THE MODERATES IN EDUCATION.* THERE is at the present moment

a considerable body of educa- tionists whom their friends would describe as followers after the golden mean, and whom the educational Reds " would probably describe as a sort of Provisional Government. In either case, if this world were a place where candour flourished, educa- tionists of all opinions would unite in acknowledging the excellent work which the moderates are doing. As it is, however, we have no doubt the Tory half regard this group of people as dangerous Radicals, and the " Reds " hate them with the detailed, discriminating hatred which we all reserve for " half- hearted " friends.

Probably most non-professional readers will find it exceedingly difficult to decide how to class these moderates. Are they indeed a Provisional Government who only hold the reins of educational thought for a moment until the true " man- datories " of Apollo and Athene are ready to come into their own, or are they themselves the repositories of a wisdom to which the best minds among the extreme reformers will return when the first revolutionary ardour has cooled ? In either case they are certainly just now fulfilling a valuable function.

The ease of these moderate Liberals is admirably stated in the four volumes which have appeared of " The Modern Educator's Library " which Mr. Edward Arnold is publishing.

To the reader whose interest in education is non-professional the two most interesting volumes are those entitled The Child tinder Eight,' by Miss E. R. Murray and Miss Henrietta Brown- Smith, and Education : its Data and First Principles,2 by Pro-

fessor Percy Nunn, for it is in the aims and principles that underlie education and in the setting free of the spontaneity of the younger children that the most obvious modern educa- tional progress has been made. Since time immemorial, Pro- fessor Nunn says, people have been asking and answering the question, " What is the aim of education ? "-

" One says it is to form character ; another, to prepare for complete living ; a third, to produce a sound mind in a sound body. . . . All of them seem satisfactory until, pursuing the matter farther, we ask what kind of character it is desirable to ' form,' what activities complete living' includes, or what are the marks of a healthy mind. . . . The success of these attempts to state a universal aim for education is largely illusory, • (1) The Child under Eight. By E. B.. Murray and Henrietta Brown- Smith.—(2) Education : its Data and First Principles. By Professor T. Percy Nunn.—(3) The Teaching of Modern Foreign L in School and University. By H. G. Atkins and H. L. Hutton.—(4) Um and Religious Education.

By Sophie Bryant. London ; Edward Arnold [eb. net each-1

being due chiefly to the happy fact that every one may, within wide limits, interpret them exactly as he, pleases. For A's idea of a fine character turns out to be either ridiculous or rankly offensive to B ; what C regards as complete living would be a spiritual death for D ; while the mene emu; in corpore *an.) that E reveres, F loathes as the soul of a prig housed in the body of a barbarian."

Nor is Professor Nunn himself in the least more perspicuous when he asserts that " individuality is the supreme educational

end." However, though we may have written " Define " in the margin against his assertion, in our less captious moments we have a pretty good idea of what he means us to understand by his phrase. Professor Nunn has stated one of the principal causes of the mental fog with great felicity :— " The root of the trouble doubtless lies in the complexity of human nature, and especially in one of its strangest paradoxes. From one standpoint men seem like solitary inhabitants of islands, each sundered from the rest by an impassable sea. Your spirit, for example, and mine can communicate indirectly and clumsily by means of the sounds our lips utter and the written or printed marks our fingers frame ; but there is no direct touch between us and no community of being : you are for ever you and I, I. Yet from another standpoint men are seen most truly to be every one members one of another. We come into the world with minds as empty as our bodies are naked ; and just as our bodies are clothed by others' hands, so our spirits are furnished with what enters into them from other spirits. Stripped of these borrowings we could hardly live, and should certainly be less than human."

Fortunately educationists, and indeed the public in general,

are beginning to realize that a profound truth is embodied in the old proverb, " It takes all sorts to make a world." We have ceased to insist upon remoulding our unfortunate children nearer to our own particular heart's desire. Moreover, the work of the educator is no longer conceived as being analogous to

that of the trainer who teaches poodles to perform a variety of difficult and irrelevant actions. Rather we see it as resembling

that of the gardener. We have, in fact, returned very largely to Froebel's conception. To pursue the gardening metaphor, in the last generation we were exceedingly doubtful as to what

sort of plant the seed of man would grow into if it were left to itself. We imagined the Evil One to have mixed a very fair proportion of tares among the wheat. Some children, we thought, were born with an hereditary bent towards evil, and in all children the Old Adam had to be pruned away. Now we are beginning to believe that, though all children are not exactly born good, they are never, at least, born evil. The child, like other natural phenomena, is primarily amoral. It has certain physical and psychical needs, and if it is made to struggle for the satisfaction of these needs it will probably be anti-social ; but these imperative needs satisfied, the child is

