Part 9 (1/2)

After the press and the parent coest that ”caps” can be entirely abolished; but the enterprise of haberdashers and the weakness of school authorities have led to a s, badges, scarves and the like, which certainly tend to mark off the successful player froar and an object of coames should be its oard In some cases it certainly is And the paradox is that very often it is those who are least bountifully endowed by nature who profit th and dexterity, that froale, and they breathe the incense of applause But others have a clumsier hand, a slower foot, and yet they have a deter to their task that brings them at the last to a fair hening of the will that perseverance brings: he does not need a ribbon on his sweater To give the other, the natural athlete, a coloured scarf, is to run the risk of ifts he owes to nature

There is no reason why a boy who excels in ga sides of education, they are compleain the advantages of both The athlete who neglects his work, grows up with a poorly furnished arows up without the nervous development that fits his body to be the instrue ofwith s It has been proved again and again that it is possible to get the advantages of both these sides of school life There is no reason why the playing of school ga but a help to the intellectual developaht be talking of worse things It is related that a French educational critic was once descanting to an English head lish public school boys: ”they talk of nothing but football” But when he was asked, ”And of what do French school boys generally talk?” he was silent But if ”cricket shop” saves us from worse topics, it certainly is destructive of rational conversation on subjects ofschools we collect a population of boys under quite abnorreater part of their social life froeneral experience that boys who have been at day schools and are the sons of intelligent parents, have their minds more awakened to the questions of the day in politics, or art, or literature than boys of equal ability who have been at a boarding school They have had the advantage of hearing their father and his friends discussing topics which are outside the range of school life Boarding schools are often built in so life of tohere the noise of political strife and the roar of the traffic of the world are but dimly heard In such seclusion the life of the school, particularly the active life of the playing fields, occupies the focus of a boy's consciousness The geographical conditions tend to narrow the range of his interests, and he re to be men Those who have the wider tastes, are deterred fro about them by the ever present fear of ”side” They will talk freely to a master of architecture orthese enthusiasms to their fellows And masters are not free from blame: I suppose we all of us sometimes bon in the house of Riuishes at the tea-table, fall back on a discussion of the last house match It is the line of least resistance, and after a strenuous day's work it is not easy to ue about Home Rule Not the least of the boons of the war is that it has ousted games from the foremost place as a topic of conversation I have not noticed that they are less keenly played, although the increase of iven to thehts of boys The problea interests We cannot, fortunately, always have the counter-irritant of war Where we fail now, is that the intellectual training of a boy does not interest hiive hiive some fe interests by means of societies, literary, antiquarian or scientific But the main problem is to make every boy see that the work he does in school is connected with his life, that it is h which he hways and byways of the world

Do school gaames as the main business of life? We e English life to healthy exercise--and few, I suppose, would wish them to do otherwise

The Indian civilian does notpolo, nor is Benin worse adolf-links were laid out there But there are a passion, because no stronger passion comes to drive it out For this the schools ht clearly enough that athletics are a means but not an end Not all the blame, for surely some must rest on a society which tolerates the idler, and has no reproach for the olf” And here as elsewhere, I believe we are judged more by a few failures than by many successes We can all of us in our experience recallsplendid service to Church or State, doughty curates, self-sacrificing doctors, soldiers who are real leaders of s, but they have not forgotten what they owe to the discipline of their boyish ga in life for them now, but they have no doubt that they can do their work better froht proportion, because they know that the first thing is to have a job and do it well If we can teach boys to begin to understand that truth while they are at school, we shall have exorcised the bogey of athleticish I do not know) that the authorities at Osborne and Dartey Their boys play games with all a sailor's heartiness, but their ambition is not to be a first-class athlete, but to be a first-class sailor, and the games take their proper place It h as I have said I doubt if there is any need to do so, except for cricket It ive s will not change the spirit What we need to do is to make clearer the object of education in which athletics form a part, that there may be more sense of reality in the boy's school ti that he is at school to fit hie of life

[Footnote 1: CW Saleeby, _Parenthood and Race Culture_, pp 62, 63]

IX

THE USE OF LEISURE

By J H BADLEY

Head Master of Bedales School

To teach a sensible use of leisure, healthy both for mind and body, is by no means the least important part of education Nor is it by any , or the least difficult, of school problenised duties assigned then of slackness in work and play as well; and if we do not find occupation for thoughts and hands, the rhyme tells us ill The devils of cruelty and uncleanness will be ready to enter the empty house, and fill it at least with unwholeso” Yet work and gae in these, cannot fill a boy's whole tihts--or, if they do, his life, whether he is student or athlete, or even the occasional coet narrower as years go by If life to the uneducated means a soulless round of labour varied by the public-house and the ”pictures,” so to the half-educated it is apt, except in war time, to o beyond golf and e If our lives are emptier and our interests narrower than they need be, it is partly the result of a narrow and unsatisfying education, which leaves half our powers undeveloped and interests untouched, and too often only succeeds in giving us a distaste for those which it touches Both for the sake of the present, therefore, to avoid the dangers of unfilled leisure, and still more for the sake of the future, the wise schoolmaster does all he can to foster, in addition to keenness in the regular work and games, interests, both individual and social, of other kinds as well

