EMERGENCY SCHOOLS
SIR,-Mr. Moorman's account of the Emergency School opened in Manchester is of special interest to those of us who have made a similar effort in London. In North Kensington there is a large housing estate inhabited by people who were recently transferred from slum dwellings. There are 3,000 children on the estate ; seven children to a family is not an unusual number. The streets are their playground. Fortu- nately there is little motor traffic ; when a car drives through
the estate its progress is slow, scattering as it goes swarms of noisy children to right and to left. From the first, evacuation has not been popular with parents or children here. About 5o per cent. left with the first trek of the schools. In a very few weeks they were coming back in a steady stream, and now the proportion enjoying the much vaunted advantages of farm and country life is negligible.
The estate has a fine Community Centre. In this building we started, in September, an emergency school. We began with seventy children. Parents, however, clamoured to have their children admitted, and soon we were dealing with nearly 18o, aged from seven to fourteen. We had no equip- ment, no books, stationery, blackboards, pencils—nothing, in fact, but chairs, tables, large rooms (though not enough of them), and an unruly, undisciplined mob of children, sharp- witted little Cockneys who knew at once how to torment the valiant but, sometimes, amateur helpers who came to teach them. The experiment met with immediate sympathy and the bare necessities of school work were provided. The children pay nothing, so that we depend entirely on what our friends give us for all expenses. Among our staff of volun- teer helpers only two or three are able to give full tithe to the work ; others come and go, giving what help they can. As in Manchester, we try to be as orderly and businesslike a school as possible, though it was not at first easy to convince our young pupils of its really serious nature. We have found it best to go outside the curriculum of the ordinary school, not only widening their very narrow interests, but giving the attraction of novelty and avoiding openly expressed criticisms of differences in our methods and those they have been accustomed to in their schools. The seniors are proud students of French and elementary Algebra. By degrees diffi- culties of discipline are getting less ; we have not been forced to take the advice of a small boy who followed an exhausted teacher from the room, and whispered to her, in all kindness, "Miss, you must whack us! " We have had valuable help from students of two London Training Colleges which have been temporarily closed. The Principals were glad to let their students come to us for practice in teaching which they could not get in a London devoid of schools, and in this way the school has been able to serve a double purpose educa- tionally.
The disaster of neglect, mental and moral, in the case of these London children is the more tragic because they are high-spirited, of strong personality and character, and natu- rally quick to find an outlet for their energies in mischief and hooliganism. No more valuable war work can be done than that of saving the children in our towns from the dangers of idleness and want of control, as indeed no more tragic ruin can be accomplished by our enemies than that of the souls of the rising generation.
M. H. MEADE, M.A., Cantab., formerly Headmistress of the Bolton School, Lancashire.
221 Rodney House, Dolphin Square, S.W. I.
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