CHAPTER IX
THE CURRICULUM
1. Introductory
258. It is not our intention to discuss exhaustively every subject in the secondary curriculum, still less to frame detailed syllabuses. Not only would such an enterprise outrun our competence: it would be alien to the whole spirit of this Report. For it is our conviction that the greatest need of Scottish education is for initiative, variety, experiment, and that many things (and these the most vital) can rightly be determined only within that living relationship of teacher and taught which the whole machinery of schools, administration and councils exists solely to promote. But there have emerged from our deliberations and from the great mass of evidence we have taken certain conclusions about the general content of secondary education and some suggestions for its improvement which we believe to be of value. These form the substance of the present chapter.
[page 60]
259. We think it right to say that we have not sought a nice proportion between the length of our observations on the several "subjects" and the weight of these subjects in the curriculum: rather have we been guided by the nature and extent of our evidence.
260. It is important that this part of the Report in particular should be read in close conjunction with our Report on Primary Education. The passage from primary to secondary school is an administrative change, not a break in the continuous process of education. Every element in the "core" of post-primary education has its counter-part in the work of the earlier years; and, since the essential problems belong to both stages, much that was said in our Report on Primary Education about the value and content of the "subjects" is as relevant here as there, and need not be repeated.
261. While we have been conscious throughout how wide is the intelligence range in a secondary school, we have not felt it necessary or indeed desirable to docket the children into neat categories at every turn and to offer a separate prescription for each. It is possible to see in all secondary education from twelve to sixteen a unity which is not illusory or merely sentimental but real; for underlying every difference of class or taste or talent is an identity of childish and adolescent need and response which is best met by the formulation of a curriculum broadly uniform in content and purpose. If individual and group work are given the place we hope, it will not be impossibly difficult to vary the treatment of a general syllabus in depth and fullness, so as to take account of those differences in ability which nature has decreed and man cannot alter.
262. It is, however, misleading and at times almost meaningless to make statements as if they were equally applicable to pupils whose intelligence quotients are 90 or 105 or 120. Accordingly, we have found it convenient to use on occasions the familiar rating scale divided into five equal intervals of ability as follows:
263. We have tried to make an approach to the curriculum more practical by bringing the general question why we teach this or that into sharper focus in the form - why do we teach this subject to these particular pupils at this particular stage? In some cases, our answers to that question are explicit, in others, they are implied in the considerable changes we propose in the content and emphasis of the teaching.
264. We trust no one will fail to sense the very high value we attach to the work of the VIth Form, merely because our treatment of the 16-18 stage is much less detailed than that of the earlier years. One of our main reasons for proposing a major change in the examination system is to give the VIth Form a spaciousness it has never had in Scotland; and, as we said in an earlier chapter, we hope that it will be much wider and more varied than just preparation for the winning of competitive bursaries.
265. It is important that the different subjects should have equal encouragement: we do not favour any classical or mathematical monopoly; as little do we wish to see these older disciplines forsaken, and the VIth Form given over almost wholly to scientific or social studies.
[page 61]
266. Two things are necessary to the full success of this advanced work in the schools. The education authorities must be ungrudging in the provision of staff; and the older boys and girls themselves must be prepared to work hard. We stress this last, because, while we condemn over-pressure at any stage of school life, we think that real singleness of purpose can rightly be expected of the few to whom nature has given the ability and society the chance to be busy with knowledge at an age when their fellows are busy with livelihood.
267. What we have not found it necessary to undertake is a detailed discussion of teaching methods and subject contents in the VIth Form, and the reason is plain. Western society has been for centuries at the job of educating that intellectual elite who will long continue to provide the bulk of our whole-time VIth Form pupils, and it would be presumptuous for anyone to imagine that the general lines of such education have not long since been soundly laid.
268. A day may come when, in a profoundly changed society, full-time education up to 18 will be extended to a much larger number of young people, varying far more widely in type and aptitude. If it does, then VIth Form work will, no doubt, invite more detailed consideration and more radical changes than are called for now. Meanwhile, what our nation is facing for the first time is the difficult but supremely worth-while task of providing general secondary education for all its children in all their variety, and it is towards the accomplishment of that immediate task that our Report may properly be expected to make some contribution.
2. English
(1) ITS PRIME IMPORTANCE
269. No problem within the whole range of the secondary curriculum is comparable in urgency and importance with that of securing a good standard in the understanding and use of English. To fail in Mathematics or Latin is to leave boys and girls deficient in these subjects, but to fail in English is to leave them fundamentally uneducated. And the truth is that, despite the efforts and improvements of a generation, we are still short of full success in this primary task. Every recent committee on the curriculum has admitted as much, and the volume of criticism does not diminish.
270. The business man grumbles about boys and girls whose ignorance of spelling and punctuation is matched only by their inability to express themselves clearly in speech or writing, while the universities complain of scientific and technical students whose work is crippled by inadequate powers of expression, and even the arts student is reproached with lacking that command of simple, lucid English which might be expected from the chosen few. Not all of such criticism is justified: it is easy to generalise rashly from too few cases or to prejudge the whole question by pitching one's demands impossibly high. But, even when much has been discounted, enough remains to disquiet all who are concerned with the schooling of the nation's children, and we attach particular weight to the fact that so many English teachers themselves are ill-satisfied with present standards.
271. We insist in our Report on Primary Education that there must be no defeatism in this matter, but we are neither blind to the seriousness of the situation nor surprised that the Edinburgh Branch of the English Association should urge an expert inquiry into all the problems connected with the teaching
[page 62]
of English; for in the quarter of a century since George Sampson* strikingly demonstrated the cardinal place of English in the whole scheme of education, the schools have not so much solved the problem as merely become aware of its immensity.
(a) "Every Teacher a Teacher of English"
272. It seems to us that a fundamental issue is still undecided: is English in fact the responsibility of some, since they teach it, or of all, since they teach in and through it? Many have quoted the familiar dictum that every teacher is a teacher of English, because every teacher is a teacher in English; but is this accepted as an obligation or merely as all epigram? Does the Mathematics master really believe (and act on the belief) that his geometry period may yield the finest lesson of the week on the qualities of good English expression? Does the language teacher have any shame about accepting in the name of translation something which is a monstrous perversion of English speech? Does any staff as a whole accept what the Norwood Committee† thought a truism - "that the values of English are more important in the long run than the specific values of those subjects" (e.g. Science or Geography)?
273. On the contrary, we are convinced that, with shining exceptions, secondary teachers simply regard English as a "subject" or a "department", with its due allowance of time and "specialists" appointed to use it wisely. We cannot believe that, if secondary teachers admitted a collective responsibility for English, the standard of speech among themselves - and particularly among the men - would not be higher than it is; and we urge again the need for firm, indeed drastic, action by the training authorities to secure a substantial improvement.‡
274. We do not suggest that there is an equal responsibility for English on all teachers, or that the real though minor responsibility that rests on his colleagues relieves the English teacher of his special charge. But there is good evidence that during the past thirty years English teaching in Scotland has not lacked devotion, ability and common sense; and yet the gulf between its achievement and the minimum requirements of an educated nation is still so wide that one doubts whether it can ever be bridged without the active cooperation of the whole secondary staff. The verdict of the New Zealand Committee on the Secondary School Curriculum§ was that "a high standard of accuracy and fluency is obtained only by steady pressure in all subjects, all day long. Slovenly speech; inaudible question or answer; careless writing, spelling, or punctuation; inaccuracy in word or idiom - these things are a challenge to every teacher."
(b) Improvement in Teaching Necessary
275. One thing is clear, that the civilising work of English teaching cannot, under present social and cultural conditions, be made fully effective within the narrow limits of from four to six hours weekly of school time. If, therefore, the collective responsibility for English is rejected by teachers of other subjects, the nation may have to consider an alternative which would, we fancy, be even less palatable to the specialists, namely, the drastic curtailment or even the complete postponement for a couple of years of work in Mathematics, Science and languages, in order that abundance of time may be available for the
*"English for the English", Cambridge Press, 1921.
†See footnote to paragraph 177.
‡Training of Teachers, Cmd. 6723, paragraphs 45, 119 and 174.
§The Post-Primary School Curriculum. Report of the Committee. Appointed by the Minister of Education, New Zealand, in November, 1942 - E. V. Paul, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand, 1944.
[page 63]
English staff and that the direct attack on semi-literacy may be pressed over a much wider front and with an unhurried use of all available resources. It may be that what cannot be done in six periods weekly can be done in sixteen; and, in view of the great importance of this issue, we recommend that it be the subject of inquiry and that it should, if possible, be put to the proof by actual experiment in a number of schools.
276. But, without being dogmatic, we suspect that the solution is not likely to be found in merely emptying the curriculum and handing over a large part of the school week swept and garnished to the English teacher; for, unless we let him keep and use the varied content of the displaced subjects, there is danger that the seven devils of mere verbalism will enter in and the last state of the pupils be worse than the first. English teaching to the young needs matter as well as form: the powers of understanding and expression are not exercised in a vacuum but only on material congenial to the age and experience of the learner. Indeed, this is half the case for demanding the co-operation of all teachers. It is not merely that English may be taught during more periods, but that it may be taught in more contexts and commended to the young by its obvious right of entry everywhere. Ordinary pupils will never see English aright, until they see that it "comes into" Chemistry and History, into Geography, Geometry and Mechanics - even into the translation of Ovid or Daudet.
277. We summarise our conclusions thus. More must be done if a barely literate populace, debased by vulgarisms and corrupted by Hollywood, is to be transformed into an educated people, capable of understanding and using its inheritance of English speech. But whether it will best be done by uniting the indirect aid of every teacher with the direct work of the specialist or by sacrificing some lesser aims in order to increase the time and resources of the English staff, can be determined only by a much more exhaustive and expert inquiry than we were in a position to undertake.
278. Meantime, since the struggle against illiteracy is to be a long one, it were foolish either to ignore the real, if unspectacular, advance that bas been made or to be indifferent to the cumulative effect of slight improvements in the content or methods of English teaching.
(2) SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT
279. We have no revolutionary proposals to advance, but we offer these suggestions, which should be taken along with the relevant sections in our Report on Primary Education.
(a) The Spoken Word
280. There is need for much greater attention to the spoken word. Not only does speech come before writing in all human experience, it comes before it in importance, because it bulks so much larger in the lives of ordinary folks and is so much bigger a factor in what one might call their social adequacy.
281. Oral English has two aspects; speech training in the narrower sense, and the correctness and fluency of the spoken word.
282. We accept it as the plain duty of the schools to give every child a mastery of standard English speech. Not every form of local speech is wort h preserving. With that rare thing, a genuine patois, the schools have no concern, save to respect it and leave it alone; with the oppressive mass of merely debased and incorrect speech the schools have an immediate and hostile concern - to war against it unceasingly. Nor need they be deterred by the
[page 64]
fear that everyone will end by speaking alike: that is about as probable as that some day we shall all look alike. Meantime, it would be sheer social and cultural gain if through a closer approximation to standard English we did draw together in greater likeness of speech.
283. The campaign against the speech of the street, the cinema and the illiterate home (and not least against that strangely perverse yet rather admirable loyalty of the child and parent to them) admits of no truce, and in this fight the English teacher cannot afford to lack the weapon of thorough phonetic training. Under present social conditions, a teacher without this equipment is as absurd as a physical training specialist without a knowledge of remedial gymnastics.
284. There is no secret of easy victory here: just the steady uncompromising insistence on speech standards throughout school life: careful example, patient correction and the continual engaging of the child's imitative faculty with sound material. To lay the emphasis on imitation rather than on analysis is not, however, to rule out some instruction in the use of the speech organs when the stage for that is reached. It is essential that the teacher should be unfailingly kindly and gracious about the business of speech instruction and especially correction. No child will imitate a teacher whom he dislikes.
235. Careful reading aloud by the teacher has its uses, but in general the sounds of right speech will be best learned not in any isolation but along with that study of its sense and rhythm which is the other part of oral English. We should attach but limited value to "oral composition" in the familiar sense, but there is possible in the classroom a great range of spoken practice conducive alike to better speech and to social ease; brief debates; the giving and receiving of instructions; prepared talks by pupils, followed by questions; group discussions; the simple procedure of meetings and committees; and perhaps best of all, the many varieties of dramatic work. In short, the socialised recitation without the name.
286. A valuable and rather neglected side of oral English is training in careful listening. As the Spens Report* says, "It is as important to receive a clear impression as to give one" - and possibly as hard. To read aloud a stanza, a brief description or a set of instructions, and require the pupil to reproduce the substance is an excellent exercise, for it at once gives a good model of speech and demands that attention to the sense-as-a-whole, as distinct from isolated words, which is the secret of language mastery whether oral or written.
287. In our Report on Primary Education we have characterised as largely waste of time the routine of reading round the class, but there is a stage in the secondary school at which reading aloud can be made a valuable intellectual training. The representatives of the English Association quoted to us Hillaire Belloc's dictum that the ability to read aloud intelligibly at sight is as good a single test as any that the possessor of it is a well-educated man. This is the counterpart of that listening for the meaning of the whole of which we have spoken; and this training in the apprehension of phrase and structure, which gives an immediate command of the printed page comparable with the musician's ability to read a score at sight. should be imparted to young people by regular practice in reading unseen passages aloud.
*See footnote to paragraph 102.
[page 65]
(b) Written Composition
288. The teaching of written composition has in the past generation moved far in the direction of greater sense and simplicity, but it has still some way to go. The schools have in the main got rid of the moralising and sententious "essay", but there is still some failure to realise the unnaturalness of the essay form itself, and to make the essential distinction between the "writing that is a statement or record, and the writing which is a creation or invention." The first can be taught to all; the second can only be welcomed and encouraged in those who have the gift for it.
289. The clue to written composition is in the familiar fact that no child shows a uniform ability to write. Where the subject is congenial, where the writing grows out of his own interest and experience, it is lively, colourful and effective; where it has no roots in himself it is dull and lifeless. It follows (1) that most of the material of composition should be homely, practical and concrete, and (2) that when it does go "off the ground" it should be in a direction natural to the mind and experience of adolescence.
(i) "Communication" Writing
290. The material of "communication" writing can take many forms; letter writing, if possible to real people on real topics. e.g. to a friend or to a ship adopted by a school; short descriptions of things read; simple statements describing things done in workshop, kitchen or laboratory; "insets" to attach to history or geography wall charts; summaries of directions and reports. It will be noted how much of the best, because most natural and relevant, composition arises out of school work other than English, and what added scope is given to the English teacher if he takes other subjects as well and has a considerable block of school time to use at his discretion. In one junior secondary school, for instance, instead of a term's weekly essays each pupil made a small book called "Travellers' Tales." In it he described famous journeys of exploration in their historical sequence, each illustrated by a free-hand coloured map of the route followed. A cover was designed and painted, and the book completed with introduction, index and table of contents.
291. The form of composition that consists in expressing and arranging certain data has the further advantages that the correction of such exercises is much less laborious for the teacher and leads to a class discussion of general mistakes, which is more profitable and less depressing than the dissection of individual faults.
(ii) Creative Writing
292. So far as young secondary pupils are capable of writing which goes beyond "communication" English and reveals a touch of fancy or invention, their creative impulse should be directed not to the essay but to those simpler and more primitive forms, the story, the dialogue and the play. In familiar history and legend there is unlimited material for either collective or individual composition, and the class-magazine and the class-play are there to give a point to youthful effort. Apart from its inherent unsuitability, the essay form is open to the objection of being completely pointless in the eyes of children. As George Sampson said, "They can understand writing a story for the class-magazine or a play for a class-performance: they cannot understand writing an essay for the waste-paper basket."
293. Where essay subjects are given, they should have what has been well-described as "a real seizable content capable of straightforward development by young people."
[page 66]
(iii) Training in Composition
294. On the formal side of training in composition, the besetting temptation is haste to secure results. Foundation work in the building up of vocabulary is of necessity slow, for it involves more than the grasp of isolated words. It means that the word must be practised in other contexts till its colour and habit are understood; and it also means training in that far harder comprehension and mastery of idiomatic usage without which writing may remain stiff and laboured, even though grammar is sound and vocabulary wide.
295. Our attention has been drawn to the danger of over-stressing the merits of the short sentence, when pupils have reached an age to appreciate writing of more architectural quality. The Edinburgh Branch of the English Association in its memorandum suggests that "instead of encouraging the pupils in middle and senior classes to go on thinking in and writing strings of short, detached, simple sentences (a style most fatiguing to read and difficult to follow) teachers should instruct them how to subordinate the less to the more important, and how to construct sound sentences in which the central idea fills the principal clause and the subsidiary ideas fall into subordinate clauses, or into participial, adverbial or prepositional phrases or even into single words."
(iv) Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar
296. On the triad of spelling, punctuation, and grammar brief comment will suffice.
297. The school must take the realist view that while spelling may be a pure convention, it is one the disregard of which creates a very unfavourable impression and is handicapping to young folks in the ordinary business of life. It is for the schools, therefore, to concentrate on the high-frequency words that form part of the "writing" as distinct from the "reading" vocabulary, and consistently to assume that within this range a high standard of correctness is possible. Pupils should be trained in the regular use of the dictionary and shown how spelling may be helped by an understanding of the origin and make-up of the word. As we stress in the Report on Primary Education, spelling is essentially an "eye" subject: hence, little time should be spent on dictation. If any form of that overrated exercise is worth keeping, it is probably prepared rather than unseen dictation.
298. So far from being trivial or arbitrary, punctuation is an important element in written expression, with a bearing on syntax, emphasis, sense and intelligibility. To treat it lightly is to affront the written word; to neglect the teaching of it is to throwaway one of the "chief constructional tools of composition."
299. It is as easy to overrate the importance of grammar as to underrate that of punctuation. The isolated study of grammar by young secondary pupils is a barren exercise which has no appreciable effect on the quality of their composition. We recommend that systematic practice in parsing and analysis should not be required in any School Certificate syllabus. Teachers should be free from any coercion to teach more grammar than the modicum experience proves to be useful for composition. We should expect that minimum of grammar to be functional, related to the pupils' actual reading and composition, taught almost solely by examples, and concentrated on the correction of common errors - not as a witness said, "the grammar of what they never go wrong in". With older pupils the time formerly given to grammar might
[page 67]
more profitably go to some study (by reading and practice) of the principles of word-order, as they are determined by the interaction of syntax, idiom and rhetoric.
(v) The "Architecture" of Writing and Clear Thinking
300. Expert witnesses have stressed too the importance of not let tim, training in composition stop short at vocabulary and idiom, grammar and punctuation. For older secondary pupils there is great profit in studying the "architecture" of writing - all that is involved in adequate connection, proper paragraphing and correct proportioning.
301. It is a moot point how far in the top classes boys and girls can be formally taught the principles of clear thinking, but from more than one quarter has come the suggestion that grammar might give place to some instruction in elementary practical logic. This much is certain; that the teaching of English to seniors fails of its full purpose, if they do not "realise that clear thinking and logical expression are the crown of composition and that all the formal correctness on the lower levels is merely a means to that end."
(c) Reading
302. No extent or variety of rapid reading can take the place of a close, painstaking study of carefully selected texts. The temptation to range widely is great and impatience at the slowness of intensive reading easy to understand; but to yield to such temptation is disastrous. What must be established for boys and girls in the secondary school is nothing less than "conscience in reading", a scruple that will let no difficulty or obscurity pass. In due time, as vocabulary and grasp of structure increase, the pace will quicken, and thoroughness be rewarded by such interest and understanding as are denied to slipshod reading.
303. For intensive study, books of graded selections are preferable to complete texts, and the extracts should be varied in subject matter. With such reading, practice in writing will go band in hand; for, while we may separate the two sides for purposes of comment, they will be in constant interaction within a well-balanced English discipline.
304. We draw attention here to the frequent complaint that passages for interpretation set to test close reading and comprehension tend always to favour the classically trained boy, being drawn too exclusively from historical and political sources. We suggest that more justice might be done to pupils whose reading is on scientific lines, and that in ideas and vocabulary alike Darwin, Huxley, Jeans and Romanes merit study as truly as Burke or Newman or Macaulay.
305. The general reading of secondary pupils should include more prose than poetry, more modem literature and less of an older fashion, while the emphasis should be laid on content rather than on form. That a book is well-written and suitable for school use is its title to inclusion, not any literary pretension. Even with junior classes, however, the reading should not be confined to narrative: it is the business of the schools to introduce the young reader to that wider literature "of description and fact, explanation and exposition, speculation, argument, and persuasion."*
*Memorandum by the English Association (Edinburgh Branch).
[page 68]
306. We consider important for school purposes the distinction drawn between direct and indirect writing, between authors like Cobbett, Macaulay and Newman whose primary concern is with what they have to say, and those others such as Lamb, Hazlitt and Stevenson, who are conscious of their styles and preoccupied with the manner of saying things. For school reading, the direct writers are to be recommended, though that is not to deny older and abler pupils their delight in the more mannered and consciously stylistic English prose.
307. In regard to non-intensive, recreational reading, the teacher should show a large tolerance: his business is to stimulate, not to prescribe, and a frank admission that there are a score of different kinds of worth-while book may win a boy to some love of reading who would only be alienated by a narrow canon. Nor is it necessary that all the members of a class should read the same texts. Six copies of ten books are far better class equipment than thirty copies of two.
308. We deal with the school library in the closing chapter of the Report, but nothing we say there is inconsistent with a strong belief in the value of class libraries. Especially for younger pupils there is an appeal about the books that are passed round and commended by one to another within the smaller and more intimate circle. And here we take the chance to stress that, like the school library, every class library should have its books of reference and have them in constant use. There are few better services the schools can do boys and girls than to train them in the getting and collating of facts, in the delectable habit of poking about among those books that are veritable storehouses and extracting what they need.
(d) The Teaching of English Subjects to D and E Pupils
309. What we have said so far is applicable at varying levels to the general range of normal children, but special importance attaches to the teaching of English to the weakest third of the school, the D and E pupils.
310. These boys and girls have very little of the verbal ability which facilitates the study of English and gives that sense of achievement from which come quickened interest and the effort to progress. It follows that, while the teaching of English to such pupils will always be elementary, it will never be easy. It may not demand the best scholar on the staff, but it will tax the best teacher to the utmost, calling for exceptional patience, resourcefulness and understanding. Because the schools have largely ignored this fact, the teaching of English to D and E pupils has been in the main a record of failure rather than of successful practice and proved techniques. The able teacher must, therefore, recognise that this is a largely uncharted field and approach it in a spirit of inquiry and experiment. He may safely assume that the treatment must be not literary but homely and practical, and the less he talks and the more the pupils act, the greater is the likelihood that he is on the right road.