He will make opportunities for various handicrafts: he will try to stied for in the class-routine; he will encourage the formation of societies both for discussion and active pursuits, for instruction and entertain these lines, is possible in the school

But the reasons so far given for the encourageative In order to realise to the full the importance of this side of education, we must look rather at their positive value From whichever point of view one looks at it, physical, intellectual, or social, this value is not small So outdoor pursuits; and these, in not letting games furnish the only motive and means of exercise, can help to establish habits and aer easy to keep up

And even in the years when the call of gaest, some rivalry of other outdoor pursuits is useful as a preventive of absorption in athleticism, easily carried to excess at school so as to shut out finer interests and influences It was a consciousness of this that led Captain Scott, in the letter written in those last hours a of his boy at home, and the education that he wished for him, to write: ”Make the boy interested in natural history, if you can; it is better than gae it in some schools”

Besides health--and health, we must remember, is not only a bodily matter, but depends on mental as well as bodily activity, and on the enjoycan do much to train skill of various kinds The class-work represents the minimum that we expect a boy to know; but there is much that necessarily lies outside it of hardly less value Many a boy learns as much from the hobby on which he spends his free time as from the work he does in class

Sometiht otherwise have gone undiscovered, and determines the choice of a special line of work for the future career

But the chief value of such interests lies rather in their influence on other work, and on the general develop scope forthe intellectual training; and however ready weby doing, and to admit the educational importance of the hand in brain-develops, so far as any practical application of them is concerned One is sometimes tempted to wonder if in the future there may not be so complete a reaction froarded as ateof verses has already been relegated, to the category of optional side-shows At any rate these free-time interests can supply a very useful stimulus to much of the routine work In these a boy may find himself for the first time, and discover, despite his experience in class, that he is no fool Or at least he , round which other interests can group, and to which knowledge obtained in various class-subjects can attach itself, and so get for hi and a use And further, if we do not e of choice, and allow, at any rate at first, a succession of interests, the very range and variety of these pursuits is an antidote against the tendency to early specialisation, encouraged by scholarshi+p and entrance exaainst which we need to be on our guard If, therefore, without e of e, by discussions, essays, lectures and so forth, reading round and outside the subjects dealt with in class, this is all to the good

And all this has a social as well as an individual aspect The s for the purposes just ames, a real educational value, and do much to cement the comradeshi+p of cos school has to give And not only as in which the example and influence of the older are particularly helpful to the younger They can becoreater extent, one of the interests that help to bind together past and present members of a school And they afford an opportunity for , and to get the e and respect which are all-i's definition, a transanisation of leisure-time pursuits is of the utmost help to the school as well as to the boy, is the unani been a tradition The e, for the past five-and-twenty years, of this organisation in one such school writes that there they consider such pursuits as the very life-blood of the school, and the only rationaldiscipline

If what has here been said is admitted, it is plain that to teach, by every means in our power, the use of leisure, is one of the ht, therefore, turn at once to the consideration of the variousthat experience has shown to be practicable in the school But before doing so, there is yet another reason, thethis as a side of education fully as necessary, at the present time above all, as those sides that none would question Great as is the direct and immediate value of the interests and occupations thus to be encouraged, their indirect influence is more valuable still, if they teach not only handiness and adaptiveness, but also call forth initiative and individuality, and so help to develop the complete and many-sided human personality which is the crown and purpose of education as of life We do not now think of education as , nor even as concerned only withpreparation for skilled work and cultured leisure; but rather as the develop, with all his possibilities, interests, and ination no less than reason and will In a word, education is training for life, with all that this connotes, and, as we learn to live only by living, ht of not merely as preparation for life, but as a life itself Plainly, if we give it a reat part of education lies outside the school, in the influences of the hos and, after school, of occupation and the whole social environ the school years--and they are the most impressionable of all--it is the school life that is for most the chief formative influence; and now enerations back, life was still, in the s were still e, the most important part of education lay, except for a few, outside the school Now it is the other way

Town life, the replacing of hooods, the disappearance of the best part of home life before the derowth of luxury on the other--these things are signs of a tendency that has swept away most of the practical home-education, and thrown it all upon the school And the schools have even yet hardly realised the fullto provide only a part of education--the specially intellectual and, in the public schools at least, the physical side--we have now to think of the whole nature of the growing boy or girl, and, by the environment and the occupations we provide, to appeal to interests and ht use of powers, that may otherwise be undeveloped or misused A school cannot now consist nised by the addition of laboratories and workshops, gy-bath, lecture-hall, museum, art-school, music-rooms--all now essentials of a day school as s are still only partially arded rather as ornamental excrescences, to be used by the feho have a special bent that way, at an extra charge, than as an integral part of education for all All the interests andthat they represent, and others as well, need to be brought more into the daily routine; to some extent in place of the too exclusively literary, or at least bookish, training, that has hitherto been the staple of education, but ular curriculum _all_ that is of value, as optional subjects and free-tianised as part of the school course For it is not only the feho already know their bent who need opportunity to beit, but rather those ill not discover their poithout practice, or their interests without suggestion or encourageht opportunities of no little value to the school, not only in the absorbing interest in the war itself and the desire for knowledge and readiness for effort that it awakens, but also in the demands it has irls can do, and the lessons of service that it has taught Work on the land and in the shops, for those whose school time is already too short, is a curtailment, only to bethey will have no other opportunity to acquire; but it gives to the public schoolboy the feeling of reality thatwhat is seen to be productive and necessary work, are, like the s for those at the front, and for the wounded, both in themselves and in the motives that inspire theotten when the present need for them is over

