The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

P.N.E.U. Principles As Illustrated by Teaching

In every undertaking it is well to have an ideal end, and a scientific means for realizing that ideal. Education has long been the happy hunting-ground of the idealist, and at last, in spite of educational codes and schoolroom shibboleths, men are beginning to see that the highest ideals are those which allow education to develop most freely as a science.

Now, it is a common-place doubtless to a majority of those present, that the education advocated by the P.N.E.U. has a very high and lofty ideal, namely, the training of a generation of men and women, who, if not the best, will at least be their best -- in short, a race which shall, as nearly as can be, fulfill its possibilities in all its relationships with God, the world, and itself. To do this, the entire personality must therefore be harmoniously developed, and in order to secure such a result, we lay our foundations for the edification of "the temple not made with hands" of the child's character, on the subsoil of its inherited disposition and tendencies. This then, the gradual building up of a good and lovely character, is our ideal; and men may very well ask us "how do you propose to realize it?"

First.--We must study the laws of "mind-architecture," and not try to build on the shifting sand of a, perhaps, neurotic child's brain, a heavy "family mansion," or we may produce a "self-contained flat," or a dry respectable barrack-like workhouse of bare facts. What, then, are the principal laws which we must bear in mind? First, that character is the result of heredity, environment, and ideas, worked out, and exemplified, as habits of thought or action. These then are the materials given us to work with. The powers of the first (heredity) are undoubtedly great, but it is not the almighty bogey figured for us by Ibsen. We do not enter into possession of our house, we build it, and our inherited possession is no more than the soil. Suppose we know this to contain some fault, a dangerous sinking downhill towards self-indulgence, well, we can form a concrete wall of the habit of self-control, and everyone knows that concrete is stronger than stone.

Secondly.--Environment is one of those subtle influences which train the unconscious mind, of which we have been lately led to think so much. The whole surroundings are in themselves an education. Teachers in your inky schoolrooms, drearier often by far than an obscure office, think of the shade it must throw on your children's faces when they enter the dismal torture chamber in the morning! We advocate that the schoolroom in which so much of the children's time is spent should be at least as bright, well furnished and cultured-looking a room as any in the house; with good pictures (photos of the old masters can now be easily and cheaply got from Italy)--not merely Christmas supplements on the walls, a room to be proud of--not one in which to suffer. Good apparatus, clean school books, and perfect order are simply essential.

Our last and greatest materials for "mind-building" are "ideas." These spiritual things of the mind come to us in a vast variety of ways, but we cannot leave their advent to chance and the most ready method of imparting them in early years is through the medium of "lessons." As our mind-builders tell us, ideas are added to one another like to like, and experiences are aggregated and grouped, until the sum of our ideas becomes "a dome more vast," namely, character and active force for good or bad.

We believe in an "open-door policy" for our children; the larger and nobler an idea, the more fit are the children to receive it, for their hearts and minds are like a great open porch, not yet bricked up by prejudices.

We therefore adopt a time-table calculated to give ideas and experiences in as many branches of our relationships as possible. We don't want, for example, to teach children "all about Africa" in their geography lessons, we want to give them such ideas of the dawning continent as will send them to books of travel, and later to the place itself, to view its panoramas or take their share in its future destinies.

Therefore, for each group of subjects, as for each lesson given from them, we have an idea to give, a habit of mind or body to initiate or strengthen. A Scale Howe Student, when she gives those lessons of which we are to have examples during the week, has to write a sketch or plan of the particular room in the mental house which she has taken in hand to furnish, with an idea, and she has certain laws relating to ideas to bear in mind. These are, of course, but the common-places of educational thought, but perhaps applied a little freshly by us, as our "metier" is "ideas" rather than knowledge only.

First.--Proceed from what is known to what is unknown; in other words, touch upon old associations with former lessons or experiences before plunging into something fresh.

Secondly.--Give simple ideas before complex.

Thirdly.--Work from the concrete to the abstract, or don't fly before you can walk.

Fourthly.--Illustrations are the hooks which fasten ideas to the mind.

Fifthly.--Reproduction is the only proof of retention, therefore narration or recapitulation must form a part of the each lesson.

