Part 33 (2/2)

And I think I see it He accepts current education with its set subjects, ti to adapt the young teacher to what is established Hence to s, we must have stern discipline and swift punishht of the other side of the question; I wonder if he has asked himself whether order and time-tables and obedience and respect are really necessary I should like to meet him and have a chat; I think I should like him, and further, I think that I could convert him to the other wayif he is under forty

Ah! Horrid thought! Is it possible that Row is pulling our legs? No, he writes as an honest man Perhaps he knows all about the modern , Homer Lane, Ed Mayhap he has proved that the child _is_ a sinner

”The young teacher should never address a boy by his Christian na our legs!

At intervals during the past few years I have been puzzled when people congratulated e school in Lancashi+re I had quite a nus on the subject Then one day I discovered that there was a village schoolmaster in Lancashi+re called E F

O'Neill I wrote hi to see his school, and one July es in the world, and I walked past slag-heaps and all the horrors of industrialis on the outskirts Three or four boys were digging in the school garden I walked into the school, and two seconds after entering I said to reat man!”

There were no desks, and I could see no teacher Half-a-dozen children stood round a table weighing things and cutting things

”What's this?” I asked

”The shop,” said a girl, and after a little tirasped the idea

You have paste-board coins, and you come to the shop and buy a pound of butter (plasticene), two pounds of sugar (sand), and a bottle of Yorkshi+re Relish (a brown n and the shop-keeper gives you the change, re up and turns to the next custo

”Hullo, sonny, what are you on?”

”My novel,” he said, and showedeyes

”E F O'Neill?”

”A S Neill?”

We shook hands, and then he began to talk I wanted to tell hiet a word in edgeways

If anything, he was over-explanatory, but I pardoned him, for I realised that the poorhi of nantly took the side of the infidel and asked hiave reat e, and I believe that anyone could trip hi, Montessori or Froebel, Dewey or Homer Lane; but the man seems to know it all by instinct or intuition To hiht have the typical crank's belief in i his taste on the pupils, and I ratimes, Beethoven and Melba, and the children nearly always choose the best records”

Love of beauty is a real thing in this school The playground is full of bonny corners with flowers and bushes The school writing books are bound in artistic wallpaper by the children, and hand-ood pictures on the walls

I saw no corporate teaching, and I should have asked O'Neill if he had any If he hasn't I think he is wrong, for the other way--the learn-by-doing individual way--starves the group spirit The class-teaching system has , but the class has one ainst the others, not necessarily in co an audience that I a to praise Yes, that is it: the individual-ay is like a rehearsal of a play to empty seats; the class-way is like a perforo outward

”This method,” said O'Neill, ”hly of him for these words alone He has no fixed beliefs about , and to- to scrap theto-day If the ideal teacher is the , then O'Neill comes pretty near that ideal I wish that every teacher in Britain could see his school