311. It is generally agreed that the junior instruction centres confronted the teacher with a very sharp challenge, and it may be of interest to record a method that was found to work there. It was a method of individual or group inquiry carried out in a room furnished with a variety of reference books - encyclopaedias of different sizes, two or more gazetteers, several atlases, dictionaries, a biographical dictionary, an old "Who's Who", a Whitaker's Almanack and one or more daily papers. A series of cards was prepared, each having at the head of it a picture, a cartoon, an advertisement, shipping
[page 69]
information, a news paragraph or any kind of printed matter that provided a starting-point for thinking or inquiry. A number of questions were typed under the pasted extract. It was then for the individual (or the group) to find the answers and write them in his notebook. The teacher's part was to give just enough help or clue to enable the pupil to find the more difficult information for himself. When one card was satisfactorily finished, another was given out, care being taken to grade the problems to the mental powers of the pupils. Much success was achieved with a similar but not identical use of cards at Lankhills.*
312. We put this forward simply as an illustration, not as a model. No teacher is called on to adopt this or any other specific teaching device, but every teacher should show a like inventiveness and adaptability.
313. In appealing to the schools to attach a wholly new importance to the English (and that does not exclude the material of History or Geography) of such boys and girls, we would remind them that these are the pupils who, because of their mental limitations, will be the least educated through their work. Not for them the absorbing interests of the professional man and the technologist, or the deep satisfactions of the fine craftsman. Few of them will escape their destiny to be machine-minders and routine labourers, and it becomes an urgency to provide an antidote to the monotony of their work.
314. What can be done for these children may seem a poor thing compared with the service of awakening a gifted boy to the wonder of Keats or Shakespeare, but that is a superficial view. For in almost every case the able boy will enter into his inheritance unaided, whereas the D or E pupil is pathetically dependent on what his school can do for him; and so, if due account be taken of the difference it makes to the dignity and sufficiency of a human life, it may well prove the nobler achievement after all to have led even a few dull children into the humblest forecourt of the palace of mind and imagination.
(e) Literature
315. In Chapter V of the Report, we treated the teaching of literature as a thing apart, and in the present section we have been content to speak of interest or pleasure in reading rather than of literary appreciation. This implies no disparagement of the latter, but is on the contrary a humble admission that while certain things can be imparted by all competent teachers to all normally endowed children, there are others that require rarer gifts alike in the bestowal and in the acceptance. No rules can be laid down here and no infallible recipe given; for a man's success in transmitting to others his own appraisement of great literature and in leading them into new worlds of feeling and imagination comes not from his qualifications but from his qualities, not from the skill of his teaching methods but from the authenticity of his witness. Literary scholarship and critical expertness may avail very little, for it is not knowledge that is to be conveyed to others but an experience, and it can be, caught only by a kind of beneficent infection from those who have it. No man can give young people a vision of greatness, unless in so far as he habitually chooses to live with it himself.
316. From a field where the conditions of success are so elusive and its rewards so great, the formal examination must be banished altogether. To examine literature is as impossible as to imprison sunbeams. To attempt it is
*The Education of the Ordinary Child (pp. 193 et seq.) by John Duncan. Messrs. Thomas Nelson. & Sons, Ltd.
[page 70]
to break the spell and ensure that our sixteen-year olds are occupied either with the factual accompaniments of literary study or, what is far worse, with that glib misappropriation of other men's literary opinions which is the death of sincerity and of direct response to the appeal of great writing.
317. There is, too, a further reason for not trying to assess what is either inspiration or nothing at all: only when the examination has gone will the teacher be free to determine the content of his teaching in disregard of official syllabuses and conventional ideas about what children ought to read, giving rein to his own deeply felt preferences and the desires of his pupils.
318. One more responsibility rests on the English teacher. As boys and girls grow toward years of reflection, he must bring them to see in great literature the store-house of human experience, a source not of pleasure and recreation alone but of comfort, counsel and enlightenment. We have spoken in such terms of science and technology that we shall not be open to the charge of belittling them now if. we stress what science cannot do. When every other problem has yielded to its advance, the last problem remains, at best unsolved, at worst aggravated, because science has armed. folly and cruelty with power unbounded. For the ultimate problem is spiritual, concerning man's ability to break the tyranny of circumstance and deal wisely with life itself; and, if he seeks guidance here, he must turn not to science but to the spiritual leaders of the race and to that great tradition of western humanism which is not the antithesis of religion but one of its finest flowers. Some few may find what they seek in Aeschylus or Plato, Virgil or Dante, but for the generality of men and women it must be found in the great things of our own literature and history or not at all. It is, then, the supreme responsibility of the English teacher to show a generation sore beset where it may find the wisdom it so greatly needs and the vision for lack of which its world is perishing.
(f) The School Play
319. In no single school activity are all the values of the new education so finely embodied as in the production and acting of a play. It integrates, as nothing else does, almost every department of the school; for literature, the social studies, art, music and the dance, electrical science, the workshop and the sewing room are all alike mobilised to one end.
320. It gives the freest scope to the most varied talents, and in its uniting of individual effort and self-expression with sustained corporate enterprise it is a microcosm of the school as community.
a2I. It draws together what educational unwisdom has too often divorced, the intellectual and the practical, the artistic and the homely. And it has its own lesson to convey; for it has brought to many a gifted youngster the first realisation of his dependence on schoolmates whom he had lightly esteemed, and it has given to some who were but modestly endowed the joy and enhanced self-respect of discovering that they are needed and have indeed a part to play, whether it be before the footlights or behind the scenes.
3. Handwriting
322. This is merely a pendant to what we have said about writing in the Report on Primary Education. We draw attention there to the disappointing fact that, whereas most pupils on leaving the primary school write tolerably well, many pupils on leaving the secondary school write intolerably badly. We pointed out in fairness that the deterioration is no conclusive evidence of
[page 71]
neglect on the part of secondary teachers, since a possible explanation is that the primary school is teaching a style of writing which does not stand up to the more exacting demands of the secondary school for speed and quantity. But a verdict of "not proven" is hardly one of "innocent", and we suggest now that the secondary schools might provisionally at least admit some degree of fault and consider what can be done about it.
323. The conditions of secondary school work undoubtedly make good writing more difficult, but may it not be that the root cause of the prevailing bad writing is neither unavoidable haste nor any serious defect in writing skill but the sheer carelessness of pupils at an irresponsible age? It is significant that in this matter girls are in general less blameworthy than boys and that many of them write very well indeed. There is evidence.that where a secondary staff is prepared in concert to make itself thoroughly disagreeable over had writing and to reject everything that falls below a reasonable standard, the general level of handwriting in a school can be markedly improved in a few weeks.
324. It would be the natural complement of such proper concern on the pari of all that handwriting should he a special charge on one or two of a staff. The latter might be asked to acquire some familiarity with the accepted methods of teaching the subject, so that pupils whose bad writing failed to respond to the collective "persuasions" of the staff might be sent to them for corrective teaching.
325. Research is undoubtedly necessary and may lead to improved techniques and better writing; but we think the schools should meantime pay heed to criticism in this matter and, while hoping for more light, make sure they are walking in the light they already have.
4. Social Studies
(1) TIME ALLOCATION
326. We sympathise with but reject the claim that there should be a large increase in the time devoted to social studies during the earlier years of secondary education. We sympathise, because on the assumption that underlies the present practice of the schools, the demand seems to us unanswerable. If the familiar subjects of history and geography should be taught as such in a systematic way to children of twelve and thirteen, and examined with the expectation that these boys and girls will have at call large stores of factual knowledge, then the customary time-allowance of two periods a week to each subject is demonstrably insufficient, and the teachers concerned have a longstanding grievance. But we are free to reject the conclusion, since we do not admit the premises. The decisive reason against giving eight or ten periods weekly to history and geography at the stage we are discussing is not the congestion of the timetable, serious though that is, but the immaturity of the pupils, an immaturity which makes it fairly certain that doubled time would mean, especially in history, only redoubled labour on inert facts.
327. Both in our Report on Primary Education and in Chapter V of this Report, we make clear our opinion that the serious study of history (and the same is in great measure true of geography) must lie outside the years of compulsory schooling, because children lack the developed time-sense, the broad grasp of principles, and above all the psychological understanding necessary for the causal interpretation of human life extended in time and in space.
[page 72]
(2) PURPOSE OF COURSE
328. Accepting these limitations of the child and young adolescent, we are content to see the chronological study of history in periods and the systematic study of geographical regions postponed, and the time given in the early secondary years to a simpler and more integrated course in social studies, with quite different aims. We think such a course should seek:
(1) To satisfy natural curiosity, quicken imagination and help the child to build up individual interests. In the process, he would incidentally acquire some store of facts, not systematised but having the "cues and feelers" that attach to what has been learned in living associations.
(2) To foster generous and desirable attitudes of mind towards persons and things.
(3) To give the child a growing sense of belonging to a place and to a community.
329. We think it essential that the course should during the first three years at least be taken by one person, and desirable that the teacher should be the same who is responsible for the English of the class. If the theme is man in society, then the treatment must be integrated, and experience shows that it is vastly easier to break down artificial "subject" barriers, when only one teacher is involved. Moreover, successful work with weaker pupils depends on the possibility of carrying out projects, which demand a fairly fluid timetable. Again, if history and geography are set up in separation, much that should be included in the course may lie outside both of them and be neglected. Whenever history is taken by itself, the emphasis tends to fall on the political and the military, while geography becomes either scientific or rather narrowly concerned with commodities: in consequence, the social habits of peoples, their work and play, their cultural and religious traditions, their institutions and forms of organisation - all constitute a sort of no man's land.
330. We found the representatives of geography alive to the great advantages of uniting the subjects at the more elementary stages at least; but while "Barkis is willin'", there is a marked coldness from the side of history, some of whose spokesmen advocate the use of the specialist teacher even in the first year, a policy which we believe to rest on a misconception of the aims of secondary education at that stage. One history teacher of wide experience, however, supported co-ordination of the work, holding that the lack of it "leads to a good deal of wasted effort in teaching and of unintegrated knowledge on the part of pupils." Similarly; the New Zealand Committee on the Secondary Curriculum* remarks: "All work in the social studies in anyone class would (normally) be taken by the same teacher. If the studies we propose were covered in separate courses labelled 'Geography' and 'History and Civics', we think great pains would need to be taken to avoid overlapping and lack of articulation."
831. To recommend this integration of social studies at the early adolescent stage is not to force a union but to recognise a unity that is always there, however misguidedly the schools may seek to keep the elements asunder. The story of the rise and decline of civilisations, of frontier changes and eliminations, of movements in commerce and in warfare, is history and
*The Post-Primary School Curriculum, p. 25. (See footnote to para. 274.)
[page 73]
geography intertwined; and we accept the rough generalisation of one of our witnesses that geography is the economic and social history of the present, just as history is the economic and social geography of the past.
332. While social studies should everywhere have the same broad intention, there are cogent reasons why courses should vary from school to school, or even within the same school. This is a field of study. in which it is peculiarly easy for uniformity to do injustice to the great range not merely of intelligence but of interest and vocational aptitude, and any good course must leave room for much group and individual work. It is essential, too, that every course should start from the immediate environment of the pupil, and if due account is taken of the characteristic features of locality, that alone must always give a distinctive cast to social studies in any area.
333. But the strongest reason of all why there must be no standardising of courses is that in this matter the schools are only at the beginning of a long road of trial and experiment. What knowledge they have is largely negative: the realisation that a heavily factual textbook treatment of history and geography is a failure, the more complete in proportion as the pupils diverge from the traditional pattern of bookish ability and acquisitive diligence. The positive knowledge required-how young adolescents actually grow in social consciousness, and which elements out of the immense complex of social phenomena will foster that growth-is still to seek; and it is no overstatement to say that the getting of this knowledge and the building wisely on it is one of the biggest tasks awaiting secondary education.
(3) GENERAL LINES OF COURSE
334. We go on now to indicate the general lines a social studies course should follow; and, if we adopt the familiar headings of geography and history, it must be clearly understood that this is at most a distinction resting on convenience, not a separateness rooted in reality.
335. Educational need and social need alike decree that the study of man in his environment should start from the home locality and the familiar scene. We pointed out in Chapter IV how modern conditions of life have left the child rootless and socially uninitiated, and it is the business of education to restore by conscious means that sense of community, of the collective life and purpose, which in simpler and more static societies came to the young out of the common experience. Since the first stage in social awareness can arise in the child only from the impact of a community small enough to be physically and mentally comprehensible by him, social study must begin with the immediate neighbourhood and take the form of a local survey, designed to find out how the district or region lives, how it carne to be as it is, and how its state can be bettered. Clearly such a survey, even at the modest level possible for young secondary pupils will involve strands of geography, history, civics and economics, all crossing and re-crossing to form the social pattern.
(a) Geography
336. It will include geography, both in the making and in the study of maps and plans. To study large scale maps of the area in which one lives, passing continually from the real to the representation and back again, is the natural way in which to learn the meaning of diagrammatic portrayal of things in space and to acquire a sense of proportion. At every stage, maps, not textbooks, are the essential instruments of geographical teaching, and there is need for much extended practice in their use, especially maps recording population and the location of industries.
[page 74]
337. In local study it is as important for the pupils to be able to make simple sketch maps for themselves as to be able to read maps. Actual work in the field should give boys and girls a training in the discovery and recording of geographical facts - and incidentally a training in resourcefulness and independent effort.
338. We speak of historic places, but all places are historic, just as all families are old families; and, as has been pointed out, the moment a child asks the simple question - Who lived in this house before us? - his feet are set on the path that leads into the local past. Of local history we shall speak presently: it is enough here to point out how inextricably it is bound up with the geography and survey of the area. Incidentally too, any inquiry into local life, be it of village, town or city, will embrace some study of its administration and public services. It is with this concrete reference that civics should be taught to young people, not in a neat scheme from a little textbook.
339. The great problem of local survey, as of social studies generally, is integration-to find some unifying idea or purpose which will draw the thinking and the active inquiry of young people together and prevent their survey from becoming a loose array of discrete material. There is much to be said for finding the co-ordinating idea in the "work" of the locality, both because a man's job is in general what roots him in a community, and because we are dealing with young adolescents whose strong vocational interest attaches very naturally to allY inquiry into livelihood. The concept of work must be wide enough to include the secondary but indispensable occupations, and the contact with "work" should be as real and close as it can be made.
340. It is only from such study of neighbourhood actively pursued that children can gain the necessary sense of "belonging" and have a growing consciousness of their part in and obligations towards the common life.
341. In a real sense geographical study is only an extension of such local survey. With the child's growth in knowledge and understanding, the area widens to the region, that "product of the interaction of place, folk and work"; then to the country, with the added idea of nationhood and all the sentiment that clings to it; and finally to the whole earth, with the contrasting feelings it arouses of strangeness and of solidarity. But however the scale may vary and the degree of detail, the guiding ideas remain the same - the interaction of man and his environment, and the ever-deepening interdependence of community and community. Unchanged, too, is the criterion of what is important, namely, relevance to the life of today and tomorrow.
342. It is unnecessary to consider in detail the content of courses in geography. Excellent material, applicable to different intelligence levels, is available in, to name only three sources out of many, "The Education of the Ordinary Child"*, "Curriculum"† and "The Content of Education"‡. But we are more concerned with the standpoint from which the work is approached and the spirit in which it is carried out.
343. Here, as in other subjects, it is dangerous to assume that the kind of unity or wholeness which seems natural to the adult mind will commend itself to children. The study of a region or series of large-scale regions (e.g. the Southern Continents) has a tidy, logical quality satisfying to mature intelli-
*John Duncan - Nelson, 1942.
†Scottish Council for Research in Education - University of London Press, 1931
‡Council for Curriculum Reform - University of London Press. 1945.
[page 75]
gence, and very bright pupils may respond .well enough to such teaching, precisely as they do to Euclidean Geometry or Latin Syntax. But the ordinary child may, and the dull child almost certainly will, be interested rather in a concrete unity such as the life of a people or in topical unities like food or transport; and in a field where the pupils' interest or lack of it means everything, the teacher must be content to follow wherever adolescent curiosity leach.
344. Full satisfaction should be given to children's keen interest in the life and customs of other lands. This may be no more than descriptive geography, but it is amply justified both for the pleasure it gives to young minds and for the part it plays in that widening of sympathies which is a prime aim of all social study. Great use should be made of visual aids, and of visits to museums where pupils may see under expert guidance the artefacts of peoples whose way of life they have been studying.
345. We plead strongly for more and better books in the study of geography. The textbook has its place as an orderly compilation of material for reference, but there is little inspiration to be got from it. Boys and girls have much to gain from those other books written at first-hand by people who had the eyes to see and the words to convey the colour and variety of the human scene or of the natural background against which man plays his part.
346. We recommend, too, the provision of more and better globes. Maps are good, but globes also are essential: indeed, when a child's thinking in geography passes from the projection on the flat to the globe itself it takes on a new quality, namely the realisation of three dimensions for which we have pleaded throughout this Report.
347. It will be evident that we consider geography below the VIth Form a social and humanistic, not a scientific, study. There are certain elementary facts of astronomy or meteorology which may be presented simply to secondary pupils, whether by the teacher or general science or by the geography teacher; but, beyond these, physical geography should be studied purely for the light it sheds on men's food, clothing and shelter, on their occupations and products, sources of power, modes of communication, health and sports.
348. Unless great care is taken, a most vital subject can be killed by the intrusion of scientific teaching barren of relevance and devoid of appeal - and one encounters the absurdity, to which our attention was drawn, of children solemnly taught whether a given mountain system is "a folded system or a dissected plateau", while there is no assurance that they have clearly learned what really matters about mountains - "that they have been a barrier to the migration of peoples and customs; that they are defence lines; that they affect climate; that they have presented great problems to the road and railway engineers; that they are hard to cultivate."
349. We recommend the provision in the secondary school of a social studies room, equipped with visual aids and having ample storage accommodation, where the subject may be taken in a practical way and individual work be encouraged.
350. What we said at the beginning of Chapter VI about teaching and learning applies with unusual force to social studies, and we close this section by quoting with warm approval the words of one junior secondary school teacher of these subjects: "I try to do the minimum amount of testing, so as to leave more time for teaching, and the minimum amount of teaching, so as to leave more time for the class to carry out work of its own."
[page 76]
(b) History
351. In a recent article on the history of science,* the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge tells how boys of eleven or twelve whom he knows profess to loathe history and yet in their passion for railways have acquired a truly astonishing amount of historical knowledge of railway engineering development and some power of judgment. Professor Butterfield then goes on: "Ordinary curriculum-history may become so dark a screen to boys of this age that one may be forgiven for hoping that on all occasions it may be reduced to a minimum; so that children may wind their way into the past along tracks that have meaning for them, not so much 'learning history' as learning to see everything historically - railways, soldiers or ships at one time for example; the English language and the science of geography at another time. In particular it would be useful and it would be humanizing if when they learn chemistry they could find that the teaching of the subjects was always married and interlaced with the study of its history; so that the knowledge of the science itself might come to them, so to speak, wrapped up in the whole story of human thought and endeavour in this field."
352. We could not have wished for a more authoritative and striking confirmation of that view of history teaching which we elaborate in our Report on Primary Education, and which we believe to be as applicable to the earlier secondary years as to those that precede them.
3.53. Pupils in early adolescence cannot in the strict sense learn history, but they can "learn to see everything historically", and that is precisely what we suggest by a topical rather than a chronological treatment. For seeing historically does not mean going back to 55 B.C. or 1066 or 1588; it means looking at something in the here and now and seeing it in a new light. We forget the extent to which in our modern civilisation young people grow up ignorant of the meaning and background of what is about them, seeing things in the flat and not in depth. To cure this lack of stereoscopic mental vision, their attention must in the first instance be arrested by something in the familiar environment which is socially significant, e.g. housing. From a comparison of houses differing in type, material and degree of modernity, a class, its interest awakened, will bring together a considerable amount of information, some of it probably new to the teacher. Such inquiry and observation widen out naturally to a consideration of primitive man's need of shelter from wind, rain and temperature, and how that need must be very differently met in the Tropics and in the Arctic. Given this point of interest in the present, and the reach back in thought and imagination into the past, the teacher can then trace with the class the development of shelter and houses from early times down to our own day.
354. The field for such investigation and discussion is wide, especially with pupils of secondary school age. In addition to the history of the road, the wheel, the ship, lighting, money, weights and measures, there are the growth of language and written records, the story of medicine and of warfare, the development of custom and taboo into law, and the evolution of music and the visual arts.
355. Such an approach to history has great advantages. It is universal, not in an abstract way, but because thought and fancy are continually centred on needs and endeavours common to every age and clime: hence it makes for
*Time and Tide, 8th Jan., 1946 - Notes on the Way, by Professor H. Butterfield.
[page 77]
an attitude of mind more conscious of what unites men than of what separates them. It does not involve, unless incidentally, those political and constitutional conceptions which baffle the immature understanding and make history, as the schools have taught it, so unprofitable a study in early adolescence. And lastly, it lends itself to much activity on the part of pupils themselves; for, instead of absorbing largely by memory successive sections of a text-book, they will be surrounded by atlases, globes, gazetteers, history source-books,* and illustrative material of all kinds, and compelled to quarry for themselves. There is room for a great variety of projects, and for individual and group work in the form of lecturettes, reports and discussions. It must be remembered too, that the past is everywhere about us, and a live teaching of history will send pupils out of school on visits and expeditions of many kinds.
356. The other unity which young minds can grasp is that of events and achievements comprised within the life of one man or woman; hence full use should be made of the biographical method. Judicious selection is everything here; and it must be kept in mind that "significance for the world of today" is not to be measured by nearness or remoteness in time; Caesar and Mahomet mean much more for the understanding of our world than does Bolingbroke.
357. It is argued that the topical and the biographical treatment of the past are alike insufficient, in that they give little training in that discernment of cause and effect which is the essence of historical study. So far as the charge is true, this limitation is inevitable; for it inheres not in a particular method but in the immaturity of the pupil. It is only an illusion that the conventional teaching of history escapes it: when a boy of fourteen or fifteen is invited to give the "causes" of the Wars of the Roses, he does not cunningly separate out the significant strands from the complex web of history; he merely parrots what another has set down in the textbook or on the blackboard.
358. Wise teaching must be content to garner what each stage of childhood and youth can yield; and, instead of straining after the unattainable, namely, the power of analysis and a grasp of the causal nexus of events, we should be satisfied if young secondary pupils catch through feeling and imagination something of the glory and travail of the human past. To "admire and bow the head before the romance of destiny"† is not the only lesson of historical study, but it is much if young people are touched to a gallant pity for the "toiling hands of mortals" and the "unwearied feet."
359. Like the understanding of causality, the accurate time-sense comes only with the years, and its maturing cannot be hastened by the mere learning of dates. But, as we point out in our Report on Primary Education, some idea of sequence may be got by using graduated time-lines for each topic, and from a comparison of these charts will emerge a rough idea of time-relations, and incidentally some knowledge of dates.
