Hadow (1931)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Analysis, Preface, Introduction
Chapter 1 The history of the development of the conception of primary education
Chapter 2 The physical development of children between the ages of 7 and 11
Chapter 3 The mental development of children between the ages of 7 and 11
Chapter 4 The age limits for the upper stage of primary education
Chapter 5 The internal organisation of primary schools
Chapter 6 Retarded children in the primary school
Chapter 7 The curriculum of the primary school
Chapter 8 The staffing of primary schools and the training of teachers
Chapter 9 The premises and equipment of primary schools
Chapter 10 Examinations in primary schools
Chapter 11 Summary of principal conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 12 Suggestions on the curriculum of primary schools
Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II Physical development of 7-11 year olds (Harris)
Appendix III Mental development of 7-11 year olds (Burt)
Index

London: HM Stationery Office

Chapter 7 The curriculum of the primary school
[pages 91 - 106]

73. The elementary school curriculum was formed during the 19th century by a somewhat irregular process of accretion, now one subject and now another having been grafted on to the original stock, the 3R's. The history of the process has been told elsewhere, (1) and we need not here recount the arguments or revive the debates, instructive as they were, out of which the practice of today has gradually emerged. But the formal adoption of the primary school as an autonomous unit in the educational system renders necessary a fresh inquiry into the question what should be taught to children between the ages of seven and eleven, an inquiry conducted with reference to the specific part to be played by the primary schools in shaping and fostering the life of a people under modern economic and social conditions.

The changes which have taken place since the passing of the Education Act of 1902 have given our problem a complexion very different from the one which it presented to those who planned and administered popular education during the last century. The elementary school system which was originally designed 'for the children of the labouring poor' has long ceased to be self-contained, and is in effect being reorganised out of existence. Those who would have been its older pupils will be distributed among the schools - grammar schools and modern schools - which in our Report on the Education of the Adolescent (1926) were envisaged as offering different varieties of secondary education; and the function of the residue of the old system will accordingly be to provide a primary education in the proper sense of the term - that is, one which will be a basis for all types of higher teaching and training. In England the state has never, as it has done in republican Germany, compelled all children to pass through the primary schools. It may indeed be many years before children of widely different social grades resort to the primary schools as freely as they resorted long ago to the parish schools of Scotland or to the common schools of the New England states. Nevertheless, we have already travelled so far in this direction that the primary schools must be considered as in principle common schools: that is, institutions provided not for a particular section of the population, however large, but for all who choose to take advantage of them and to use them as the normal way of approach to institutions for secondary education.

74. To say this is in effect to say that the special task of the schools which are concerned with the later years of primary education will be to provide for the educational needs of childhood, just as it is the function of the nursery and infant schools to deal with the needs of infancy, and of the post-primary schools to deal with the needs of adolescence. In framing the curriculum for the primary school, we must necessarily build upon the foundations laid in the infant school and must keep in view the importance of continuity with the work of the secondary school, but our main care must be to supply children between the ages of seven and eleven with what is essential to their healthy growth - physical, intellectual, and moral - during that particular stage of their development The principle which is here implied will be challenged by no one who has grasped the idea that life is a process of growth in which there are successive stages, each with its own specific character and needs. It can, however, hardly be denied that there are places in our educational system where the curriculum is distorted and the teaching warped from its proper character by the supposed need of meeting the requirements of a later educational stage. So long as this is the case, it must remain important to emphasise the principle that no good can come from teaching children things that have no immediate value for them, however highly their potential or prospective value may be estimated. To put the point in a more concrete way, we must recognise the uselessness and the danger of seeking to inculcate what Professor AN Whitehead calls inert ideas - that is, ideas which at the time when they are imparted have no bearing upon a child's natural activities of body or mind and do nothing to illuminate or guide his experience.