Sixthly.--An idea is valuable in proportion as it enlarges the mental vision, forms the ground-work of a valuable habit, and is simple, clear, definite and suitable to the degree of experience in the pupil. One other condition will affect our choice of ideas; they must be "interesting" in their nature or in their method of presentation. This doctrine of interest explains why we should omit dry areas of foreign countries, strings of parliamentary enactments; what is interesting to us and therefore to the children, is the nature of the scenery of a country or the spirit of a bygone age. But the children are not to sit still and merely passively receive ideas. No lesson is valuable which does not promote self-activity by making the child think, exercising its powers of narration or reproduction, or laying the ground-work for some future mental habit, making the idea given a well-spring of activity. We can judge, then, of the value of a lesson by the amount of work which it gives the children to do. There is, therefore, in a really good lesson only one place for the teacher, and that is the background. A lesson which showed off the teacher's talents might be a brilliant lecture and a tour de force, but it would be likely to create "intellectual resentment" in the pupil's mind by being either clean over the child's head, or obviously talked down to it. No, it is the child who has to become accustomed to an idea, or led to discover a fact with as little of the teacher as a middleman, and as much "direct trading" as possible. Therefore, we teachers often have to pass a self-denying ordinance, and instead of showing off to our children how much we know, we take our children to the fountain-heads of knowledge and stand by in "masterly inactivity" while they drink.

We must now review our time-table and justify the choice of subjects, while touching upon the actual manner in which each is taught.

Scripture.--True wisdom being only to be found in the highest of our relationships, we put the greatest first and begin the day's work with a "Scripture" lesson, by which we hope to give the children some comprehension of the most perfect and progressive scheme of ethics known, and whereby they may be led to more intimate relationship with their Father, gaining "new thoughts of God, new hopes of Heaven."

We therefore read the appointed passages of the New Testament with them and of the Old Testament to them. There are many reasons why children should not read the Old Testament for themselves, for phases of life are there dealt with to which children need never hear allusions, and also because a stumble over some difficult word or name will spoil the whole beauty of some striking passage.

We do not, even for tiny children, advocate "Bible stories," but actual passages from the sacred text, for the wonderful grand old English in which it is written has been more than one great writer's school of language, and will, with necessary explanations, be far more impressive and likely to carry the contained idea, than the paraphrase of some well-meaning but common-place teacher. No, we must respect the Bible, not only as a channel for Divine teaching, but also as a classic. One other point must in these days be touched upon, namely, the difficulties which arise in teaching from the Bible. My own personal opinion, if I may obtrude that upon you, is that these should be boldly faced in the "age of faith," and all possible light and elucidation thrown upon the text by modern research, exploration, and science, given to the children. Surely it is their right to have belief made as easy and not as difficult for them as possible! The moral lessons drawn from the stories, that is, the definite idea which each contains, should not be too personally enforced upon the child. With many children, an indignant sense of self-justification instantly springs up. We want them rather to gain such a habit of mind as will lead them to reject the evil and choose the good and cling to it, for its own sake. The narration of the story at the close of the lesson will generally show whether the salient idea has been grasped, while allowing the children to become accustomed to the use of beautiful and measured language, instead of our every-day slip-shod irreverent habit of speech.

Next in order let us consider Profane [secular] History. What do we ask of it that it should do for our children? Surely, that it shall give them heroic ideas, hearts full of fraternity, patriotism, and the desire to do and be for the good of others! That the past shall for them be peopled with noble examples, dear friends, and awful warnings--not for nothing did "Boney" take the place of "bogey" in the nursery. We want the children to learn their history lessons, not "William the Conqueror, 1066," but God's dealings with humanity, the sequence of cause and effect; we want to train their moral judgment, that they may put the motive before the deed, nor dub all men with neat little labels of good or bad. In short, we want them to see, peering out through the mists of long past times, "the purpose that is purposed upon the earth," so that they may bear their part in forwarding, and not retarding, the ultimate development of God's world.

In order to do all this, we give the life stories of great men, the first great writer of which, Plutarch, has left us a wonderful store-house of great ideas and examples, showing how the life of the individual is the life of the state, and that where private standards are high or low, public morality is upheld or falls; thus it would be possible to trace much of the gradual break-down of the Roman military colonies to the example of "Mark Antony," and two such lives as those of Cato the Censor and Alcibiades will do much to teach future generations what good or evil one man can do for his times.

