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Newsom (1963) Notes on the text
Part 1 Findings
Part 2 The teaching situation
Part 3 What the survey shows
Appendix I List of witnesses
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The Newsom Report (1963)
Half our future A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1963
Chapter 17 The practical subjects
A. IN GENERAL 360. 'Practical subjects' were roughly defined earlier as activities away from desks and classrooms, involving some form of physical skill. Clearly, any divisions of the curriculum are largely a matter of convenience of discussion. Science, not dealt with here, frequently involves highly practical investigation; drama, referred to later in the context of English, might also have been treated here; form and feeling enter into art and music and literature alike. 361. For present purposes, we have related much of our discussion to the subject names which appear on most school timetables - art, craft, needlework, housecraft, handicraft, music and physical education. But we strongly commend the introduction of other activities, as yet found in only a minority of schools, such as rural studies, photography and film making, and the extension of existing subjects, handicraft for example, to include not only the traditional work in wood and metal but also building and engineering crafts and work with plastics. Again, certain aspects of traditional subjects may increasingly need to be developed in connection with special courses, as art, for instance, in relation to retail studies, housecraft in relation to catering or nursing or child-care. Experiment rather than conservatism is needed. We do not wish to suggest, by listing names, that all these 'subjects' should feature in the programmes of all pupils or of all schools. The older pupils' need of choice, and the need of each school to build from strength according to its resources, both imply variety and selection. 362. These subjects offer creative and civilising experiences beneficial to all pupils. In urging that they may have additional values for the boys and girls of this report, we are not indulging in the fallacy of supposing that there are two types of pupil, the able and 'academic', and the less able and 'practical'; but we do strongly believe that many, though not all, of our average and less than average pupils may find through practical activities a sense of achievement which can energise the rest of their work. 363. The exercise of a skill is what these diverse activities have in common; but the skill element is not their only or even their chief educational value. The pupils, and sometimes their parents, may be prone to suppose it is, especially in the workshop crafts which they like to think have a direct vocational import. Besides, it is naturally satisfying to feel yourself gaining in mastery over tools and materials and in control of your own bodily movements. When success in other disciplines is elusive, it is reassuring to know you can handle a saw or a sewing machine, play an instrument or a game, if not as well as the next man or woman at least better than you could last term or last year. 364. The pride and pleasure of a measurable achievement is considerable. So is the sheer fun in trying things out, whether it be a new recipe or first time on the trampoline or painting a mural. There has to be room for simple enjoyment, and for light-hearted experiments which are not regarded as tragedies if they go wrong. There can be, too, an intense creative satisfaction in making and doing which is especially important for those who do not easily achieve expression in words: art, drama, and dance, particularly, draw powerfully on feeling and provide both an emotional release and a channel through which feelings can be constructively employed. 365. But these are not all the dividends. There is the advantage of grappling with a problem in a practical situation: and of learning from the discipline of the material which is different from the discipline imposed by a teacher. The English teacher may tell you that your written work is faulty, but if the piece makes sense to you, the criticism may remain unconvincing. But what can be done with fabric and wood and metal and stone is a matter of pragmatic test: some things work and others manifestly do not. The English sentence may be broken-backed but still convey its meaning: the ill-made stool collapses. Again, in the variety of media available, there are more possibilities of success; pupils of quite modest talent have more chances of finding something which they can manage and enjoy, and the resultant increase in confidence may be reflected in all the rest of their work. 366. This individuality of experience can happily be combined with group projects - indeed, a major contribution of a subject like music lies in the communal life of the school. The weaker pupils gain from association with abler companions, without being in competition with them, and all can enjoy sharing in an enterprise which is valued by the community. Moreover, most of these activities link readily with the social and recreative interests of young adults, and, if stimulatingly taught, will develop informal extensions in clubs and societies which will in turn feed back into the classroom. 367. In practical subjects, except in music and games, the size of the teaching group is commonly smaller than that of a full class. A closer relation between teacher and pupil is possible, and allows immediate comment on the work in hand which is especially helpful to the boys and girls who lack confidence or who quickly get into difficulties. While we welcome this feature of practical work, and think the maximum advantage should be taken of it by teachers, we also realise that the small teaching group would be as valuable, and sometimes even more needed, in subjects like English, in which rarely does a teacher get a chance to work with less than thirty pupils at a time, although lack of power over language may be many pupils' gravest handicap. Since the staffing prospects for many years yet seem to rule out the possibility of even the majority of lessons being taught in groups of fifteen or twenty, there should be more reflection on the priorities for small classes, and except where safety considerations are involved, they should not always be assumed to lie with the practical subjects at the expense of the rest. This carries implications for the size and design of some 'practical' rooms. 