EDUCATION BY MEANS OF SIGHT - SEEING. T HERE is, and must always
be, a great deal of irresponsible talk about education. " So many parents, so many opinions !" sighs the schoolmaster, who, like "the sons of Levi," tends perhaps to " take too much upon " himself. Since children must 'always have parents who will talk about them, it is worth the educationist's while to listen even to the wildest parental gossip. Just now, to judge by such gossip, one might gather that books are a little out of fashion. True, among the rich who are able to send their sons to Public Schools and their daughters to modern institutions designed to combine the advantages of a College and a great country house, book-learning has never played an exclusive part. Character and health and a certain initiation into the ways of the world have always been the first consideration. In short, judgment " and mental " balance," cant words though they have become, still express what the cultivated aim at for their sons and daughters—children who, nevertheless, will be required to make their livings by mental labour or to marry men who expect to do so.
For the children of the hand-workers, who themselves look forward to getting their daily bread without so much mental effort, a different programme has hitherto sufficed. During the short years given to their education they have been kept to book-learning entirely. The object of their teachers has been to make them " apply " for a given number of hours in each day. They have striven, no doubt, and often successfully, to make this burden of application easy ; but by whomsoever borne application has been both the means and the end of their efforts. It is a very odd thing, when we come to think of it, that the ideals of primary and secondary education should have been respectively what they are considering the probable after life of the children. It is true that all the primary scholars are day scholars, and we suppose this fact has hitherto been considered sufficient explanation of rather puzzling phenomena. The old notion that to love your book was to be educated has not died, has not even been much modified, in simple circles. On the other hand, that ideal has seldom been reached, and boys leave school hating it, determined to open their primers no more. Meanwhile the children of London live in perhaps the most interesting city in the world and are not interested in it. Just lately an attempt—a tentative attempt—has been made to bring them, as it were, into their kingdom, to give them all the mental delight which lies shut away from them behind a screen of ignorance. The British Museum in instituting a system of really competent guides has offered to the multitude a key of knowledge hitherto jealously guarded by the learned, and other of the nation's treasuries are following suit. But the idea, though it has, as we say, " taken hold," has not yet been systematically developed so as to become an essential part of any educational scheme. We have all heard lately of groups of schoolchildren being taken over the Houses of Parliament, and of their delight in seeing with their ' eyes the halls of which they had read so much. The history of most of the historic " sights of London " would fill volumes, and such histories where they exist could certainly be popularized sufficiently to bring them within the comprehension of children from twelve to fourteen years of age. Even as they are, they would enable average teachers to give a course of lectures upon the Tower of London, the various cathedrals, churches, palaces, or galleries, not perhaps of a nature to please a learned Pro- fessor, but quite good enough to fascinate the attention of a child. Where no such handbooks exist a demand for them might tempt a hundred competent persons to try their hands at the only remunerative form of literature which now exists—the making of school-books.
Of course it is obvious that if " sight-seeing " were to become a recognized part of education, it would be necessary to do away with the conventional idea which associates public buildings in children's minds with " treats." Such " treats " are seldom enjoyed because holiday-making, to please a child, must be connected with freedom or with feasting, or with pageantry or fun. This new form of object-lesson, if it becomes common, should remain quite frankly a lesson to be learned in school hours and under discipline. Accepted as a form of instruction, the expedition may cast a wholly new light upon what has seemed an arid subject. The cinemas have already trained town children to observe and to learn by eye as well as ear.
Naturally it would not do to push the experiment too far in schools intended for the average child. Years ago Sir Walter Besant dreai a charming portrait of a girl who had never learned to read. The heroine of The Golden Butterfly had been taught orally, and well taught, but had never read a page. Perhips some new novelist may now take as a heroine an imaginary victim of a new educational fad—a London child whose intelligence had been systematically developed by sight-seeing and " pictures." If the " movies " were carefully selected, the sights ably explained, and the explanation laboriously amplified out of well-chosen books, a very good result might be obtained. A year's course of reading founded upon the Tower, a year upon the Zoo, a year upon the National Portrait Gallery, would not be three years wasted if the teacher or teachers were able for their work. We hope some faddist will try the experiment upon his own (female) child.
There is just now among the irresponsible educationists we mentioned above some talk of the reinstitution of " the Grand Tour." It would be very expensive to send a troop of boys properly officered by misters to pass two or three months in two or more Continental capitals during the last year of their Public School course. It might not, however, be more expensive than the University, and for certain characters destined for certain careers it might be more profitable. Foreign sight-seeing, taken seriously, and considered in its bearing upon the political history of the country, might certainly be of great educational value. But the Grand Tour even when it was the fashion had its critics. Francis Osborne in his Advice to a Son cannot say enough against it, though at the end of his animadversions he seems to make an exception in his own son's favour. " I am not much unwilling to give way to peregrine motion for a time ; provided it be in company of an ambassador or person of quality by whose power the dangers may be rebated no less than your charge of diet defrayed." For his own part, however, he got no good from his early travels, and he begs his son to take advice from one " wearied, and therefore possibly made wiser, by experience." Probably no system of " higher education " will ever be found which gives universal contentment either to educationists, parents, or scholars. The newest and youngest young men are now complaining even of the athletics which have been supposed to fill the heart of every English schoolboy with joy. Their complaints, however, are no new thing. Sir Philip Sidney said that as a boy "next to hunting" he "liked hawking worst."
How would it be to let women be the pioneers in the revival of educational travel ? The relation between girls and their schoolmistresses is a very friendly one, and learned and enthusi- astic teachers might awaken an intense interest in foreign sight- seeing of a nature to enlarge the minds of many girls to whom book-learning without tangible illustration is always uphill and distasteful work. They might by this means not only be made
to think during their last school year, but made to continue thinking, in later life.
To return to the cheaper " Grand Tour " which may be under- taken among the sights which surround the town boy, would not such an educational innovation tend to make too great a distinction between him and his rustic brothers ? Would not the farm labourer's son find himself at too great a disadvantage ? Surely not. The disadvantages of town life for children of the working class are too great to make jealousy reasonable. The study of agriculture alone offers endless opportunities for the modification of the present system of education by means of print.
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