Labour and Childhood/Introductory
INTRODUCTORY
NO one will deny that we are living in a period of great social upheaval and unrest. A great thrill has passed through this country—a thrill of wonder, of mingled joy and alarm, and in some quarters perhaps of terror. The old political parties no longer face each other in the field, alone. Another is between them, who looks at each, but gives allegiance to neither. The masses have awakened, as it seems, suddenly. And it is pretty certain that they will look at every great question of human interest from a new standpoint and with a new aim.
There is no vista on which the light strikes more strangely for the newly-opened eyes than on that covered by the word Education. A little while ago there was nothing that could be called education for the masses in England. And even in recent days education has meant for the labouring man a wrangle between the sects: a quarrel for religious supremacy—and the three R's! But the morning light is even now tearing aside the shadows of ecclesiastical authority, and in the ear of Demos a fresh cry rings, fresh and new as from the lips of Morning: "What is Man? And what can you make of him?"
What can you make of him, toiler and bearer of burdens, you the unlearned, who have been called the last? It is an old question, but it has to be answered in a new fashion. Here tradition will not serve. To follow the path of mere tradition now would be, for the masses, to wipe out all the glory of their own advent. Is there anything in their experience which can supply them with a new answer to this old question, and which can also give them faith and courage to work for the realization of a new ideal? If not, then their new political power itself will in the end only prove a snare to them. They will be baffled by the same forces which in the past have proved too great for them. The spell which kept them half-conscious bearers of burdens, and which threatens still to keep them mere parts of a great machine driven by a power that ignores them, will still work.
But the working classes and their representatives may have a new word to speak on education. In any case, their experience furnishes ample materials for such a new message. Not forty years have passed since the three R's began to be taught to the masses by law! Are they, then, more learned than the scholars and leisured class? No, indeed. But it is a mistake to think that books contain the only record of humanity. If all the books in the world were burned to-morrow, the record of the race would still be written in the tools that have been made. There is, it would appear, a prophecy in work. There are museums where the tools are ranged in order like the letters of an alphabet. But they are not an alphabet. Each of them is a word—a sentence rather—and they tell a story. They throw a strange light on the doings of their makers. An awful method begins to reveal itself now even in the seeming madness of the people—and the tools reveal this method. It was the human hand that worked out language, just as it was the hand that first made tools. And the tools themselves are a language—a kind of literature.
To the hand labourer, and to the school doctor, much reference is made in this book. At the first blush it may seem that they have nothing to do with one another—that the artizan or hand labourer and the school doctor are far apart, and that neither have much to do with education! Well, this book is nothing more or less than an attempt to show that though these two men—artizan and doctor or physiologist—have long walked apart, yet one is always following the other; that on these two depended human progress, and that there can be no great advance in education till their relation to one another is understood in schools and the function of each represented more or less by those who have to prepare the youth of any generation for their lifework.
It is disease and the fear of infection and racial decline that (more than anything else, perhaps) makes us now turn to the school doctor. The fear of infection is growing acute because we have learned more about its dangers, and also because, having drawn the children of the masses into schools—that is to say, gathered together and exposed those who are the most susceptible of all—we are alarmed by the possible consequences. Our fears are well grounded, and there is no doubt that the immediate duty of the school doctor is to minimize the risks of school attendance. But beyond all this there are new duties awaiting him. His real work does not consist in the mere dealing with questions of sanitation and the prevention of infection any more than does the real work of the musician consist in the tuning of instruments. His real work is concerned with the healthy organism. His goal is education—not the mere checking of disease or infection.
The teacher's power and influence are not threatened by this new advent. They are safeguarded. The new light brought in by the school doctor must deliver the teacher from much ignorant tyranny and misrepresentation. It will free him from the torture of striving to do impossible things. Hitherto there have been inspectors and examiners of method, but there was no one to say at the right moment, "Do not insist—It is torture" or "Do not persist—It is folly." Barriers invisible to the mere "classical master" existed, and the teacher often had to fling himself against these in vain. But there is a kind of knowledge which the school doctor is always winning, and which makes clear to him what the teacher's task is.[1]
This little book is nothing but a study of the original contributions made to education by the handworkers and mechanics of the race. For a long time the relation between these doers and thinkers was never fairly realized or accepted. They stood apart. They seem to stand apart still. The tool and the man were separated. Sometimes the tool was worshipped, while the man who made it was despised as a slave. There were magic swords, like King Arthur's, made by nameless workers. And yet the study of the human organism was attempted. "Know thyself," cried the great Greek; and the thinkers strove to know themselves.