We take all historical stories, as much as possible, from original and contemporary or standard and classical sources, for an oral lesson by a teacher, whose views on such a subject as the Great Civil War have a strong personal bias, will not give the children half such inspiring or just ideas as passages from Clarendon, Carlyle's Life and Letters of Oliver Cromwell, or Guizot's history of that worthy. It is for the teacher to choose and select from the best authorities such passages as will most vividly leave with the children the spirit and ideas of the time, not teach naked facts from a miserable text-book, which contents itself by calling Queen Elizabeth "great," or Robespierre "cruel." Every possible aid should be given to the children's imagination, the ideas being given simply and the pictures vividly, so that the children may be able to make a chart of the century they are studying, and fill the small square allowed for each year with little pictures, drawn by themselves, of the events which have struck them most, anecdotes, pictures, connection with places familiar to them, reference to events in their own experience illustrating the same forces at work, and an incidental coupling of some great man with some great epoch should help the children to get a grip of the world's progress from Alexander the Great to the Right Hon. Cecil Rhodes, as a catholic comprehends his whole faith by the beads on his rosary.

Literature.--The passage from teaching history through contemporary sources to literature is practically imperceptible. It is a nice question whether the history of a country makes its literature or its literature the history! The child's first introduction to the study of words is through the medium of learning to speak and then to read, for the written characters are the key to what we understand by "Literature," the legacies of great minds, and it largely depends upon the ease and fluency with which a child can read whether he will naturally turn to books as wells of knowledge and gates of a new world peopled for him with many friends. Our method for that "battle"--learning to read--is, teach by the eye as well as the ear. Choose words which convey an interesting idea to the child and he will as readily learn to recognize robin-redbreast, as one-syllable words like "cat." Then if he knows the sounds, not the names of his letters, he can build up Bobbin, Dobbin, or any number of words from those already familiar, and put the words he already knows into different and yet sensible order, and the sense of power gained will be tremendous! There will then be (supposing the child to learn to recognize five new words a day, build up others on them, and finally make them up again out of loose letters and put them into sentences of his own) no gap between reading, spelling, and composition; they follow one another in natural and reasonable sequence.

Then comes the science of words, namely, "Grammar." Here we boldly abandon that academic nightmare, "the first grammar book" and arrange our course rather on the sequence of ideas natural to a child's mind. Let him first discover that he speaks with words (a truly wonderful discovery) then, that when he puts these words together to make sense, behold he has a sentence! Next, that every sentence has two parts, the thing we talk about--the subject, and that which we say or predicate about it--the predicate. Things are generally spoken of by their name words (or nouns), and we cannot make a sentence without those most valuable words of all--verbs, which tell us what the name words are, or do, or suffer. So that analysis and parsing do not loom up suddenly as awesome tortures, but simply become habits of mind when dealing with words and their uses.

If the child learns his history at first hand from the writings of the times, whether they be the Saxon Chronicles or With Kitchener to Khartoum, the phraseology will help him as a model on which to form his own, as well as a key to the spirit of bygone ages. In studying the masterpieces of literature we do not learn about them in text-books (though we must concede a point by using the invaluable little Stopford Brooke to show us in what constellations the bright peculiar stars shine), but we introduce the children to the first sonnet, or to Malory's King Arthur, or Tennyson's Idylls.

We choose the children's books, not on the score of "prettiness," but on account of the score of their true literary flavour; Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote are quite as much literature as Macaulay's Essays or Gibbon's Decline and Fall. We therefore choose sundry really valuable books, which are to be read to or by the children every term, not leaving their literary taste to be formed by the first story-book which catches their fancy.

As we study the history of many nations and of many times, the Hebrew race, the Ancients--Greek and Roman, and the modern peoples of Europe, so we must also study their literature; older pupils will work at the "classics," works crowned by the French Acadamy, the masterpieces of Goethe, etc., in the language in which they were written, while for younger pupils there is the wonderful classical library now published by which we can enjoy Plato, Virgil, Petrach or Racine in our mother-tongue.