360. Two matters call for comment - (1) the importance of very recent history, and (2) the significance of local history.
(i) Importance of recent History
361. It is a teasing problem for the history teacher that the period most vital to the understanding of current affairs, namely the last 150 years, seems to hold most difficulty and least appear for young students. In history above all
*We have in mind such work as the many volumes of "A History of Everyday Things" by M. & C. H. B. Quennell Batsford.
†R. L. Stevenson - Dedication to Catriona; and EI Dorado.
[page 78]
subjects much must be left unfinished, but it is generally felt to be intolerable that boys and girls should leave school with almost no knowledge of the nineteenth century. If then some attempt must be made to teach the recent past, and it proves both intractable and unattractive when treated as a "period", we suggest that here too a topical approach may give better results. "Nineteenth century history can be for the not-too-bright an arid waste of treaties and alliances, but a discussion of the present world situation going back at various points to its nineteenth century origin can be a very different thing."* What gives especial urgency to this problem is the fact that any dynamic teaching of civics (as distinct from the imparting of some factual information) depends so largely on the nineteenth century coming alive for the boys and girls in our schools.
(ii) Significance of local History
362. Nothing can be better or worse than local history. To start from the rich vividly-felt reality in which the pupil lives is the merest common sense, and some of the most telling illustrations for the teaching of universal history may be drawn from the familiar material of the local past. It is not smallness of physical scale but pettiness of spirit that makes local history mean and distorting. Local men and events do not gain moment merely by being ours: such an idea is not history but egotistic parochialism. But, if we can see that the meaning and dignity of our own annals reside in their representative human quality: that is, if we can bring them "into organic relation with the whole process of man's history", then it is impossible to exaggerate the value of their study for young and impressionable minds.
(4) COURSE FOR VERY ABLE PUPILS
363. Throughout this section on social studies we have had in mind primarily the 80 per cent of children who range from intelligent to dull, not the small minority with high intellectual powers. We do not suggest that for the latter the traditional teaching of history and geography has been largely ineffective, but we are convinced that even they have much to gain from the more homely and topical approach we have proposed. While, therefore, the course for the very able should be different, it should differ not by reverting to a chronological treatment of periods but rather by enriching the biographical and topical material through the infusion of a much bigger element of political history, There is, of course, no objection in principle to a picked class making a careful study of a period of history before the School Certificate is taken; but it should be done to acquire not a mass of historical fact but a technique of study which the serious student may later apply to any stretch of history, be it Scottish, British or European.
(5) VIth FORM WORK
364. When the VIth Form is reached, the nature and scope of social studies change. They then become the freely chosen pursuits of able boys and girls rapidly maturing in their intellectual powers, and most of the limitations of the full study of history and geography are left behind. At this stage the history teacher may properly begin to enforce "the rigour of the game" and demand something very different from the spontaneous response of children to the colour and pathos of the human story. Much time can now be given with utmost profit to a subject that combines the austere discipline of a science with a rich humanistic appeal.
*The Content of Education, p. 167.
[page 79]
365. We do not venture on any detailed suggestions as to the content of advanced courses in history; but we hope they will always have as their first aim not the amassing of historical facts but that training in critical judgment, in the mustering and weighing of evidence, which is the best reward of historical study and a great need of our time. This would seem to imply some concentration on short periods and extensive use of source-material. We hope that much good work will be done along the lines followed with great success by Dr. F. C. Happold at The Perse School and at Bishop Wordsworth's.
366. Although VIth Form geography must do justice to the scientific side of the subject, it should never become simply a science. On the contrary, great stress should still be laid on the human aspects, and the closest affinity of the subject should be with those studies in modern history and elementary economics which will engage the interest of an increasing number of good students in the years ahead.
367. The vexatious limitations imposed by the immaturity of pupils during the earlier years and the great importance of social studies for the public life of our country are the justification for making them a "compulsion" throughout the VIth Form. Accordingly, we recommend that all VIth Form pupils not taking full courses in history or geography should give at least two periods weekly to the continued study of social science. What we have in mind is not any truncated or small-scale textbook course, but some consideration of historical, geographical and economic factors as they are operative in current events: and the method of approach should not be by lectures, but through guided reading combined with group discussion under the direction of a highly qualified teacher.
5. Classics
(1) GENERAL
368. It is very hard to make suitable provision for dispossessed royalty, and no small part of the difficulty in discussing the place of classics in our schools lies in the contrast between the regal, indeed the imperial, sway they exercised for centuries and their necessarily more modest station in the contemporary world. Proposals which in other circumstances might have been accounted generous seem against the background of so great a past little short of a betrayal.
369. We accept as indisputable the claim that what Greece and Rome have given to modern civilisation is unique and irreplaceable and that, if our political and cultural life is not to be grievously impoverished, the classical inheritance must in every generation be interpreted anew by men and women who have drunk deep of the ancient springs. It follows that we desire to see a due proportion of our ablest minds turning as they have always done to the classical disciplines and that we should regard the provision for secondary education in Scotland as gravely defective if in any corner of our land an able boy were denied his entry into the ancient inheritance because there was no one qualified to guide him. We approve the insistence of the Scottish Education Department that classics and not Latin alone must be the basis of recognition as a specialist teacher, and we strongly recommend that every secondary school offering courses of four years or more should have on its staff a classical honours graduate fully qualified to teach both languages. We have a twofold concern to secure this provision, firstly to safeguard Greek, and secondly for a reason that will presently appear.
[page 80]
370. We deplore the extinction of Greek in so many schools that have in their day produced fine classical scholars. Admittedly there is no remedy in compulsion; but there is a counter-compulsion of a negative sort which is equally indefensible - the forcing of an able boy or girl to turn away from Greek to other studies either because no teacher is available or because his time is grudged to the few. We consider it both unfair and wholly unsatisfactory that a school should profess to give facilities for the study of Greek and then in fact leave keen youngsters to struggle along almost unaided at the back of another class. There is a time to forget numbers and remember quality; and so far from being wastefully used the periods given to enable even one or two gifted pupils to learn Greek will in the end give a good return.
(2) WIDESPREAD TEACHING OF LATIN
371. It will be evident that we concede to a classical education carried to university level many of the merits claimed for it; and we are in no doubt as to the great value of such a training for minds of high quality. But the real problem lies elsewhere. It is not how to justify the teaching of classics to the gifted few, but how to defend the inclusion of Latin in the curriculum of the many ordinary boys and girls who will go but a little way and that with difficulty.
372. We submit that some of the more ardent protagonists of Latin have not always helped their own cause. They have rested the case for Latin on its value as formal mental discipline, clinging to a doctrine of "transfer of training" which no longer commends itself to the dispassionate investigator. They have made claims for Latin in connection with the study of English which are so grossly overstated as to be self-discrediting. They have catalogued the indisputable rewards of finished classical scholarship and then calmly attached them to that halting and truncated study of Latin with which the schools are all too familiar. Some have even sought to silence honest misgivings by the assurance that "no boy was ever the worse for three or four years of Latin" - a reflection which does equal despite to the dignity of classics and to the preciousness of school time.
373. We feel that the case against the widespread teaching of Latin is formidable and merits a more fundamental reply than is usually forthcoming. Stripped of irrelevances the issue is this - are we justified in devoting to the study of a classical language a fifth of all the time ordinary secondary pupils have available for bookish subjects?
374. We are satisfied that such a claim will never be established on any incidental benefits of Latin study whether real or alleged. To the supposed training value as commonly stated we attach little credence. Similarly, if there were no more in question than the real but limited help Latin affords in the study of English and other subjects, it would be arguable that the direct additional allocation to these studies of far less time than Latin requires would give a much better return.
375. The crucial questions are these. Can we, with a period a day for four years, give pupils of good average parts a real contact with and interest in Latin literature, and some understanding of classical history and civilization? And are these fruits of Latin study not merely benefits but benefits at least as great as any that could accrue to young people, were the time given to Latin used in other ways? We are convinced that, unless these two questions can be answered in the affirmative, the next generation will see a progressive shrinkage in the place occupied by Latin in the secondary school curriculum.
[page 81]
376. No such affirmative answers could honestly be given in support of the kind of Latin course boys and girls are following in most Scottish schools today. On what does the pupil who has taken Lower Latin in the Senior Leaving Certificate look back? On an expenditure of some six or seven hundred hours, about half of which have been devoted to the learning of grammatical forms, the memorising of words and rules and the turning of many hundreds of English sentences - into Latin. The rest has gone on the reading of Latin, mostly of a military or narrative cast, often in short disconnected extracts drawn from a narrow range of authors and treated with no more than incidental reference to ancient life and history. To suggest that the run of such pupils have any real mastery of the language, any connected picture of Roman life and history or any sense of having reached an objective is to fly in the face of the facts. The naked dullness of the course is well symbolised in the Lower Latin paper itself - two prose unseens, a set of detached sentences and some snippets of grammar.
377. If we do not yet despair of Latin for ordinary boys and girls, it is because we believe that the present dreary programme can be radically changed and that the time is ripe for doing so. Leaving aside for the moment the few who will pursue classical studies to university level, we indicate the lines on which we think un specialised Latin study should proceed during the School Certificate years.
378. The study of Latin should normally be confined to the A and B pupils (i.e. to the third of the age group whose intelligence quotients range from about 108 upwards). The sufficient ground for this limitation is not that Latin is wholly worthless for pupils below this level but simply that there are more valuable ways of using their time.
(3) COURSES IN LATIN
379. Latin courses should be planned for a minimum of four years, and pupils should not as a rule be encouraged to enter on the study of a classical language unless there is a reasonable hope that they will complete the School Certificate stage. To justify shorter courses requires a faith in the training value of Latin, which we do not share. This recommendation does not, of course, rule out the teaching of Latin in a three-year school which normally passes on some of its pupils to more advanced studies elsewhere.
380. The first year of Latin needs little change. Sound and interesting courses are available, which provide for the systematic learning of necessary forms and basic vocabulary, together with practice in the turning of easy sentences into Latin. The simple reading material usually gives a first introduction to Roman legend and history. But the main objective in the first year is a thorough mastery of the essentials of accidence, and, provided the teacher imparts some vigour and liveliness to his class-drill, this can be attained without undue difficulty.
381. From the second year onward, however, the course, in our opinion, requires radical alteration. The teaching should have a twofold aim: to give the maximum ability to read and understand Latin, and to present a simple but connected account of the main course of Greek and Roman history, with some appreciation of what classical civilisation achieved and of our debt to it.
382. Such a programme leaves no room for that systematic practice in written composition, whether of sentences or of continuous prose, which has till now absorbed from a third to two-fifths of all the time given to the study of
[page 82]
Latin. We believe that in general this time has been ill spent, yielding on return sufficient to compensate for the curtailment of reading and the almost complete exclusion of realien which it involves.
383. Accordingly we recommend that ability to turn into Latin the familiar array of simple and complex sentences be no longer required of pupils at School Certificate stage. We wish the Latin teacher left free to give just as much or as little sentence-drill as his experience proves to be useful for the grasp of essential syntax and the understanding of Latin. Such drill can be carried through, much of it orally, with a very limited vocabulary and at no great cost in time.
(a) Translation
384. Translation from Latin is beset by two major problems - (1) the inherent difficulty of the process for all but the most gifted of pupils, and (2) the dearth of suitable reading material for young students.
(i) The Inherent Difficulty of the Process
385. There need be no fear of making translation too easy: even if every difficulty of vocabulary were removed, it is still hard for children to cope with word order, syntactic usage and above all with the periodic structure of the Latin sentence. We suggest, therefore, that classical teachers take thought how they can ease the burden and increase the pace of reading in Latin. Is there any reason why the rarer words should not be given in footnotes, or lists of them in the order of the text be compiled and supplied to the pupil? Were this done, the Latin teacher would be in a much stronger position to demand a real effort to master those relatively frequent words the learning of which is a condition of steady progress in Latin reading.
386. Some grammatical study there must be, but we hope that, with the demands of prose composition out of the way, there will be much less use of the Latin text as a peg on which to hang continual discussion of grammatical detail. It is possible to do justice to the form and yet to remember what much Latin teaching has ignored, that we read books primarily for their content.
387. It were excess of optimism to hint that there may still await discovery some method of approach to Latin reading that will give an easier mastery of its many difficulties. Nevertheless, there is room for experiment even here, and we suggest in particular that Scots teachers might consider what success American schools have had with the Hale Method, which substitutes for our very analytical attack on the Latin period an effort at direct comprehension as the pupil reads. Nothing should be ruled out - except dogmatic complacency.
(ii) Dearth of Suitable Reading Material
388. The difficulty of finding Latin reading of moderate hardness and high intrinsic interest is a commonplace; but as Professor J. S. Phillimore* pointed out nearly forty years ago, the problem has been aggravated by the prim narrowness of our canon and by a ridiculous preoccupation with prose composition.
189. It is strangely inconsistent to base the case for Latin on an unbroken tradition from Ennius to Erasmus, and then to confine pupils' reading to a few
*Introduction to "Latin of the Empire", by Gillies and Cumming.
[page 83]
names within a single brief period. Caesar, Livy, Nepos - just how much outside these three does the average Lower Latin candidate ever read? And yet there is a world of material inviting judicious selection (and, if need be, simplification) in Pliny and Seneca, Ovid and Martial, in the Fathers and the Latin Vulgate, in the Hymns, the Chronicles and Erasmus. There is much room for innovation here, and we urge classical teachers to get together and make up anthologies of Latin passages, with a catholicity of taste as wide as the whole sweep of Latin writing.
390. We are not for a moment suggesting that the Latin of the great classical period be set aside. So far as it is suitable in difficulty and content, it will always have the first claim; but no merely conventional ideas or supposed requirements of prose composition should confine the schools to what is either dull or unnecessarily hard, when lively material of much less difficulty is available.
(b) Knowledge of the Ancient World
391. The good teacher will always impart considerable background knowledge of the Roman world in the actual reading of texts, but the evidence is conclusive that this is not nearly enough. We hold that the main business of the classical teacher is to convey to buys and girls who will at best have "small Latin and less Greek", an adequate picture of that ancient world which has so largely determined the shape and spirit of our own. To this end the study of Latin or Greek is a means, but not the only one.
(c) Greek and Roman History
392. During the second and third years there should be systematic teaching of Greek and Roman history. In the preface to his "Roman Commonwealth", the Headmaster of Harrow justified the large amount of space devoted to Greek history in a book about Rome by pointing out that the ancient Mediterranean civilisation was essentially one and that a large part of the significance of Rome is as the transmitter or mediator of Hellenic culture. We think this a sound view and strongly recommend the inclusion of Greek history as well as Roman.
393. Such teaching of ancient history need not be chronological and formalised. It should rather be a treatment of topics designed to give young people not a large mass of factual information but a clear idea of the distinctive values of Greek and Roman culture, and some insight into those familiar problems of national and inter-national life which emerged and had to be faced within the simpler setting of the Graeco-Roman world. But we think that the teaching of classical background should include much more than history in the stricter sense. Especially during the last three or four terms of a School Certificate course, pupils should be invited to consider with the teacher how the Romans (or the Greeks) reacted to various aspects of human experience: what feeling had they for nature and scenic beauty; what place did they give to women and children; what was the nature of classical humour, or the quality of their patriotism; were they generous in public life and tolerant in private; what conclusions about them can we draw from the work of their hands; and so on. With this kind of teaching about the Greeks and Romans the schools have scarcely made a beginning, so busy have they been with the niceties of syntax and the impossible demands of composition.
[page 84]
(4) USE OF TRANSLATIONS
394. Almost inexplicable is the failure of classical teaching to make sensible use of translations. We refer to this in connection with modern languages, but it is even more puzzling in Latin and Greek where the difficulty of reading in the original and. the small amount of ground covered make it doubly necessary to supplement it with wide and wisely directed study of the classics in English. A translation, we are told, gives little or nothing of the original and is largely useless. We reject this view as perverse and exaggerated. In poetry much is lost, but by no means all, as is evident from a study of the Oxford Book of Greek Verse in English, while prose well rendered yields almost all its content and something of the characteristic excellence of its form. If this be doubted, a masterpiece like Cornford's "Republic" is a vindication of the claim in perhaps the hardest case of all. But the general refutation of the uselessness of translation lies in the fact that no one applies this despairing doctrine to German or Russian or the Scandinavian languages, or seriously suggests that in regard to Goethe or Tolstoi or Ibsen there is no mid-way between complete ignorance and the full understanding which comes from mastery of the original text.
395. We should like to see what a good classical teacher could do, given a group of intelligent boys three times a week and armed only with Rieu's "Odyssey", Cornford's "Republic", a few of Gilbert Murray's translations of Greek plays, and Mackall's "Selections from the Greek Anthology". It might be found at the year's end that they had acquired a juster sense of the Hellenic genius than sometimes rewards the toilsome labour of the Greek classroom.
396. We have dwelt on the use of translations, because, whatever the intransigent classic may feel, the schools cannot afford the heroics of the all-or-nothing attitude. If the modern world is to be kept alive to the abiding interest and appositeness of classical culture, it is for those who know and love the ancient languages to use every device for passing on something of their riches, not rejecting the opportunities of the twentieth century because they cannot recreate the conditions of the eighteenth.
(5) FUNCTION OF THE CLASSICAL TEACHER
397. Such an approach to the classics as we have been advocating implies a major change in the function of the classical teacher and in the relative positions of Latin and Greek. It will be plain now why we recommended that every secondary school should have a classical honours graduate on its staff. We hope to see him using his scholarship as interpreter to a whole school of the two great civilisations - not doomed, as so many have long been, to pass his days almost wholly within a round of quite elementary Latin teaching. We believe that with this wider conception of their function classically trained men and women will exercise a much more varied and potent influence in the schools. They will, as always, do good work with the few who have it in them to become classical students; they will give a better service to the average boy by combining the teaching of one or other classical language with a wide and stimulating treatment of the ancient civilisation as a whole; and through courses in Greek and Roman history their influence may extend to many who will never enter on the formal study of the classics. In the VIth Form particularly, such teaching may be of the utmost value to boys and girls whose days are largely given over to scientific and practical studies.
(6) STUDY OF GREEK
398. It follows from our whole attitude towards the teaching of classics that we attach especial value to the study of Greek, and we suggest that where
[page 85]
only one classical language can be taken up the claims of Greek should be carefully weighed against those of Latin. The suggestion has been made from time to time; but, so long as the doctrine of mental training remained unshaken and great stress was laid on the secondary advantages of Latin, it seemed a little freakish and unreal. But, if we are right in holding that in the end the inclusion of a classical language can be justified only on its intrinsic merits - the interest of its study, the range and excellence of its literature and the value of the culture it enshrines - then the case for Greek becomes very strong. Moreover, it has a great advantage over Latin in the availability of reading material of moderate difficulty and superlative quality. While, therefore, we do not expect any landslide away from Latin, we recommend that, where staffing allows, it should be possible to take Greek as a first or sole classical language.
(7) CONTINUED INTEREST AFTER SCHOOLDAYS
399. How far this unspecialised classical education we have been outlining would produce the fruits of continued interest in Greece and Rome once schooldays were past, we cannot profess to know; but at the lowest it could not fail so dismally as the present system does with thousands of boys and girls who devote four or five years to the almost unrelieved linguistic study of Latin. They leave school with virtually no knowledge of Roman history and life, bored with the endless round of proses and unseens and determined never to open a Latin book again.
400. No magic will ever enable pupils to read Latin or Greek freely at the end of a School Certificate course; but with such a training as we advocate they might combine a limited power of reading a classical language with a considerable store of knowledge about the Greeks and Romans and some idea of the sources from which more is to be learned. Is it too much to hope that some at least might go on, not to become classical scholars, but to take down a Loeb, Virgil or Homer, a Terence or a Herodotus once in a while? What they would get from it would be much less than the full reward of scholarship, but it would be much more than a wise man would willingly forego.
(8) CONCLUSlON
401. We do not feel it necessary to speak at length of the kind of training appropriate for those who have the ability and the intention to carry the study of classics to a high level. As in other subjects, the traditional ways suit them much better than their less gifted fellows, and they do benefit from certain disciplines which the others find unprofitable and dull. But even for the able minority the present classical course is open to the double objection that it neglects ancient history and much overdoes the practice of prose composition. We think that the rendering of anything but the simplest continuous English into Latin or Greek, and similarly the translation of highly idiomatic sentences, belong to the university stage. Accordingly, while we take for granted a good standard in classics at the Higher School Certificate, we recommend (1) that the demands in composition should be very moderately pitched, and (2) that general questions on ancient history and civilisation be included, with a sufficient allowance of marks to make it evident that they constitute an important part of the tests.
402. We are convinced that the position of classics in Scottish schools is indeed precarious, though not always for the reasons adduced by their defenders. If we propose great changes in the teaching of Latin, it is because we believe
[page 86]
that at present the subject is dead for a majority of those who take it, and that, unless it is revitalised, it may in the absence of compulsion go the way of Greek and within a decade be deserted by all but a few.
6. Modern Languages
403. In a memorandum issued in 1907 the Scottish Education Department made this remarkable pronouncement; "The knowledge of a language other than the mother tongue is not a necessary part of the equipment of an educated mind." In Chapter V we made clear our unqualified acceptance of this view and our equally strong conviction that it does not detract in the least from the great value of language learning for those who are able to profit by it.
404. In considering the place of modern languages in the secondary school we have tried to answer these questions:
(a) What languages should be taught and what are the aims in teaching them?
(b) How should they be taught?
(c) To what proportion of pupils can they be taught?
The questions are, of course, intertwined, but it is convenient to take them in the order given.
(1) WHAT LANGUAGES SHOULD BE TAUGHT?
405. Never in history have men been more conscious of the need for international understanding and of the extent to which differences of language may be a barrier to it. Yet, to clear thinking it is evident that a complete cure for Babel must come not by futile attempts to fill the world with polyglots but by the agreed adoption of a common tongue for international communication, whether it be some simplification of a natural language or one of artificial construction. But, short of that heroic step, we could as a nation ensure one thing - that over the country as a whole each main language was understood and spoken by considerable groups of our people. At the moment we are very far from realising that aim. Our secondary schools instruct a large number of boys and girls in French, a very limited number in German, a mere handful in Spanish, and there the matter ends.
406. On international grounds the virtual monopoly of French is as unwarranted as the neglect of other dominant tongues is deplorable, and we submit that the other reasons for learning languages strengthen rather than weaken the case for a much wider and more even spread of language teaching. The qualities that commend any particular language we take to be three - (1) that it expresses a noble culture in an extensive literature suitable for young minds; (2) that it is easy to acquire; and (3) that it is of practical use.