There are doubtless several reasons why a principle so obviously sane should in practice be so often neglected. Perhaps the reason most relevant to our inquiry is that in the earliest days of popular education children went to school to learn specific things which could not well be taught at home - reading, writing and cyphering. The real business of life was picked up by a child in unregulated play, in casual intercourse with contemporaries and elders, and by a gradual apprenticeship to the discipline of the house, the farm, the workshop. (2) But as industrialisation has transformed the basis of social life, and an organisation - at once vast in its scope and minute in its efficiency - has gripped the life of the people, discipline associated with the old forms of industrial training has become increasingly difficult outside the walls of the school. The schools whose first intention was to teach children how to read have thus been compelled to broaden their aims until it might now be said that they have to teach children how to live. This profound change in purpose has been accepted with a certain unconscious reluctance, and a consequent slowness of adaptation. The schools, feeling that what they can do best is the old familiar business of imparting knowledge, have reached a high level of technique in that part of their functions, but have not clearly grasped its proper relation to the whole. In short, while there is plenty of teaching which is good in the abstract, there is too little which helps children directly to strengthen and enlarge their instinctive hold on the conditions of life by enriching, illuminating and giving point to their growing experience.

75. Applying these considerations to the problem before us, we see that the curriculum is to be thought of in terms of activity and experience rather than of knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored. Its aim should be to develop in a child the fundamental human powers and to awaken him to the fundamental interests of civilised life so far as these powers and interests lie within the compass of childhood, to encourage him to attain gradually to that control and orderly management of his energies, impulses and emotions, which is the essence of moral and intellectual discipline, to help him to discover the idea of duty and to ensue it, and to open out his imagination and his sympathies in such a way that he may be prepared to understand and to follow in later years the highest examples of excellence in life and conduct.

76. It will now be convenient to illustrate this general principle, at least so far as to make its meaning clear and to indicate the kinds of practical problems which arise when one seeks to apply it.

Attention to the physical welfare and efficiency of children claims a most important place. That claim is generally admitted, but in meeting it fully there are, unfortunately, difficulties which are as serious as they are well known. School regulations cannot affect some of the chief factors involved in the problem which it presents - that is, cannot secure that children shall everywhere be adequately and wisely clothed and fed, have proper conditions and hours of sleep and sufficient open spaces for health-giving play. In spite of great improvement it is still sometimes hard to persuade parents to act upon the advice of the school medical officers even in cases of easily remediable disorder. Under many local education authorities there is, however, some kind of organisation for dealing with the worst deficiencies on the home side, and it may be suggested that still more could be done by the judicious use and extension of parents' associations formed in connection with individual schools. Much could also be done by the widespread imitation and development of the experiments which have been made by some authorities and schools in the use of open-air classwork and activity. And although what is called child guidance is concerned more directly with the difficulties and failings of children in the moral sphere, these are known to be so closely implicated with physical troubles that the movement, as it develops, is bound to work with other influences towards raising the standard of physical efficiency among the pupils of the primary school.

These matters, essential as they are, lie strictly speaking outside the question of the school curriculum. Turning, then, to what can be done as part of the ordinary routine of school we desire in the first place to express our appreciation of the advance which has been brought about in the conception and practice of physical training. The exercises and games now prescribed by the Board of Education seem to us to offer an admirable example of education through activity at once joyous and disciplined, and we wish that the problem of fusing those two prime characters of all educative activity were as near solution in other departments of school work. But, while we can here make no better suggestions than that the instruction should be regarded as of high importance and that competence to give it in the spirit of the Board's intentions should be regarded as a most desirable item in the equipment of a primary school teacher, our principle carries us further. It leads us to advocate the claims of a physical culture which includes physical training and efficiency but goes beyond these, since it includes also training in comely posture and movement upon social occasions. This is not merely teaching manners, if by manners one means certain conventional acts generally distinctive of a particular social class; it is something much more broadly and essentially human. It involves that kind of sensitiveness which Plato spoke of as eurhythmia and valued highly because, though expressed in bodily bearing and movement, spiritual elements of deep importance were implicated in it and it was likely to run out into many expressions of a man's nature in his work. (3). Dancing is a chief means of cultivating it - provided the dances do not aim at a cheap and superficial 'gracefulness' but are, like many of the old English country dances, full of aesthetic quality as genuine as it is delightful and not only linked with but expressive of simple and beautiful music. Drama, both of the less and more formal kinds, for which children, owing to their happy lack of self-consciousness, display such remarkable gifts, offers further good opportunities of developing that power of expression in movement which, if the psychologists are right, is so closely correlated with the development of perception and feeling.

