What Is and What Might Be: A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in ParticularHolmes, Edmond
Philosophy
What Is and What Might Be: A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular
Holmes, Edmond
Education
It is by methods analogous in all respects to this that many of the
subjects on the time-table are taught in thousands of our schools.
The teacher seems to imagine that he knows, fully and precisely, how
each subject ought to be taught; and instead of standing aside, and
trying to learn how Nature wishes this or that subject to be taught
(if Nature can be said to take any interest in "subjects"), and then
trying to co-operate with her subconscious tendencies, he makes out
his elaborate scheme of instruction, sets before the child as the
goal of his efforts the production of certain formal results, and
drives him towards these with whip and bridle, satisfied that if he
succeeds in producing them, the subject will have been duly mastered.
And all the time he will not have given a thought to what is
happening to the child's inner life. Yet it is more than probable
that the teacher's disregard of, and therefore incessant interference
with, the subconscious processes of Nature has quite as disastrous
results in the teaching of composition, let us say, or drawing, as it
would certainly have in the hypothetical case of the teaching of the
child's mother tongue.
But in truth the Utopian conception of what constitutes efficiency
differs so radically from the current conception, that little is to
be gained by comparing them. If I am asked by those who value outward
and visible results for their own sake, whether the training given in
Utopia is "efficient," I can but answer: "Yes, but efficient in a
sense which you cannot even begin to understand,--efficient in the
sense of developing faculty and fostering life, whereas the price
paid for your boasted efficiency is the starvation of faculty and the
destruction of life."
* * * * *
"_But how_," it will be asked, "_are the Utopian children, one and
all, induced to exert themselves? The standard of activity in the
school is, on your own showing, exceptionally high. Much is expected
of the children. Yet there are no rewards for them to hope for, and
no punishments for them to fear. How, then, are those who are by
nature less energetic or less persevering than the rest to be induced
to rise to the level of the teacher's expectation?_" By implication
this question has been answered again and again. But it deserves a
direct answer, and I will try to give it one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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