368. But since the craft, handicraft, housecraft and rural studies teachers will usually have the advantage of smaller classes, and often, too, longer continuous periods of time with their pupils, they have an obligation to seize all their chances, not only to teach the special skills of their subjects, but also to reinforce the pupils' understanding of the use of language and of number, and to develop their powers of reasoning and judgement. Most practical experiences, if they are to justify fully the time spent on them, should lead to thought and expression: they are not to be regarded as a substitute for thought for the less intelligent. 369. This requires that the teachers shall be able to appraise the general educational needs of their pupils, and that they use the technical matter of their specialist subject as a means as well as an end. It also requires that as well as being good exponents of their skills, they should be able to call on other cultural resources to draw analogies and illustrations from other fields, and be sensitive to where their subject touches on other aspects of human experience. Any craft, however useful and enjoyable in itself, ought also to lead to a consideration of other things that men have made - buildings, parks, gardens, furniture, clothes, paintings, sculpture, ships, motor cars, the pots and pans of everyday use as well as the masterpieces of art. It needs a sense of history as well as a perceptive eye on the contemporary; a feeling for the appropriateness of materials to their use; a response to colour and form and design, in the natural as well as the man-made world; a sensitivity towards the personal and social needs of human beings in relation to their environment. Few fourteen year olds or fifteen year olds can be expected to get so far on the strength of their time in the workshop or the housecraft room; but the teacher who can bring out the connections will start them thinking, and give them a vocabulary with which to do it. 370. Books do not become superfluous because subjects are practical. Our pupils need plentiful sources of information, simply, but not childishly, presented, to which they can be encouraged to turn for self-help. They also need sources of ideas, not to copy slavishly but to stimulate their own invention, and books which enlarge their perspectives; handsomely illustrated works, for example, on furniture, costume, painting, architecture, ballet; books which deal with the history and traditions of their subjects, in this and other countries; stories of the lives of musicians, inventors, artists, sportsmen; books which may eventually lead some of them to museum and art gallery and theatre, and widen their range of personal interests. 371. These books must be put persuasively in their way, and some must be conveniently to hand in the appropriate room, along with other reference material. But many such books are needed in the library too, to delight the casual browser and the pupils whose particular programme may not take them into the art studio or the workshop. There is a need to duplicate a good many books, and to make a point of featuring others, perhaps too costly to duplicate, in a display in the library, or in association with an exhibition of work, always with information on where to find them again. Our pupils need every inducement to read, and their practical activities ought to provide many starting points for doing so; what is to be avoided is treating these as non-bookish subjects for non-bookish pupils. 372. Closely related to the use of books is display. Most specialist rooms will need not only extensive wall surfaces for charts, posters, photographs, and illustrations of all kinds - and they ought to offer a silent lesson themselves in good arrangement and presentation - but also well designed exhibition areas for showing sometimes the pupil's own work, sometimes interesting material from other sources. Display areas are needed, too, on the main school thoroughfares where pupils going about their daily business will see attractive exhibits, well labelled and documented, and have room to stop and discuss them. 373. Another still more direct way of contributing to the general life of the school may be in work or activities specifically communal in their object - a mural for the dining room, a lectern for the hall, curtains for the stage, playing by the orchestra for morning assembly, providing the refreshments for some social occasion. In these and many similar ways instructive experience for the individual may also enhance the school's corporate life. The knowledge that they are contributing, and the public appreciation of their efforts, can strengthen the morale of many of our boys and girls. 374. Clearly, although there are affinities between the practical subjects, they are not all equally interchangeable. Some form of physical education, for instance, ought to feature in the programme at every stage, though we hope with increasing scope for choice of activities and in the amount of time devoted to them. Music offers distinctive experiences of which too many older boys seem to be denied the opportunity, to judge from our survey. Art, the studio crafts, needlework, housecraft and handicraft form a more nearly homogeneous group within which choices are bound to be made as the pupils grow older: not everyone can, or will want, to do all of these things all the time. But there must be some initial experience on which choice can eventually be based, and it is desirable that the younger pupils should have opportunities to sample as much as possible. 375. They may even need some compulsion to do so; some of our pupils are reluctant to risk the unknown, and will say they have no interest: nor can they have, until they have given things a try. It has been put to us that in handicraft 'sampling' presents difficulty as long as pupils are leaving school at fifteen: boys need a fairly solid and continuous basic course before they achieve skill enough to benefit from a choice. With the raising of the leaving age, however, this problem could be resolved. We have not labelled crafts 'boys'' or 'girls'', although the workshop crafts will generally be taken by boys and the domestic crafts by girls. We regret that in many schools girls are denied the satisfying crafts of rural studies. We welcome, however, the fact that some schools achieve a sufficiently flexible organisation to allow boys to take cookery if they wish, and girls, handicraft or technical drawing; and where a school has vocationally-slanted courses related for example to catering or the clothing trades, the conventional divisions of boys' and girls' interests will clearly not apply.
