CONFLICT IN THE SCHOOLS
By E. L. PACKER HAT is the use of learning modern methods of teaching
if we are not allowed to use them when we teach? " was the question asked by a group of training-college students recently, on their return from a period of teaching practice in elementary schools. The remark throws light on a problem which must be solved if the new Education Act is to be of real benefit to our children. The reorganisation of our educational system has created a demand for many thousands of extra teachers. The existing training colleges are unable to cope with the increase in the number of students, and new colleges are being established as quickly as possible. Students, some from the Services, many from the grammar schools, are coming into the profession full of enthusiasm for the job they are going to do. Unfortunately, this enthusiasm is likely to fade, and disillusion take its place, unless the present conflict in teaching methods can be settled.
Broadly speaking, the issue is between the old method of class- teaching in which the teacher does most of the work and nearly all the talking, and the new method of class activities in which the pupils are given a pcoject to carry through themselves, working in groups, with the teacher acting as adviser when called upon. The old method is one of lesson-learning by the child, the subject being considered of greater importance than the pupil. The child's share of the lesson is usually limited to memorising informa- tion imparted by the teacher, and the interest aroused is in pro- portion to the unpleasant consequences which will follow the child's failure to absorb a certain amount of factual knowledge. The lesson is given to the whole class, it being assumed that the individual differences between the children are not of sufficient importance to be specially catered for. The child is throughout being led by the teacher. The new method of education is by means of class-room activities. It is rooted in the fact that a child learns more quickly when an aroused interest leads him to obtain know- ledge by personal effort and responsibility. It is not a new idea in educational theory; it underlies the Montessori method and the Dalton plan, to name but two of the many schemes based on individual effort by the child. Each child advances at his own rate of learning.
An example of the contrast between old and new methods is provided in the teaching of history. Professor Turberville, in his presidential address to the Historical Association, reminded us that the study of history was an adult study and could only be approached by the child-mind through the imagination. Class-teach- ing ignores this principle. Beginning with the Ancient Britons the curriculum takes the child onwards through the Romans, Tudors and Smarts, up to the present day, without regard for the mental make-up of the child. The new activity-method appreciates that a child is likely to have a particular interest at a given age. Boys pass through a phase in which they are intensely interested in transport, when they can name correctly the type and make of cars, locomotives and aeroplanes. This is the age at which they would be asked to find out all about transport through the ages, with particular reference to an arterial road passing near the school. The teacher would suggest methods whereby information could be ob- tained, the pupils would compile the facts for themselves.
Fortunately the Ministry of Education has recognised the value to the child of the new method of learning. In its recently pub- lished pamphlet, The Nation's Schools, the Ministry encourages " departure from traditional methods of class-instruction in favour of individual work in acquiring particular skills and in project- activities pursued in groups." How far is the Ministry prepared to support teachers now in training in an effort to translate these words into practice? Training colleges have long advocated group- activity methods, and students are being trained in this type of educational practice. Yet there is every possibility that on taking up an appointment the young teacher will not be allowed to put the new methods into effect. Instead he may be required by his head teacher to revert to the old class-teaching methods in which he hall had little training and in which he puts no confidence. Head teachers in the main have a conservative attitude of mind, which does not take kindly to new ideas in teaching techniques. Their own train- ing-college days may 'be some thirty or more years ago when orthodoxy did not question the class-teaching method. Trained in this now out-moded method they look askance at the new.
They see in it a challenge to the teacher's sense of power, a trans- ference of the limelight from the teacher to the child, and a loosening of the rigid discipline which class-teaching demarlds.
School organisation as at present constituted places far too much power of veto in the hands of the head teacher in the matter of educational practice, with a consequent diminution of opportunity for the assistant teacher to use initiative or produce original work. Frustration and loss of efficiency can only follow a veto on teaching methods in which an assistant has received training and which he believes to be sound. Where head teachers are out of sympathy with the new teaching techniques the Ministry should obtain a modifica- tion of the relationship between the head and the assistants so that all assistants may have choice of teaching method.
Perhaps the most important contribution which the new teaching can make to society is in its effect on the child. The child learns from his own experience at his own rate ; his sense of responsibility is strengthened ; what initiative he possesses is cultivated. Karl Mann- heim embodies this aspect of the new teaching in a paragraph in Diagnosis of Our Time when he points out that
" society is an educational agent, and education is only good if in many ways it embodies the educational technique of life. From now on the aim of the school is not only to impart ready-made knowledge but to enable us to learn more efficiently from life itself.... The social organisation of the school, the kind of social roles one has an oppor- tunity to play, whether competition or co-operation prevails, whether there is more opportunity for team-work than for solitary work, all contribute to the type of man which will grow up in these surroundings."
The new teaching aims at developing the skills and aptitudes of the child by methods which will give the child responsibility and opportunity for using initiative. With the acceptance of the new techniques, that well-known speech-day figure, the school failure who made good after leaving school, will disappear. His initiative was not developed by the old class-teaching methods, and it was not until he left school life behind him that his ability was discovered. The antagonism and autocracy in the classroom produced by the traditional teaching must give place to democratic relation- ships fostered by the new methods if our education is to be of value to society.
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