77. Language. There is little need to stress the importance of language training, for there are few concerned with education who would not give it the chief place among the intellectual exercises of the primary school. In a sense this has always been true; for the ancient primacy of reading and writing was due to the fact that they are arts bearing directly upon the use and cultivation of language. What we now see more clearly than of old is that instruction in these arts must largely miss its purpose, if it is not made subsidiary to well planned and systematic training in the direct use of oral expression and communication. In the days of classes of overwhelming size such training was scarcely possible. But those days are past or passing; much more can now be effected and useful examples for imitation and inspiration are not lacking. Our own observations may, accordingly, be brief.

(i) We are impressed by the way in which modern science confirms and indeed goes beyond the traditional belief in the significance of language in its relation to a child's individual and social development. In so far as the work of the primary school is to be regarded as preparatory to higher stages of education, whether literary, scientific or practical, we are of opinion that it can do nothing more useful than help children to gain a thorough command of the mother tongue, to use books freely as a source of information and pleasure, and to express their ideas readily in writing.

(ii) We think, however, that there is too much adherence to methods of teaching not well designed to achieve the proper purposes of language training and insufficient use of the better methods now available. To this point we shall return later.

(iii) Just as we desire to see a culture of bodily movement which includes more than ordinary physical training, so we wish the cultivation of speech in the primary school to go beyond the art of correct and lucid expression. Children should learn to dislike coarse vocalisation and slovenly articulation and to feel something of the dignity which is added to life when men use with care and respect the beautiful instrument of discourse which they have inherited from their forefathers. From the point of view both of individual and social culture and of national solidarity this is a matter of no small importance, and we assent cordially to what is said upon the subject in the Report of the Departmental Committee on the Teaching of English. Reading aloud, verse recitation, singing and drama are the obvious occasions for the formal cultivation of good voice production and seemly speech, but there should be a general pressure in the same direction throughout the school work.

It is needless to add that the example of the teacher's own practice is the force upon which we chiefly rely. His own language may be that particular dialect which has come to be recognised as standard English (or Welsh as the case may be), or it may contain other dialectal characteristics. What is important is that the language he uses on all occasions should be grammatically correct and free from solecisms.

78. Manual skill. We have spoken of language as a main instrument of intellectual development through its use as a machine of intercourse between the child and the world of other people, children and adults. There is another world, the material, which also plays a great part in his mental growth. The means of action and reaction here are the correlated and nicely adjusted activity of senses and limbs - particularly the hands and fingers. (4)

When children reach the primary school, speech assumes for the majority the leading role in the development of knowledge and intelligence. For some, including the very dull, this is not the case, indeed there is no child, however intelligent, whose range of primary experience - to be converted later, it may be, into advanced knowledge, and creative thought - will not be usefully extended by simple but regular and progressive constructional work. This is apart from and in addition to practice in the skilled use of the pen in writing and the pencil and brush in drawing. Both drawing and constructional work, including the making of models out of suitable material, may often contribute most usefully to a child's study of the subjects presented to him, and it is to be hoped that in the primary schools constructional activity and drawing of a pertinent kind will be increasingly developed. We insert the qualification 'pertinent' to make clear that we do not recommend either model making or illustrative drawing on the vague ground that they constitute what is called expression work but only when they definitely help understanding or increase enjoyment. We desire that drawing should be pertinent both to the constructional and literary work of the pupil.

79. Aesthetic subjects. Handwork and drawing are, as we have said, useful as ancillary means of learning about other things, but they should also hold an important place in their own right. One of the most striking of modern observations in the field of education is the discovery how widespread among children is the gift not only of enjoying but also of producing simple forms of beauty. In painting, in the simpler crafts, in music, even in verse, their performances, when encouraged by a teacher who knows how to direct without interfering with their unsophisticated sincerity, are generally interesting and often surprisingly good. Although, in the majority, interest in aesthetic production seems to be left behind as they reach adolescence, yet while it is predominant it plays a vital part in the formation of mind and character. Many educationists will indeed be disposed to think that, as Dr Bridges has said in what is, perhaps, the finest educational treatise (5) written since Wordsworth's Prelude, 'there is nought in all his nurture of more intrinsic need than is the food of Beauty.' Others, hesitating to accept a claim pitched so high, will yet agree that the creative powers, of which even the ordinary child has his share, gives his teachers the opportunity of fostering very desirable tastes, desirable not only because they will improve the quality of his adult leisure but also because they must in the long run tend to keep up the national level in craftsmanship and incidentally assist in the improvement of many products of industry; and this we take to be a consideration of great weight. (6)

