Beale, Dorothea, 1831-1906; Cheltenham Ladies' College -- History; Teachers -- England -- Biography
Other points discussed were the training of teachers, a subject on
which Miss Beale had much to say. She insisted on the advantages of
associating training colleges with large schools: ‘If students get simply
lectures, and ideas which they have not an opportunity of carrying into
practice, they become unpractical, and they have to learn the practical
parts of their profession when they become teachers.’ The question of
scholarships was introduced; Miss Beale enunciated her theory that they
should be given irrespective of place. It ought not to be possible for
one institution to buy up scholars from another. She admitted that she
would like to make necessity a condition of holding a scholarship. ‘Would
not that,’ asked Dr. Fairbairn, I carry with it to a large extent what
one may term a social distinction,—even a stigma in certain cases?’ ‘I
think,’ was the reply, ‘if people are ashamed of being poor, they ought
to be ashamed of being ashamed of it.’
Some points there were on which the Commissioners desired enlightenment
from Miss Beale’s experience, but got little help. One of these was by
what means a passage might be effected from primary to secondary schools
and the universities. Miss Beale, who disliked free education, had in
1895 even less sympathy with elementary teaching than she had a few
years later, when she undertook to train students for it. The indication
she gave the Commission was a suggestion that to meet the needs of the
prize pupils of the elementary schools, it would be best to found higher
schools of the same class, as she maintained that, owing largely to the
influences of their homes, children coming from primary schools could not
profit by the kind of education existing in secondary schools as they are.
Three or four times the chairman also sought to obtain an opinion from
her on the difference between boys and girls, but was always met by some
such answer as, ‘I do not profess to say much about boys.’
It was an excellent thing that Miss Beale was asked by Messrs. Longmans,
Green and Co. to put forth her own original ideas, and state something of
her long experience concerning education, in the volume which appeared
in 1898 under the title _Work and Play in Girls’ Schools_. Designed
primarily for the enlightenment of the generation which first received
it, the book will remain as an historical record of methods actually in
use at the Ladies’ College.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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