407. It seems to us that the extreme claims for French rest on an exaggerated emphasis on (1) and a minimising of (2) and (3). Few would dispute that of all nations France has made the largest single contribution to European culture and the one that has most profoundly influenced our own. But it is easy to forget that the point at issue is not what a consummate scholar will gain from one culture as against another, but rather what fragments ordinary folk will carry away, and surely the truth is that each of the main European literatures enshrines a civilisation so great that the ungifted will assimilate but a fraction of it. Hence any one of the languages is the key to riches far
[page 87]
beyond our using. Moreover, we must set against the exceptional merits of French literature the sophistication and the strain of sentiment that make some of it not wholly suitable for young students.
408. We conclude, therefore, that on cultural grounds French would secure a high but not an exclusive place, even if it were conceding no advantage to any rival under heads (2) and (3). But even its strongest advocates hardly contend that it matches Spanish and Italian in ease of acquisition, or Russian and Spanish in utility. Admittedly, all languages alike are hard at the higher levels of scholarship, but what concerns us here is that in spelling and accents, in intonation and above all perhaps in its peculiarly idiomatic texture, French presents unusual difficulty at the earlier stage, and that in consequence young students of ordinary ability do not make the progress or enjoy the sense' of achievement that are possible in Spanish or Italian, and to a less degree in German.
409. Great as are the claims of Russian on cultural and practical grounds, our evidence is definite that the language is difficult and that younger secondary pupils would make little progress in it, unless conditions could be created for them almost equivalent to prolonged residence among Russian-speaking people.
410. When all the criteria are taken together, Spanish has, in our opinion, clear title to a much more important place in the secondary school than has been accorded to it, and we anticipate a steady growth in its popularity.
411. To sum up, we are satisfied that the primary need is for a considerably wider provision of language teaching in our secondary schools, in the sense that while relatively few pupils might study more than one and few schools offer more than two or three, the country as a whole would be recognising the importance of all the principal European languages and giving knowledge of them to large numbers of people. These groups would be focal points of interest in the civilisations of the languages they knew and interpreters to their fellow nationals of the characteristics of some one member of the European family. We count it of good omen that this policy is strongly supported by the Association of Directors of Education.
412. Within this wider scheme French would still occupy a prominent place, especially for such pupils as were to carry their language studies to university level, but that place should be something much less than the present almost exclusive possession. In particular, the strong claims of German for prospective science students should be much more widely admitted, while for the mass of average pupils whose language studies are to be neither profound nor prolonged, we believe that Spanish will be more and more recognised as on the whole the most satisfactory choice.
413. The ethnological, cultural and commercial associations of particular areas may justify the provision of teaching in languages that have hitherto lain outside the orbit of the schools, e.g. Aberdeen and the East Coast might well find a place in certain schools for one or more of the Scandinavian tongues.
414. We realise that the problem of finding suitably qualified teachers precludes rapid, large-scale change in the incidence of language teaching; but it is important that a start be made, and progress should not be slowed by a too finicking insistence on academic qualifications which cannot in general be forthcoming in the immediate future.
[page 88]
(2) HOW SHOULD LANGUAGES BE TAUGHT?
415. To the vexed question - How should languages be taught? Our witnesses are emphatic in reply that it must be in ways very different from the present practice of the schools.
416. We have made a fetish of the power to write formal compositions in the foreign language, with its inevitable concomitant of close grammatical study; and so, for the shadow of an accomplishment as generally useless as it is excessively difficult, we have sacrificed the substance of two good and quite attainable things - the ability to read the language and to speak it simply. Such unwisdom is hard to account for, until one compares a Senior Leaving Certificate French paper with its Latin counterpart and notes how close is the correspondence between them. Conformity to the long established classical modes was the price French and German had finally to pay for entree to the best educational circles, and the price has been disastrously high.
417. Fortunately, there is almost complete unanimity about the urgency of reform and the direction it should take; and, in fairness to the Scottish Education Department, it should be said that its own memorandum M143, issued on the very eve of war in 1939, laid down the principles of modern language teaching with such sanity and enlightenment that it remains only to translate them into practice.
418. The learning of a foreign language must start, as did the native one, in aural comprehension of the spoken tongue. This means training pupils to listen and to reproduce the sounds and words, with sensible use of the phonetic symbols and early recourse to simultaneous reading as a respite from the strain of unrelieved speaking of the foreign tongue in the class-room. Once pupils can pronounce, they should be taught to read from the printed page orally. The ability to read by looking comes later, and the need for intensive oral training persists throughout the first year.
419. An extensive course of reading, beginning with specially simplified material, should lead to increasing understanding of ordinary narrative and conversation. The subject matter can be lively and informative, without being trivial, and grammatical explanation should be introduced simply as required. As the course proceeds, there should be constant reference to the cultural background, the pupil's interest being more and more engaged in the life and customs of the people whose language he is studying.
420. It will be seen how far removed this teaching for comprehension and oral use is from the familiar alternation of "translation from" and "translation into".
421. In the early stages of a foreign language course some limited use of translation, or more correctly of a "construe", is no doubt necessary as a check on understanding, but what is not sufficiently realised is that the continued and continual use of this device becomes in due course a check to understanding, for the child's comprehension of what he is reading is constantly being arrested by the necessity of finding supposed English equivalents.
422. Again, when a high degree of proficiency in a language has been acquired, translation becomes an admirable exercise for able students, but it implies a large command of both languages and a sensitiveness to functional equivalence and shades of meaning that are denied to all but the talented. To demand such an intellectual activity from ordinary pupils with a very limited mastery of the foreign tongue serves only to corrupt the use of their
[page 89]
own by habituating them to a jargon that has no existence outside the mistaken routine of the class-room. If it be asked how one is to test the pupil's understanding of a passage otherwise than by translation, the obvious answer is by questioning him on it and having him state its substance either in English or, at a more advanced stage, in the language studied.
423. Nothing but the immemorial practice of composing into Latin and Greek could have blinded us to the unnaturalness of the kind of composition we have been wont to require in modern languages. Such exercises may be a proper part of the advanced study of a language, but for young students they are condemned as much by their uselessness as by their extreme difficulty and the vast expenditure of time and energy they involve. At worst - as every examiner knows - they are a farrago of nonsense and grammatical confusion; at best, a pastiche of idiomatic tags culled mainly from text-books and reproduced by an effort of memory.
424. It must not be thought, however, that in condemning "synthetic" composition we envisage lengthy courses in a language, with no writing of it at all. That would never happen. There is evidence that, if children are well taught on the lines we have sketched, a time comes when they want to write French or Spanish and experience the liveliest pleasure in exercising their ability to do so. But such writing is an unforced use of vocabulary, forms and turns of expression which they have learned in living contexts, employed to convey ideas that are either their own or congenial to their age and experience. Such "composition", as it were, flows from the pupil and is as agreeable as the other is distasteful.
425. In this brief discussion of teaching method, we have not attempted to disjoin the two alms of learning to read and learning to speak, for our witnesses have told us that they must go together. Because the ability to read is so much the most easily attainable and the most precious reward for a limited study of a language, some of us were minded to propose that it should be sought directly and with an economy of effort that excluded speaking as well as writing. Experienced teachers have convinced us, however, that, while such an approach is feasible for the adult, especially in the learning of a second or a third foreign language, it would be psychologically quite unreal for young students. To a child a language is never primarily something to read but always something to hear and speak: hence, even if the goal be reading ability, it must be reached by the way of oral and aural practice that we have described. We record this conclusion, because others may, like ourselves, have failed to appreciate that this is essentially a case in which the young beginner at least must get "to Paradise by way of Kensal Green".
426. The question whether this less formal approach to language learning would suffice for all types up to School Certificate stage we answer in the affirmative, being assured that the systematic study of syntax and composition could be covered by specialised work in the VIth Form. A reading of the last paragraph of M143 suggests that even in 1939 the mind of the Scottish Education Department had already moved far in that direction.
427. It is obvious that such revolutionary changes in the method and content of language teaching imply a complete departure from the traditional requirements of the Senior Leaving Certificate, with its excessive emphasis on translation and composition, its scant attention to comprehension and oral proficiency and its neglect of the cultural background. While the new School Certificate will not be awarded on external examination, we think it wise to
[page 90]
indicate briefly the factors of which account should be taken in any general assessment of a four years' course in a modern language.
(1) Oral and aural proficiency should be thoroughly tested and the weight given to it such as to reflect its prime importance in modern language study.
(2) Power of comprehension should be carefully assessed, but the best forms of test can be determined only in the light of experience as this side of the work is more fully developed. At School Certificate stage the answers should probably be in English.
(3) The Scottish Education Department should ensure that due attention is paid to the history, culture and life of the people whose language is being studied. This background knowledge might form material for oral practice and testing.
(4) Translation from the foreign language should bulk less large, and the rendering of poetry into English should not in general be expected at this stage, though passages of narrative verse, if not too heavy in vocabulary, might prove suitable for tests of comprehension.
(5) Neither set compositions nor sentences of an elaborate kind should be a compulsory part of any School Certificate syllabus in a modern language.
428. We draw attention to the extreme importance of securing a good start in a modern language. It follows that only able teachers should be allowed to take beginners' classes and that, wherever possible, the Ist and IInd Years at least should be treated as "practical classes" and the numbers limited to about twenty.
429. We are satisfied that wireless and the gramophone (especially if teachers can secure the production of records wholly suitable in content) have a fruitful part to play in the teaching of modern languages, and education authorities should grudge the provision of such aids as little as they do the proper equipment of the laboratories. The same reminder applies to the supplying of maps, pictures and other material illustrative of the history and culture of countries studied. One useful form of such material would be good translations of a large number of works of literary merit for use by the pupils. It is astonishing how rarely in either ancient or modern language study the necessarily limited reading of texts in the original is supplemented by the sensible use of translations.
(3) TO WHAT PROPORTION OF PUPILS CAN LANGUAGES BE TAUGHT?
430. We have carefully considered whether, with changed methods and objectives, the teaching of a modern language could be extended to a bigger proportion of secondary pupils, but have been unable to reach a firm conclusion. It seems clear that a good many of the boys and girls in senior secondary schools who are attempting a language might be better employed, and our witnesses did not encourage the belief that many short-course pupils who could profit by language study are denied it. On the other hand, it has been put to us that some of the abler youngsters in junior secondary schools themselves feel that in a non-language course they are missing something they would have enjoyed. One would not lightly disregard such a feeling, but there is the restraining thought that to indulge the wish for a language may mean excluding from the schooling of these children something else which would have proved of more solid worth to them. We think there is room for experi-
[page 91]
ment here in regard to the better C's at least, and we recommend that headmasters should be free to try such pupils with simple Spanish or French.
431. There is general agreement that, unless for boys and girls of marked ability, one foreign language is enough at School Certificate stage.
432. French teachers and Latin teachers are united in thinking that only one foreign language should be begun at the outset of a secondary course. They are equally certain that to postpone their own subject till the IInd Year is to ruin it. If the difficulties of timetable and staffing can be got over, it seems as if the able minority who are to take two languages might begin with one and add the other at the end of a half-session.
433. We suggested in an earlier chapter of this Report that the VIth Form should give a big place to language work, and we would emphasise that this stage should be marked not merely by the greater range of languages studied but by much variety of approach. There would, of course, be provision for the continuance and consolidation of language study already carried to School Certificate level. Some will wish to begin a language for the first time, others to add a second or a third. A School Certificate pass may be the objective in one case, a purely reading knowledge (possible now for the sixteen year old) in another, while a third may concentrate on conversational command of the language, with little reference to literary texts. It is obvious that radio and gramophone will figure largely in such language learning, and we hope that a predilection for the more orthodox textbook will not rule out the use by senior pupils of some of the excellent little manuals built up, like Basic English, on scientific study of word frequency and essential syntactic usage. The use of such books may well mean an economy of time.
434. We recommend that every encouragement be given to the study of Russian at this stage. What was impossible with ordinary pupils of twelve or thirteen because of the difficulty of the language becomes relatively easy with selected boys and girls of sixteen or more; and, unless we ensure that a due proportion of our able senior pupils, destined for commerce, technology or administration, are given a working knowledge of the principal language of the U.S.S.R., we shall be guilty of inexcusable blindness to the realities of the world situation.
435. To allay a very natural concern, we express our belief that much of this varied VIth Form language study need not make heavy demands on teaching time: indeed, we go further and say that, unless ample room is left for pupil initiative and self-help, a great deal of the distinctive merit of VIth Form work will be lost.
436. As the fitting crown to language study at the top of the school, we strongly recommend that education authorities should make it possible for able boys and girls who have made good progress in a language to have a term's residence abroad, but always under conditions which ensure their entering into the normal life of the country and continually hearing and speaking its language.
(4) GAELIC
437. Where pupils enter the secondary school already able to speak Gaelic, the systematic study of that language is, we believe, the best linguistic training that can be offered them. They can look to attain in it a proficiency far greater than would reward a corresponding attention to French or Spanish;
[page 92]
and they have the key to a literature which, since it enshrines the experience of their own race, will come home to them with an intimacy of appeal no other could rival.
438. Every secondary school in a Gaelic-speaking area ought, therefore, to have a fully qualified teacher of the language on its staff, and facilities for the study of Gaelic either alone or in conjunction with Latin should always be available. There should not, however, be an indirect compulsion to take Gaelic, arising from the denial of the opportunity to study any other foreign language.
439. We further recommend that in large centres, where there is a considerable population of Celtic origin, facilities for learning Gaelic should be available in one school at least.
440; But we cannot support the claim of An Comunn Gaidhealach that Gaelic should have complete parity with other foreign languages in all the secondary schools of Scotland. Even were it possible to find all the specialist teachers required - and no one knows better than An Comunn how wildly impossible it would be within any measurable period - we think the position untenable for the following reasons:
(1) For the pupil with no previous knowledge, Gaelic is not easier but much harder than the romance languages; indeed we are told that to reach even the Lower Standard in the Senior Leaving Certificate would mean five years of very hard work, except for the most gifted.
(2) The utility value of Gaelic is not high.
(3) While Gaelic Literature is rich in appeal for those to whom it is native, it could hardly be claimed that it has either the sustained greatness or the immense range and volume of the European Literatures.
7. Mathematics
441. We are in no doubt that Mathematics in Scottish schools needs a drastic overhaul. On that our witnesses were agreed; they differed only as to the precise degree of change desirable for different categories of pupils.
442. There has, of course, been some modification of content and method in the past twenty years, but the changes have been either insufficient or too narrowly applied. The existing teaching of Mathematics is least unsatisfactory with the strongest pupils and the weakest - with the former, because they are best able to cope with the pure and formal presentation of Mathematics traditional in Scotland; with the latter, because they proved so manifestly unequal to it that the schools have already been forced to abandon the old ways and to devise new courses which in their simplicity and realism take account of the needs and limitations of the pupils in question.
443. It is the great central mass of boys and girls, ranging from the weak C's well up into the B group, who have fared badly, and the dullness and futility of much school teaching of the subject has been thrown into relief by the remarkable interest shown and progress made by many of these same pupils in the mathematical work of the Air Training Corps.
444. While the schools are not blameless, much responsibility in this matter rests with the Scottish Education Department, for the nature of the Leaving Certificate papers in Mathematics has made it very difficult for the schools to break with a formal and academic treatment of the subject; nor
[page 93]
have the short-course schools found in the Department's "Note as to Mathematics" a charter of emancipation and a mandate to experiment.
(1) PROVISION FOR D, E AND THE WEAK C PUPILS
445. The provision for weak C's and the D and E pupils need not detain us long. There is general agreement as to what is possible for them, and, as we have said, the schools are already evolving modest, practical courses suited to their capacity. Little Mathematics can be required of these pupils beyond simple, everyday arithmetic, easy mensuration and the veriest elements of graphical work - with the immediate usefulness of what is being done evident at all times.
446. Arithmetic should be treated throughout as a "tool" subject, and, once research has determined the best methods, mechanical operations should be standardised over the whole country. The content of the arithmetic should be drawn from the familiar life of home, work and community, and weak pupils should never be forced beyond their powers. Accuracy in calculation and that very precious thing, a sense of achievement, are more likely to be got from abundant practice on easy examples than from laborious efforts on more difficult material.
447. Instruments and scissors should be used for simple mensuration and the making of models. It may be, however, that for these D and E pupils some idea of shape and symmetry will be secured less by direct training in geometry than from technical subjects, art or dressmaking. But if, as common-sense suggests, the work of such pupils is entrusted to only one or two teachers, there will be a considerable and very advantageous fusing of subject-contents.
448. Pupils should be shown how to use tables of the ready-reckoner type, while attendance returns, class savings, results of team matches and other familiar data may allow of simple graphical teaching and understanding.
449. On the whole, our witnesses were against any major differentiation of courses for boys and girls at this very humble level.
450. Lastly, with these children of limited powers, formal examinations should be replaced by frequent diagnostic tests, for progress depends on early discovery of the point at which the individual's difficulties or weaknesses emerge.
(2) PROVISION FOR THE BETTER C AND THE MAJORITY OF THE B PUPILS
451. When we turn to the intelligence range represented by the able pupils of the junior and the average pupils of the senior secondary school, i.e. the better C's and most of the B's, the criticism of our school Mathematics is severe. It is, we are told, divorced from reality, turned in on itself and far too much pre-occupied with these virtues of formal correctness and logical sequence which are peculiarly devoid of appeal to ordinary youngsters. Hence the lack of interest in much of what is studied and the widespread feeling that it is an irksome waste of time.
452. We set out now in detail the main points of criticism and our recommendations for reform.
(a) Geometry
453. The demands in formal plane geometry are excessive at every stage. Even for a three-year course, the Department's "Note as to Mathematics"
[page 94]
requires some 60 formal proofs, while the full Senior Leaving Certificate programme involves over 120 theorems. It is sad to think of the time and energy dissipated on the memorising (for such it largely is) and regurgitation of this mass of bookwork. The Spens Report* remarked with truth of a less terrifying list: "Only very few of the 'propositions' usually learnt have any importance, except for the development of a logical sequence." One experienced witness claims that only 20-30 of all the Leaving Certificate theorems have any application in pure or applied science, while another has suggested a reduction of the list to about 24. The new Cambridge School Certificate syllabus requires formal proofs of only 16 theorems. With the radically changed view of the place of formal geometry expressed in these judgments we are in general agreement. Admittedly the Euclidean proof is one of the high achievements of the human mind, and we consider that all pupils of the requisite intelligence should be introduced to it. But surely, for under sixteens at least, it must be a tasting by sample, not the imposition of an unrelieved diet. Moreover, the "samples" must not be forced on the pupil too soon. To introduce certain things prematurely is to waste time: there is often true economy in waiting a little. A teacher of wide experience, stressing the necessity for much measurement with instruments, much practical familiarity with spatial relationships before any geometrical reasoning begins, put the point to us strikingly - "A boy should never be asked to prove a theorem till he knows intuitively that it is true."
454. We recommend -
(1) That in a three-year course there should be no insistence on formal geometrical proofs at all; and
(2) That in no School Certificate course should the number of such proofs required exceed twenty-five; and that this more formal work should in all cases be preceded by a great deal of practical geometry and empirical proof.
(b) Algebra
455. The present content of school algebra is understandable only on the assumption that the chief end of mathematical teaching is manipulative skill. How else explain the extent to which elaborate simplifications of fractions, the manipulation of purely artificial factors, exercises on simultaneous quadratics, theory of quadratics, surds and the remainder theorem occupy the pupils' time and the Department's examination papers? Scarcely any of this arises out of natural data, and there is the same objection to the many made-up trigonometrical equations that have no root in reality. Nor is the uselessness of such exercises redeemed by their being rich in interest: on the contrary, they are for most boys and girls exceedingly dull.
456. We agree that there must be some manipulative practice on simple material, but our evidence is conclusive that the curriculum is at present choked with such "exercises in pure technique", and we recommend that the manipulative work be drastically simplified in type and reduced in amount. A two-thirds shrinkage would not seem to us too great.
(3) DIVISION INTO BRANCHES OR SUBJECTS
457. Another symptom of our excessive preoccupation with the inner ordering of mathematical truth as against the application of it to the real world is the almost invariable practice of teachers and textbooks of dividing
*See footnote to paragraph 102.
[page 95]
Mathematics into branches or subjects. This may be congenial to the mathematical thinker, but its pedagogic effects are bad. It breaks up the concrete unity of the real, obscures relationships by treating connected ideas in isolation, overloads certain branches of the subject and delays too long the introduction of others that are of singular interest and practical importance
458. By contrast, it is noteworthy that when a man sits down to make a textbook for students of Mathematics in action, he tends to produce not a Geometry or an Algebra or an Arithmetic, but simply a "Mathematics for Technical Students". The same obsession with the logical to the neglect of the psychological shows in the unwillingness to depart from the traditional arrangement of topics. Yet it is obvious that, if the child's interest is to be engaged, he must see meaning not merely in what he is doing but in the order in which he is doing it, and that, as the Council for Curriculum Reform* points out, "If the order of topics is dictated by a remote mathematical or logical principle, the whole thing seems to him arbitrary."
459. Again, it should be kept constantly in mind that historically Mathematics has been the devising of improved or alternative tools for particular jobs. Hence it is bad to have the pupil linger any longer than he need on the use of inferior tools (e.g. to delay the introduction of logarithms, slide-rule and calculus), or to decree the use of a clumsier tool where he has a better (e.g. to make him find graphically a result he could get more easily by other means), or to rule out forms of valid proof that may seem to him easier or more congenial (as when the "Note as to Mathematics", in contrast to English practice, insists that the proofs of all the area propositions must be geometrical only).
(4) GENERAL CONTENT OF SCHOOL CERTIFICATE COURSE
460. But criticism of the existing curriculum in Mathematics is not confined to the otiose or unsuitable material it includes. It is directed no less vigorously to what is excluded or treated either too lightly or too late. We, therefore, proceed to indicate what, from a consideration of our evidence, we think the general content of a School Certificate course should be.
461. The time saved by excluding the bulk of formal geometry should be devoted to a thorough training in mensuration and technical drawing - with paper, simple instruments and drawing boards, all of good quality. This should familiarise the pupil with the fundamental ideas of similarity and symmetry, should give him a working knowledge of spatial relations in general and an increasing ability to pass from concrete data to inductive reasoning, and, most important of all perhaps, should train him to see and think three-dimensionally. It is realised now that the dropping of solid geometry from the Leaving Certificate was a mistake: what should have been discarded was not the subject, excellent in itself, but that too rigid Euclidean treatment of it which made it impossibly hard for all but the mathematically gifted. We recommend that the subject be taught from the outset by the natural approach through the drawing board, the making and handling of solid models and through the relevant parts of trigonometry. Experience has shown that, treated in this practical way, solid geometry is well within the powers of average secondary pupils, and it is more than time we were rid of the reproach that a boy may pass out of school with a Higher Leaving Certificate pass in Mathematics, and encounter mechanics, optics, electricity and navigation without even having learned the relation of a line to a plane.