"good "—i.e., it is not in conflict with its environment. Rather, as evil is negative and carries in itself the latent seeds of its own

destruction, it is the good which is the edifying principle. We hold that the child will, unobstructed in its growth, given a choice of the foods proper to the various types of humanity, given space in the flower-bed and access to the air and sun, most surely grow into a plant of grace. We have begun to doubt of salvation by the pruning-knife alone, and to ask ourselves a few questions about the natural habits of children. How has the child acquired the knowledge with which he is already equipped when he first enters the schoolroom ? He has learnt to speak one language fluently, he knows a certain amount of elementary physics, and he often has a considerable store of general know- ledge. How has he acquired all this, and how will he acquire all the store of miscellaneous worldly wisdom which he seems to absorb when the eye of the teacher is off him ? How does the child manifest himself most spontaneously ? Unquestionably in his play, and this phenomenon, therefore, must be considered.

Both Professor Nunn and Miss Murray have interesting things to say of play :—

" Groos notes first that play is confined to animals which are at birth not sufficiently developed to face the difficulties of life without the help and protection of their parents. The puppy, born blind and helpless, enjoys some months of undiluted play ; the chick, who, a few minutes after he is hatched, can pick up a grain of rice or tackle a worm, affects ab eve an almost puritanical severity of behaviour. Secondly, Groos bids us observe that when an animal plays he always imitates in sport what will be the serious activities of his adult days. The kitten hunts a ball of wool as he will later hunt a mouse ; the puppy chases and dodges his brother as he will some day chase and dodge his prey or his foe. When these facts have once been perceived, the interpretation is easy. A playful youth is a biological device to secure to the higher animals an efficient equipment for the battle of life. It is not so true, says Groos epigrammatically, that animals play while they are young as that they are young so long as it is necessary for them to play, in order to prepare themselves for the serious business of adult life."

There is, as Professor Nunn reminds us, another interpreta- tion of play. It is sometimes regarded as being reminiscent— a recapitulation, the manifestation of that climbing of its own family tree which is done by every individual in post-natal as well as in pre-natal life. "For example, the absorption of the boy of nine in imaginary hunting and bloodshed is, like the characteristic bodily form of that age, a momentary repre- sentation of a pigmoid or Bushman stage which the race has long left behind." Professor Stanley Hall holds that this play is cathartic in. operation. " Men cannot shed altogether the ancient tendencies to cruelty and vice, but play is at once a means by which the mischief may be taken out of them and a means by which they may be transformed into impulses of ethical value." Professor Stanley Hall considers Groos's account " very partial, superficial, and perverse," but Professor Nunn believes them to be complementary rather than opposed. He believes that much play probably does derive from the adult life of a distant age, and that these racial memories reawaken because they have value in the adult life of the present epoch. Professor Nunn proceeds to apply this theory in a very convincing way, showing, for instance; the reason for a generally acknowledged fact. That is the great value of dancing and outdoor games as opposed to physical exercises. He also points out certain fallacies in the common explanation of " recreative play "—i.e., that fresh tracts of the nervous system are brought into action by the exhausted tracts being thus given time to rest. This, he points out, does not account for all the phenomena. (We refer in another column to his argu- ment.) For what is true of the child is here true of the adult. Those who are endeavouring to direct the new leisure which the shortening of the hours of labour has- given to a great many members of the community will find that, if their work is to be more than benevolent dabbling,. they will need to consider some of the abstract questions which govern spontaneous action. We are all beginning to realize that the social worker has got to study psychology and pedagogics just as the pedagogue and psychologist must study social conditions. Without breaking down some of the water-tight compartments which the need of specialization in research has set up, we cannot apply our science satisfactorily.

To return, however, to the subject of play and edu- cation. In her chapters on "Learning Born of Play" and "The Biologist Educator" Miss Murray joins issues in a very interesting way with Mine. Montessori. The present writer has, indeed, never seen the Froebelians' and Moderates' position better stated. Miss Murray deals particularly faith- fully with an aspect of Mine. Montessori's teaching which has undoubtedly alienated a number of her English disciples—that is to say, her condemnation of the fairy-tale, and all that world of the fancy and imagination which is associated with it. Those who are familiar with the Latin temperament will merely say " How like an Italian ! " but to those who perhaps rather unreasonably expected Mine. Montessori to have a kind of international understanding of the psychology of all children her complete lack of comprehension of the fundamentally fanciful nature of the Northern races has come as something of a shock. We hope shortly to review a book entitled The New Child, by one of Mine. Montessori's English disciples, and to go more fully into this interesting question.