Taking what has just been said as the basis of criticism we are bound to judge that while drawing has a barely adequate place in the present curriculum for children, that assigned to handwork of all kinds and, especially craftwork, is definitely insufficient, particularly in the case of boys. Girls have their needlework, but we should be glad to see the work in this subject more widely liberalised and developed everywhere as it is in the better schools into a delightful craft. But girls as well as boys should be allowed to learn other crafts. (7) It is much less important that a child should learn many than that he should bring his skill in at least one to the point where he can use the materials freely to express ideas of his own. It is also of the first importance that the crafts taught should be genuine, and representative of a great historic line. Little children may be allowed to discipline their fingers by making things in paper and cardboard, and such materials are legitimate at any stage when, for instance, the purpose is simply to make models illustrative of some geographical or historic topic. But craftwork, as we understand it here, must be inspired by one of the great traditions and, unless it is so, cannot fill the place we assign to it. In this statement we mean to include handwriting, which has at times risen to the level of a very beautiful craft. Without entering into the vexed question of the propriety of what is called script writing, we would insist that handwriting should be influenced throughout the school by the best English traditions, and taught as a mode of art as well as a useful instrument. (8)

Of music we need say nothing here except to indicate that we count it among the indispensable elements of the primary school curriculum. The subject enjoys a long established place in primary education, and its teaching in the schools shows a response to the present revival of the art as a constituent of the cultural life of the nation.

80. Other subjects. Of these, in the present general review, we may also speak very briefly. We mean them to include, in addition to literature, the beginnings of science and mathematics, geography, and history.

Literature, in the sense of prose and verse, read or learnt for enjoyment, has an indispensable place, and we give in an addendum to this report (9) some suggestions as to the way in which that place may be filled. We would, however, point out here that in the primary school much of what is commonly taught as history may better be read as literature. We have in view partly stories, such as the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood, which are priceless national treasures but not serious history, and partly other stories of genuine historical texture that make a strong appeal to children but cannot, in the simple form in which they must be presented, be used to build up the notion of historical continuity. A child may gain useful historical materials from such stories, but he should read them, as he may later read a historical novel, mainly for the interest of their contents. In the same way a child may well read in these years a simple connected history of his own or another country, not for the purpose of learning the story in detail, but in order to obtain a general outline of it which he can fill in at a later stage.

81. Under science we include: (i) a study of the more salient features of plant and animal life, as far as possible in their natural setting - a study strictly elementary in scope yet conducted in a genuinely scientific spirit; (ii) some first-hand study of the apparent movements of the sun, moon and a few stars, taken in connection with the sequence of day and night and the seasons; (iii) a rudimentary study of some outstanding physical facts, such as the working of the mariner's compass. Under mathematics we include, in addition to the more familiar parts of arithmetic, a simple practical initiation into the properties of spatial figures, especially in so far as these emerge in pattern designing and are involved in the making of models in paper or cardboard. This rudimentary geometry will give opportunity for gaining skill in the use of straightedge and compass and in measurements of moderate but increasing accuracy. In so far as it involves copying figures to scale, it will lay useful foundations for theoretical work to come in the post-primary stage. It will also include the formation of the concepts of area and volume and the mensuration of the simpler plane and solid figures. In the highest class it may reach the measurement of angles and the beginnings of what has been described as Boy Scout Geometry.

82. During the primary school course children should be taught to reach the conception of the round earth, to gain some knowledge of its peoples and their distinctive modes of life and activity, and to acquire some familiarity with the preparation and use of maps. Lastly their experience, at first but rudimentary, of the flux of events in time, should be deepened and widened in the direction of what is called the historical sense, so that in respect of events and objects within their own observation they may understand a little of how the present has grown out of the past and contains within itself the germs of the future. Although formal history is appropriate only to a later stage, they should have gathered, about people and things in successive historic periods, a harvest of romantic information which will create an intelligent interest in history of a serious character.