They strove very honestly. All the great religions are founded in hygiene. But the contempt for hand labour and the slave made rapid progress impossible. Beautiful work was done by all manner of bondsmen, of helots, of serfs, and villeins; but the "scholars" turned away from the study of such people and their work. To be sure, all did not turn away completely. The ethical teachers found their impetus in the study of the body. Thus Plato in youth was a sculptor, and Aristotle the son and grandson of physicians. Coming down the centuries, we find the life-sciences, even in their crudest, rudest forms, still giving their impetus to the pioneer. From Paracelsus, with his perplexities, to clearer thinkers, such as Harvey, Galileo, Priestley, Galvani, Lavoisier. Even in our generation the same influences determine the bent of genius. Darwin was a doctor's son, and Herbert Spencer a student of physiology, and more especially of the nervous system.
But the two factors in the whole problem—that is to say, the worker and his tools—were not often studied together. Their relation to one another was as a rule ignored even by great writers. And so there were theories of education, but no science. And neither workman nor physiologist, save those by chance admitted, darkened the doors of the modern elementary schools until, in very recent days, a movement was begun to admit at least the latter. And now at last Disease is driving the doctor into schools! Disease and failure![2] A kind of failure that is, however, not nearly so new as we imagine; for it always appears when the workman is banished. There is a kind of stupidity that was noted long ago by Luther, and named by learned men "Stupor Scholasticus." Luther declared that "boys got this particular kind of stupidity from sitting much in schools." Perhaps men get it, too, from sitting too much apart in very high places—from taking no part, however small, in the rougher kind of manual labour. But where the worker and inventor comes, this particular kind of dullness vanishes.
The generation that determines to get real education will banish it for ever. But it cannot be banished without the introduction of manual work into schools. Nor can it be banished without the help of the physiologist.
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Every difficulty that a teacher encounters begins and ends with the organism of the child. There is the power. There too is the defect or weakness. If any subject does not invoke power and improve health it is not worth learning. But nearly all school subjects may do this. To take the common R's and writing: to learn these in the right way is as healthy an exercise as skipping or running. It is to exercise the lungs, the lips, the vocal organs, the eyes, the hands, and arms aright. It is to discover (if there be anything wrong) the risk or mischief, and be warned. Health is a by-product of right learning, and good teaching is founded on physiology.
There is, then, a Hygiene of Instruction, and to develop it as a science will be the ultimate task of the school doctor.
This little book attempts a threefold task. Its first aim is to make clear what the immediate task of the school doctor is.
Its second to show the trend of the only continuous education the race has received (that is to say, the trend of education through work and experience).
And last of all, having a glimpse of what has been done by the artizan, and what is being attempted already by the school doctor in this and other lands, we shall try to indicate the probable line of advance.
- ↑ This does not dethrone the teacher. The "rôle" of either is different from that of the other, and the kind of knowledge each has acquired is different, and also complementary. A curious example of the naïveté of great physicians was offered the other day to a very humble teacher. "When I think of the people's children," he said to her, "I always think of my own little girl. I would like every girl child to play just as I see her play. Now, I notice how she teaches herself hygiene. She plays with her doll. She undresses it, washes it all over every night and morning. She brushes its hair, washes its teeth, looks at its nails (it has none, but that is no matter). Well, this play is capital. I should have all the little girls in school taught to prepare themselves in the same way for motherhood. My child does it voluntarily, but others could be taught such plays."
The teacher could not help smiling. Certainly our great doctors have something to learn, as well as a world of things to teach in our schools. Play, as the teacher knew to her cost, is a living through of something that has been already experienced. It deals with memories. The doctor's little daughter played what she knew, and it was her own play. But to impose this mere skeleton of real play on poor children who have never known a morning bath and have never used a hair or tooth brush—what a mockery! The "play" is merely a new task. The teacher knew this very well. She had taken no degrees, and had no knowledge of medicine. But she had had the opportunity of observing the children of the poor, and so she knew that this new play would not even amuse her children, still less make them love the bath or the toothbrush!
- ↑ In speaking of failure, I do not cast any shadow on the fair work achieved by thousands of good teachers all over the country. I mean to imply simply that the method that excluded the physiologist and passed by the worker gave a false result—as it was bound to do.