Language.--But if we are to study untranslated literature we must know the language in which it is written, and in which the lessons on it will be given. We believe in the necessity of learning as many languages as possible, because we believe in that "open-door" policy, and though a language may not be learned fully during school-days, even a slight familiarity with Italian, for example, may lead to --Dante? Tongues are valuable, not only as an end in themselves, but as tending to give us wider interests and sympathies with our fellow-men, and a more cosmopolitan insight. We would have children learn Latin certainly, but so that translation and grammar should go hand-in-hand, and the mind get the severe logical training which its rules of accidence afford, but neither for boys nor girls would we devote a disproportionate time to its study. But all living spoken languages should be taught--at first, at least--orally, from the lip to the ear, as we learn our own. Such a method has been provided for us my M. Gouin, whose exponent Mdlle. Duriaux is so well known in our midst. Not only does it teach the child to think and speak in a foreign tongue, but it trains the lips to produce and the ear to catch foreign vocables, training at the same time the understanding while cultiviating clear and beautiful speaking.

Geography.--Foreign tongues naturally suggest foreign countries. If we know the history and speech of our neighbours, we shall also need a pretty thorough knowledge of their surroundings. The educational value of geography, both as alone helping us to understand all the intricacies of the former (how Holland's dykes kept her free, and how France had her two languages--the Langue d'oc and the Langue d'ocil) and as enlarging our conception of the wonderful, beautiful world in which we live, and of helping us to understand and sympathize with the imperial spirit of our times. "What do they know of England who only England know?"--and we see in geography that older spirit of emigration which is ever driving men Westward Ho! "The world's our oyster"--through the medium of the map; this must be known and studied so that its every line and dot are familiar, and this, not as a mere mechanical recognition, for our lessons must furnish the children with graphic pictures so that they can describe any part of the map to which their attention is drawn, or describe the course of a given river from its source to the mouth. Comparison with what they know at home, on a smaller scale, or comprehension by contrast, as for example, "Imagine those green fields to your left reared straight on end, and they would be like the South Downs, etc,"--are valuable as bringing facts, very remote in themselves, within the children's experience.

We should teach children what we ourselves need and care to know about foreign lands, read them good books of travel, and link the passing events of the day into their lives by lessons on the places whose names are on everyones's mouth--Manila and the Philippines are more important to the child than "the area of the German Empire is so many thousand square miles." The first beginnings of geography--its foundations will be laid long before the schoolroom days, at home, for geography is essentially a subject which must progress outwards from the circle of the child's experience, he begins by learning to know a hill, a river, a field, a village, and to reproduce them in sand or clay. Then, in the early days of the definite instruction, he hears about the round world and her seven sisters--the planets, he learns that part of the earth is very hot and part very cold, he learns that the sun does not go to bed at night but that the earth turns round, while at the same time, his knowledge of the earth's surface has spread to the neighbourhood of his home, his county, and his country. He will then go from the sand tray to the plan of his schoolroom, actually measured by himself, parts of inches being taken for feet so that he knows what is meant by "measuring to scale." Then he learns how the globe is measured and maps made to scale, and then he is ready, map in hand, to explore the earth, sitting comfortably at home the while.

Science.--Geography is a science both mathematical and natural, embracing as it does through the magic words "flora, fauna, and production," the sister sciences of botany, zoology, and geology. We want our children to learn all these, for they will draw them more closely to mother earth, but they need not at first ever hear their names. One of our maxims is "teach the thing before the name."   "Go out," we say, "into the country, learn its sights, its sounds, its smells, learn the flowers by sight and by names, the creatures in their homes and by their customs, the stones of earth by their look and from touch, and the configuration of the country." Then you will have learnt at first hand from the most wonderful books, and have something to classify and amplify in your later studies.

From their earliest babyhood, children can and should be given interests and pursuits, therefore we encourage them to note their observations and to reproduce, however roughly at first, in their nature note-books, the treasures they have found, and above all we want them to have that loving interest in "birds, and beasts, and butterflies" which will teach them that life is a sacred cycle, not be tampered with, so that the protection of an apparently valueless lady-bird means fewer green-fly and therefore more roses and therefore more pleasure in life. Our science lessons are therefore largely incidental. A few words about the stars they can see walking home from evening church for example, dealing with the things most of interest on the spot, and as children get older we use this knowledge of their own as a basis for our further teaching, which must as yet be largely oral, for as yet the "literature of science" is only "in the making."

