FOUR BOOKS ON MODERNIST EDUCATION.* IT is often a little

difficult for the parent to follow the course of the revolution which is going on in educational theory and practice. We blow that a modem movement is at work in the sphere of infant education, university study, in public and preparatory schools, and in national education. But it is often a little difficult to make out what is meant by somewhat vague terms or to see the precise application of certain theories. The Joy of Education, is a little book which gives us the very best definition possible—a use definition, as it were—of one section of the modernist's theory of education. Mr. Platt describes with considerable detail and a good deal of humour the running of his own co-education modernist preparatory school, and he describes it in such a way that his theory and its application ere perfectly clear both to parents and experts.

As comprehensive though much less concise is New Schools for Old,' but here another side of the modernist movement is given. It is a book about an American problem which is also an Australian and a South African and a Canadian problem. It tells the story of the conundrums which faced the woman who accepted the appointment of Teacher at the School in Porter, the rustic centre of an isolated community of farmers. Mrs. Harvey went to Porter to meet the definite expression of a "felt want." Porter was getting left behind. Its agricultural methods were perpetually obsolescent ; the families which made up the community were isolated by great distances from the world and from each other. They suffered from mental stagnation and an acute form of boredom. The younger people of the community who had any go in them drifted away to the towns. The community had, nevertheless, the intellectual initiative to make a last effort against the engulfing moss. Their children should not suffer from the disabilities which they them- selves experienced. They would have a good school and a thoroughly modern go-ahead mistress—the more revolutionary in her ideas the better. A good school might draw the Porter district together and make a civilized community out of a col- lection of farms. How Mrs. Harvey began her work by rebuild- ing the school-house (partly with her own hands and with the help of the children), and how she succeeded in waking up the whole district, is told in Miss Dewey's book.

Another American book which is not formally concerned with education, but with girls' clubs, is that by Miss Helen Ferris.' It contains some practical hints and suggestions. We draw our readers' attention to it here, as those who have studied the question are well aware that modem club and school activities

• (I) The Joy al Education, By William Platt. London : Bea. [2s. ed. net.) New Schools foe Old-. By Evelyn Dewey. London Dent. not.)---(a) OW,' Clubs, Their Orgasatzatson and Management. By Helen Ferri!. London: Dent. [8s. net.}—(4) .4 Day Continuation School at work. Edited by W. J, 'Wray sea It, W, Ferguson. Leaden Longman" and Co. 189.0d. net.] very largely overlap, and the problems which are set forth in this American book and in such a work as the symposium A Day Continuation School at Work 4 are very often the same. A Day Continuation School at Work has particularly interesting sections dealing with camp and outdoor schools, but it does not achieve quits the modern spirit. For example, a great deal of the arts and crafts teaching described by Mr. Hill, Headmaster of the Bournville School of Arts and Crafts, is decidedly old-fashioned. He begins with drawings of twigs d /a Ruskin, and passes uid pencil sketches of a wild rabbit (which are, however, exceedingly clever) to all the horrors of " elementary geometrical design " and the mechanical atrocities of what we might call " the linoleum school."

Perhaps, however, the parent is at the moment the person who desires most for enlightenment, and of the four books under consideration The Joy of Education is the one that is chiefly addressed to those providers and disposers of raw material. It is a fascinating book. Mr. and Mrs. Platt set up a small school of their own, and so carried out their experiment under ideal con- ditions. The experimenters already had considerable experience. Mrs. Platt had been a head-mistress, a lecturer and a Board School Inspector. Moreover, she had children of her own. Mr. Platt was a musician, and had behind him the experience of a successful career as an accountant. They both had extraordinary enthusiasm for the work and, what is perhaps most necessary of all in pedagogues, the greatest possible love and admiration for children. Fortunately they were able to carry out their experi- ment with very little hindrance or pressure of outside circum- stances, for their school, in spite of their refusal to adopt con- ventional ideas or to bow the knee to the Baal of examinations, was a financial success, growing in the course of eight years from eight to eighty pupils. Co-education was one of the foundation stones on which the school was built. Freedom was another. " No restraint unless there is a thoroughly good reason for it— a reason that the children themselves can understand "—was a watchword, and as most people agree, he considers that children possess a very high sense of justice. Mr. Platt accepts boredom with work as one of the chief danger-signs :— " It does not matter how well a school may believe it has crammed up a boy, if that lad has lost all interest in his work, if he is bored by it and only comes to it by compulsion, than that boy's education is something too like a failure. . . . People talk about putting the interest into the work, but this is reversing the facts ; the interest is there ; it always seems to me remarkable that bad teachers succeed in suppressing the interest in subjects that so obviously bristle with it I Yet we have had intelligent children sent to us from the more con- ventional schools already almost hopelessly bored with their work at the age of twelve. Children come from schools where long hours of homework are given and they have developed a pace of the most lugubrious slowness ; clever children coma with frowning faces, overdone before they are thirteen."

