ADVENTURES IN EDUCATION.
THE armistice was signed and the fighting over, and word came from the powers that be that recreation and education were to be the order of the day. Recreation explains itself ; education was enjoined upon us partly as a means of diversion in circumstances where there was no work to do and little to be had in the way of amusement, and partly as a definite aid to men in their return to civil life, so that they might recover their lost skill and recapture their old methods of thought. The whole affair was to be voluntary, for you cannot educate a grown man against his will.
The problem had unusual aspects in our ease. We were a Tunnelling Company, consisting almost entirely of miners, with a sprinkling of R.E. tradesmen, carpenters, fitters, black- smiths,- and so forth—men, that is, accustomed to think, and all skilled, but full of an intense conservatism, and apt to be distrustful of any scheme proposed to them. These traits appeared as soon as education was suggested. The miners had all the skill they required for their profession, and had kept it going during the war ; they were all going back to be miners, and had no desire to learn anything else ; they could, with two or three exceptions, read and write, and they did not feel the need of intellectual interests outside their work. Con- sequently two sections rejected the scheme entirely, while the two others, thanks to the persuasive eloquence of their com- manders, contributed a few members to a class on elementary coal-mining which would help them to qualify as " deputies " or "firemen," and thus better their position in the pits. For the rest of the scheme they had no use.
There remained the Headquarters Section, who were not miners at all. Considerable trouble was taken to put the scheme attractively before them, but even so the response was very slight, either from apathy, because it was too much trouble, or because they honestly could not see how education outside their own particular sphere of work would give them profit or pleasure. In short, the commercial view of education was universal. Of the pleasure of learning and knowing there was no ides, nor could they grasp the fact that they might become better carpenters or fitters if they could read a book with intelligence, or express their thoughts clearly in writing. They had their technical skill, and were content tO keep that as their sole asset.
• In the upshot, we learnt that all miners were to be recalled for service in the mines almost at once, and in consequence the only class formed was a French class of seven men. It included one miner, two blacksmiths, a painter, and three joiners, and their motive for attending was frankly utilitarian ; they opined that there would be a deal of work to be done in France after Peace was signed, and that a knowledge of French would help them to get some of it. The progress and methods of this class are interesting and worth description.
To begin with, they were desperately keen. The purest scholarly zeal could not have produced more industry and dogged perseverance than these men showed. For a long time their visible progress was oil, their difficulties hourly increasing ; but they never missed a class, nor failed to pay the most scrupulous attention. There were no books, partly owing to a general shortage of then:, and partly owing to our repeatedly changing from one corps to another, and being "nobody's children." The method adopted, therefore, was to hold an hour's class every two or three days, to demonstrate on the blackboard and viva rocs during that time, and subsequently to issue sheets from the Company typewriter, embodying the results of the previous hour's teaching, and providing exercises based upon it. Thus we wrote our grammar as we went along, to suit ourselves.
The question that will be asked is : "What method did you use 1 "—an important question because, if half our educational promises arc fulfilled, we shall soon have to educate hundreds of boys and older men of a precisely similar type of mind to that of this French class. The answer is, that we followed no system, but regarded the French language as a citadel to be approached, now on this side, now on that, first by bombardment, then by mine, then by storm, as opportunity presented itself. There was no question of adhering to a fixed system, because we never knew where we should stick next ; points which to a child of ten would be easy required with us an hour's explanation, and when we ought to have been advancing we had often to go back and revise. Our only rule was : "Begin with the elements, and go ahead if you can."
The class had to face difficulties innumerable. Chief of these was a weak memory. Infantry officers who have tried to teach men how to pass a verbal message will know what I mean, and sympathize. The product of our Board-school education seems to have no power of noticing detail, much less of grasping it : " we " and you " are much the same; " of " and " to " are scarcely different. This is so even in their own profession of soldiering or carpentering ; much more then in the matter of French grammar, where ideas and details are utterly strange. Consequently no advance could ever be regarded as certain ; we spent two hours on pronunciation, and there are still some of us who will pronounce dne as "an." At one time we 'errs fairly proficient in the present tense of avoir ; but if we ar.i suddenly asked the French for "you have," we are apt to say 720118 sommes. It is this fact which prohibits the use of such systems as the Berlitz or that of Mr. Alge ; fascinating as they are, and great as are the results which they produce, they postulate memory, quickness of perception, and an instinctiv- knowledge of the structure of language, which we simply do not possess. There is no point of contact between us and the French language whatever. Donnant may be the present participle of donne., but that to us is no reason why parlact should be the present participle of parks. Nor is it clear why "He gave the man the boy's flag" should mean, and have to be translated, He gave the flag of the boy to the man." It is no good trying to advance by simple French questions and answers ; for when we have learnt with great difficulty that the French for "Where is Paul 1" is Oil cot Paul P we aro not appreciably nearer to knowing the French for "Where is Henry ?"
To put it shortly, after we have got over the memory difficulty, there is the fact that we are learning English as well as French. English grammar is not of a kind that forces itself on the atten- tion. Loose speaking and loose writing are the rule rather than the exception, whereas in Franco the most ordinary person will correct you if you give a noun its wrong gender, and will speak correctly even if he cannot write. We are so accustomed to a journalism which in its worst and most common examples strives solely after superlatives and " brightness " that we have lost our sense of precision, both in the meaning of words and in the construction of sentences. French bein; nothing if not precise, this lost sense has to be recovered in learning it, and because, in our particular case, we have no grammatical sense whatever, the only way torus to learn French is to begin with the grammar. It is dull, but we have keenness to cope with that. The easier and more picturesque methods will, we hope, come later, if we are not demobilized first ; but in the meantime there is nothing for it but solid slogging with
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