*"The Content of Education" p. 132.
[page 96]
462. We have spoken of the time that can be saved by the ruthless curtailment of purely manipulative work in algebra, and we assume too that the treatment of factors and equations will be much less elaborate. It is doubtful if for most pupils the study of the last should go beyond the simultaneous equation, plus a graphical treatment of quadratics. What is vitally important and needs more time than it is receiving at present is practice in the handling of formulae, for we have clear evidence that many pupils cannot do this with speed and precision and find great difficulty in expressing the formula in terms of a new subject. This is a field of practice far more profitable than the abstract handling of equations, especially if the wise dictum of the Spens Report* is borne in mind "that from the start pupils should be trained to associate the formula and the results of any manipulation of the formula with the realities for which it stands, and the teaching should constantly refer back to these realities." Our general recommendation that arithmetic be taught as a "tool" subject does not preclude some treatment of the more mathematical aspects, which will always have their own interest for the able boy or girl.
463. When we spoke of things introduced too late, we had in mind especially logarithms, the use of the slide-rule and the elements of trigonometry, and we recommend that all three be introduced in the IIIrd Year, to ensure that pupils leaving at the statutory age shall, so far as they are capable of benefiting by it, have instruction in them.
464. The teaching of logarithms and the use of the slide-rule need not be theoretical: the important thing is sufficient practice to bring home to the boy "the ease and success with which they do the work they are called on to do."†
465. Similarly, the treatment of trigonometry should be very practical, commencing, as one witness put it, "where the subject began historically, that is in the solution of right-angled triangles, then on to the more general cases, leaving the formal parts of the work till later."
466. Again, much greater emphasis must be laid on graphical work. This has a twofold importance. First, it is vital to our well-being as a society that as many people as possible should appreciate the significance of statistical data and have some little ability to interpret them. Secondly, graphical work and the plotting of data lead naturally to one of the most fruitful of mathematical concepts, that of functionality or the dependence of one quantity on another. From the plotting of points the abler pupils might pass on to examine the behaviour of the function and try to form a mental picture of it, thus preparing the way for the introduction of calculus. For we are assured by expert witnesses that, with all the dead wood of algebra and geometry cleared away, able boys and girls would find room in a School Certificate course for the beginnings both of calculus and of analytical geometry.
467. The most startling evidence of our mathematical "purity", in contrast to the greater realism of English practice, is in the complete exclusion of mechanics from most of our five-year courses. Our evidence leaves us in no doubt that this has had a debilitating effect on Scottish teaching and accounts in some part for the failure of Mathematics to come alive for so many boys and girls, who, whether we adults like it or not, have a healthy partiality for dealing with things that. belong to a real world. It is not for us to suggest in advance of experience what parts of statics and dynamics should enter into
*P. 240 footnote. (See footnote to paragraph 102).
†Spens Report, p. 239. (See footnote to paragraph 102).
[page 97]
the mathematical syllabus, but these subjects obviously offer natural fields for the application of geometry and trigonometry and for the construction and application of sensible formulae and equations.
468. Accordingly, we recommend that appropriate parts of elementary mechanics find a place in all School Certificate courses in Mathematics. We believe this will go far to vitalise Mathematics in the senior secondary school and secure from average pupils that lively interest which at present seems to attach to the subject only outside the day school. The short-course schools may find it advantageous to continue the arrangement by which certain parts of elementary mechanics fall rather into the technical subjects course. Apart from its educational justification, we hope that two important practical advantages will result from our recommendation that mechanics be given its natural place in the mathematical syllabus:
(1) That in future Scottish candidates will be on better terms with the Civil Service examiners who, strangely enough, remain unimpressed by our success in keeping school Mathematics unspotted from the world.
(2) The removal of one impediment at least to the entry of Scots lads into various training establishments, and, in particular, into what is among the finest apprenticeship centres in Europe, H.M. Dockyard at Rosyth. The handicap imposed by lack of instruction in applied mathematics has long been a hardship to the boys and a reproach to our secondary education. We realise that there are other reasons for the deplorably meagre recruitment of Scots boys to Rosyth, and we hope that early action will be taken to clear up the situation and to bring the great value of this training more effectively to the notice of our schools.
469. It will be evident that the scheme of School Certificate Mathematics we envisage bears considerable likeness to the new and very realistic syllabus for the Cambridge School Certificate, the main features of which are the severe curtailment of formal geometry, the emphasis on technical drawing, the encouragement to use instruments just as the practical man does to get his results. the employment of logarithms and slide-rule, the free use of tables, the practical reference of the questions, and above all the fusing of the mathematical subjects and the freedom given the candidate to get his result by any valid method that commends itself to him. Meantime this syllabus.is alternative to a more traditional one, and we urge all concerned with the teaching of Mathematics in Scottish schools to give careful study to the Cambridge scheme.
(5) MATHEMATICAL LABORATORIES
470. It is clear that such reform of mathematical teaching as we recommend will be greatly furthered by the provision of what might best be described as mathematical laboratories, and in this we are confirmed by our witnesses.
471. The ordinary class-room is not adapted to the teaching of accurate drawing, to the storage of the requisite apparatus, or, in general, to the demonstration of Mathematics in action. Only experience can determine precisely what the equipment and function of the mathematical laboratory should be, but we give, as being of interest, the suggestions of one teacher who has long felt the need of such a room: "The laboratory should be equipped with drawing-boards and T squares, solid figures, verniers, micrometers, spherometers, slide-rules, pantographs, theodolite and sextant. Here the pupil should learn the decimal notation sensibly and concretely through the decimal ruler, vernier and micrometer; logarithms through the slide-rule; solid geometry through plans and elevations and drawing sections: trigonometry
[page 98]
through the theodolite; and the meaning of area and volume through approximate valuations by Simpson's Rule." He adds a significant comment. "This should not be part of a 'technical' course but a course for everyone. The classical people are the very ones who need it."
472. The Council for Curriculum Reform,* recommending a mathematical museum for each school, suggests yet other functions for the practical room:
The museum envisaged is a large room devoted to charts and models designed to do what the text-book cannot do, viz. give a survey of a topic, reveal the relation to other topics, give a bird's-eye resume of a collection of topics, show the historical development of important symbols and concepts, express in solid models the third dimension and in working models the mathematical treatment of time. Many features of mathematics, intolerably difficult when spread over dozens of textbook pages, become clear when summarised and brought together on a single chart. An important section of the museum would show by an arrangement of tables, formulae, graphs, pictorial statistics, and photographs, the technical and social applications of mathematics. Another section would show the physical, chemical, and biological applications, including astronomy. Yet another would deal with aesthetics and architectural considerations. And a corner might be devoted to supplying the old-fashioned museum need for 'curios' i.e. mathematical puzzles and recreations.
473. We recommend that every sizable secondary school be provided with one or more mathematical laboratories according to its numbers, and that each class should spend in such a room at least a double period weekly.
(6) SUITABILITY OF COURSE FOR ALL PUPILS
474. We have no doubt about the greater suitability and the sufficiency of such a Mathematics course as we have described for the average pupil: the important question remains - would it suffice, up to School Certificate stage, for the ablest pupils? Would the small minority who have it in them to be mathematical specialists manage to cover in two years of VIth Form work all the manipulative practice and the more theoretical, systematic approach to the subject necessary in preparation for the university? We believe that they would, and our hopeful view is shared by a number of witnesses, including some who are concerned with the teaching of advanced Mathematics.
475. A similar conclusion was reached by the New Zealand Committee on the Curriculum,† who write, "Such a preliminary (i.e. School Certificate) course in practical mathematics has been proved in experience to have advantages even for pupils" proceeding "to university Mathematics or Science or advanced technological work." But some of our witnesses whose work has lain within the more academic tradition of Scottish Mathematics expressed misgivings on this score and urged, if we may put it so, that real mathematicians must get busy with real Mathematics before the VIth Form. Dogmatic assurance would be unwarranted here, and, as we are anxious to safeguard the interests of the few as of the many, we recommend that, while the Mathematics of the first two years should be little differentiated, provision should be made thereafter for a more theoretical and logically rigorous approach by pupils of marked ability; and that, as in the Cambridge scheme, there might meantime be alternative syllabuses at School Certificate stage.
*The Content of Education, p. 137.
†The Post-Primary School Curriculum, p. 51. (See footnote to paragraph 274).
[page 99]
476. It may well prove that the most satisfactory way of providing for various types is to have the more practical course as basic for all, but to challenge the gifted pupil to the full exercise of his mathematical powers by having him undertake the more formal work as extra "contracts".
(7) COURSES FOR GIRLS
477. We indicated that in the case of the D and E pupils there was little need to differentiate the treatment of Mathematics for boys and girls, and at the other end of the scale it is probably equally unnecessary to have a distinctive approach to the subject for. girls of high intelligence and bookish interests. Our evidence suggests, however, that at the middle levels there should be a separate course for girls, though some of our witnesses suspect that the disability of girls in this subject is conventionally assumed rather than real.
478. There would seem to be two cases to consider:
(1) That of the girl who combines passable general ability with undeniable weakness in Mathematics. For such the sensible course is to attempt little beyond "tool arithmetic", since anything more ambitious is unlikely to be required for the career she will elect to follow.
(2) That of the girl who is capable of a three or four years' course in Mathematics.. For her, no less than for the average boy, Mathematics. should have a practical reference; but, if she is expected to respond with the same lively interest as her brother, the application of the subject for her must be to a world as real and important in her eyes as is the world of engineering and surveying and navigation in his. The very nature of feminine interests and employment makes this much harder to compass, but a good deal depends on its being done, and we invite Scottish teachers of Mathematics to give their minds to a problem which has not so far received the attention it merits.
8. Science
(1) COURSE FOR FIRST THREE OR FOUR YEARS
479. We can best introduce this section by giving the reasons for the recommendations we made in Chapter V of this Report.
480. We propose that Science should be studied by every pupil throughout the four years of the School Certificate course. To justify such a policy we do not point to the technological needs of the country, nor do we lay the primary emphasis on that exactitude in observation, measurement and thought which is the characteristic virtue of the trained scientist. Science claims this place in the education of every boy and girl because of its immense cultural significance. It is far more than a subject or group of subjects: it is a whole vast world of human thought, feeling and endeavour; and it is the field in which the distinctive achievements of modern man in the West are most strikingly displayed. The need for scientific skill and understanding is unlimited at every level, and Science teaching must, therefore, be catholic enough in aim and spirit to value every kind of return for its labours - from the discoveries of the researcher down through all the degrees of technical competence and quickened interest to the least insight imparted to a dull child or the slightest awakening in him of curiosity or wonder.
481. Such an all-embracing purpose in Science teaching calls for a corresponding richness and variety of material and could not be secured by a narrow systematic discipline in one or two branches of Science, however valuable
[page 100]
such a training may be for maturer students with the capacity to profit by it. Accordingly, our recommendation is that for the first four years the approach to Science should be wide and unspecialised; in a word, that "General Science" and it alone should be taught. For a definition of the term, we cannot do better than use the words of the English Science Masters' Association*, whose two volumes on the teaching of General Science are invaluable to any inquirer in this field: "General Science is a course of scientific study and investigation which has its roots in the common experience of children and does not exclude any of the fundamental special sciences. It seeks to elucidate the general principles observable in nature, without emphasising the traditional division into specialised subjects until such time as this is warranted by the increasing complexity of the field of investigation, by the developing unity of the separate parts of that field, and by the intellectual progress of the pupils."
482. In advising against School Certificate courses in systematic physics, or chemistry, or both, which would be alternative to General Science, we go rather further than did the Spens† and Norwood‡ Committees. Our whole conception of secondary education made us anxious to guard against premature narrowing of scientific study, and a great weight of expert opinion expressed in recent years leaves us confident that in preferring this broad and integral treatment of the subject, we are doing no injustice to those who will later carry selected scientific studies to a high level. The Goodenough Committee on Medical Studies,§ the Chemistry Education Board and the Institute of Physics have all declared openly for General Science, as being not merely a possible preparation but unquestionably the best foundation for subsequent specialised work. We have, too, the assurance that the head of an important science department in a Scottish university would be well content if students came to him with the equipment derived from a good General Science course, provided they had keen minds and a genuine desire for scientific knowledge. Most, though not quite all, of our evidence was to the same effect. We are glad that we have not felt constrained to allow systematic physics and chemistry to compete with General Science at School Certificate stage; for the scales would have been weighted against the latter, owing both to the influence of teachers whose own training has been somewhat over-specialised and to the partiality of the average boy for what seems obviously and directly useful as against what may on a long view be educationally more valuable.
483. If there are any in whom the postponement of more formal science teaching rouses misgivings, we would remind them - (1) that a well-planned course in General Science need not be valueless from sheer lack of coherence for, as the Norwood Report‡ says, "There would be no randomness under a proper method of treatment, since the point of departure would be the pupils' own interest and experience, extended by directed observation"; and (2) that our provision for VIth Form work would, without any undesirable specialisation, allow of considerably greater concentration on science for two years than has hitherto been possible in Scottish schools.
484. In paragraph 480 we stressed the distinction between precise or "utilisable" knowledge and that background knowledge and inspirational content in which a good General Science course should be particularly rich.
*"The Teaching of General Science", Part I, page 30 - John Murray, 1936
†See footnote to paragraph 102.
‡See footnote to paragraph 177.
§Report of Inter-Departmental Committee on Medical Schools. H.M. Stationery Office, 1944. Price 4s. 6d.
[page 101]
We would remind the teacher that in regard to the latter kind of knowledge any recourse to a rigid timetable and formal testing on his own part is only one shade less harmful than their imposition by an external authority. This side of science teaching seems to us as little accessible to direct examination as is the study of English literature. If a very general assessment of it is desirable, it will best be got from the unhurried contact of teacher, headmaster or inspector with the pupils at work in the laboratories. From such contact it should not be difficult to determine whether life and colour are being imparted to the science teaching. If these qualities are revealed in the response of the class as a whole, that is enough; sane men may well refrain from the attempt to weigh the imponderables in respect of individual pupils. Very apposite is the verdict of Sir Philip Hartog* in regard to General Science:
If ever there was a subject in which the go-as-you-please method of an enthusiastic teacher was the best of all methods, I believe that you have it here. Therefore make room for it in your curriculum but impose no examination burden on the pupils.
(2) CONTENT AND OBJECTS OF COURSE
485. We go on now to consider (1) the content of three- and four-year courses in General Science, and (2) the objects to be aimed at and the methods to be employed in teaching it.
486. It is common ground that while General Science "does not exclude any of the fundamental special sciences", the major elements in any school course will continue to be drawn from physics, chemistry and biology. But there is equal agreement that very considerable parts of what it has been usual to teach in physics and chemistry must be curtailed and simplified, or else postponed entirely till the VIth Form stage.
487. In general the quantitative aspects of both sciences have been given excessive emphasis. Not one of our witnesses had a word to say for the familiar series of experiments in density, the undue lingering on the Principle of Archimedes, and the time and energy given to difficult experiments in heat, e.g. coefficients of expansion, which involve elaborate calculations. In laying it down that such experiments have little place in a General Science course, the Science Masters' Association† gives a wise reminder that qualitative experiments are often more striking and easily remembered than quantitative ones, and that, while pupils must never be allowed to forget that physical science is based on exact measurement, "the appropriate degree of accuracy may often be more profitably attained by increasing the scale of an experiment than by refining the precision of the measuring instrument." For in such matters one is limited not merely by the mental quality of the young student but by the very imperfect muscular co-ordination which is all one can expect of a growing child. Hence the futility of introducing into the earlier years chemical weighings that involve the use of delicate beam balances. At that stage, a spring or Butchart balance will give as high a degree of accuracy as is either necessary or attainable.
488. The first thing to be said about biology is that the place given to it in Scottish schools till now has been pitifully inadequate. A late comer, it has lacked impressive credentials to a generation more concerned with science for livelihood than science for life. In certain quarters it has been dismissed
*Address to Higher Education Meeting of National Union of Teachers, 1937.
†Op. cit., p. 33
[page 102]
as "merely observational", a poor thing to set against the rigour of the mathematical sciences. It would be strange irony if the discovery of biology's increasing importance to the physicist should turn academic frowns to welcoming smiles. Be that as it may, in any General Science curriculum, the claim of biology must be for parity with physics and chemistry everywhere, while in courses for girls and in the science schemes of rural areas it is difficult to deny it pre-eminence.
489. Within the range of biological science itself we are struck by the disproportionate place given to the study of plant as against animal life, and we invite science teachers to consider whether this predominance of botany rests on anything more substantial than custom and the greater ease in getting and handling plant material. We feel sure that zoology has decidedly the greater and more sustained appeal for many girls and for nearly all boys, and we have it in evidence that this is particularly true of D and E pupils, whose interest in animal life is one of the greatest assets the science teacher has.
490. There is a further reason for urging increased attention to zoology: it leads more directly to something we regard as an essential element in the General Science course - elementary teaching on the structure and functions of the human body and the conditions of healthy living. We rejoiced to learn from our witnesses that here too is a subject in which children of limited intelligence can be keenly interested; and, whether simple physiology and hygiene are to be the province of the physical training teacher or of the scientist, the latter must not neglect the side of biological teaching that provides the natural approach to them.
491. We think astronomy and geology have a good claim to be included, even if their place be a modest one, in the General Science syllabus. The Science Masters' Association first excluded and then, on second thoughts, gave a limited admission to both subjects, and the same hesitancy is reflected in the findings of the Education Reform Committee of the Educational Institute of Scotland. The objections, advanced do not seem to us convincing. The subjects do not readily lend themselves to experimental treatment. But surely the hand of Professor Henry Armstrong does not rest upon us so heavily that we must go on equating school science with the laboratory? It is difficult to make arrangements for observational work in school. But when did it become a demerit to seek education outside the playground? And is it impossible for a keen teacher to find an occasional evening hour to star-gaze with his pupils?
492. Nor are we happy about the suggestion that what is to be done in astronomy and geology is the concern of the geography teacher. It would be absurd to deny the latter the right to enter these fascinating fields, but we hold very strongly that during the School Certificate years geography is first and foremost a social not a scientific study and that its strongest affiliations are with history and current affairs. Accordingly, we suggest that there remains with the teacher of General Science a real, if limited, responsibility in regard to astronomy and geology.
493. In astronomy, emphasis would naturally be laid on the movements of earth, sun and moon, which bear directly on time-keeping and navigation, but the appeal to wonder is so strong in stellar astronomy that it should not be neglected.
[page 103]
494. The case for geology on both practical and educational grounds has been well put in two British Association Committee Reports of 1936 and 1937, from the former of which we quote:
Geology has an appeal to which many students, even quite young ones, readily respond, and an interest that roused and stimulated almost invariably outlasts school days. It gives a definite practical outlet, takes them out of doors, and provides a pursuit which can be followed in school journeys, in the leisure time. of holidays, and through the opportunities afforded by travel. The field of investigation is almost unlimited, and for this reason progress. in certain directions must be closely related to the activity of amateur workers.
495. Astronomy and geology are alike in that in differing senses the material of their study is all about us, and that they confront the mind with the twin immensities of space and time, re-awakening that primal sense of awe which our over-sophisticated age particularly needs for the good of its soul.
496. No worthy concept of the purpose of science teaching can fail to take account of the three aspects to which we referred in an earlier chapter-the aspects of wonder, utility and system. The systematising of knowledge in a rational synthesis may well be the noblest of the three, but it is assuredly the narrowest in its application, for the intellectual qualities it demands are in their fulness given only to the few, while in very many they can never be more than rudimentary. Hence to make the inculcation of the more austere intellectual virtues the main aim of General Science is to sacrifice the attainable for the unattainable so far as the majority of boys and girls are concerned. In the early years of the secondary course science teaching is fully justified if it results in interest, appreciation, enjoyment and background knowledge - if, as the Science Masters' Association put it, the pupils not only learn science but learn to love it.
497. It is not yet sufficiently realised that the age of wireless, cinema and aeroplane has brought a new challenge to the educator. The uncontrolled experience of children has become so colourful and exciting that, if the controlled experience which we call schooling fails completely to compete with the other in vividness and interest, education will be in desperate. case. This challenge must be met, not with puritanical lamentations but with the robust sense which informs these words of the Science Masters' Association:
It is possible that we, who are sheltered by permanent scholastic appointments, have something to learn from those whose livelihood depends on their ability to grip their audiences. We science masters are fortunate in having a really fascinating story to tell. Let us always be asking ourselves whether we tell it well, suiting our pace to the youthful hearers, or whether we do not often let the story drag and interest subside.
498 Witnesses whose work has lain among C, D and E children have stressed the transitoriness of their interests, and we think it should be strongly impressed on young teachers how largely success with such pupils depends on devising "projects" that can be quickly completed, and on the resourcefulness that knows how to avoid drag by a switching of the interest. And may we say in parenthesis that this full recognition of the obligation to interest the child, wherever interest is possible, does not conflict with another and equally real responsibility of the teacher - to use every form of quiet, moral and disciplinary pressure to make pupils learn to do a task, interesting or dull, simply because it is the duty that lies to their hand.
[page 104]
499. As the secondary pupil becomes more mature, the utility aspect of his science bulks very large, and the teaching should take full advantage of the intense interest normal boys and girls feel in the varied applications of .science and in its bearing on the work of their choice. We should not be justified in recommending a "topical" method of teaching exclusively and with pupils of all mental levels, but evidence from very varied sources powerfully supports the view that the systematising motive has long been overworked, and that "to fail to make use of the utility motive is to allow one of the richest sources of intellectual activity to run to waste."
500. The doctrine that school science must find its starting point and inspiration in the actual human environment, if specially relevant to the treatment of C, D and E pupils, is true for them all. As far back as 1918, Sir J. J. Thomson's Committee recommended that the teacher of physics should work from the pupils' interest in natural phenomena to the study of scientific principles rather than treat natural phenomena merely as illustrations of scientific principles previously established in the laboratory. Similarly, the British Association Committee of 1917 laid it down that "topics, instead of being regarded as applications of scientific principles to be taught if time and the demands of a public examination allow, should be treated as the foci of interest from whose study the pupils' knowledge of the scientific principles emerges."
501. We stress this evidence, because we know how strong will be the tendency to systematise the work of the abler pupils too much and too soon. There may be, as in mathematics, a case for some differentiations in the treatment of the A and good B pupils during the later part of School Certificate work; but, if the programme consists merely of concurrent or alternating courses in physics, chemistry and biology, with little attempt at integration or the use of topical interest, then nothing whatever is gained merely by calling this "General Science".
502. We add a number of brief observations which, lacking the minor merit of originality, are perhaps commended by the major merit of being true.
(1) No school science course is satisfactory that acquires meaning only when completed by advanced studies (cf. Ch. VI, paragraph 122).