83. The foregoing inventory of the main content of the curriculum has necessarily been written in terms of subjects. In no other way is it possible to summarise concisely the content of a curriculum. But it will be noted that even in a formal catalogue of this kind it is scarcely possible to keep the items distinct from one another. For instance, any treatment of linguistic or manual training tends to overflow at once into a number of departments of school study, and one cannot go far into the question of physical training without being led into references to music and drama. This observation introduces a question of great weight. It has been maintained that teaching by subjects is a mode of instruction which, though it may be appropriate for older boys and girls, who have themselves developed specialised interests, and who are ready to follow the major intellectual pursuits of mankind along the lines of their logical development, does not always correspond with the child's unsystematised but eager interest in the people and things of a world still new to him. We agree with this view, and we think that what is needed, therefore, is a new orientation of school instruction which shall bring it into closer correlation with the natural movement of children's minds.

We very much doubt whether a mere reclassification would obscure the old landmarks between the various primary subjects, or whether much would be gained by so obscuring them. Real change, where change is desirable, can be effected only by a different method of approach to these subjects. What is perhaps a characteristic method of approach, may be illustrated from the way in which William Cobbett dealt with the education of his own family. (10) Cobbett, with characteristic violence, rejected the idea of public education on the grounds that schools could only give a devitalised kind of instruction, an organised book drill that would do nobody any good. His own method was to engage the interest of his children in the work and occupations of his rural holding, and to let them discover that these could not be carried on successfully without 'book learning'. Thus when the father, acting on the advice of a gardening book, raised a prodigious crop of melons, the eldest boy, fired to emulation, read the same book 'perhaps twenty times over'. Similarly, 'calculations about the farming affairs forced arithmetic upon us: the use, the necessity of the thing led us to the study.'

It is clear that what we may for the moment call Cobbett's method can hardly be prescribed for general use in primary education. Nevertheless, schools, especially rural schools, may easily find, as the best of them already do, a good many opportunities of applying it; and there are occasions in the life of every school when the method is clearly called for by the situation. For instance, preparation for the performance of a school play may for some time supply the motive for the work done in many classes, the lessons in literature, singing, drawing, needlework and carpentry all being made to converge for a while upon the great event. Similarly, a visit to some place of interest in the neighbourhood may give a definite turn to the children's lesson in history, geography and nature study. There is no doubt that at such times what the children learn has a significance and vitality not often reached in the routine lessons of the week. As Cobbett remarks about his boy's enquiry into the raising of melons, a child may then learn in a short time more than he would otherwise learn in the course of a school year. One is moved, therefore, to inquire whether a method which is known to be so fruitful on special occasions cannot be more generally adopted in the teaching of children.

84. Various attempts have been made, in this and other countries, to answer that question. The best illustration of them is given, perhaps, by what has come to be known as the project method. (11) In its simplest form such a method would be compatible with teaching within the traditional subject divisions, and implies merely that the teaching, instead of consisting in imparting knowledge of a subject in logical order, takes the form of raising a succession of problems interesting to the pupils and leading them to reach, in the solution of these problems, the knowledge or principles which the teacher wishes them to learn. It is the method which an inquisitive boy is driven to follow, when he wants to find out how a steam engine or an electric bell works. It is the method which a boy scout would follow in trying to understand how, by triangular measurements made on one bank of a river, he can calculate the distance across it. In all such instances the inquirer sets out ignorant of the scientific or mathematical principles, but keen to solve a problem that appeals to him: and the satisfaction of his desire is made to depend upon his discovering and learning the principles involved. Although most readily applicable in science and mathematics, the method in this form can often be used in other subjects. A teacher may, for example, start an inquiry into economic history from a question about the old village fair or feast.