B. PARTICULAR ASPECTS Art and the studio crafts 376. Art and the related crafts, such as modelling, carving, pottery, weaving, embroidery, basketry, fabric printing, bookcrafts and leather work, are particularly helpful in the sheer variety of techniques and experiences they offer. To take full advantage of these possibilities requires more space than many schools now enjoy, and more flexibility in the shape and furnishing of working areas, to allow different groups of different sizes to use them in various ways. But given the facilities, there is the possibility of suiting almost every customer, and at many different levels of accomplishments 377. Some pupils will respond best to a precise and craftsmanlike approach. Others, including some of the most difficult of those with whom this report is concerned, may need a more freely emotional outlet, and find, especially through painting and modelling and carving, some means of exploring feelings which have to be inhibited in everyday life, or of vividly living out again past experiences. Here they can deal imaginatively with the real, and realistically with what is imagined. There are analogies in this with some forms of dance and drama and imaginative writing. A teacher need not venture into the dangerous realms of psychiatry to recognise that for some pupils these experiences may have a therapeutic value, and for most, a strong emotional satisfaction. 378. But art is not only a matter of the emotions, and for many boys and girls it can offer a rewarding discipline of hand and eye and intellect. Here is a training in perception and selection, a way of looking and a means of communication. Film making is a particularly interesting example of a creative craft which combines exacting technical skills with invention, visual imagination, and selective judgement. To make people more observant of the world about them, more responsive and more discriminating, is potentially to enrich their personal lives a great deal. It also has a significance for our standards of living and the quality of our industrial products. In school, creative enjoyment will be the mainspring, and perhaps for the majority of older boys and girls who choose art subjects the work will be at a semi-recreative level. For some, however, it can clearly form part of a group of studies which will have broad vocational relevance. Design and function, decoration, display and communication, have special significance for those who may one day work in shops, in commerce, in the dress and clothing and furnishing trades, in textiles, buildings and printing; and, not least, for the future housewife. Handicraft 379. Much of what has been said about the crafts in general applies equally to the particular crafts which are comprised under handicraft. But they bring in an extra element. A great deal of the world's work involves the use of tools and machines, and the boy in the school workshop, as well as knowing the pleasures of a craftsman, has a strong sense of being directly in touch with what is going on in industry. As far as specific technical processes are concerned, the relation is slender. But in as far as he is coming to terms with tools and materials he is right to feel that in the workshop he can do a 'real' job. 380. This satisfaction may be lost if the course is too narrowly conceived as a series of exercises, though progression there must be. It is particularly important for the less able pupil that the emphasis should be on making things, rather than on practising processes for their own sake. There are parallels here with the need in mathematics to combine repetition in practice, to strengthen techniques, with variety in the examples and applications. The examples need to be such that they are relatively free from complexities of detail, interesting in themselves, and do not take too long to complete. Some schools, for instance, have made a successful feature of toy making and repairs, linked with a service to a children's home. Sometimes the work can directly serve some other study, as in the making of rough working models for use in mathematics and in science. There is considerable scope for the improvisation of apparatus; or for the making of equipment needed elsewhere in the school - bookshelves for the classroom, tools for the garden. A 'handyman's' course related to common jobs about the house and involving the use of domestic hand power tools, such as many of their fathers will have at home, may appeal to boys who have neither the refinements of skill nor the ambition to become professional craftsmen, and will serve a doubly useful purpose in providing safety training in the use of such tools. Some girls would gladly join in a domestically-biased 'do-it-yourself' course. 381. For the really dull pupils, a high standard of accuracy and finish is no more likely in handicraft than in the rest of their work. But the end product in the shape of something which works and can be used can give personal satisfaction; and the experience itself can, and ought, to be made the occasion of much general education. 382. For the abler pupils the vocational impulse may be strong. Many of these have a prospect of taking up eventually some skilled trade, whether or not they have any clear notion at the age of fourteen of what this may be; and while it would be a mistake to suppose that the only interest in handicraft of most boys is vocational, there is a natural tendency for them to see their wood and metalwork as a link with future employment. The schools can legitimately use this to encourage increased effort; and, if it leads to a general improvement of work, it may indeed result ultimately in better employment prospects. It will add interest too, to relate some of the subject matter of the handicraft course to the dominant occupations of the locality - rural crafts and the use and maintenance of agricultural machinery in a farming area; or the motor engineering or ship building or steel working of industrial areas in which many of the boys will soon be earning their living as their fathers are already. This can help to give a sense of solidarity with the home and the neighbourhood, as well as introducing a reassuring realism into school work. 383. There is room, too, to widen the scope of 'handicraft' to include, for example, building crafts, which can provide the basis of a satisfying practical course whether or not the pupil is ultimately an entrant to the building trades. Particularly if the school has any bias towards rural science and animal husbandry, brickwork and cement-work, drainage, fencing, estate maintenance, the erection of useful constructions in the service of the school, will provide plenty of realistic applications. 