T HE youth of Athens, at the time of its greatness,
was taught to play the flute, to use the abacus, and to read its Homer : beauty of form and expression held then their rightful place in education. To-day we must return to such standards, adapted to our modem needs. There must be an end of the era of "chalk and talk " which was evolved during more times, when printed books were mush more difficult to obtain than they are now. Our system of elementary education dates, indeed, from the days of manuscript, powerfully reinforced, as Mr. Household says,* by the great pioneers of elementary education who could afford no books or next to none for their large classes.
In the eyes of the public the teacher was an autocrat whose foible was omniscience. Children, and very often adults, had to listen to him with respect, and above all, in silence. He filled the stage. They were the crowd. But nowadays we know the stage must be left to the child and to the printed books with which the child is supplied. The teachers are but the prompters in the wings who speak when they are needed : the child is all- important his attention and co-operation must be enlisted. Without an appetite knowledge cannot be assimilated : it will merely form hard lumps in the young brain.
The root of the matter is to get interest. Children— and adults—do not want to listen to those who try to teach them. Human nature being what it is, they want to listen to themselves. That, as we understand it, is the key to the method that the late Charlotte Mason so successfully adopted. There is a remarkable power of attention, retention, and intellectual reaction in every child. The secret of the system is that the mind can know nothing except what it can express in the form of an answer to a question put by the mind itself. If, then, we desire to -recount- the substance of a conversation, we go over the conversation in our minds and say to ourselves, What next, what next ? Lo, we have the whole thing complete, provided we have been attending. And how, then, may attention be captured ? It is a strange but surprising fact that not only the children of educated parents, but also slum children, attend only to what reaches their mind in a more or less literary form. The manner of presentation is everything. We adults all acknowledge our vast debt to good books. Children, given the • opportunity, will enjoy them as much as we, and benefit equally.
" Plutarch and Scott are both of them difficult for children of nine and ten " (we quote from Mr. Household again); " but much of the difficulty is really created by teachers who have not quite grasped the secret of the method and who forget how they themselves began to read. We did not as children check at each hard word, each passage that was obscure to us in our Treasure Island. We read on, content to get the story. And as we read book after book we gained power and mastered the difficulties unconsciously. It was very seldom that we paused to ask for help. . . . Although a child's dictionary knowledge of the meaning of the words is lacking, it does not follow that the meaning of a sentence or paragraph is unknown to him." This, we believe, can be borne out by the average adult who attempts learning a language in later life. It is certainly true in the experience of the present writer. • The results achieved by giving children good books, 'Teasming`Methods of Miss Charlotte Mason. (Parente' National Educational Union, 26 Victoria Street, S.W. 1. 4d.) even if supposedly over their heads, and allowing them to read them once only, making them then narrate what they have just read, is " little short of marvellous,". according to the experience of those well qualified to know. As Miss Mason, says :-- " With large classes, every child cannot narrate at each lesson, but all are ready to narrate. Many will contribute points that the narrators omit and help to build up the story. Some children are - extraordinarily exact narrators, reproducing the writer's very words in many passages. But it is no mere parrot mimicry that is brought into play, for both the knowledge and the vocabulary become the child's own. They are, as it were, fused in his mind. They are at his command and reappear at the most unlikely times. The effect upon the composition of all this reading of good bookg, followed by narration, is nothing short of startling. The quantity that even children in Standard 3 will write is beyond belief.
• Equally beyond belief are the wealth of language, the feeling for style and rhythm, the reasoned sense of order, the kindling imagi- nation, the love of literature, the beginnings of a perception of what wide reading means."
Of course, such statements may appear to be but the exaggeration of enthusiasts possessed by a new idea. They are made, however, by teachers of reputation and experience. Facts confirm their opinion. Children of the age of ten and twelve years who are following the method are racing ahead of their fellows following the well- worn rut.
All over the country, but especially in Gloucestershire; -State schools managed by the Parents' National Educa- tional Union are springing up, and " public " and private schools are inquiring into the method. Let us hope that some of our older and more conservative schools will take it up : we can affirm without hesitation that it would be of value alike to rich and poor children. For the children of the rich, especially, Miss Mason's methodi are to be recommended, for not only does the governess have an orderly and systematized course to which to work, with the possibility of a bi-annual review of pro- gress, there is the further advantage that if the local schools are following the same curriculum the children will have common interests to discuss when they meet on Scouts' parades and other similar occasions.. Anything that will serve to bridge the senseless barriers between class and class is for the great good of modern England, and a nation-wide adoption of the Mason method might have a far-reaching influence on our social problems,
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