In its broader use this method would aim at reproducing as nearly as school conditions permit, the sort of teaching in which Cobbett believed. Some centre of interest is selected, and for a while the children's studies along many lines converge upon it or radiate out from it. One may, for instance, take up the question of the various ways in which food and other goods find their way into a given city. The pursuit of such an inquiry may first direct the attention of the young researchers to the different modes of transport, by rail, road and now by air, and bring up for solution problems concerning the draught of barges, the way in which the railway engine and the petrol engine do their work, and how aeroplanes can remain in the air. It may follow the lines of traffic backward into the country and lead to some study of the district from which the corn or the fruit and vegetables come, or the industrial regions where the textiles are made. Historical questions are started by the presence of modern methods of transportation side by side with the old. There are illustrative sketches and maps to be made; perhaps models to be constructed. The whole process of enquiry will constantly involve reference to books, and frequently give opportunity for arithmetical calculation and the graphic representation of numerical facts. Moreover, the pursuit of the project would provide many openings for independent enquiries by children who might be attracted specially in one direction or another, or could bring special gifts, e.g. in drawing or modelling, to the illustration of particular points. Thus the work would take largely the form of cooperation between a group of children, all of whom would find they had something to learn from the work of their fellows.

In deciding what attitude we should adopt towards the project method, the following points seem to deserve consideration. In the first place, there is always some danger that a new method, particularly if, within its proper field, it is a strikingly useful one, may be forced beyond its proper limits. While, for instance, music and drama may at times be brought in naturally and usefully in the working out of a project, it is too likely that in many instances they will merely be 'dragged in', obediently to the supposed claims of a principle. The teacher in his enthusiasm forgets that both music and drama are activities which contain their own self-sufficient motives: that one may learn a song simply because the song is delightful; and act a play because acting is such good fun. The same thing is true of drawing and handicraft. Both kinds of activity may quite naturally have their place in the working out of a project, but there is no reason why they should not also be pursued outside all projects merely for their own sakes. We are, therefore, definitely of opinion that it would be unnecessary and pedantic to attempt to throw the whole of the teaching of the primary school into the project form. Next, we are inclined to think that as the children advance through the primary school the project method, while still having a useful place, should to a greater extent pass into the subject method. Thirdly, we have to remember that a change in methods of teaching, so thoroughgoing as the adoption of the project method, cannot be brought into operation with success except gradually and cautiously. No teacher can do his best work with a new method until he has welded it on to his educational faith and has coloured it with part of his personality. Although, therefore, we are of opinion, subject to the foregoing qualifications, that the teaching of children in the primary schools should be increasingly informed by the principles of the project method, we do not wish to see that transformation from the more usual subject method undertaken with dangerous haste or where conditions are not favourable to its success.

85. We turn to a last question which arises inevitably when the proposal is made to depart from the traditional way of teaching by subjects. If reading and writing were to come in only in connection with the working out of projects, if the teaching of the elements of mathematics and science were to be only episodical, could there be any guarantee, first that the necessary ground will be covered by the end of the primary school period and, secondly, that the children will be sufficiently drilled in the fundamentals? Though projects may afford useful starting points for instruction in the 3R's and equally useful opportunities of applying what has been learned, mastery of these subjects, which is the indispensable foundation for future work, should be obtained through a regular and systematic practice with this single aim in view. (12)

86. As a conclusion to the whole discussion, we would point out that after all the teacher's method must ultimately be personal to the teacher, a quintessence of formal plans and methods. (13) He may adopt the project plan as incidental to his practice, or even make it, as Cobbett desired, fundamental. We doubt whether in either case he will find in it a means of approach equally accessible to all the subjects of the primary school curriculum. Certain aesthetic subjects will, of their own nature, lie outside its scope. And as regards the foundation subjects, it would obviously require a high degree of skill and experience, and the most highly developed staff work, if the teacher were to use exclusively the project method of approach, and thereby to ensure that the necessary ground in each subject will be covered without gap or hiatus. Nevertheless the principle underlying such a method, which is common also to other enlightened forms of teaching practice, does offer a sound alternative to the isolated treatment of school subjects. Judiciously applied, and based upon more direct and intrinsic kinds of teaching, it may be expected to impart a meaning and a motive to school work, and to afford the teacher a means of following the natural development of his pupil's interests.

