Architecture as a School Subject G ENERAL knowledge, in the scholastic
world, may mean almost anything : in' Public School exami- nations it often, means a mixture of history, geography, and Scripture ; at . private preparatory schools, so far as the writer is able, to recollect, it invariably used to mean : (i) Who is Chancellor of the Exchequer ? and (ii) What do you know of Cleopatra ? (the answer tO (i) being somebody one could not conceivably spell, an to (ii), briefly, "Cleopatra had a needle ")• In examina- tions at Oxford,' on, the other hand, general knowledge ineans, quite simply, something about the Peloponnesian War. . There is, however, another kind of general knowledge, which masquerades. under the name of English literature and consists in knowing, "In what book does Becky Sharp appear ? 7 or, ". Who wrote Donzbey and Son ? " or, "From which of Shakespeare's plays are the following quotations taken ? " Much ghostly and agonizing, know- ledge of this sort is first acquired by small boys sitting the Common Entrance Examination to Public Schools, and continues to haunt them until at the age of eighteen Or so they are safely sheltered from it for ever by the four walls of an office in the City. No doubt, the more a boy reads the better, but the . only reasonable thing to do with literature is, after all, to read it. Time devoted to facts about ‘literature is nearly always , time wasted and can only be defended on the ground that, a certain amount of general knowledge is essential, to a boy's education: In that case, why favour literature at the expense of all other branches of art ? Is general ignorance about literature so much more regrettable than general ignorance about painting, sculpture, music, architecture ?
In these days of widespread building, the elements of architecture and the history of its development constitute, a subject with a very strong claim to be taught. just as in the sixteenth century every gentleman could write a sonnet, so in the eighteenth .century .every gentleman
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knew the five orders and could criticize a building : the result was excellent: -In the Victorian age there was little or no public conscience in the matter and the result was, on the whole, deplorable. What is to be said of our own age by future generations'?
Architecture is a good school subject for a number of reasons: (i) It offers opportunities for drawing, and a very large number of boys enjoy drawing ; moreover, one tends to remember a thing when one has drawn a picture of -(ii) It helps the teaching of history, simplifying the almost overwhelming task Of getting a boy to "see the centuries" as different entities ; and, no less than the study of dead languages, it connects the modem world with the ancient. (iii) It is not entirely an abstract subject : the practical advantages of the pointed arch in ecclesiastical architecture, or the solution of simple household problems in domestic architecture, bring what the book-reviewers call "a welcome touch of reality into the class-room." (iv) The present age is an age of architectural transformation in London and, generally speaking, an age of architectural activity, and this should help to arouse interest in the subject.
• But how teach architecture ? There are difficulties : the masters are not expert in the subject ; there are not enough elementary books about it ; there is not time. Of these objections the first is not a serious one : actually there are probably several masters in every school who know a good deal about it, and those who do not have only to teach themselves, keeping the proverbial "chapter" ahead of their pupils. (Such a state of affairs tends rather to make the lesson more lively and interesting.) The second objection, lack* of elementary books,' would soon cease to be real if schoolmasters provided the demand, and if publisheis would restrain their passion for anthologies of Poetry for Lower Forms, and the like, of which there are now far too many. As a matter of fact, there are already one or two quite suitable books : for small children (or, indeed, beginners of any age), Architecture Shown to the Children, by Gladys Wynne (T. C. and E. C. Jack, Ltd.), is an ideal book, full of illustrations and well-chosen photographs ; for rather older students, Architecture, by A. L. N. Russell (Chatto and Windus), is interestingly written and can be Used in conjunction with English Architecture at a Glance (The Architectural Press, is. 6d.), which contains short and easily memorable notes on each period and quantities Of illustrations. Another valuable work is A History of Everyday Things in England (two volumes), by Marjorie and C. H. B. Quennell (Batsford), though this is a more expensive book and deals with many subjects besides architecture.
The most serious difficulty is the• third—the lack of time in the school curriculum. Every faddist nowadays grinds his axe in the newspapers and in the class-room, and there is a danger of simple instruction in compo- sition and arithmetic being neglected. Obviously, architecture should not be made a major school subject. But even one hour a week for a term or for a year would make all the difference between a little elementary knowledge and the blank ignorance which now prevails —one hour out of the time which to-day is devoted to learning by rote the solemn names of authors and their works. "But one cannot go through life," people say, "without knowing who Becky Sharp' was." One might reply that even that has been done ; but this is not the question at issue. The question is whether at the age of thirteen Jones minor ought to have read Vanity Fair, and, if not, whether he is a better boy for knowing who Becky Sharp was. From the point of View of common Sense, you might just as well try to teach a child the taste of a banana without ever giving him one to eat. The fact is that not only the scholastic profession, but a great many other people besides, are obsessed by a kind of terror of general ignorance about literature ; which is strange, since there seems to be no such terror of ignorance about any other subject (unless, perhaps, carburettors or county cricket). How very few people, for instance, have really read "Endymion " ; yet the fart that Keats wrote it is common knowledge. How many, on the other hand, look every day at the Banqueting House of Whitehall Palace, and yet .how few know .who designed it ! "Every schoolboy knows" what a hexa- meter is ; but does anyone think that the modem world owes more to Homer than to the Greek builders of Pericles' age ? Most schoolboys hardly know a Doric column from a barge-pole. And even the actual reading of literature at school is often so arranged that ,a boy reads the same works over and over again as he makes his way up the school. There may be much to be gained, no doubt, from reading Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" or Chaucer's "Prologue" for the fourth or fifth time but such rereadings are an extravagant use of seriously limited time. We do not want to produce a nation of dilettantes, but it does seem a little difficult to justify the prejudice which at present determines what is and what is not to be considered as indispensable knowledge.
W. C. SELLAR,
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