384. A welcome development in recent years has been this general extension of craft skills to a widening range of projects. Some of them are useful to the school in its everyday life - a sports pavilion or a swimming bath, for example, although experience has shown that for the latter it is advisable to seek expert technical advice and assistance. Many link directly with out of school hobbies and recreations - aero-modelling and model railways, canoes and boats and camping equipment. And there are examples of schools building a permanent camp or climbing headquarters on a site they have acquired. Often, these are team jobs, including girls as well as boys, and a large part of the work may be done out of school, through some enthusiastic club or society, although there is no reason why such projects should not be also properly regarded as within the scope of handicraft in school. However they are managed, these enterprises have a double value for the pupils, who both gain from making the equipment and from using it in other school activities. 385. Another development lies in the growing demand for machine tools in schools, which surely makes sense - not because they will familiarise pupils with industrial processes, for the machines appropriate for schools will not be of the industrial mass-production type; but because machines are part of the culture of our society, and their introduction in school is a way of providing a further educational challenge in the course. The use of power tools requires thought and planning and skill, and as such extends the demands on the pupils. It also adds to variety in the work, and increases the possibilities of offering 'man-sized' jobs, which most boys tackle with zest. The provision of more engineering craft courses to include work with machine tools for older pupils is a development to be encouraged. Again, this is a field in which expert professional advice both in the selection of machines and in safety precautions is essential. 386. Additional equipment and probably different workshop planning will in future be needed in the schools. It may sometimes be necessary for some pupils in their final year to attend a local college of further education for part of their course, as happens already in some areas, in order to have the advantage of specialised facilities not easily available in schools. Provided that there is close consultation between school and college, and that the out of school part of the course is sensibly related to the rest of the pupils' programme, this seems a sound procedure. It may widen the scope of the work, give the pupils a useful introduction to the world of further education, and confirm their more adult status as students rather than schoolchildren. It will serve an additionally valuable purpose if it strengthens the links between schools and colleges and enables the respective staffs to learn more of each other's work. It will not, however, obviate the need to provide most secondary schools with better and more varied craft facilities. Rural studies 387. We referred earlier to some applications of rural crafts. In this connection we note with regret how few schools in our survey appeared to have facilities for serious work in gardening or rural studies. (1) A well developed rural studies course, which will include much besides craft skills, can offer particularly satisfying experiences to all boys and girls in the contact with living and growing things. For our pupils, the crafts involved in gardening and livestock keeping, linked as they easily may be with almost every part of the curriculum, may provide a motivating force in their education. The range of material is vast: flowers, fruit, vegetables and herbs; lawns, trees and shrubs; rockeries, pools and streams; greenhouse cultivation; agriculture and forest plots; rabbits, poultry, bees and possibly goats, calves and pigs. There are dangers to be avoided; too much land under cultivation and too much stock will turn pupils into labourers and extinguish any spark of interest. And too much may be expected of the dedication of teachers, without suitable buildings and ancillary help, especially at weekends and in the holidays: such help is beginning to be provided by some authorities. Given the right conditions, rural studies can offer a wealth of rewarding experiences, both in lessons and in the many out of school studies to which they easily lend themselves, in the formation, for example, of Young Farmers Clubs, which have county, national and international connections. Some boys and girls will find a career through gardening and livestock keeping, but many others, town dwellers as well as countrymen, may acquire satisfying hobbies which will continue long after they have left school. Housecraft and needlework 388. The domestic crafts start with a built-in advantage - they are recognisably part of adult living. Girls know that whether they marry early or not, they are likely to find themselves eventually making and running a home; moreover, some quite young schoolgirls, with mothers out at work, are already shouldering considerable responsibilities - a fact which needs to be taken into account in school housecraft programmes. Although we live in an era of high standard mass production in clothes, many women continue to find pleasure in needlework, including embroidery, as a recreational as well as a useful art. Even those girls who do very little sewing themselves after they leave school will, as young wage-earners, spend a sizeable amount of their money on clothes, and as young married women they will soon be responsible for buying clothes for the family and furnishings for the home: they will need some foundation of taste, and an eye for finished workmanship and quality in materials, fashion and design. 