(2) With unlimited material available, which will enrich the mind as well as train it, nothing should be admitted to a science syllabus merely for its training value.
(3) Much of the best apparatus for elementary science is made, not bought, and a working bench is as much in place in a laboratory as an array of balances and test tubes.
(4) Great stress should be laid on science as human achievement, and the effective use of biographical material can make science a humanistic subject singularly rich in appeal.
(5) Every science department needs a library of simply written books. Fortunately there is a rapidly growing literature of popular every day science which has much to give to the inspirational side of the teaching.
(6) The full utilisation of vocational interest requires visits to municipal and industrial plants where pupils can see science in action.
(7) Visual aids are not desirable extras but indispensable equipment of the enlightened science teacher.
(8) Biology is taught in gardens, aquaria and museums no less than in laboratories.
[page 105]
(9) Up to the end of School Certificate stage, one person should teach all the science of a class in a given year.
(10) Note-taking has been much overdone and is often a time-waster. Brief pencil notes and simple sketches should normally suffice, but there might be value in occasional full descriptive notes treated as an exacting exercise in English composition.
(11) The proportions of talk, demonstration and experiment in science teaching must vary with the age and quality of the pupils. This is something to be determined empirically, not dogmatically: nor is it any longer impiety to look back beyond Armstrong and his heuristic method to South Kensington and the old "physiography" and to suspect that we may still have something to learn from the earlier tradition.
503. Regarding science in the VIth Form, we stress two points only:
(1) Both continued General Science and systematic courses in separate sciences will be required, the former for prospective medical students and such as wish unspecialised work for cultural or other reasons, the latter to meet the needs of pupils preparing for advanced scientific studies in universities and technical colleges.
(2) While many will drop the full study of science at School Certificate stage, we think it most desirable that some contact with scientific thought and teaching should continue for such pupils throughout the VIth Form. Accordingly, for those whose main studies are on the humanistic side, we recommend a limited scientific course, say, two periods weekly, which would be devoted not to experimental work but to lecture-talks and discussions on the fundamental scientific conceptions and their bearing on the problems of society.
9. Domestic Subjects
504. The increased attention given to the household arts, the improvement in the quality of the teaching and the provision of suitable accommodation and equipment for this work are among the most gratifying developments in secondary education between the wars. The time is ripe for further advance, and we submit that justice will not be done to either the educational value of the subject or the social needs of our people unless that advance ensures - (1) that every girl has some regular training in the domestic arts throughout at least the first three years of her secondary course, and (2) that a much bigger proportion of girls than at present take a full course in domestic subjects extending over three or four years.
(1) REGULAR TRAINING
505. All we have said in this Report about the claims of handicraft to a place in the education of every boy applies with equal force to the value of house craft for girls, and we think it deplorable that so many are leaving the senior secondary schools without this training.
506. It has been represented that, for girls following an academic curriculum, it is enough to provide an intensive course in domestic science during the last term of their schooling. We cannot agree, nor did our expert witnesses. Such a course is a desirable extra, but it is not an adequate substitute for a double period weekly over the first three years. Moreover, even if it could be assumed that the intensive training is educationally the equivalent of the
[page 106]
other, the fact must be faced that illness, early leaving, limitations of accommodation and staffing and other causes will always prevent many girls from having it, and that if a basic training in the domestic arts is to be assured for every girl, she must get it as she moves up the school.
507. We wish it were possible to insist on a minimum of three consecutive periods for homecraft during one of the sessions at least; but we suggest that if the third period cannot always be found in a two-language course, the cookery periods be made the. first two or the last two of a day, as experience shows that girls are usually willing to begin a little earlier or stay a little later in order to complete the lesson without undue hurry. In one-language courses three periods on end should normally be possible.
508. This minimum course for all, with no vocational significance whatever, save in the sense that it is every girl's vocation to be a home-maker, should be wide in its appeal and quite unspecialised. The elements of cookery and needlework will remain the core of it, but in neither branch is it necessary to be exhaustive. To teach a girl the simpler principles of cookery and food values and have her do a few essential things well is of far more worth than to cover the whole range of the recipe book.
509. Needlework and laundrywork should be taught together. The teaching of the former is vastly improved, but we suspect that there are still a few quarters that need two homely reminders: first, that "doing specimens" (the "grammar" of the art) is a preliminary to, not a substitute for, making garments; and second, that no generation of girls will ever be thrilled by being taught to make the things their mothers might have liked to wear.
510. Some reference there should be to personal and household hygiene, but here the domestic science teacher's boundaries march with those of the biologist and the physical training specialist, just as at other points she borders on the province of the chemist or the teacher of art.
511. The basic course in domestic arts should find room for some discussion of planned expenditure of household moneys and a little instruction in the care and training of babies. The introduction of this last has raised the very debatable question whether the instruction should be given by the domestic subjects teacher, or by the health visitor or trained nurse. There is a natural desire not to break the unity of teaching in the domestic arts, but experience seems to show that instruction in mothercraft carries much greater authority and appeal to girls when it is given by a nurse, and we conclude that she is the person to do this work, despite her lack of teaching qualification.
512. We draw attention here to a point of extreme importance not for domestic science only but for the whole range of practical work. Care must be taken that the intellectual element is never lost and the instruction allowed to degenerate into an imitative routine. Practical subjects are not alternatives to or rests from reasoning subjects: they are forms of education in which intelligence operates in and through concrete activities. The bearing of this on the teaching of cookery, for example, has been well brought out by John Duncan of Lankhills,* and we bring to the notice of domestic science teachers his valuable distinction between practical work that expresses a purpose and such as merely shows a result.
*"The Education of the Ordinary Child", pp. 108-9
[page 107]
513. Some of our witnesses complained that schemes of work in domestic subjects are much too uniform at present. Apart from the distinctive touch the individuality of the teacher should impart, schemes ought in their content and emphasis to reflect major differences in social environment, including the fundamental one between town and country life. Provided that a school's practice does not fall below the ideal of simple graciousness and refinement of living, it will never err in taking realistic account of life as the children are going to live it.
514. A good basic education in the domestic arts finds its crown in a short period of residence and in the unified experience of "running the house". Accordingly, we recommend that the provision of housewifery centres; where girls can live in, be given a high priority in all the building and reconstruction programmes for secondary schools. Moreover, we feel very strongly that no ban on permanent building should operate in regard to such accommodation. Common sense will accept with a good grace the limitations of temporary or prefabricated units for most school purposes: but, if "the centre" is to become for a time school and home and the whole scheme of things to successive groups of girls, it is essential that its structure and furnishings alike should satisfy every reasonable standard of domestic amenity.
(2) BIGGER PROPORTION TAKING FULL COURSE
515. While we attach first importance to some housecraft for all girls, we are keenly desirous that far more girls should take a full course in domestic arts, and we hope that neither a mistaken emphasis on academic curricula nor the illusory advantages of premature commercial training will prevent this development. Like the one-language technical course for boys, the one-language course with domestic subjects should be second to none in esteem and popularity; and in all non-language courses for girls a generous place should be given to training in home-making.
516. "Domestic Subjects" as part of the syllabus for the School Certificate should, as in England, include both cookery and needlework; the separate specialised treatment of the two branches belongs to the more advanced stage. Fortunately, too, the troublesome question of "allied science" should cease to vex. As every girl would be following a course of General Science, with a definite practical reference, the need for a separate science course for the domestic arts pupils would no longer be seriously felt.
517. The provision of intensive School Certificate courses in the VIth Form is particularly desirable in the case of domestic subjects, as many girls who have devoted the earlier years to an academic curriculum may well be attracted to the domestic arts at this stage, either to give balance to their education or in preparation for a career.
518. There should also be the normal provision of an "advanced course" in domestic subjects, to complete the preparation of girls going on to a domestic science college. Such a course should, like the Senior Leaving Certificate course, allow of alternatives - (1) specialisation in cookery and dietetics, with allied studies in science, and (2) specialisation in needlework and design, with allied studies in art.
519. Whether "Domestic Subjects" should be examined in the Higher School Certificate at both levels or on the "subsidiary" standard only is a question on which guidance might be obtained from the experience of the English examining boards.
[page 108]
520. We may, in connection with domestic subjects, fitly draw attention to a point that concerns all the practical courses in the secondary school. It has been a complaint that the Department has been too rigid in its prescribing of minimum numbers of hours which a Certificate candidate must devote to each of these courses, and that pupils of high intelligence who might have added a practical subject to their academic ones and greatly profited thereby have been debarred, because they could not find the very large amount of time demanded by the regulations. Our evidence convinces us that pupils of high calibre can cover practical courses very satisfactorily in considerably less time than is considered necessary for average pupils, and we think they should be free to do so. We appreciate that there was need for minimum time requirements, while standards were being gradually built up in a new group of practical subjects, but that stage is past, and we recommend that the Department should no longer insist on "time spent" as distinct from "standard reached", but should leave it to the school, which knows the quality of the pupil in question, to decide whether he or she can adequately cover the work in the time available.
10. Education for Commerce
521. It is the verdict not of the educational idealist but of the business man himself that the best preparation the secondary school can give the boy or girl who is to enter the world of commerce is a sound general education.
522. The one supremely important "commercial subject" is neither book-keeping nor shorthand, but English - not that fictitious thing called "Business English" but the plain speech of every day, command of which enables a boy to understand and to make himself understood, to receive and to convey ideas, information and instructions. If along with this the school gives a facility in calculation, some awareness of what is happening in the world and a certain alertness and receptivity of mind, then by comparison the commercial emphasis and the manipulative skills matter very little. We should, therefore, be content to see what are commonly called "commercial subjects" occupying a very inconspicuous place in the earlier stages of the secondary curriculum.
523. But we feel compelled in this matter to take some account of existing practice; nor can we evade the fact that, if the desire for specifically commercial training is denied any satisfaction whatever in the three- and four-year courses, then, with the raising of the age, the schools will have to cope with many boys and girls whose schooling will go dead in the last year and who will leave at the earliest date the law allows. What we propose, therefore, is in the nature of a compromise; and, if we seem slightly more hospitable to commercial subjects than the Norwood Report,* it should be remembered that the multilateral Scottish school could hardly emulate the exclusiveness proper to the "grammar" school within the tripartite scheme of English secondary education.
524. Our recommendations are these:
(1) That the time allocated to Commercial Subjects in the first two years of the secondary course should nowhere exceed four periods weekly; and that it be devoted to a very simple and unspecialised treatment of book-keeping, with which should be linked on the one hand a little extra mental arithmetic and short methods of calculation, and on the other such elementary teaching about transport and communica-
*See footnote to paragraph 177.
[page 109]
tions, commercial terms and routine, and the nature and functions of banks as might usefully be given to any boy or girl in a secondary school.
(2) That the teaching of shorthand and typewriting should be by regulation excluded from the first two years of the secondary course. These are purely manipulative skills, almost devoid of educational value, and the evidence is conclusive that they are best and most expeditiously' acquired by intensive practice after fourteen or fifteen years of age. To set ungrown children of twelve or thirteen, with their still uncoordinated muscles, to learn such skills on a couple of periods a week is an educational folly that has gone on far too long.
(3) That shorthand be started in the IIIrd Year; and that at least four periods weekly be given to it over two terms in order that the theory may be mastered fairly quickly and a good beginning made with speed practice. The importance of correct transcription should be stressed throughout. Though we have taken no direct evidence on the subject we venture to raise an important question in connection with shorthand. It is common knowledge that the learning of shorthand up to office speeds involves a considerable expenditure of time, and it seems just possible that labour is being wasted, because the schools are using tog high-powered instruments for the purpose on hand. The shorthand systems in common use are marvels of ingenuity, but they involve an array of contracting devices sufficient, if effectively used, to give reporting speeds far beyond anything required of the thousands of girls who pass through classes every year, and the mastering of the body of "theory" governing the use of the contracting system undoubtedly postpones and slows the process of acquiring moderate speeds. Now, when one remembers the surprising increase in writing speed got merely by using brief signs for some fifty or sixty of the commonest words, it is difficult to quiet the suspicion that working speeds of 100 to 120 words a minute could be secured more quickly than at present by the use of some simple form of short-writing, designed solely for this purpose and not pretending to meet the far more exacting needs of the reporter. As school time is precious and this matter concerns many thousands of young people, there is room for expert inquiry and experiment which, disregarding all vested interests both professional and commercial, would concentrate on the question how this quite limited objective, the ability to take letters to dictation, can be reached with the greatest economy of time and effort.
(4) That even where typewriting is started in the IIIrd Year no more than a beginning should be attempted, the systematic practice on the machine being regarded as work for the IVth Year.
(5) That every encouragement be given to girls who have taken the three-year commercial course to continue for a fourth year and complete their preparation for office work within the disciplined and varied life of their own school. To make the extra year attractive to them may require a concentration on commercial subjects greater than is provided for in our timetables. We see no objection to this in the 15-16 year, provided there is a sufficient element of general and cultural education to justify the inclusion of the training within a secondary school.
525. The provision we have suggested would allow of "Commercial Subjects" being included in the syllabus for the School Certificate. Whether they should be confined to the combined subject of book-keeping and shorthand or should include typewriting is something to be determined by the Department.
[page 110]
526. If we cannot be more than acquiescent about the inclusion of Commercial Subjects in the earlier secondary years, we feel on the other hand that different forms of preparation for commerce will be an important part of VIth Form work In general, it is unlikely that the type of pupil who takes Commercial Subjects in the School Certificate Course will pursue them far into the VIth Form, though any of these boys and girls electing to stay on for even, a term or two should be welcomed and enabled to use the time profitably.
527. But the important provision at this stage will be for pupils whose education has been academic up to School Certificate. Many girls may desire a limited continuance of general schooling along with a year's intensive course in shorthand and typewriting as preparation for office work, and we think they should be able to get it. Without reflecting in the least on the proprietary business colleges, we hold that, if this work can be done efficiently in the secondary schools, there is gain to the girl and gain to the school in her rounding off her training there.
528. At a higher level, both boys and girls may desire to follow a course comprising some of the commercial subjects of real educational value - book-keeping, commercial practice, economic history or geography, and the elements of economics itself, together with the study of a modern language such as Russian or Spanish. This seems to us worthy of all encouragement, and we hope not only that full provision will be made for it in VIth Form teaching and in the Higher School Certificate scheme, but also that business firms will use and remunerate these young people in such a way as to make it worth their while to stay at school to seventeen or eighteen.
529. It is not too much to say that the vitality of the VIth Form will depend largely on the success of the schools in providing for this and other new types of advanced education as well as for the orthodox Higher Certificate work in the traditional subjects.
11. Music, Art and Crafts
530. We have grouped Music and the Visual Arts both in dealing with the content of secondary education and in our suggested timetables; in the former context, to make it clear that together they constitute the main educational instrument (apart from literature) for the expression of feeling and imagination and for the cultivation of taste; in the latter, to convey that there should be no fixed division of time between them, because, while both are needed, their relative appeal to and value for individual pupils may vary considerably.
531. Though the position has slowly improved over a generation, the biggest problem in regard to the teaching of the Arts is still to have them taken seriously at all. Education authorities, headmasters, and parents in their different ways contrive to perpetuate the notion that such things as singing and painting hardly belong to the serious business of schooling but are at best recreational attachments to it. Against this philistine conception there must be war without truce. The Arts are recreational only incidentally, in the sense that the best relief from over-cultivation of one side of the mind is always to turn to another. But this "corrective" function is reciprocal, and it is no less true that the best antidote to an overdose of the aesthetic or emotional is to be found in severely practical or intellectual activity. Boys and girls must learn to draw and play the fiddle not because they need a rest from French or
[page 111]
Mathematics, but because man cannot live by Euclid alone, and a failure to cultivate the Arts leaves life poor and ill-balanced.
532. If the Norwood Committee* was right in feeling that for various reasons the Arts "have lacked a good tradition in the schools", on the other hand there have been compensations attaching to their late arrival on the educational scene and to their hard struggle for even a modest recognition. They have escaped the petrifying effects of a too powerful tradition and the complacency of the long established. Their advocates have been put on their mettle, and it is a pleasure to record the enlightened enthusiasm shown by teachers of Art and Music alike in recent years, and the increasing amount of first-rate work being done in progressive schools.
533. Within the general aim of fostering the love of the beautiful, Art and Music teaching must always fulfil a threefold function: to train the pupil in executive techniques; to provide facilities for creative work in various media; and to develop in the young the appreciation of artistic excellence in many forms.
534. The history of Art and Music in the schools is virtually the discovery by experience that the fulfilment of all three functions is a condition of effective work, and that, if passing fashion or a mistaken concern for quick results disturbs their due balance, both subjects decline sharply in educational value. They have known the contrasting temptations to over-emphasise and to neglect the "grammar", sight-reading in Music, and in Art the elementary principles of draughtsmanship and colour harmony. Overstressed, it reduces the teaching to a jejune routine; but its disregard is followed by formlessness in the creative effort and by shallowness of understanding on the appreciative side. Again, lack of standards of excellence has proved as fatal to the child's creative efforts as any deficiency in technical training, while even the very limited practice of an art which is possible for the untalented finds its reward in more disciplined powers of appreciation.
535. But, though executive skill and appreciation are mutually dependent, the two elements are not of equal ultimate importance in the teaching of the Arts to pupils in general. For the many, in contrast to the few who have a distinct musical or artistic talent, what matters most in the end is intelligent and trained sensitiveness to fine work, and it is the indispensable value of such appreciation in the age of wireless and town-planning which above all justifies the inclusion of Music and Art in the curriculum of every pupil throughout the first four years.
536. We consider that in the Ist and IInd Years the available time should be fairly evenly divided, two periods to Music and two or three to visual arts. If the pupil proves equally apt for both branches of aesthetic training, the even allocation of time should continue through the third and fourth years; but where there is evident disparity in the appeal they make and in the pupil's profit from them, a preponderance of time should go in the later years to the subject in which it will be best used, provided the other is continued even for one period weekly on the side of appreciation. It will be noted that we propose for Music the complete parity with visual arts which it has not hitherto enjoyed in the secondary school. It is no belittlement of the latter but a belated recognition of the former that prompts us to recommend complete equality of status from now on.
*See footnote to paragraph 177.
[page 112]
537. We have had in mind so far the Art and Music to be taken by all secondary pupils, and we believe that this work with no examination objective will always be the biggest contribution of these subjects to the life of the school. . But we recognise that some girls and boys will wish to cultivate a pronounced aptitude for Art or Music in a more systematic way even within the School Certificate course, and we do not think the chance to do so can fairly be denied them. Art was a full subject for the old Intermediate Certificate, while both Art and Music have been so recognised in the Senior Leaving Certificate Examination and in the School Certificate schemes of the English examining boards. Accordingly, we recommend that Art and Music be admitted as School Certificate subjects within a one-language or a non-language course, and that the time-allowances, be approximately those for Technical or Domestic Subjects in the same curricula. It would not normally be possible to offer both Art and Music on this full scale at that stage, but the taking of one should not be a ground for discontinuing completely the unspecialised study of the other.
538. The history of Music and Art as school subjects makes it easy to understand why an unusual diversity in teaching qualification has persisted to this day, especially in the former. Our recommendations in the Training of Teachers Report* will after a time, we hope, right what is amiss; but it is pertinent to stress here a danger to the balance of school work in both Art and Music arising from excess of what one might call the "executant element" in the equipment of many teachers of these subjects. In Art this takes the form of a training strong on the side of drawing and painting, but much less adequate in respect of design and a wide range of crafts; in Music it means high instrumental skill, but not always a like competence in the teaching of singing and in classroom techniques. This is a matter of considerable importance and it merits the immediate attention of the Scottish Education Department and the National Committee for the Training of Teachers.
(1) MUSIC
539. The main element in the musical education of secondary pupils must be good class-singing. Here much depends on the work done in the primary school, and we were disappointed to learn that in some areas at least the secondary teacher cannot count as he once could on a sound standard in sight-reading among children of twelve. Without plunging into "the battle of the notations" or discussing the relative merits of music specialist or class-teacher in the primary school, we draw the attention of the education authorities to the situation. It is evident that if primary school music becomes ineffective in this important regard, the secondary school will fail to produce the standard of singing traditional in Scotland, and the loss to music in the churches, choral societies, youth groups and the community generally will be calamitous.
540. We also invite the education authorities to consider whether they have taken as seriously as they should the provision of suitable accommodation and equipment for the teaching of Music. It needs more than just a room with desks and a piano of sorts. This is as truly specialised work as is the teaching of science, and we hold that an enlightened community must be in earnest about meeting its requirements. We recommend, therefore, for every secondary school a special music room or rooms, of good size, sound-proof and away from external noises. It should be equipped with a piano of good quality, a radiogram and an adequate library of books, prints and gramophone records.
*Cmd. 6723.
[page 113]
541. Without any parochial exclusion of other folk music or of classical songs, the music teacher should make the basis of his class-singing the folk songs which are the rightful inheritance of Scottish children, and should ensure that they leave school knowing the words and airs of an ample repertory of their country's best songs.
542. Finished singing is much to be desired, but joyous singing - we are tempted to say "hearty" singing - is essential: and, with no disparagement of the value of careful preparation, we would stress that technical or artistic excellence can never wholly compensate for the loss of the spontaneity and delight which should mark the singing of young folks. It follows that we strongly deprecate the securing of beautiful tone by the exclusion of pupils who could and would sing, if allowed to do so. Nor do we find sufficient justification for discontinuing the singing of adolescent boys. Expert evidence and the striking success achieved in certain schools convince us that singing, and pleasure in singing, are possible for almost every boy throughout the secondary course, provided correct teaching techniques and appropriate song material are employed.*
543. Pupils should be guided in the writing of melody and given every encouragement to develop this creative urge. Mr. Herbert Wiseman told us that Scots children have a wonderful aptitude for melody making and at one time sent in thousands of tunes to the B.B.C.
544. Though only a minority of pupils have executant ability, boys and girls should be encouraged to "make their own music", not necessarily on the piano or the violin but on, say, the recorder.
545. Each school should have its own choir and, if possible; an orchestra. A choir in four-part harmony should be the aim of every co-educational senior secondary school, and, with the orchestra, it should lead the praise at morning assembly. Compared with the United States, we are very backward in the development of school orchestras, largely because of the great cost of providing instruments - especially "winds". We can only hope that education authorities will show a new awareness of their obligations (and opportunities) in this matter.
546. We draw attention to the proved effectiveness of group instruction in the violin. Promising beginnings were made before the war, and it may be that the application of new teaching techniques will make Scotland once again a land of fiddlers and preserve what is in much danger of being lost, the great tradition of Scottish reels, strathspeys and other folk dances.