I think I have intimated rather than said what it is we want science to do for our children's characters; for example, what ideas of awe, wonder, reverence, and our own insignificance, should astronomy give them, and so in every branch they will be led to see the Creator in the created, to reverence life and enjoy it, and to gain that largeness and sympathy and catholicity of interests, which an open-air life or the love of it seems to bring.

Mathematics.--We turn from the sciences of facts as we see them to the science of facts as they must be.   Truth is the key-note and core of mathematics. There is no "nearly right" or "probably is so" or "certainly may be" about 2+2=4. Logic, the putting of two and two mentally and inevitably together, and truth in all her majesty and tidiness are to be the mental acquisitions gained from arithmetic, Euclid, and algebra. How, then, do we teach them? Why we try to crystallize the idea of numbers by treating each fresh number that the child learns to count to an analysis comprising the four great processes, for example, 6=5+1, 6=2x3, 6=8-2, 6=3+3, 6=4+2, 6= 12÷2, 6=2+2+2, 6÷2=3, etc. We teach those awful tables much as we teach reading, by sight, the child gets a mental photograph of 2x2=4, and by thinking of its position on the black-board can readily recall it.

For tiny tots we, of course, teach first of all in the concrete and then translate their thoughts in the abstract. When the children are far enough advanced in abstract arithmetic, they can begin algebra, which would certainly be more interesting to them if they knew something of its history--the very name is meaningless for them without--how many school-boys know what it means, or who Euclid was! In teaching algebra it would be well to let children see something of its uses, how it helps, for instance, in astronomy, and the measurement of curves, so that they may not feel they are "ploughing sand," whilst they are gaining in abstractive power and true ideas of equality, etc.

The application of algebra to curves, etc., brings us to its meeting-point with geometry. Nothing can help children better to understand that abstract logical reasoning is not unreal than the mental discipline of going from figure to proof, and proof to figure, in what we term "propositions." Geometry trains the mind to severe reasoning, the hand to absolute accuracy, and it lies at the root base of many important and honourable professions, which is a real, though utilitarian, reason why we should teach it. The child begins to learn geometrical truths when he finds out that the top of the table is a flat thing with edges (a plain surface) and that the parallel hedges of the high road do not meet together in the far distance. It is on this common and already existing knowledge on which we must base our first lessons on geometrical definitions and axioms. Geometry is especially remarkable in that it converts each idea it gives into a habit of mind or action in construction, and a base for the next idea to rise upon. Thus, when we give a lesson upon a proposition, we make clear the idea (equality perhaps of two triangles) to be conveyed, and then help the pupil to discover the logical as well as the obvious proof of its reality, and never make the children learn by heart without comprehension a chatter of ABC=Q.E.D.

Having gone over with the pupil the method of reasoning, we ensure that it shall become habitual by giving exercises (riders) on that particular truth before proceeding to the next. There is an article in the Parents' Review for April which proposes a way whereby the reductio ad absurdum proof may be avoided and so one of the greatest mental difficulties of geometry done away with.

Art.--Via geometrical drawing, which is the ground basis of architecture, we find ourselves in the "Palace of Art." The recognition of the beautiful and the cultivation of taste are, we hope, to form part of our children's education and character. It is only what we have truly seen that we can truly reproduce; hence, observation is enormously trained by art-teaching. Personally, I believe every living soul can learn to draw from actual objects, if the eye has not first been vitiated by seeing copies of them. We want the children to get form, colour, and gesture, so we sit them down before some flower or object, already interesting to them, and teach them to boldly block them in, and catch first their main characteristics, and afterwards (long afterwards) their details.

The use of the brush and the wonderful variety of marks which it can make (although the children will be sure to call them "blobs") gives a mastery of material and a sense of colour before more difficult work is attacked, then in the Nature Note-books, which we hope every P.N.E.U. child keeps, the flowers, twigs, insects, etc, that they see, they now doubly observe in trying to reproduce.

But execution is only one side of art, appreciation is the other, and this we try to give the children by putting them in the way of seeing beautiful pictures which convey noble ideas. The child to whom Millet's "Angelus," Carpaccio's "Vision of St. Ursula," Durer's "Good Knights," or Fra Angelico's "Hospitalitus" are familiar, will at least know true art when he sees it, and demand something better of the next generation of artists, than endless "Little Girl and Fox Terrier" pot-boilers. Who shall say that more educated public taste, by creating a demand for what was truly great and inspiring, would not call forth a supply?