The question, Mr. Platt says, which is most frequently asked him is : " What kind or what type are your children, or what type of child do you seek to develop " Here, he says, is the gist of the matter. For he disclaims any and every idea of developing a particular type. " The child has its own soul, and it is the most miserable impertinence for a grown-up to dare to distort this soul of a child to fit some narrow scheme of his own." But—and this is an instance where, in the present writer's opinion, Mr. Platt is ahead of a good many modernist teachers—he is willing to face the fact that not only does a child need a leader, but demands one, and if the teacher or parent shirks his natural work of guidance, refuses the help which the child asks, the child will himself set up some ideal creature whom he can follow—the captain of the eleven or Aristides the Just, according to temperament. But the teacher must not thus avoid responsibility. The child must be warned against those weaknesses which are common to all men and " are as well known to be dangerous as are the rocks and shoals on the mariner's chart."

How did the children at Mr. Platt's school differ from children at conventional schools ? The " Home School " children were, Mr. Platt considers, more alert, had greater initiative and power of tackling work ; had an easy and natural manner which was neither affected nor boorish ; had a courageous outlook on life and the power to enjoy intellectual study. " Sympathy, unselfishness and usefulness seemed to grow naturally in a soil so prepared."

Mr. and Mrs. Platt were very thorough in their tackling of the co-education problem. Most people would admit that to transfer a boy or girl at the age of twelve from an ordinary school to a co-education school was to court disaster, but this is what was done in " The Home School " on several occasions, difficult boys or girls with whom other schools could not make headway being sent as a sort of last hope to Mr. and Mrs. Platt. We wish that Mr. Platt gave us rather more details as to the housing of the boys and girls. We gather that they had meals together, but it is not made clear whether when the school got bigger the house system was adopted and there were different houses for the two sexes. In the classroom Mr. Platt found that the boys and girls generally liked to sit in two groups—boys by boys and girls by girls. Perhaps, however, it is not in the classroom aspect of co-education that his evidence is most material, for co-education is here by no moans, as many people seem to forget, in the experimental stage as it obtains in all country national schools. In the playing fields the girls were on exactly the same footing as the boys, and it was found that the girls' games soon rose to the boys' level.

Many people arc perfectly agreed as to the civilizing effect of the girls upon boys, but we must not regard daughters as a kind of moral " sand paper " whose function is to rub rough edges off sons. Mr. Platt considers that the girls benefit quite as much as the boys by the association. They do not become " missish." They profit by the better intellectual grasp of the boys. The question of love be faces boldly, and asserts that friendships between boy and girl are very common and entirely to be encouraged. " Most of the friendships are just pure friendships, but some of them have quite a distinctly romantic flavour." In his experience these romantic friendships have never brought about anything but good ; in fact, be tells two very charming stories in which the effect of what be calls " such an illumina- tion" was admirable upon both the boy and girl concerned.

But, after all, a school should be a school, and must not be merely a sort of parallel bars for the sole development of charac- ter. Even the English have some slight regard for learning. We have got to ask the question, What did Mr. Platt teach, how did he teach it, and how much learning did his scholars carry away with them ? He taught Latin, history, mathematics, elementary science, geometry, drawing, music, composition, and civics. His enthusiasm for his curriculum is infectious, but there is absolutely nothing new-tangled in his way of teaching most of the subjects except the aforesaid enthusiasm. But civics—a subject, by the way, which ought to be more generally included—was taught in a most exhilarating fashion.