389. Housecraft and needlework easily justify their place in the curriculum to most girls; and everything that has been said about other crafts as satisfying skills and instruments of general education applies equally to these subjects. There is ample matter for interesting basic courses during the early years in the secondary school. When in the fourth and fifth years choices begin to operate, there will be some pupils, especially those who hope to find their future occupations in dressmaking or the catering and food trades, who will want to carry these crafts to a higher level of technical skill and make them the central parts of their programme. In a mixed school there will be boys as well as girls in this group. Other pupils may drop the subjects entirely from their formal programme, although they still may enjoy, say, an out of school cookery club at a recreational level. 390. Since these are always likely to be popular subjects for girls, there will also be large numbers of pupils who fall into neither of these two categories, and these set the challenge: how to provide satisfying developments of the work for relatively mature young women of fifteen and sixteen and even seventeen, who may not be of very high general ability, but who certainly need to tackle something more demanding than what they practised in the second and third form. There may also be some girls who are far from enthusiastic, because they have had their fill of scrubbing and washing up and getting meals for the family at home; and yet they may need all the more the education a good school course can give in the wider aspects of homemaking, and in the skills which will reduce the element of domestic drudgery. 391. For many of the less able girls, it is not the straightforward, individual tasks of cooking and sewing and cleaning which are likely to defeat them, but the management of themselves and of their total time when a whole complex of tasks has to be accomplished. These pupils, especially, may benefit from the concentrated experience of running a house or a flat for a block period of time - perhaps a week and probably more than once in their last year. But if the experience is to be fully educative, they must be required to work independently, and the conditions must be reasonably realistic. To encourage independence, it is obviously better that the flat should be a self-contained unit, even a physically separate building, than merely a 'living area' at one end of the housecraft room, continually under the teacher's eye. Realistic conditions are a little more difficult to ensure: real houses get lived in and untidied by adults and children and animals; a model flat which is unused, save by the pupil housewives themselves and their occasional visitors to lunch, belongs more to an ideal home exhibition than a real world. 392. There is everything to be said for inviting in a few children for the day, perhaps the pupils' own brothers and sisters, perhaps children from a nearby infants school, to feed and entertain them, play with them and read to them; something valuable can be learnt about small children as well as about housework. Or, in the design of a new school, part of the social and common room provision for the senior pupils might be incorporated in a house in the school grounds, maintained by the housecraft department; rooms could be used for informal group activities, with the pupils on duty acting as housekeepers and hostesses. 393. A second element of realism needs to be introduced in claims on the pupils' time. Real housewives have to take children to and from school, keep appointments, and fit in their cooking and sewing and cleaning and their own recreation with demands which are outside their control. The pupils who are least competent in managing their time need some contrived complications in their programme - an appointment to attend, perhaps a lesson or a meeting with the head; notes to make on a particular broadcast programme; some set reading to cover during the week. Sometimes, special projects might include the redecoration of a room, with all the attendant preliminary planning, although this could obviously not occur very often. 394. Schemes of this kind are being tried, and would be tried more often if more schools had suitable facilities; but improved accommodation alone does not ensure a good course, and there is room for much thought and experiment in the realistic use of housecraft flats. 395. A different approach to domestic studies which might be developed with the rather abler pupils lies in applied household science. There is a large field of topics round which a course might be built, heating and lighting, electrical appliances, detergents and polishes, natural and man-made fibres, the constituents of foodstuffs, the effect of chemical additives, the properties of aspirin and other commonly-used medicaments. Much of this study would lend itself to simple experiments and recording, and would require not a highly equipped housecraft room but something like a modestly furnished laboratory. 