If, then, by the fullest use of leisure occupations, we are, like Canning, to call in a neorld to redress the balance of the old, what, in actual practice, is possible in the school? For an answer to this question one has only to see what is done in the schools of the Society of Friends, in which the use of leisure in these ways has always been a stronglybefore it was taken up by others, with a tradition, indeed, in the older schools, of sixty or a hundred years of accu out, for description of the use it ht be supposed that there were special conditions present, it will be best to enu been practised in several different schools Of those selected for the purpose not all are connected with the Society of Friends; soirls only, and so schools, and in keeping their boys and girls froo on to the university or to their business or professional training A few of the pursuits to be mentioned are obviously irls; but the differences between those that are followed in schools for boys and those for girls are surprisingly sive separate lists would only involve much needless repetition

For the sake of clearness, itas they are roup, ga, in most cases, as much a part of the ordinary school course as the class-work They only become free-time pursuits, in the sense here intended, in so far as practice for thee amount of free ti is, or should be, coular time found for it in the school tio in, as in e number do, for the tests of the Royal Huaest place is probably, in most of these schools, some branch of natural history (which y as well as the study of plant and anih this usually serves as a beginning, as by the keeping of diaries, notes of observations illustrated by drawings and photographs, and experimental work, in connection, perhaps, ork done in science classes Siy, visits to places of interest--there are always s of equal interest--give raphs; and in at least one case, the fact that the neighbourhood is rich in Rouidance of a keen classical archaeologist, for the laying bare ofadditions to the school museum Besides their use in the service of other pursuits, sketching and photography also have h the fore

The tenure of a plot of ground is a joy to many children; and in the opinion of the writer, so of the most necessary food plants, as well as flowers, should fore, whether in school time or in free time For some, where the conditions are favourable, this can be extended to the care of fruit-trees, bees, poultry, and to soht soain of education, now and later, if it can be retained, at least as a possibility of choice So also with the care of the playing fields: the ame is thrown upon the players themselves, the more does it contribute to education And so too with constructive work of any kind that, with soestion or direction, is within the cothy list could be given of things accoreater for their practical purpose, from Ruskin's famous road down to the last field levelled and pavilion built or shed put up, by voluntary effort and in tiular school work And lastly, an outdoor occupation for free time which, in the earlier days of school life, we shall do well to encourage--both for its own value and the es and lessons that it teaches, and also for its bearing on questions of national service that will ree of activities co, undoubtedly one of the chief educational advances of our time Whatever differences of views there may be on the wider questions ofa specific part of education, few can deny that, with a view to national service of _some_ kind, the use made by Sir Robert Baden-Powell of instincts natural to all at a particular stage of growth, by an organisation which can be kept entirely free fros of militarism, is a development of the utmost educational, as well as national, value If a school already develops, by other , and utilises in other ways the instincts and motives to which it ained by its adoption But of how many schools can this be said? For the rest it undoubtedly offers a way of doing, at the stage of growth for which it is best fitted, ed above, is, froreater importance now than ever before If, in addition to this, it will go far to solve the problem of national service, and to remove the need for conscription in the continental forive it a proed, if not insisted upon, at school

Let us now turn to the group of indoor pursuits, which, if they have not quite so direct a bearing upon health, are in another way even e part of leisure, even at school and still more, in all probability, afterwards, falls at times and under conditions that make some indoor occupation necessary, and the waste or roup certain things need be no iven time, only to a few picked individuals, or else likely, in the ular part of the school routine; such as, of the one kind, the editing of the school ade with the frequent practices that this involves; or, of the other kind, special gy), or lectures and concerts and other entertainiven by ives occupation beforehand to much of their leisure Of the free-time pursuits more properly so called, in which many can share, the commonest are probably the various school societies Most schools have one or ular intervals throughout the winter tereneral or special interest; the difficulty being more often to find a subject than speakers Many also have Essay or Literary societies, for reading papers and discussing the books and writers treated of, which involve a considerable a

Besides these most schools now have si out the field-work alreadylectures and discussions on various branches of science So fuller acquaintance with the works of the chief co plays as occasion allows Allied with these interests is voluntary laboratory work in soroups, which nified with the name of research, even if it is only the re-discovery of what has been worked out by others In so optional work of this kind in astronoetable dyes, and so forth In soer can take part; and of the ement not the least is the wide field it opens to individual initiative