"I was determined to teach them, without devoting too much time, and yet without spoiling by over-haste, the practical meaning of ' General Election' and 'Thal by Jury.' . . . Two friends of the candidates did a little last-moment canvassing, or eaked questions concerning the votes. The Mayor counted the papers. It was imagined to be midnight, and a vast crowd assembled outside the Town Hall. The Mayor read the result. Cheering and booing ; a speech (of a few words only) from each candidate ; then the two rivals shook hands, admitting that each had fought the election like an English gentleman. The boy who was elected was the less popular of the two boys, but he had made the better speech. The class took the matter very seriously, though at the same time very joyously, and agreed that he was by far the more suitable person to represent them in Parliament ! The principles he advocated were very hazily stated, and whatever they were, they had practically nothing to do with the case. It was the fervid yet gentlemanly eloquence with which he begged for their votes, and his declared purpose of devoting himself to his work, that won him his proud position."

The lesson took a little over an hour, but Mr. Platt feels sure the children will never forget it. The trial by jury was even more stirring. Nothing less than a poisoning case would suit the children's melodramatic minds, "so two little girls of ten and eleven stood in the dock, their eyes blazing defiance, watched by two stern and sturdy boy-policemen. I was the judge : there was a barrister for and against ; five witnesses, an usher and six jurymen, one of whom was chosen foreman." The prosecution opened with the charge of attempting to poison a dear old lady by putting arsenic in her tea. The defence tried to put the blame on the cook. All the witnesses were examined and cross-examined with a brevity which was remarkable. The only witness for the defence was a young lady who brought testimony to character. But the attitude of the accused was far from reassuring—it was one of pert defiance. After the judge had summed up,

"The jury consulted a moment, then returned with a verdict of unexpected ingenuity ; they brought in that both the prisoners were guilty, but that the elder one appeared from her attitude to have been the ringleader, and deserved the greater punishment. This verdict was, to me, one of the most inter- esting of all the happenings ; it was entirely the children's own idea, and showed how real everything was to them." The judge, in giving sentence, addresses a few words of moral admonition to the misguided creatures, but " at this point the one witness for the defence developed violent partisan feelings and asked what would happen if she called the judge `a horrid old pig.' When she was informed that she would, in that case, be sent to prison for a month for contempt of court, she answered that it was not fair, as, of course, the judge could call her a horrid old pig without any punishment whatever." Mr. Platt notes the tendency to devote a special period in the time-table to what is called " Moral Instruction," "Ethics" or "The Humane Side," and says how much he is in sympathy with this movement. He says, how- ever, that at " The Home School " they did not set aside any such period because these subjects are perpetually being incul- cated throughout the lessons on literature, history, geography, scripture and so on. Surely it was a pity when Mr. Platt was compiling his ideal time-table not to leave a niche for psychology and metaphysics, for they are subjects in which the present writer believes boys and girls of twelve or fourteen are particularly interested.

Mr. Platt is very amusing on the subject of parents, to whose loyal co-operation, however, he pays duo tribute. " They have such curious notions as to the indestructibility of clothes." The chapter on the answers which he gave to other teachers' questions should upon no account be missed by the reader, while the list of howlers which he adds to his indictment of the examination system is admirable.

" ' The greatest misfortune of Mary Queen of Scots was that whenever she did anything wrong she was sure to be found out.' Mohammed got tired of driving camels, and thought that he would like to be a prophet.' When you want to prove that two triangles are equal, you first take care to draw them exactly the same size' (which is precisely what the geometry book does in its figures).

From a boy ' The Normans wore not funks ; they fought anything they saw in front of them ! ' (Distinct note of admiration.)

The people of Boston threw the tea into the harbour because they did not like the ration books.' The class having been asked to write a poem of four or six lines on any subject they pleased, a girl of twelve produced the following

If Shakespeare started in this way, And no more talent had than I He must have practised every day,

And had no other things to try.' da=y, And quote the howlers, for to have ignored the humorous side of the book would have given our readers a false idea of Mr. Platt and his intentions. He is by no means an earnest. crank of the unfired food and sandal type, and his book will, we hope, have the success it deserves in strengthening the belief that co-education and the modernist movement in education are not eccentric ideas which are inapplicable to the child who has to earn a living in a commonplace world.