396. The course might include a comparative study of commercial products on consumer research lines. And associated with it, whether under the aegis of housecraft or English or social studies, a consideration of advertisements might lead not only to a nicer appreciation of the advertisers' techniques but also to an identification of the prejudices and emotions at which they are aimed. It is a useful beginning of self-honesty to realise that standards are not wholly imposed from without, and that if advertisements contain subtle appeals to, say, material or snobbish interest, it is because they have found a response in the reading and viewing public. 397. We have not overlooked the fact that probably one of the easiest approaches, even with the most difficult girls, to more critical work in both housecraft and needlework lies in their natural interest in dress and personal appearance and social behaviour. Many schools do already successfully make use of these interests. It would be a pity, however, if the pupils were not led beyond their purely personal preoccupations with themselves and their own concerns to some wider concept of their role in life. 398. One line of advance lies in courses built round broad themes of home making, to include not only material and practical provision but the whole field of personal relations in courtship, in marriage, and within the family - boy and girl friend, husband and wife, parents and children, young and old. At the age of thirteen and fourteen few girls are ready to explore these aspects of adult life and there are some aspects for which they will not be ready till after they have left school; but older girls can be brought to see that there is more to marriage than feeding the family and bathing the baby, and that they will themselves have a key role in establishing the standards of the home and in educating their children. Married teachers who have returned to the profession after bringing up their own families can make a specially valuable contribution here. 399. A study of young children, which appeals to many girls, might include not only their physical nurture but their behaviour and emotional needs, and the relation of these to children's stories and literature. Visits out of school might include time spent with infants in a local school or children's home. Or again, since caring for the sick and the elderly is commonly a woman's responsibility, the school course might include home nursing, and visits take pupils to hospitals or on errands of service to old people in the neighbourhood. 400. Some courses could usefully be designed for mixed groups of boys and girls more often than they are. Partnership in marriage, whether in household chores or in bringing up the children, is an important concept for our society. We note with interest the ingenuity of one boys' school which, lacking the focus a housecraft department might provide for studies of the family, has introduced, for pupils in their final year, a series of discussions on personal relations: many of these topics relate to family life, and are largely treated from the standpoint of the boy, thirty years on, married and with a son much resembling himself as he is now. Many of the adolescent difficulties of the boys themselves are illuminated by discussion of the problems of these hypothetical families - the responsibilities of parents to children; quarrels; pocket money; staying out late; undesirable friendships; social loyalties. 401. For both girls and boys, a range of rewarding studies can be developed, basically related to domestic crafts and interests, but reaching out both into the humanities and into science. But to do so will require teachers who see their job as more than the teaching of crafts; and accommodation for older pupils which is not necessarily conceived in terms of conventional specialist rooms. Physical education 402. The essential needs in physical education for many older pupils could perhaps be summed up in the words variety, choice, better facilities, and links with adult organisations. 403. Most healthy young people enjoy being physically active; many find in sport satisfying exercise, fun, comradeship, and a sense of achievement. We believe that many more could do so, who are at present underestimated and under-challenged. For some boys, particularly, self-esteem is linked with ideas of physical strength, prowess and daring - and where appropriate outlets are lacking in overcrowded urban areas, explosively violent behaviour may result. 404. But much of our evidence is convincingly emphatic that conventional gymnastics and field games, valuable as these are for those with skill enough to perform well, are not a source of enjoyment or of self-esteem for all pupils. Boys who, as 11 year olds, punted footballs about eagerly enough, may fail to develop sufficient skill later to participate enjoyably in team games involving large numbers of players and complex tactics. Slowness of mental reaction, poor coordination, differences of physique and of temperament, timorousness, fear of looking foolish may all be limiting factors. Girls who out of school will energetically dance the evening away appear reluctant in the gymnastics lesson, and take whatever evasive action they can, 'forgetting' their kit, feigning illness, or simply staying away. This is a matter not only of limited skill, but, frequently, of growing distaste for what they regard as childish activities. 405. There is often a marked difference here between the attitudes of boys and of girls which reflects their different physical and emotional maturity. If it is in the interest of all adolescents and young adults that they take some form of physical exercise, then there is surely a need in this country to establish for girls a much more attractive image of athletic grace and physical well-being which is reconcilable with their notions of adult interest and fashionable good looks. Perhaps the Scandinavian countries have something to teach us here. 406. On the other hand, some of these same reluctant pupils, girls as well as boys, can enjoyably engage in swimming or dancing or some individual form of athletics, or in an easily organised game involving only a few players. Squash, skating, archery, fencing, judo have all been successfully introduced in some areas. Some pupils, girls especially, under a skilful teacher, will work in modern dance and movement lessons with an absorption they rarely show at other times in school; and they find through this activity a keen imaginative and aesthetic pleasure, such as others may discover through art or music - and indeed, all three are sometimes allied in forms of dance-drama. 