Modern Methods in Education
III.—The Dalton Plan T _AST Week we discusscd the late Charlotte Mason's Methods, as now 'Carried 'out by the Parents' National Educational Union, and expressed the hope that 'the ideas advocate& by that would find growing nceeptance in the schools of England. , We would now glance for a moment at a more contro- versial Versial topic : the much-diScuSsed " Dalton where the children are at liberty to divide their time durink 'school hours more or less as they wish. Under this plan, Whieh has been rather unkindly described -'as an ideal • one if all teacherS Were saints and all children scholars, 'Pupils are merely advised by their teachers as to .what they should study and occasionally examined to check their progress. There are no' regular classers. The child chooses his own subjects. - One of the advantages of the Dalton plan is that it raises imagination and character to a place beside intellect.
Its disadvantages we cannot discuss in the space available, but while there are defects in most new ideas, we can point to an excellent school established for several years and managed on these lines with success. It is the West Green Council School in the North of London. Mr. Aldous Huxley has described the bearing of the boys there.
" I have rarely," he writes, " if ever, seen a set of small boys whose ways I like better. They are as polite, as quiet; as composed and infinitely less self-conscious than any group of undergraduates I- have ever seen." Em- ployers who take boys from this school report that they ere reliable and intelligent -beyond the average. • • The plan is simply this : from the age of seven until fourteen, Mr.. Lynch, the Head-Master, makes out a curriculum to which the boys must adhere, choosing, however, their own time for doing the work. The first year or two after the age of seven is spent on reading, writing, and arithmetic. As soon as these are mastered the boy enters a little University, naturally a much coveted promotion. At first the pupils are rather weak, and the majority only accomplish four months' work in twice that time, but that, as Miss Parkhurst (the origin- ator of the system) would probably say, is due more to the novelty of- the arrangements than to any defect in the system. The year's work is divided into ten months, and within the month the boy may work very much as he likes. If he finds he is growing tired after half-an-hour at English,. he is free to shut up his 'books and go to Geography. Or he may spend the greater part of one day at Drawing.. On the surface, the Dalton plan gives the child a dangerous amount of opportunity for " slack- ing," and for devoting himself to the subjects he finds easy while neglecting the difficult ones : in practice it has. been found that while the. system works well enough with really capable .teachers it is not possible to apply it on a large scale, because there are not enough people who can make it, work. • . .
That the Plan, like the Mason method, makes for self- reliance and self-confidence in the pupils seems to be the experience of those who have tested it. In a pamphlet concerning a new preparatory school (Abinger Hill, near Dorking) whose classes are to be administered on the Dalton principle, we are told that " more and better work is done with far greater keenness and a 'spirit of co-operation is -fostered." Now co-operation is the lesson that in other spheres our public schools have so well inculcated by team-games. Tennis and golf, healthy and delightful as they are, would never have produced the type of manhood that cricket and 'football have made famous. Intellectually, however, our schools do not teach team-work. How the Dalton Plan does this is difficult to explain, but it is a fact none the less that the child soon learns that he must go out to meet knowledge, not await it passively or even sullenly as so Many of us did -when faced by a disagreeable task. Each one of us has aptitudes and inhibitions : under the old system, subjects we failed to grasp were apt to become fear-complexes : the fatal " I can't " arose from our unconscious to blight effort. Under the Dalton Plan, difficulties become a game. A certain standard is necessary in each subject. Those in which a child is weakest he will work at longer, and of his own volition, supported and supervised, of course, by a mentor in the background. Without proper direction this - system of education, like any other, must fail. Given a teaching staff imbued with liberal ideas and a good deal of adaptability, however, we see no reason why it, should not be a success, always and everywhere.
A revolution in education is slowly germinating, and Miss Parkhurst as well as Miss Mason (who was much her senior, of course) may be said to have carried on the torch of Matthew Arnold. We all of us, adults, have suffered in our minds, if not our bodies, from the damn- able iterations of the pedagogical routine of other days. True, tidiness and an exact method were taught better then than they are now. But what a tiny and meticulous mouse was this accuracy, born out of the labour of a dreary decade of schooling ! To-day, children have the chance to be articulate and interested while at school. They love their lessons, look forward to them, discuss them with each other without in any way being prigs. Surely that is better than the bad old methods we remember ?
The Dalton plan may be a revolution, but it is not a doctrinaire one. It lends itself to adaptation, and where languages are taught and pupils must be prepared for examination, adaptation is necessary. At the Howard School at Tapton, for instance, there are three sections, a preparatory or grounding section, an intermediate Daltonized School, and a finishing period of two years in which pupils are prepared for examinations.
Let us not adopt any new plan without due inquiry and full trial. The Dalton Plan may be above the capacities of our teachers. It may possibly be unsound in principle. Perhaps more experience and experiment is required before we can say whether it is applicable to the schools of England. But the idea that knowledge cannot be put into the head of any human being and that it must grow and blossom there is a truth that shall prevail.
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