CHAPTER V A FEW MAXIMS § 1.-BEFORE proceeding to the application of our principles, it seems worth while to bring together a few observations, which are not based on distinctive pedagogic principles but are in the nature of rules or maxims dictated by common-sense. Every practi cal art grows into shape under the guidance of such empiric rules, and the abstruser parts of Theory" are of small use if these homely fruits of experience be neglected. The hints here offered apply only to topics affecting the Curriculum and the Time Table. The rule of Restraint. "You cannot pour a quart into the pint pot,” 1 quoth Richard. A School Authority was recently troubled with the bi-lingual difficulty, and wisely decided to appeal to the parents, asking them by circular if they wished their children to learn the native as well as the alien tongue. Replies in the affirmative were sent in by hundreds. After an interval, further difficulties arose, and the parents 1 See p. 197, below. were again invited to vote, but were warned this time that, if the two languages were to be learned, some other branch of study would have to be dropped. This obvious fact did not seem to have dawned on the parents, and it so affected their minds at this second inquiry as to lead hundreds to reverse their vote! They were accustomed in matters of purchase to expect only a shilling's-worth of goods for the sum of twelve pence, but it had not struck them that time is subject to the same law as money. They were, however, not more careless than others. In how many schools, especially Secondary Schools, is the attempt made, and unhappily with great success, to appear to be teaching two or three branches in the time required for one! We have seen, in our discussion of Equipment,1 how determined is the present age to force every possible study into the Time Table. The result is seen in the almost dishonest devices which teachers and Boards are forced to adopt in order to satisfy the public that the quart has succeeded in squeezing inside the pint. Thus, on the Modern Side of a certain Public School, French and German have to be taught, and it takes a boy all his time to learn one of these languages. But then Latin has, it appears, a special value of its own: parents would be grieved to see their sons dropping Latin; so Latin must be poured on the top, and it gets two lessons per week, given to boys who have commonly been shunted to this Modern Side because they made nothing of Latin when taken twice a day! But "Latin " stands in the Time Table and appears in the prospectus, so every one is satisfied.2 There are 1 Chapter II, § 2. This is an exact statement of fact, certainly thousands of schools at this moment where various branches are taught for a single lesson per week, simply because an ignorant public (said public being a convenient whipping-post) demand that the pupils shall appear to learn the same. The teacher is in the same fix as the doctor whose patients refuse faith in him unless he prescribes a drug he, however, can dispense coloured water, thereby saving the patient's body at the expense of his own soul; but the teacher is tempted not only to register these studies in a prospectus, but to injure the pupils by plaguing them with all the latest novelties. For there is no limit to the possibilities of new "subjects." Every new Local Authority, every new enthusiast for a special study, be it Engineering or Anglo-Saxon, Sloyd or Electricity, every failure in commercial or political supremacy, brings a new "subject" to enter the brains of unlucky children. That their teachers also have to acquire these is matter for tragedy also; but their lot is in any case desperate. The study of Education has no remedy for this state of things beyond that provided by common-sense and courage. § 2.-The rule of Sufficiency. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might." This is the complement of the rule of Restraint. When once a pupil is committed to the pursuit of some new study, reason demands that there should be no stinting in the allowance of time adequate for the purpose. A protest needs to be raised against the rigid mechanism of many Time Tables. The following is by no means an extreme specimen of a schoolboy's scheme of study at the ages of eleven to fourteen in certain schools: Such a Time Table is so crowded with branches of study as to make it impossible to achieve thorough success in any. For example, one lesson per week in Drawing or Science is bound to spell failure, especially if these pursuits are conducted without relation to other studies. The mind is simply not capable of gaining hold upon a new set of ideas and habits, unless it is allowed to attend closely to them with renewed attention day by day during some months or years.1 It must act here like the black 1 As a useful technical term, such a Course of Study, which allows each new study to have special attention for a time. may be described as Intensive. smith when he brings the iron hot on to the anvil. The result can only be achieved by rapid repeated strokes. If he pause for rest and change, his labour is wasted. An illustration may be permitted from the current practice of St. Paul's School. The present High Master does not bear the character of being a rash theorist, but in this matter at least his practice breaks happily away from that of most of his contemporaries. If a boy is specially behind, or specially in advance of, his Form, he may be taken for a few weeks entirely out of class-teaching, and placed in "Hall," where he does private work continuously at one or two books, helped as required by a master, making what we may call an "intensive" study for a few weeks of a single branch. In a short space of time a boy will often by this means leap across ground which would otherwise have taken him six months. In another London school, habits of Military Drill are acquired on a similar intensive plan-greatly to the enjoy ment of the pupils. A similar method is often followed by an adult scholar who wishes to acquire German. He knows better than to devote only two lessons a week, with one Home lesson thrown in! That may be all very well for children at school, from whom one expects so little! A man of sense will wait for a favourable opportunity to go abroad, if only for a month, and will prepare himself beforehand by giving every spare moment to this new effort. While abroad he will pass the whole of his time in German society, securing thereby an accumulation of sense-impressions of the foreign tongue, during two hundred hours, which will produce a far more effective result than five hundred hours distributed evenly over twelve months. Hence this Time Table may be mended at once by adopting the "intensive " plan, even if we do not cut off any of the branches from the Time Table 1 (as we ought to do) : : 1 The reader will bear in mind that neither of these Time Tables are offered as examples for good practice. They are simply drafted here to illustrate the extremes of the contrasted methods, reaching the same totals. The latter plan is more complicated in arranging at the outset, but the end achieved compensates for the extra trouble, |