kept practical. Glancing at my third-term programme he said: ‘Don’t be too nebulous about what you call bigger educational problems. Why not give them some hard facts?’ ‘What do you suggest?’ I asked. ‘What about a course on Educational Polity?’ ‘Polity? Is that the same as policy?’ ‘No, there’s a big distinction; the policy of a society is its relation to other societies, but its polity is its management of its own affairs. It would be good for these girls to know something of the development of education in England during the nineteenth century, the effects of the industrial revolution on it, and all that kind of thing.’
‘Did that affect education much?’ I asked.
‘Yes. People got drunk with the idea of producing large quantities of things cheaply, such as iron railings, and they thought that masses of children could be educated by similar cheap methods. Hence the curse of making them sit in rows, “being good”, while one teacher spouts at them or insists on their all doing the same exercise. If your students see the origin of this, they will no longer consider it a method ordained by providence, or even a practical necessity. And if you know how a thing grew up you are half-way to seeing how to improve it.’
This sounded good, but I didn’t know where to turn for the facts. ‘Oh, I can give you the main ones,’ said Arthur, and then and there began to reel out to me descriptions of the old hedge-schools and dame schools, the ‘inventions’ of Bell and Lancaster to meet the demand for ‘mass’ instruction by means of monitors, the founding of the National and British Societies, and so on to Forster’s Bill in 1870 and compulsory education for all. It took us many a séance to cover all this ground, and I was busy taking notes all the time. Comparison of our polity with those of France and Germany had to be discussed, as well as the status of the so-called public schools, the universities, and private schools. Then, of course, the religious question (a serious bone of contention in Wales) was considered, and the difficult point as to whether education, if compulsory, ought not also to be free. I felt provided with ample matter for a short course on these lines for my third term.
‘How did you come to know all this?’ I asked.
‘A man gets to know these things,’ said he.
A married friend to whom I related this incident with some pride was not at all impressed. ‘That’s the usual thing, Molly,’ said she. ‘One of the great advantages of being married you will soon find is that you have a fount of wisdom ever springing at your side; you have only to dip. How men get to know everything astounds me. And it’s the same thing if something goes wrong in the house—a clock won’t go, a tap drips, or there’s a smell of gas—as soon as the wretched thing sees a pair of trousers it gives up the game and resumes work.’
‘A bit humiliating for us, isn’t it?’ said I.
‘Not at all. We women have far more difficult and delicate problems to face. If we were learned and practical and wise we should have no reserve strength.’
§ 2
On the opening morning in January 1892 I walked into the lecture-room that had been assigned to me, feeling a fair amount of confidence. But two shocks awaited me. The students were duly there, looking all pleasant and expectant, but seated firmly on one side, notebook in hand, was the member of the Council who had sponsored the new department. She had come, she said, to see how I should start it. My plan was to devote the first hour to giving my skeleton of the year’s work, with reasons for this and that. I soon gathered from her manner that my visitor was properly impressed, and at the close she was very cordial in her appreciation of the scheme. I fancy that she was anxious to be prepared against any attacks from her enemy on the Council.
The other shock was to see, sitting meekly among my students, none other than Miss Armstead, the classics mistress of the North London Collegiate School, who was the finest teacher I had ever sat under. She smiled happily at me now and again during that first hour, but as soon as possible I approached her in the spirit of John the Baptist, to ask why on earth she had come to me for help in a business at which she herself was so brilliant. ‘Oh, I know absolutely nothing about psychology,’ said she, ‘nor logic nor hygiene nor all these other things you mention. It’s all so exciting…. My only regret is that I shan’t be able to attend full time, because of my work at school. And I shan’t be able to do any of the practical work. What fun it will be just to go about theorizing, when I’ve been making mistakes all my life!’
I was relieved that she didn’t want practical work, for that was my chief trouble. All theorizing might be fun, but it was not my idea of training. I wanted, if it could be managed, that every psychological law mentioned should be illustrated in school life; and that every success or failure in school life should be explained by a psychological law. But to get school life—that was the rub. The College authorities made not the slightest effort to help me in this matter by giving me introductions to the schools in the neighbourhood. I had to go round and beg for permission to give a few lessons here and there. I was as coldly received as if I were attempting to sell tea or basket-chairs. Then, of course, I was told that training was entirely useless, or indeed harmful—‘putting ideas into their heads’; that having strangers in upset the school routine; and so on. I admitted all. Then, by throwing myself on their mercy, and by pointing out how enhanced would be their chances of heaven if they helped the cause of education by giving me half an hour a week, I induced one or two kindly disposed principals to allow us in on trial. One of the schools to which I gained admission was a little dame’s school, where Mangnall’s Questions were actually in use. With my scanty triumphs I returned to College and parcelled out among the students the few courses available, so as to squeeze the utmost value from these scraps of real teaching. Syllabuses were prepared for them, notes for each lesson considered, and friendly discussions (rather than formal criticisms) carried out in College afterwards. As time went on and downright failures were few, and the schools survived the dangerous outside influence, and the pupils received us with delight, and the teachers got a spare half-hour for their corrections…why even the principals became pleasant, and actually tried to be helpful. One day I was drawn aside privily by the headmistress for her to impart her new-born idea: ‘What these students really need is to be shown how to teach.’ I smiled assent and admitted that her advice was sound.