547. Of the supreme importance of education in the appreciation of music it is not necessary to speak at length. It must start from such vocal and instrumental training as the pupils are capable of, and widen out to utilise the many new resources our age makes available. To use good records, and make them better by informed commentary; to give music that historical background without which no subject carries its full appeal: to train discrimination in wireless listening; and to foster the habit of concert-going and the enjoyment of music-these are among the services by which the music teacher can enrich life for the new generation and raise the standard of taste for the whole community.
*"The Boy's Changing Voice", by Norman W. Mellalieu. The Oxford Press, 1935.
[page 114]
548. We have not felt it necessary to consider in detail the syllabus in Music for the School Certificate. We assume that it would follow the general lines of the existing Senior Leaving Certificate schemes, but we desire to stress the following point. The practice by which the instrumental work for the Certificate can be done with an outside teacher should be disallowed. It results in an unnatural separation of musical theory and practice, and it is objectionable in that it leaves a substantial part of a pupil's Certificate work in the hands of one over whom neither the Department nor the school has any effective control.
(2) ART AND CRAFTS
549. It is quite consistent with delight in the "free expressional" work of young children to hold that, when the secondary stage is reached, Art must be taught. The present practice in the secondary schools follows a sensible middle way after a period of excessive formalism and control, and another in which youthful talent, denied guidance in the sacred name of freedom was expected to find adequate expression despite its complete ignorance of techniques.
550. Even more than in Music, the major aim of teaching in Art is appreciation rather than the skill of the executant: the schools' job is to turn out, not a few competent art producers, but a great many "intelligent art consumers". If appreciation is to be intelligent, and free from a glib and dilettantish quality, it is essential that pupils should have firm instruction in the fundamentals of line and colour, and we think the schools are right to insist on this as the necessary preliminary to sound work whether in design or in appreciation. But it is equally important to remember that for most boys and girls it is only a preliminary. In the senior secondary schools at least, owing partly to the teacher's own training and partly to the influence of the specialised syllabus for the Leaving Certificate, there is a tendency to.dwell too long on drawing and painting, to the neglect of design and the varied applications of the visual arts to modern living. This means a loss both educational and social. There is educational loss, because, just as few people have sustained capacity for pure mathematics, so in the visual arts there are obvious limits to the appeal of technique and even of imaginative expression, whereas many boys and girls can find great interest and satisfaction in applying what they have been taught about form and colour, about material and function, to the everyday realities of home and shop and factory. And that they should so apply their knowledge is a major need of society. We have been too prone to accept ugliness as the necessary mark of mass-production and a mechanistic age. Recent experience shows, however, that if education can revive the craft-interest in the producer and match it with a high standard of taste and expectation in the consumer, there is no inherent reason why the products of the machine should not combine functional excellence with delight to the eye. In support of this, it is only necessary to instance what has been done in printing and book production, in furniture and glassware, or to point to the indisputable merit of the best contemporary architecture.
551. Moreover, this application of art to industry and social life has for post-war Britain a new, an economic urgency. Our material well-being is in the opinion of many largely bound up with our ability to produce and export goods of high quality and distinctive workmanship. We agree, therefore, with the finding of the Council for Art and Industry* that "the art teaching in the
*"Education for the Consumer", p. 49 - H.M. Stationery Office. 1935.
[page 115]
primary and secondary schools should aim not only at providing a basis of art knowledge and some degree of efficiency in the practice of art and crafts as part of a general education; but it should be the foundation and preparation for pupils entering industry and pursuing their studies further in the workshop or factory, in continuation classes, technical schools, schools of art, or universities." We support this recommendation, not as a reluctant concession to economic necessity but from a conviction that here, as so often, the requirements of practical life and the truest educational enlightenment point the same path. It is pertinent to add that a good art teacher will never neglect to make clear to young people how consistently in human history great art has had a religious or national or civic inspiration and relevance.
552. We have been more concerned to suggest the considerations that should influence the art teacher's work than to discuss its content in any detail, but the following matters have been brought to our notice:
(1) The range of craft work needs to be extended. It is, however, important to exclude trivial crafts with little or no educational value and to give a place only to such as will genuinely draw out the powers and stimulate the creative ability of the pupil. In some cases, it seems as if forms of craft work had been selected not because they offered most to the pupil but because they demanded least from the teacher in the relevant skills or from the education authority in the necessary equipment.
(2) The craft work should take account of the divergent interests of girls and boys. For the former, no field of study in design and colour harmony can rival that of dress, and we agree that it is more sensible to invite their interest to the dance frock, with its various accessories, than to lamp shades and decorated vases. The need for co-operation with the domestic science department is obvious, and in many schools a considerable measure of it is achieved. Boys are more difficult to provide for, since their interest centres less often in form and colour than in structure and three-dimensional design. Successful craft-work for them indubitably demands a co-operation of the art teacher and the technical teacher which will not be effective until the training of the two types is drawn much closer together, and we recommend that the Department and the National Committee for the Training of Teachers give this problem immediate attention.
(3) It is impossible for art teachers to meet the new demands which education and industry alike are making on them, unless accommodation and equipment are on a higher standard than in the past. Art may have fared a little less badly than Music, but there are still too many rooms where teaching is handicapped by unsuitable desks or poor lighting, or by lack of running water, storage accommodation and the very extensive "tacking space" that decorative work requires.
(4) It is easy to exaggerate the value of visits to art galleries unless the conditions are right - ample time, small groups of pupils and the guidance of a specialist teacher.
(5) Every school should form its own art gallery, to include outstanding examples of its own pupils' work, together with good prints of the great masters. The latter can be of real educational value, and neglect of fine reproductions is a form of all-or-nothing perversity akin to contempt for the use of translations.
[page 116]
(6) Of all school subjects Art has probably the largest number of natural links with others. No member of staff can make a more valuable indirect contribution than the art master, through willing co-operation with his colleagues.
553. VIth Form work in Art and Music, like that in Technical Subjects, will consist of (1) intensive preparation for a School Certificate pass by pupils who have not specialised in these subjects at the earlier stage, and (2) the advanced work of pupils aiming at Higher School Certificate standard. This last will concern only pupils of outstanding musical or artistic gifts, and the details of it are out with the province of a lay committee.
554. The Council for Art and Industry* have recommended that the teaching of art appreciation "should have a definite place in the curriculum throughout school life". We have admitted that claim for both Art and Music up to School Certificate stage, but to press it for every pupil thereafter is, in our opinion, to ignore the fundamental difference between general secondary education up to the age of sixteen and the freedom and reasonable specialism proper to the VIth Form. We are disposed to admit only three intellectual "compulsions" in the VIth Form - continued practice in the understanding and use of the mother tongue, some little attention to the basic ideas of science, and social studies. But we hope that, outside the specialised studies, schools will provide a considerable variety of short VIth Form courses, and within such a scheme talks on the appreciation of Art and Music would find their natural place and be profitably attended by many who had given up the formal study of these subjects.
12. Physical Education
555. In the chapter on the Content of Secondary Education we gave pride of place to that enlightened care for the bodily well-being of boys and girls which includes, but is much more than, physical training in the narrower sense. A reference to our timetables will confirm that we accept the Scottish Education Department's requirement of 4 or 5 periods weekly as a reasonable minimum. Our regret is that Scotland as a whole is far from giving real effect to it.
556. Much that is said about Physical Education in our Report on Primary Education† is equally applicable to at least the earlier years of the secondary school. We would stress in particular the great value of space, and not least of a little bit of "rough ground" beside a school: the importance of making physical exercises supplement and not supplant the "natural and restless activity of children"; the need to respect the spontaneous play of youngsters and to avoid over-organising their every movement; and lastly the very special value, both physical and moral, of swimming.
557. If we attempt no very detailed consideration of Physical Education, we are deterred by more than the layman's awareness of his own limitations. We are satisfied that in general teachers of Physical Education are making good and enlightened use of the time and resources available; and we are forced to recognise that proposals pitched too high only make a mockery of Scotland's plight in regard to buildings and equipment in the years immediately ahead. Accordingly, instead of cataloguing obvious demands that cannot be met for many more gymnasia, playing fields, swimming pools, spray
*"Education for the Consumer", page 21 - H.M. Stationery Office, 1935.
†Paragraphs 118 to 126.
[page 117]
baths and remedial clinics, we content ourselves with suggesting certain modest ways in which the schools can even now promote the physical well-being of their pupils.
(1) They can refuse to let a quite natural impatience over the multiplying of "extraneous" duties blind them to the immense importance of the milk and meals schemes, reflecting that, since nutrition is at least as fundamental as exercise, they may be doing as much for health in the dining hall as in the gymnasium.
(2) They can accept as well founded the extreme importance all medical and gymnastic experts attach to a daily period of physical exercise, and be prepared to submit to certain timetable and other inconveniences to make it possible. It is hopeless to wait till everything can be done in a gymnasium. It may have to be the classroom or the playground or any corner of open space, as weather and circumstances allow, and that clearly implies some co-operation of the staff generally with the physical training teachers. Conscious though we are of the many difficulties, we recommend that the secondary schools be asked to make the daily period of physical exercise a reality. This "period" may be considerably less than 40 minutes. We have been assured that even half that time allows of physical exercise that is worthwhile, provided it is not used up in needless changing of clothes; and, so long as the shortage of gymnasia persists, there is obvious advantage in thus fitting in almost twice as many classes into the school day.
(3) The younger members of a staff at least can in some measure repair the deficiencies in playing fields by sharing with their pupils other out-of-doors activities such as swimming, hiking, botanising and hill climbing. Many a teacher has found ample reward for some such sacrifice of leisure in a new understanding of his pupils and a happily changed classroom relationship.
(4) Teachers should be vigilant to note and prompt to report any signs of malnutrition or of slight physical defect, in order that early action may be taken.
(5) By a consistently right attitude and a wise word in season, teachers can do much to create the atmosphere in which the more formal work of physical training is carried through with maximum effect, and a school comes to be right-minded about healthy living.
558. It would, however, be an impertinence to require this almost missionary effort for health from the schools themselves, did we not at the same time remind education authorities that it must be matched by an enlightened zeal on their part which has not been everywhere evident in the past; nor must the impossibility of doing all that the schools need be made an excuse for doing anything less than the maximum that the national resources allow.
559. We note briefly points to which our attention has been drawn:
(1) The provision of physical training staff should be generous enough to allow of remedial work being carried out in close co-operation with the school medical officers.
(2) The practice which obtains in some smaller secondary schools of having boys taught by a physical training instructress or girls taught by an instructor is bad, and we recommend that the Scottish Education Department should disallow it.
(3) More adequate provision of gymnasia should not wait on the possibility of permanent building. Much could be done with huts:
[page 118]
indeed a usable gymnasium requires astonishingly little except a sound floor and good lighting and ventilation.
(4) Special value attaches to physical exercises performed in the open air; and, so far as climate allows and the work does not require apparatus difficult to move, classes should be taken out of doors.
(5) A bigger place in Physical Education should be given to dancing. It is at once an exercise and an art, a complex and subtle form of expression and an unfailing source of pleasure to young people.
(6) Physical activity rarely exists in isolation from feeling and cognition. The significance of the emotional tone which normally accompanies it, e.g. in games, is fairly well recognised, but it is no less essential to remember that all physical education ought to include a mental element also. The proper carrying out of an exercise-sequence is more than a physical routine; it is an intellectual exercise as well. It is important, therefore, that pupils should understand not merely what they are to do but why they are to do it - and in a given order.
(7) Much thought should be given to extending the range of games played. It is no disparagement of football (either code), cricket or hockey to suggest that our ideas about team games have tended to become conventionalised. Moreover, if we are serious in planning games for the whole adolescent population of our towns and cities, the inventive faculty will be forced into activity by the sheer impossibility of finding enough accessible ground on which to play the games traditional in this country. Cricket takes 2-3 acres for 22 players (or more strictly for 13), Rugby 1½ acres for 30, and Soccer and Hockey each fully an acre for 22. Such "spaciousness" was possible when we catered only for the few, but it is difficult to see how it can be extended to the many. This is a problem of great practical importance, and we recommend that it be the subject of immediate expert inquiry.
13. Religious Instruction*
560. In giving this section the narrower title of Religious Instruction we are not forgetful of that greater whole, Religious and Moral Education, of which instruction is only a part. We stressed the other in our Report on Training for Citizenship,† and its supreme importance is presupposed in all we have written about secondary education. Worship and the influence of good men and women pervading the whole life of a school are spiritual forces for which no formal instruction, however effective, could ever be a substitute. But, on the other hand, Christian influence and atmosphere cannot in the end survive without knowledge, and there is real need to ensure for this generation some understanding of the great affirmations of the Christian faith and of the Bible as their basis.
561. The Secretary of State's Memorandum on "The Provision made for Religious Instruction in the Schools of Scotland"‡ contains an excellent historical resume and a statement of the present position which make it unnecessary to traverse the same ground in this Report. It will suffice to recall that the Act of 1872 empowered the newly established school boards to continue the custom of giving instruction in religion; that almost all the boards exercised this power; that the Education (Scotland) Act of 1918 confirmed use and wont;
*This section is not intended to apply to Roman Catholic Schools.
†Cmd. 6495.
‡Cmd. 6426.
[page 119]
and that the place of Religious Instruction was further secured in the Local Government (Scotland) Act of 1929, in which it was laid down that it should not be lawful for a council to discontinue the provision of instruction in religion unless and until a resolution in favour of such discontinuance, duly passed by the council, had been submitted to a poll of the electors for the county or burgh taken for the purpose, and had been approved by a majority of the electors voting thereat.
562. It may fairly be claimed that the existing provision, always with the safeguard of the Conscience Clause, is approved by the mass of our people. We share the opinion, widespread throughout Scotland, that, since we inherit a Christian tradition and the Christian Church is nationally recognised in Scotland, Christian instruction should find a place in every secondary school. This opinion we have already expressed in our Report on Training for Citizenship,* and we now reaffirm our recommendation that in every secondary school two periods weekly be allocated to Religious Instruction at all stages. But we must stress again that, as Religious Instruction is to be neither inspected nor examined, there is real danger of its being neglected in favour of subjects that form part of the School Certificate or Higher School Certificate syllabus, unless the two weekly periods ate definitely required by regulation of the education authorities and the regulation is strictly enforced. Our present purpose, then, is not to discuss whether or why we should teach religion in schools, but rather to consider how it may best be done.
563. There is a great deal in the existing situation for which we may be thankful, not least the increasingly friendly co-operation of church and school. Nevertheless, much of the evidence we received revealed serious defects in the teaching of Scripture in Scottish secondary schools, defects attributable in the main to the fact that many teachers have been obliged to take the subject who lacked the necessary conviction or the necessary knowledge or both.
564. The taking of Scripture by teachers who lacked personal conviction resulted largely from the regulation that the time or times for any religious observance or instruction must be either at the beginning or at the end of the school meeting, a requirement most easily met by confining all the Religious Instruction to a few periods and calling on the services of almost the whole staff. Now, however, the Education (Scotland) Act, 1945, gives that complete freedom as to times which we recommended in the Report on Training for Citizenship,* and a headmaster should seldom have difficulty in finding for this work sufficient colleagues with at least one of the two qualifications necessary, the personal conviction that gives life and sincerity to the teaching.
565. But the problem remains of securing that necessary knowledge which is the other qualification, and we find it strange that so little attention has been given to this in the past. Devoutness and good intentions are no substitute for adequate scholarship; and it should be obvious that if teaching without conviction leads to insincerity, equally surely does teaching without knowledge fall into dull routine and ineffectiveness.
566. In regard to qualifications, there are two classes of teachers to be considered separately; those taking the Religious Instruction of pupils aged 12-16, and those responsible for the work at the top of the senior secondary school. For either purpose, we regard the present training college course of 30 lectures available for ordinary and honours graduates as wholly insufficient,
*Cmd. 6495.
[page 120]
though a course of this extent on the methodology of Scripture teaching would be appropriate for students already well equipped with Biblical scholarship.
567. In Chapter XIV of our Report on the Training of Teachers* we indicated that a year's course in Biblical studies of M.A. Degree standard would be adequate preparation for teaching Scripture in junior secondary courses, and we record with satisfaction that the University of Aberdeen has recently instituted such a course in the Faculty of Arts.
568. For the teacher who ventures to tackle those eagerly disrespectful critics at the top of the senior secondary school, we hold that a full specialist qualification is necessary. Since, however, there has been some misunderstanding of the term "Scripture Specialist", we wish to make it clear that we have in mind not someone divorced from the general life of the school or one whose appointment will preclude others from taking a part in Religious Instruction, but a trained teacher and regular member of staff who, while taking a full share in all school activities and some part in the teaching of secular subjects, will have a major qualification in Theology and will find his main interest in the field of religious education. We assume, too, that such a "specialist" would be employed and superannuated on precisely the same terms as any other secondary teacher.
569. The very general approval accorded to the "Syllabus of Religious Instruction", issued in 1930 by a joint-committee of the Church of Scotland and the Educational Institute of Scotland and now republished after thorough revision, makes it unnecessary to enter into detailed discussion of the content of religious education at the secondary stage. It is enough to observe that, while in the first three years of the course the Old and New Testament Scriptures will naturally be the basis of study, increasing attention should be given thereafter to those more general questions of religion and ethics in the treatment of which senior pupils are keenly interested and responsive to informed guidance. It is extremely important that this teaching, however authoritative, should not be in a bad sense authoritarian; and we believe it will fail of its purpose unless the teacher is wise enough to efface himself a good deal and to draw these older boys and girls into the expression of their own views and difficulties. The atmosphere must be much more that of the discussion group than of the lecture-room.
570. While we lay great stress on the necessity of ensuring that this, like all other subjects, is entrusted to none but qualified teachers, we lay equal stress on the importance of ensuring that no teacher is in any degree penalised by being either unwilling or unable to give Religious Instruction. Nothing must be done to menace the intellectual and moral integrity of any teacher. We recommend therefore, that headmasters be left free to allocate Religious Instruction to such of their colleagues as are willing and able to undertake it: and that neither on forms of application nor at interview should any candidate for a post in a secondary school (unless, of course, a post as Scripture Specialist) be asked whether he is willing to undertake such teaching.
57l. If at any time a headmaster finds that the number of teachers on his staff, willing and qualified to take Religious Instruction, is insufficient, it would, in our view, be entirely proper to intimate in the advertising of a vacancy that the person appointed must be prepared to teach Scripture. But the right point at which to make this clear is in the advertisement itself, so that teachers
*Cmd. 6723.
[page 121]
who for whatever reason cannot satisfy this requirement may be spared the labour and expense of a useless candidature.
572. Lastly, we recommend that education authorities should provide maps, reference books, commentaries and other aids to Scripture teaching, and we suggest that these might well include sufficient copies for class use of a good modern translation of the Bible, to be used when pupils are studying the thought of the New Testament Epistles or certain non-narrative parts of the Old Testament.
14. Timetables
573. It is with no little reluctance that we have committed ourselves to timetables at all, realising as we do how easily they may be misinterpreted or given a finality we never intended. But we are proposing considerable changes in the content and balance of secondary education, and we recognise as both reasonable and inevitable the demand that we should try to do what the practical educator will certainly have to do, in the measure that our recommendations take effect - translate them into terms of the familiar school week.
574. The timetables set out below are at many points suggestive only, and in particular, we cannot anticipate just where the allocation of times may be more flexible, once the conditions governing presentation for the School Certificate are laid down.
TIMETABLES FOR FOUR-YEAR COURSES
Periods in Hours and Minutes
[page 122]
[page 123]
575. We suspect that the timetables will come under fire from opposite quarters. To the convinced upholder of the older disciplines we shall seem to have clipped dangerously close the time allowances for Mathematics and languages. We reaffirm our hope, however, that if the reforms we have proposed in the teaching of these subjects are carried out, it will be possible to cover the essential content in the times suggested. Further, we may legitimately invite these critics to consider whether the place we have given to the physical, moral, practical and affective sides of education anywhere exceeds the minimum that enlightened opinion would now accord them; and if it does not, to tell us how else we could have secured it for them than in the way we have done.
576. On the other hand, the educational reformer passing from our chapter on the Content of Secondary Education to the timetables may feel surprise, if not disappointment, at the relatively small proportion of the total time we are giving to those non-intellectual aspects of secondary education which bulked large in the earlier chapter. It is true that we think more periods than at present should go to the non-bookish elements in the curriculum; and, had we been able to forget all the immediate difficulties of staffing and accommodation, we might have proposed at once a more drastic re-allocation of times. But, if it be argued that, because the physical and emotional sides of education are of equal importance with the cognitive, all three should have equal room in the timetable, we reject the argument as unsound. It forgets that the proportions may be much better balanced within the total activity of school life than within the narrower round of the timetable. Moreover, it ignores the fact that the function and responsibility of the school (as distinct from those of society as a whole) in regard to the three aspects of human development are markedly unequal.
577. For the physical care of children the school has indeed a responsibility, but its part is a minor one compared with that of the home, and in their games and freely-chosen activities adolescents themselves contribute much to the physical education of one another. In the same way, while the school has a clear responsibility towards the emotional and aesthetic training of boys and girls, it is a responsibility shared with many other agencies; indeed, all experience goes to condition taste and feeling. But when we come to those intellectual disciplines and branches of knowledge that are the stuff of formal schooling, then we enter a sphere where the role of the professional educator is supreme. Here society expects him to do expertly and well what others could at best attempt in an amateurish and inconsequent fashion, and we must not add to his many other difficulties that of a sheer insufficiency of time.
578. The timetables are set out in 40-minute periods, since that is the normal division of school time. Science and practical classes usually require double periods, however, and for certain purposes hour periods are suitable. Again, in Physical Education, the arrangement might well be one long spell for team games, and a short daily period of physical exercises - not necessarily always in a gymnasium.
579. No three-language course is shown, because such a course seems to us over-specialised for the earlier secondary years, nor can room be found for a third language without deliberalising the curriculum by the exclusion or undue contraction of Music and Art, Handicraft, and Physical Education - all subjects which the highly academic pupil needs at least as much as the average youngster. In the IVth Year (15-16) adequate time might be found by taking two periods from Music and Art, and one each from Mathematics, Social Studies and General Science. On this foundation a good knowledge of the
[page 124]
language could be built up by more specialised work during the two post-School Certificate years. Where a still earlier start in Greek is considered necessary, Greek should be the second language, the study of a modern foreign language being postponed till the post-School Certificate stage.
580. In every timetable the allowance of time to Social Studies jumps from 4 periods to 6 at the IIIrd Year. This increase expresses our conviction that when the point is reached at which History and Geography can begin to be treated systematically as subjects, three periods are the minimum that will allow of effective teaching. To limit the time to only two lessons weekly is to condemn even the most enlightened teacher to a narrow and unfruitful treatment of the subjects.