Manual Training.--But art is a wide word, covering many fields, of which painting is only one. The child is only truly educated who can use his hands as truly as his head, for to neglect one part of our being injures the whole, and the learned book-worm who is ignorant of the uses of a screwdriver, also lacks that readiness and resourcefulness, mental neatness and capability, and reverence for labour and its results, which a knowledge of practical matter gives. We want the children to be neat in mind as in body, to have clean-cut ideas and be capable of producing good work of all sorts; so we set them to fold paper, while their fingers are still tiny, and they will soon find how much better one clean fold is than a crumple (and simplicity than duplicity). Then we set them to model the familiar pear or apple in clay, and their conception of the fruit rises above mere "taste," while the fingers learn how much one light touch can effect. Then we would give them the joys of cardboard sloyd, employing the creative instinct which is in every man, craving to be given a means of expression. Here, truth and tidiness go hand in hand, for an error of a centimetre here or there will render a morning's work useless. If you ever want to see how untruthful, lazy, and depraved and fallen human nature is, go yourselves and see how you fare over a first morning at Sloyd--it is a revelation of one's own inner blackness and want of intellectual truthfulness; to the children, however, who are not yet fully cursed with our self-consciousness, it is a great treat and a great education.

Any work which employs the creative instinct to good purpose and produces a reputable and artistic result (not mere exercises which waste the children's time and material for nothing) finds favour with us. Basket work, wood carving, etc., all so adapted to the children's age and capabilities that they may be able to attain a habit of perfect execution, and that sense of the mastery of our spirits over matter which is surely part of our divine heritage.

Music.--But there is another art which certainly requires some manual dexterity, namely, music. Here we plead that children may be taught its wonders and its history from the first, and get idea of key, scale, etc., by ear as well as by mere telling and teaching. We therefore advocate the adoption of Mrs. Spencer Curwen's method by which the child learns to read by sight, write from ear, make his own scales, and transpose simple tunes, before attempts to play more than simple duets or the most rudimentary solos, for though every child cannot be a great performer, all may be taught an intelligent appreciation of the beauties of music, and it is a wicked shame to clang the doors of music, and therefore of endless channels of delight and inspiration, in a child's face, because we say he has "no ear," when perhaps his ear has never been trained, or because he never will be able to "play."

Bodily Training.--Thus far we have spoken only of the mind, or of the mind as applied to matter. Now we must speak of the training of our whole bodies by exercise. Pestalozzi tells us that he found an upright carriage and a straight glance means of acquiring, as well as expressing, self-respect. Good physique is a great help to good character, lounging in body being a sign of lounging in mind. Grace, and health, and development are the children's right, and necessary if they are to have healthy bodies and healthy minds. We would also have that prompt obedience to command, that quick self-discipline which, when they become habitual, will influence the whole, not merely the physical life. Swedish drill, military dumb-bell exercises, and the old Greek deftness and grace with the ball, will clear away mental cobwebs by their delightful alertness, and prepare fitting temples for the beauty of character.

Our principles thus applied to teaching are fully worked out in the programmes issued every term for the work of the Parents' Review School. Here, on a definite syllabus, for an uncompetitive but nevertheless searching examination, working from interest and a sense of duty, and not from any desire to "go one better" than their fellows, are now some 300 children engaged in their own home schoolrooms--a proof, if any were needed, that all we plead for is eminently practical and possible. And what, it may be asked, are the results as seen in those children? Well, as far as I am capable of saying, they are distinctly encouraging.

But we do not look for results, we don't train "prize pigs," we educate children and that, not after our own ideal, but keeping the national type in mind, after the ideal for each child which we dimly discern in God's gifts to them of especial environment, circumstances, talents, and disposition. The personal influence that one good life may have, widening out from generation unto generation, testified by so many instance--Wonderful Walker, the lake country priest, or the old servant and nurse of Pestalozzi, and many another almost unknown saint of God--these show us that if, by all our work, we can help one nature only to expand to the utmost limits, if such there be, of its relationships, and be what God meant it to be, we shall be amply rewarded. We cast our bread upon the waters, and often sow in tears of discouragement, but we believe that after many days we shall find it again and return rejoicing, bearing the sheaves of a higher national character with us.

Proofread by LNL, May 2020