407. Variety of provision, a degree of choice, both in the activity undertaken and in the amount of time given to physical education, are all desirable for the older pupils, but not easy to contrive. A major difficulty is lack of staff; specialist teachers, especially in girls' schools, are in seriously short supply, and unless they can be supplemented by other teachers, as we have suggested earlier, who can offer some form of physical education as a subsidiary teaching subject, it will be virtually impossible to provide an adequate choice. 408. Nor do premises greatly help. (2) Rather less than a third of the schools in our sample had playing field provision up to the standard prescribed by regulations, and two fifths of the schools had less than half the prescribed acreage. Many lacked an adequate gymnasium. Only a tiny minority had a swimming bath, in most cases laudably provided largely by their own efforts; and ease and frequency of access to outside baths greatly varied. Perhaps in any case some reconsideration needs to be given to the kind of provision which is most needed. Swimming surely ought to come higher on the list of priorities. Could some more hard-surfaced areas, rather than large areas under grass, give more versatile year-round use? Would a sports hall be more useful than a second or third gymnasium in a large school? The answers will not necessarily be the same for all areas. 409. The downtown school raises exceptional problems demanding exceptional solutions. Its pupils need, more than most, constructive outlets for physical energy and a wider range of activities to compensate for cramping environment. Either the schools should be supplemented with generous community centre facilities; or better still, the schools in crowded urban areas - the potential, as well as the actual slums - should be conceived on a different design and scale, as part themselves of a community centre serving all the social needs of the neighbourhood. It is no solution to provide detached playing fields and sports facilities miles away: the provision is most urgently needed on the spot, out of school hours as well as in school time. 410. Fortunately, not all the problems have to be solved entirely within the limits of the school premises and the school staff. One of the most striking developments in recent years has been the increase of informal outdoor pursuits offered to young people, through the schools and through youth and sports organisations. Cycling, camping, rock climbing, fell walking, sailing, canoeing - these and similar activities have proved to have a wide appeal; and because, although challenging, they do not necessarily require the highly coordinated, refined skill typical of many sports and games, they may have a special value for the pupils with whom we are concerned. We have already urged earlier, the need to assess nationally the various forms of residential provision, including camps and outdoor pursuit centres, of which many have recently been opened; increased facilities would make it possible to supplement the school programme in ways we believe to be significant for large numbers of boys and girls. So too would the provision of more community sports centres in towns. 411. These out of school extensions of physical activity would have the advantage of introducing pupils to recreational interests which can readily be carried forward into adult life, and might go some way towards bridging the gap noted by both the Albemarle and Wolfenden Committees - the sharp break that occurs between school and membership of adult organisations, with a resultant 'wastage' of young people who appear to lose interest in physical recreation altogether. The situation might be further helped if the schools, as a matter of policy, as well as a way of increasing their own staff resources, deliberately sought the assistance in some extra-curricular activities of local experts and enthusiastic members of adult clubs, some of whom might might well be found amongst the parents. Music 412. Out of school, adolescents are enthusiastically engaged in musical self-education. They crowd the record shops at weekends, listening and buying, and within the range of their preferences they are often knowledgeable and highly critical of performance - and the technical performance of the music they like is frequently high. They find rhythm exciting. Some teach themselves or each other to play an instrument. Transistor radios and tape recorders are longed-for presents. From radio, television, cinema and concert hall, and for that matter, from the local chain store, music is making a continual impact. Here is a vigorous popular culture which is international in its camaraderie. 413. Yet in the schools, the contrasts are striking. On the one hand, there are the individual schools, or whole areas, where music nourishes, extending beyond the classroom to choirs, orchestras, brass bands, concerts, informal club activities, and involving many of those same boys and girls whose private out of school diet is 'pop' records. In these schools, pupils and staff, and boys and girls of different ages and ability are brought together in cooperative non-competitive efforts, in which the less able certainly benefit from the support of their companions. The playing and singing for school worship at morning assembly; musical and dramatic productions for public performance; and cheerful contributions to an end of term party - by these and many similar experiences a sense of unity is fostered, and the individual's range of responses widened. 