Another difficulty had been lurking in my mind for a long time, and as the second term was coming near I had to face it. How best to deal with special subjects? Each student would probably intend to specialize in some branch, such as mathematics, modern languages, or science. Jack of all trades though I was, it was not possible for me to cope with the best methods for all these. Suddenly I realized that I was starving in the midst of plenty. Bedford College was replete with professors of everything, genial fellows with whom I had hobnobbed at staff meetings. Surely I could harness them. So one by one I waylaid them in some passage and asked them casually whether they would spare an hour to give my students a lecture on their subject.
‘But what on earth is there to say about it?’ was the usual tone of the reply.
‘You must find among your own students some who have been badly taught?’
‘Oh, rather!’
‘Well then, just come and talk to my people about your grievances, tell them how you wish all schoolchildren could be properly taught your subject, what mistakes to avoid, what chief points to aim at, and so on. Or indeed talk about anything at all. It is the clash with a bigger mind that these girls want, especially a man’s, for they may be buried in girls’ schools for years. I don’t care what revolutionary ideas you put into
their heads—in politics or religion or art—so long as you say what you really mean.’
As I pressed my point in such ways a look of intelligence would come over my victim’s face, and he would beamingly agree to do his best, and fix a date. My plan was to devote a complete week to each leading school subject. Before the lecture was to be given the College library was raided for any books on the subject, various text-books were produced and criticized, our own past troubles were discussed, and the latest modern methods were soberly considered. We had plenty of questions to propound to the lecturer when his hour arrived. And what good stuff each professor gave us, evidently enjoying the chance to say what he thought, letting loose subversive views in an irresponsible way, abusing ancient follies and modern fads.
The most revolutionary was the history specialist, Mr. Allen, who was so earnest that he twisted himself into a kind of knot round his chair and barked out his opinions like a Hyde Park orator. He was dead against all the usual methods of teaching history, training his biggest guns against any attempt to draw morals or any effort to make it picturesque. Science, that was the thing. History was merely a branch of biology. The doings of human beings in the past were to be studied and recorded as cold-bloodedly as the wrigglings of insects under the microscope. The students were too much overawed to ask him how this method was to be carried on in school life, but they were wholesomely headed off anything like an emotional touch in their history lessons.
The mathematics man was generous indeed, not only in his ready assent to my request, but also in his offer to give a series of six talks. One would not be of much use, he said, for it was in the earliest stages of dealing with Number that the mischief began, and he would like to talk about those difficulties as well as the later ones. ‘I find that my women students here in College cannot be broken of their school habit of shirking fresh thought, and waiting for some “rule” or “dodge” and then learning it by heart; real grappling with a problem has become almost impossible for them. People ought to begin with realities in the cradle.’ Mr. Harding was a man of humour as well as sympathy with weakness, and his talks were enjoyed to the full. One of his main principles in teaching mathematics was to show the close connexion of every step with the needs of ordinary life. He described how geometry had begun, as its name implies, from the need to measure out the fields, after the Nile had flooded away the boundaries every year. A book on the subject had been discovered with a date some two thousand years B.C. and Euclid was only the author of a ‘modern text-book’.
His plan of teaching little children to intuit numbers by the use of playing-card patterns has now become a common-place, but in those days it was a striking change from learning the multiplication table by heart. In ordinary school work he considered that the usual stumbling-block was division, owing to the two quite separate meanings of the word, and these two meanings had to be cleared up. I fancy that the maddening ‘docility’ of the average woman student must have broken his spirit, for later on, when he was writing to congratulate me on my first-born, he said, ‘Be sure not to teach your children the stuff I talked about; teach them in the old-fashioned way; it pays better; memory, I fear, will always triumph over reason.’ A great contrast to Mr. Harding’s ready acquiescence met me in the professor of classics, Mr. Platt, who required corkscrew methods to induce him to give us a lecture of any kind.
‘B-but, my dear Miss Thomas,’ he stammered, ‘there is b-but one way to t-teach Latin. There are no d-dodges or short cuts. Latin has to be learnt:
‘Quite,’ I readily rejoined, ‘but could you point out its value when once it is learnt? A young pupil asked me that question once, and I was put to it to give her a ready answer.’ I believe this aspect of the matter was quite new to him. He stroked his chin in silence for a bit, and then said, ‘Very well, I’ll d-do my b-best.’