Note. Much detailed treatment of the various aspects of the curriculum will be found in Chapter 12, which should be read in connection with this chapter. Particular attention may, perhaps, be directed to the suggestions on the teaching of English, and of elementary mathematics, and to the section on the various forms of handicraft (practical instruction). But the whole of that part of our Report is an essential complement to the general considerations set out in this chapter; and it contains our detailed views on the question remitted to us in the Terms of Reference regarding 'Courses of Study suitable for Children (other than children in Infants' Departments) up to the age of 11 in Elementary Schools, with special reference to the needs of children in rural areas.' We would also direct attention to the section on curriculum and methods of teaching for retarded children in Chapter 12.

Footnotes

(1) See Chapter 1 of this Report; Chapter 1 of the Report on the Education of the Adolescent (1926), and Report of Board of Education for 1910-11 pp. 2-41.

(2) Professor John Dewey has given a classical description of the process in his early work The School and Society (1900).

(3) Republic Book III pp. 398-401, particularly p. 401 C. 'Is it then, Glaucon, for these reasons that we attach such supreme importance to a musical education, because rhythm and harmony sink most deeply into the recesses of the soul, and take most powerful hold of it, bringing gracefulness in their train, and making a man graceful if he be rightly nurtured, but if not, the reverse?' (Davies and Vaughan's translation, p. 97).

(4) The striking observations and deductions made in this field by Seguin and others form an important and interesting chapter in the history of educational practice. They indicate that in the coordinated activities of sense and limb lie the first dim beginnings of intelligence, and that language can play its part only when these have established the necessary foundations in experience.

(5) Bridges The Testament of Beauty IV, 643. (1929).

(6) There is, however, always a certain risk that such handicraft teaching may become merely conventional, unless the teachers keep in close touch with craft practice. Cf. Report of the Departmental Committee on the Training of Rural Teachers (1928), Section 167, 'there is a danger of handicraft becoming conventionalised as a school subject, unless contact with craft practice, as understood by practical craftsmen, is constantly maintained.'

(7) Cf. Report of the Departmental Committee on the Training of Rural Teachers (1928) Section 166. 'Of late years, particularly, there has been in many areas a notable development in the teaching to both boys and girls of varied forms of handicraft such as bookbinding, basketry, raffia work, rug making, leathercraft, weaving, domestic craft, and some of the lighter forms of wood and metal work; and also a development in the use of illustrative handwork as part of class teaching in arithmetic, science, geography, history and drawing. It has not generally been found advisable to attempt in any one school a large number of these varied forms of handicraft, but to concentrate on one or two crafts with which the teachers have made themselves familiar.'

(8) See Chapter 12, Handwriting.

(9) See Chapter 12.

(10) Cobbett Advice to Young Men (1830) par. 298, cf. pars. 288 and 290.

(11) Dr RB Raup, Professor in Teachers College, Columbia University, was good enough to furnish the Committee with a valuable memorandum upon the project method. Several of our English witnesses and others pressed the advantages of the method upon our attention.

(12) In this context, it is useful to notice the policy adopted by Dr Charles Washburne in the schools under his supervision at Winnetka outside Chicago. Dr Washburne draws a clear distinction between the instrumental or 'tool' subjects, reading, writing and arithmetic, and the other subjects of the primary curriculum. The latter are pursued in class largely by social cooperation between the pupils and take the project form. In this part of the curriculum there is no definite programme to be followed and no definite standards of attainment are laid down. On the other hand, in learning the 3R's every child pursues as an independent unit a very carefully thought out course. In arithmetic, for instance, the programme is limited strictly to the processes and problems of fundamental importance, he goes through it at his own pace but is not allowed to pass from one stage to the next until he has reached in the former stages a comparatively high level of mastery. Thus, by the time he has completed the course, the teacher not only knows what ground the child has covered, but also knows that he is, to all intents and purposes, competent in it. Educational Yearbook of the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University (1924) pp. 583-586. A similar procedure has been adopted in some schools in Germany in respect of 'Kern-und Kursunterricht'. See VJ Spasitsch Die Lehrerfrage in der neuen Schule Weimar (1927) p. 77.

(13) Cf. Chapter 12.