414. On the other hand, on the evidence of our schools survey, (3) music is the subject most frequently dropped from the curriculum in boys' and mixed schools; and it is the only subject in the practical group for which one single period a week is common. 415. The reasons for this weakness, where it exists, appear to be several. One is an unduly narrow conception of the subject. If the scope of music in school is restricted to choral singing, difficulties and discouragement may arise at the stage when the boys' voices begin to change, though many schools have seized the opportunity to introduce fresh types of choral music congenial to adolescent male voices. Apart from singing, however, there is much else that can be profitably be attempted: various forms of instrumental music, training in selective and critical listening with the aid of scores, a combined musical and scientific approach to the phenomena of sound, all can play their part in the scheme. 416. Another is undoubtedly a shortage of suitably qualified music teachers. Many schools are without a specialist, and others have only one, with no supporting team among the rest of the staff to help share the burden of all the activities, in and out of school, which a lively musical department ought to promote. Again, although one way - and it is certainly not the only way - of developing musical interests in school is to start from the pupil's recreational interests out of school, not all music teachers who are highly qualified themselves are able to bridge the gap between the popular enthusiasms and the much more varied and demanding forms of music to which they rightly feel the school should be introducing the pupils. It takes a particular skill to use that initial interest, and without rejecting what the young people have spontaneously chosen, to sharpen perceptions and extend capacities for enjoyment over a much wider field. To do so does not imply handing over the initiative to the pupils and accepting the music of 'pop' culture, with all its commercial pressures, as the basis for a scheme of music teaching. Rather it involves the teacher in an analysis of what it is that makes the appeal of the best of that culture - the rhythmic vitality, the easily memorised tunes, the clever harmonisation and orchestration, the highly professional performances - and in the presentation of good light music which has these qualities but for various reasons is not likely to have come the pupils' way. The teacher will also realise that a transient liking for 'pop' may exist simultaneously with a capacity to enjoy far more serious and substantial music, if only the school can provide the opportunity. Something of the same problem confronts the English teacher, seeking to extend the pupil's range of reading. 417. The music teacher, however, operates at a greater disadvantage. Some will consider music neither a useful nor a prestige subject. It is especially liable to be hit by examinations in two ways. Since it is not a readily examinable subject for most pupils, it tends to disappear from the programme of the more able as examination pressures increase; and because the more able pupils cease to take it, it may lose significance in the eyes of the rest. 418. Most of all, music is frequently the worst equipped and accommodated subject in the curriculum. (4) It is only very recently that specific accommodation for music has begun to be included in the design of school buildings: half the schools in our survey had none, and another quarter had only makeshift provision contrived within an ordinary classroom, often inconveniently placed in relation to other work going on in surrounding rooms. Of all the 'practical' subjects, it had the least satisfactory provision. 419. Equipment is often similarly inadequate. Whereas with the other 'practical' subjects the equipment is installed before any teaching can begin, with music the reverse practice is commonly followed: the teacher has to begin with virtually nothing and build up very slowly through the years, with his equipment supplied by small grudging instalments, often of poor quality. Yet sheet music, books, musical instruments, records, a tape recorder, as well as access to radio and television, are all essential teaching tools, and particularly valuable for work with the less able pupils. Brass band work, for example, has often proved most successful with pupils of quite limited general ability, and a practical approach through instrumental playing can be much more effective than 'appreciation' classes. But a set of instruments is out of the reach of most schools if they have to provide it out of their ordinary annual capitation allowances: new schools need a foundation grant for equipment in music as for any other major branch of the curriculum. 420. It seems to us that some schools are being asked the near impossible, and although they sometimes contrive to do it, that music will not make anything like its full contribution to the education of many boys and girls unless much better provision is made. In areas where this provision is good, there is abundant evidence to show that pupils of all kinds of ability can respond to opportunity. Music can clearly be a potent force in the lives of many young people. It is a natural source of recreation, and one form of activity which can be carried on from school through adult life; its contribution to both the school community and the larger community can be notable. It deserves generous encouragement.
Footnotes (1) See paragraph 664. (2) Details are given in paragraphs 666-670. (3) See paragraph 640. (4) See paragraph 671. 
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