Unlike Mr. Allen, who had poured forth his indignation in a stream of extempore fervour, and unlike Mr. Harding with his light-hearted chat, Mr. Platt had written out his whole lecture on blue draft-paper (for I believe that in his lighter moments he was a barrister). Only one point in his brief, or rather opinion, on the teaching of classics remains in my memory, and that because of its oddity. He maintained that one great value of the study of Latin was that it acted as a corrective to Christianity. (Here we all sat up and took sharp notice.) While our established religion exhorted us to offer the other cheek to the smiter, the whole spirit of Latin literature suggested that we should smite back good and hard. The combination of the two had made England what she was. I longed to ask him what England was. He was too wary to elaborate the subtle satire of his statement, and I wondered afterwards whether he was even conscious of it.
I had hardly written these words when the answer to my wondering came to hand, in the shape of a letter to The Times which runs thus:
May I add to the unpublished fragments of verse by A. E. Housman an amusing distich, which I had from the late W. P. Ker.
A colleague and great friend of Housman’s at University College, London, was the late Arthur Platt, Professor of Greek there.
Housman and Platt infused ‘a certain liveliness’ into the serious pages of the Journal of Philology by tilting at each other in jesting, but friendly, fashion.
In reference to these sparrings Housman made these two lines, which deserve not to be forgotten:
‘Philology was tame and dull and flat;
God said “Let there be larks” and there was Platt!’{1}
Obviously there was no unconscious humour in Mr. Platt. I only wish we had been provocative enough to get some more of his larks.
Professor Herkomer’s lecture on Art was more practical for his art-students than for anyone endeavouring to teach. He gave a most amusing account of the proceedings when the selection committee for the Royal Academy were doing their selecting. He advised anyone who aspired to have a picture accepted to make it long horizontally and short vertically. ‘There’s a great shortage of pictures of this shape,’ said he, ‘and we’ll accept the poorest stuff, to fill the empty spaces on the walls.’
Another year he was unable to deliver a lecture himself, but was kind enough to write a paper for us, and send one of his underlings to read it. The underling was more artistic than literary, and read so badly that the students could take no sensible notes, and I was roused from semi-somnolence by hearing the amazing statement: ‘Such a course of work will enable you to reach the gaol of your ambition.’
For Art I had to fall back on my own resources. I had kept up my hobby of studying in the National Gallery, and I induced several of the students to catch my enthusiasm. Miss Worley, one of my best, essayed to give a course of lessons on Italian art in one of our schools, and even took a party of her pupils to the Gallery. How chagrined she was that it was almost impossible to get them past Frith’s Derby Day, and that they admired the frame of a Fra Angelico far more than the picture. She and I then laughed together over Rousseau’s wise remark that the greater the picture the simpler should be the frame.
Yet another variety from our College staff was afforded by the science specialist, a woman. She was quite the wisest person I have ever known—a living reproof to the foolish. ‘A fine morning!’ was my greeting to her one day in the cloakroom. ‘I have not had time to think of the weather,’ was her almost reproachful reply. She was too conscientious to say ‘Yes’ without due consideration.
Much to my surprise she was only too ready to give a lecture to my people, and I was grateful indeed that she would spare the time. As for myself, I knew no science. Like Arthur Sidgwick I had ‘not even taught it’. So I was prepared to learn a great deal about its proper place and treatment in the schools. What was my dismay to find that instead of giving her views on such points she spent the entire time in arguing the importance of knowing one’s own subject (a quite unnecessary point to labour) and the utter futility of the training of teachers. In short, she was letting off her spleen in a way that could be no possible use to the students. H
owever, her depressing remarks aroused so much indignation in her audience that more good than harm resulted. But I took care not to ask her help in the succeeding years.
By the third term we had all become enthusiastic in the work and found the time too short for the programme. Nervous as to the reception of ‘educational polity’, I introduced it as a dull subject, a necessary grind, and so on. But I managed to clothe it as a kind of story, and as the pathetic struggle for a decent education and better conditions for English children was unfolded, in as dry and matter-of-fact tones as I could achieve, the interest of the students warmed and it became the most welcome item of the week. I was able to illustrate the story, not only by pictures of a vast mass of children being taught by a ‘monitor’, and of old-fashioned dame schools, but also by my visit as a child to a dame school in a Cornish cottage, and by some of Arthur’s memories of similar oddities in Wales. What interested them most was my description of one of the very earliest (I suppose) play-centres in the East End of London. When I was at the North London School in the eighties some of the teachers ran such a centre in Stepney, hiring a large room and inviting any children to come for play once or twice a week. It was always crowded, and on one occasion a little person aged three arrived, clad in absolutely nothing but a piece of old shawl pinned round her. At this point in my lecture, a student leaned forward and said, ‘Do you call this dull?
A London Home in the Nineties Page 3