581. It should be noticed that, although even the IVth Year of the commercial course shows only 9 periods devoted specifically to Commercial Subjects, the actual degree of specialisation might be considerably greater, since Mathematics would probably be given a pronounced bias and Social Studies become largely Economic History and Commercial Geography.
CHAPTER X
TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL
582. The Report of the Special Committee on Technical Education* surveyed the whole field, save the part which is occupied by the secondary school. The purpose of this chapter is to complete the survey and to make clear the place we think these subjects should have in the post-primary curriculum of Scottish day schools.
583. Just because we do not recommend any general policy of setting up separate technical high schools, we feel it the more incumbent on us to state with emphasis our conviction that there must be a welcome for technical education in the secondary schools of Scotland and a great extension of it, both in short courses and in long.
584. The inclusion of Technical Subjects - woodwork and metalwork, technical drawing, and applied mechanics - is amply justified by their high educational value and by the strength of their appeal to adolescent boys: but, while these are the primary considerations, it is proper to stress certain reasons why these subjects are peculiarly important at the present time:
(1) Our education should reflect the fact that ours is a highly industrialised society, where the products of technology are all about us, and almost everyone has to handle power-driven appliances or other mechanical and electrical contrivances. We agree with the contention of one of our witnesses that in such a society everyone should have sufficient technical training to give confidence in presence of machinery and "a feeling of friendliness towards it."
*Cmd.6786.
[page 125]
(2) Our material prosperity depends on the well-being of our industry, which under conditions of unprecedented competition must recruit a larger share of the best brains in the country. The need for first-class research workers, designers and leaders of production is clamant and must be met if we are to remain an efficient industrial nation.
(3) In a time of rapid industrial change, the adaptability of young people to re-training becomes extremely important, and we believe that a basic education in Technical Subjects would conduce to this end.
(4) While modern industrial organisation and practice may require a smaller number of skilled craftsmen, the degree of skill called for is higher than ever, and this makes it imperative that the spirit of fine craftsmanship should be fostered in our secondary schools.
585. If Technical Subjects are to have the place they merit, there are four important conditions to be fulfilled.
1. Minimum Period of Instruction
586. As we have already recommended, all boys must have at least a minimum of instruction in the use of tools and in the interpretation of simple working drawings throughout the first three years of the secondary course. Even if this minimum can be no more than a double-period (80 minutes) weekly in a two-language course, it is of great value. The boys concerned will be the better for it; the standing of the subjects in the school will be enhanced by the very fact that all boys take part in them; and - a very important point on this - general foundation able boys who have followed an academic curriculum up to School Certificate will find it possible to build a sound knowledge of Technical Subjects by two years of more intensive study in the VIth Form.
2. Adequate Time Allowance and Equipment
587. For those who take a full technical course from the outset, both the time allowance to the subjects and the provision of equipment must be adequate.
588. Our expert witnesses made no extravagant demands for time. Indeed, they asked for nothing that we felt to be in the least incompatible with the general and balanced education which we desire for all young people during the years of compulsory schooling. Their recommendations, which we make our own, are embodied in the following time-allowances, and a reference to our suggested timetables (para. 574) will show how Technical Subjects stand related in each case to the rest of the course. We would add that these time-allowances, which are expressed in 40-minute periods, presuppose the extension of the existing pre-apprenticeship courses to cover other industries and that the entrance age to such courses will be the statutory school-leaving age.
[page 126]
589. We are advised that for these courses the following power-driven tools (with individual drives) are required:
(1) WOODWORK
1 circular saw (for instructor's use).
1 jig saw or a small totally enclosed band saw.
2 wood-turning lathes.
1 power-driven morticing machine.
1 buffing machine.
(2) METALWORK
4 centre lathes (4"-6" centres).
1 shaping machine (8"-10" stroke).
1 bench drill.
2 pillar drills.
1 tool grinder.
1 hack saw.
In schools where the metalwork room will be used for the greater part of the week and particularly in schools with Higher Certificate courses in Technical Subjects, a small horizontal plain milling machine might well take the place of one of the centre lathes. For applied mechanics the usual range of equipment provided for Physics should be supplemented by large scale models of representative machines, e.g., simple and compound wheel and axle, block and tackle differential pulley block, screw jack, worm and worm wheel, crab winch or geared jib crane. As we stressed in Chapter VII, the expenditure on such equipment spread over many years is a very minor item in the whole cost of running a school, and we trust that, in a development fraught with so much benefit to the country, education authorities will construe their obligations very generously indeed. We suggest that they might try how far the necessarily more modest equipment of small schools could be supplemented by the use of mobile workshops.
3. Full Status for Technical Subjects
590. It is high time the senior secondary school underwent a change of heart and became willing to give technical education the full status to which it is entitled. There is bitter and justified complaint that year after year the intake of the senior secondary schools is creamed for the literary courses, with the result that a boy of first quality rarely, if ever, finds his way on to the technical side. This is indefensible, and the position will not be satisfactory till the technical course with one language is given complete parity with the general two-language course. And the proof that headmasters are giving it such status will be the very simple one-that the course is recruiting a substantial share of the ablest boys. Both at the 12-16 stage and in the VIth Form Technical Subjects should in the eyes of all be good enough for the very best.
591. Without minimising the responsibility of the schools themselves for the existing situation, we draw attention to two factors militating against the general development of Technical Subjects in the senior secondary schools:
(1) The attitude of the universities - the rigidity of their demand for a foreign language pass in the entrance requirements,* their grudging
*Cf. Report on Technical Education (Cmd. 6786), page 47.
[page 127]
recognition of a pass in Technical Subjects, and, not least, the preference sometimes expressed for engineering students who have done only Mathematics and Pure Science at school. This last is justified by the claim that such students almost invariably do better than those who have had Applied Science. We admit the fact, but read it differently. If all the ability of our schools is shepherded into the "pure" subjects, the results at the university stage will be precisely what they are at present. But we suggest that, if a reasonable proportion of first-rate boys were allowed to add Applied Science to their Mathematics and Pure Science at school, the university faculties of engineering would have a different story to tell.
(2) Scottish industry has not, in general, provided an avenue for boys with the Senior Leaving Certificate, but has tended to treat them in the same way as boys beginning their apprenticeship at sixteen. Recently, however, a number of important engineering firms have revised their apprenticeship schemes to make suitable provision for these older and more highly qualified boys, and we hope their good example will be widely followed.
4. Realistic Treatment of Other Subjects in Course
592. There must be unity of spirit and purpose running through the whole of a technical training. Accordingly, it is not enough to have a considerable mass of practical work embedded in a school course, if the other constituents of it are all treated in an abstract and academic manner. We are not suggesting that the English and Geography, the Mathematics and Science of a technical course are to be narrowly vocational, but we do hold that all these subjects must be realistically treated by being directly associated with the world the pupil knows, if maximum interest and effort are to be secured. It is not sufficient that syllabuses should be meaningful for those who frame them: it is essential that their purpose and relevance be clear also to the pupils who follow them. The application of this to individual subjects belongs to the chapter on curriculum; but it may obviate misunderstanding if we say here that our argument does not lead us to advocate a special kind of Mathematics or Geography for technical pupils; what we do believe is that the treatment of Mathematics or Geography which will be effective with such boys is precisely what will suit the generality of secondary pupils.
5. Content of Courses
(1) SCHOOL CERTIFICATE COURSE
593. The content of a School Certificate Course in Technical Subjects need not differ radically from the syllabuses for three-year courses outlined in the Scottish Education Department's Memorandum.* The additional year will be well used, if it allows of a fuller and unhurried treatment of the existing programme.
594. During the first two years the time available would be shared more or less evenly among woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing. The
*Memorandum on Technical Subjects in Secondary Schools. H.M. Stationery Office, 1938. Price 6d.
[page 128]
additional periods in the IIIrd and IVth Years make possible the inclusion of applied mechanics, for which the pupils are now ready.
595. While this may be considered the normal content of a junior technical course, it must be remembered that in areas where a particular industry, e.g. textiles, predominates, it may for educational as well as practical reasons be wise not to focus the training too sharply on wood and metal work but to direct it rather to the distinctive materials and techniques of the local industry.
596. We recommend these modifications of the approved syllabuses:
WOODWORK - Constructive work such as building the model of a house should be encouraged, as well as the usual forms of cabinet-making. Some practice in wood-turning should be given. The making of a simple pattern and the casting of it in an alloy of low melting point should also be included.
METALWORK - Machine-tool practice should be given from lInd Year onward, occupying from a fifth to a quarter of the time devoted to metalwork. There is no suggestion that this should supersede training in hand tools, but it is obviously desirable in an age like the present that boys should be introduced to machine tools and get the "feel" of them before they leave school.
(2) COURSE FOR WEAKER PUPILS
597. For pupils of limited ability the syllabuses outlined would need to be adapted, care being taken to select practical work models of easy type and construction and to limit technical drawing to exercises on the plans, elevations, and very simple sections of some of these models and of suitable familiar objects.
598. Pupils of this type may lack aptitude for and sustained interest in work in wood and metal, in which case other kinds of craftwork should be tried. Plastics, for example, are obtainable in a variety of forms. They are easily worked and pleasing to handle, and they can be filed, sawn and chiselled, thus giving a sound training in measurement and the use of tools and also in appreciation of good shape and fitness for purpose.
599. With such pupils, the treatment must lean far towards the project method and make much sacrifice of logical sequence to immediate interest. Benchwork can have its own brand of pedantry, and it is poor comfort to reflect that one has given a boy a most thorough and progressive training in the use of tools, if the whole business has been so dreich [dreary] and dull that at the end of it he has no wish to use them. Although we have dealt with the practical training of these weaker boys under "Technical Subjects", we have had in mind nothing formal or specialised, but a wide, general course rich in craftwork.
(3) TECHNICAL COURSES FOR GIRLS
600. Throughout this chapter the words "pupil" and "boy" very naturally alternate as synonyms, but we cannot dismiss the possibility that there may have to be some provision of technical training for certain girls, for the experience of the war years, the development of new industries in Scotland and the possible scarcity of male skilled labour may well lead to an increased entry of women into technical employments.
[page 129]
601. We consider that, if a girl seriously wishes to take the benchwork or other technical training available for boys of her age rather than its usual feminine counterpart, a training in the domestic arts, she should be free to do so. Such a proposal should not as a rule create much difficulty, since in most co-educational schools the two forms of practical training are synchronised for each class.
602. But a further question remains. Even if girls did not react favourably to Technical Subjects as provided for boys, are there other forms of such work in which they would find interest and success? Are there different types of school workshop from those we have evolved, where certain girls would be at home? We think it possible that there are, and we recommend that this be a subject of inquiry and experiment in one or more of the larger centres of population.
(4) THE VITH FORM
603. At the VIth Form stage (16-18) two groups of pupils in Technical Subjects will need to be provided for:
(1) Pupils who have followed a general or literary course for the School Certificate and now desire to carry Technical Subjects to the same standard. This should be relatively easy. Given even the compulsory minimum of benchwork throughout the first three years, such pupils should cover the work comfortably in two years, with a time-allowance to Technical Subjects of 10 periods weekly.
(2) Pupils who have taken Technical Subjects in their School Certificate and wish to continue the study of them.
604. The technical work for these boys should still be as general as possible and not limited to a particular section of industry. We are, for example, unable to accept the suggestion that aeronautics should be introduced as a separate subject. That seems to us much too highly specialised: all that can reasonably be asked is that in the air age the teachers of Mathematics and Technical Subjects should draw examples where suitable from aeronautics, and should encourage by their interest school clubs for the construction and flying of model aircraft and gliders.
605. Moreover, it will have to be remembered that these are youths with no experience of industry and that the schools must resist the temptation to carry their work in technical drawing and applied science far beyond their real knowledge of industrial techniques. It is easy, for instance, to deal with problems of boilers, condensers and pre-heaters, but where boys are unfamiliar with the actual plant, this becomes a rather pointless juggling with formulas.
606. Practical work in wood and metal should, of course, be continued; so also should technical drawing and applied mechanics. With the last might be incorporated such elementary study of heat engines as is profitable in a school course.
607. There should be provision also for some training in design from the aesthetic standpoint. This should, as far as possible, be related to the practical work and should aim at making the pupil "proportion conscious" and "colour conscious", since a knowledge of the factors governing good proportion and colour harmony is desirable for the public generally and highly important for the future industrialist.
[page 130]
608. We recommend, too, that a Higher School Certificate course in Technical Subjects should include some study of the industrial and social history of the last 150 years. Such a course should give, for instance, some understanding not only of the social impact of industrial developments but also of the structure of modern industry, the raw materials used and their processing, together with the fundamentals of industrial and business organisation and the elements of descriptive economics.
609. Visits should be paid to industrial plants, and full use made of both diagrammatic and pictorial films with commentary. There should be an adequate technical library, including prints and photographs of specimens of good craftsmanship.
610. An advanced course of this wide scope obviously implies the cooperation of the teachers of Art, History and Economics.
611. Lastly, what we have said about the need for a realistic approach to all the subjects of a technical course still applies even at the post-School Certificate stage. It is not a question of making things easier: the difficulties of an "applied" subject are as numerous and challenging as those of a "pure" one. But different minds are quickened in different ways; and if, ignoring the diversity of the real, we seek to make all conform to one academic pattern, we cast away the greatest single aid to learning - that spontaneous interest which alone seems to have the power to mobilise the total energies of the self for the work on hand.
612. As postscript to the chapter, we express the hope that, apart from specific courses in Technical Subjects, most if not all VIth Form boys will elect to spend a little time in the workshops. The more verbal or abstract their main studies are, the more would they benefit from a couple of periods a week at the bench. For it is a salutary thing to escape at times from the world where a mistake means a false concord or a wrong answer into that other and hardly less important world where a mistake means a knock on the thumb or a piece of actual material irretrievably spoiled.
CHAPTER XI
SECONDARY EDUCATION IN RURAL AND HIGHLAND SCOTLAND
1. Purpose of Secondary Education in Rural Areas
613. The problems of education in rural areas appear to provoke extreme and conflicting opinions. To many, dismayed by the progressive decline in country life and population, it seems that the prime purpose of rural secondary education should be to stop the drift to the towns and keep country-bred boys and girls within their native environment. Others hold that, apart from administrative difficulties, there is no problem of rural education at all, since secondary schooling should be in all essentials the same throughout Scotland.
[page 131]
614. To the former view we see the gravest objections. Suitability for rural life is by no means coincident with country birth and upbringing, and to make it the chief end of rural education to stop the flight from the soil is to offend against every reasonable canon of freedom and equality of opportunity. Moreover, any such attempt will surely fail, for movements of population are the result of social and economic forces too powerful to be countered by education alone. All our witnesses were disposed to accept the verdict of Mr. Joseph F. Duncan - "The greatest illusion under which we are suffering is that anything taught in the schools will prevent social changes from taking place. The school cannot prevent the drift from the rural areas."
615. Our attention was drawn to the remarkable economic revival and arrest of depopulation in Orkney and in Lewis and Harris, but despite these heartening exceptions, it remains true that rural and Highland Scotland generally cannot offer young folk enough to prevent their migrating to the towns. Our evidence was that for the average boy, destined in most cases to remain a wage earner, economic opportunity is less in the country than in the towns, though not startlingly so; but that for the able boy or girl rural prospects are meagre indeed compared with the scale and variety of opportunity in the big centres. Without trenching on territory not our own, we wish to stress one point in this connection. It is sometimes argued that a prosperous agriculture would in itself provide great opportunities for the able girl and boy. But surely this must depend on the nature of the prosperity. Agriculture might prosper in the conventional sense, as it has done during the war years, but, if it remains easy for capital even without skill to secure a farm but impossibly hard for skill devoid of capital, then it is difficult to see how the situation would be substantially improved. But economic drawbacks are not the sole cause of the exodus to the towns. The inadequacy of community life in village or parish is keenly felt, as is the lack of facilities for recreation and entertainment. Admittedly, road transport and broadcasting have in their different ways broken the sense of isolation in remoter places, and the admirable work of the Women's Rural Institutes and Young Farmers' Clubs points the way to an enrichment of country life in which extended education may have a fruitful part to play. Moreover, great changes, the full import of which cannot be foreseen, will come over rural life with the break up of large estates, the much increased scale of afforestation and the development of hydro-electric schemes. But, whatever amelioration the future may bring on either the economic or the cultural side, we must face the fact that meantime the country cannot hold the bulk of its young people. Accordingly, we reject any conception of rural secondary education which tacitly assumes that children country-bred are in any sense "adscripti glebae" [tied to the land] or that the school may justly conspire with circumstances to narrow their opportunity in any way. A good secondary education for rural as for town children must be one that gives them the fullest opportunity for social usefulness and personal advancement in either town or country, according as temperament and talents incline them.
(1) ENVIRONMENT OF THE CHILD
616. But, while we reject the view that rural education is something apart - and properly designed to keep its products apart - we do not accept the opposite extreme that there is nothing distinctive about secondary education in the country save the administrative problems raised by distance and lack of numbers. To go that length is to deny the fundamental truth that education must be rooted in reality, finding its material and its starting point in the environment of the child.
[page 132]
617. Valid even for the man-made surroundings of the town pupil, this doctrine is compellingly true for all whose lot is cast amid the elemental experiences of country life, beholding the processes of the seasons, familiar with "the swift importings on the wilful face of skies", and ever surrounded by the wonder and variety of living things.
(2) TREATMENT OF SUBJECTS
618. The Spens Report* drew a useful distinction between schools which have imparted a "rural colour" to the curriculum and those which have developed an "agricultural bias". Of the two we regard the former as much the more important conception and capable of far more general application. This rural colour should tinge almost the whole area of the curriculum. A literature so rich as ours in the delighted portrayal of nature and the unspoiled joys of country life should come home to rural children with a vividness and an impact of reality hard for the town child to experience, and in the traditional Scottish airs and dances country children have a native expression of individual and community feeling.
619. Again, the Scottish countryside, with its rich and varied historic associations, provides the natural starting point for young people's thinking about the past, while geography can find no saner beginning than in the careful observation and survey of the familiar locality and in the close study with large scale maps of all it has to tell about nature's ways and man's.
620. To give a rural emphasis to mathematics is only to bring much of calculation and measurement back to its place of origin, and the unforced applications of arithmetic and geometry to the activities of country life are too obvious to need elaboration.
621. It is, however, in science most of all that it is possible to give a distinctively rural cast to secondary education, and especially to secure that heightened emphasis on biological teaching which enlightened opinion so strongly demands. We hold the view that all science up to School Certificate stage should be general science and that fullest use should be made of concrete "centres of interest". In this respect the rural secondary school seems to us most favourably placed, for in the school garden and orchard plot, the apiary and the poultry run, it has most valuable adjuncts to the more conventional laboratory provision. Nor need there be any lack of either scope or variety in an elementary science course that ranges over the biological study of plants and animals, insects and birds, meteorological observation, the simple chemistry of rock, soils and food and the varied application of physical and electrical principles to agriculture in an age of mechanisation.
622. One point we stress as the result of evidence laid before us: the amount of ground to be attached to a school, and the extent to which such rural activities as bee-keeping or poultry raising are undertaken, should be determined by educational considerations alone, not by the very understandable concern to spare the schoolmaster and his boys an impossible burden of manual labour. Accordingly, we recommend that for this necessary routine work adequate hired assistance should be provided, account being taken of the work involved in firing glass-houses and of the need for extra assistance over holiday periods.
*See footnote to paragraph 102.
[page 133]
(3) TRAINING AND ATTITUDE OF TEACHERS.
623. But all those factors favourable to the imparting of a rural colour may remain largely inoperative unless the training and attitude of country teachers are right. It is for them to convey to their pupils that "the country" means far more than a place of abode or livelihood, is indeed a distinctive way of life, which even if it lacks certain urban amenities and rewards, retains its immemorial power to satisfy many of the deepest and noblest instincts of our human nature. We believe that our proposals for the training of teachers* will help to this good end, but education authorities must recognise how serious is the hurt to rural education caused by a shortage of suitable accommodation which compels many teachers to live at a distance from their schools, divorced from the social and cultural activities of the community in which their pupils are growing up. We recommend that education authorities should regard as a matter of urgency the provision for their teachers of living accommodation within easy distance of the school;
2. Types of Courses
624. How far and at what stage we consider an "agricultural bias" desirable in rural education will appear from what follows. Here we record the conviction, supported by evidence laid before us, that agriculture as such should have no place in the secondary curriculum within the years of compulsory schooling.
625 We go on to give some account of the present state of secondary education in rural and Highland Scotland, prefacing our remarks with a reminder of the wide diversity of conditions - in rural areas adjoining industrial belts, in country districts farther withdrawn from centres of population and in the great and almost untenanted stretches found in the Highland counties, and in certain parts of the Borders.
(1) SENIOR SECONDARY COURSES
626. Of rural secondary education, as of our national system in general, it can be claimed that the most satisfactory feature is the provision for the abler minority in the full five-year centres. The secondary schools of the larger country towns are well staffed and equipped. The quality of their Leaving Certificate work is often very high, and even if their VIth Forms miss a little of the systematic advanced tuition available in city and large town schools, in many cases they show by way of compensation the greater initiative of those who are thrown back somewhat upon their own resources. Nor does this favourable verdict need much qualification in regard to the small senior secondary schools; it is still true, as it has long been true, that some of the soundest secondary work in Scotland is being done in very small schools whose worth and importance are out of all proportion to their size.
627. But while the standards are high, the curricula of our rural secondary schools are in most cases too narrow to meet the needs of the contemporary world and to do justice to the variety of interests and aptitudes found among boys and girls at the higher intelligence levels. The bookish tradition in Scottish education and the vastly greater difficulty of providing for advanced practical instruction in a large number of small schools have combined to keep rural secondary schooling predominantly literary and oriented towards the universities and the learned professions.
*Report on the Training of Teachers (Cmd. 6723).
[page 134]
628. For the teaching of pure science the schools are not ill-equipped; physics and chemistry are well taught up to Senior Leaving Certificate level, and in the larger centres the work of the VIth Year is undertaken with success. The prevalent subordination of biology persists in the smaller centres as in the larger town schools, a neglect which is particularly unnatural in the former. If domestic subjects, art and music have found a place, it is, with rare exceptions, a place that does far less than justice to their value for education and for life. But the most serious deficiency of all is in the meagre provision for advanced technical education, whether on the mechanical or on the agricultural side. Our expert witnesses confirm that the necessary staffing, equipment and accommodation are largely non-existent, especially in the Highland area. Only five Scottish schools offer a course in agriculture leading to the Senior Leaving Certificate, and, if we except Wallace Hall Academy, Dumfries, the total number of such certificates awarded in the quinquennium 1938-1942 was four. During the same period Wallace Hall Academy alone had 30 certificates. Light is thrown on this surprising contrast by the fact that at Wallace Hall no Senior Leaving Certificate can be taken that does not include agriculture. This situation, in our opinion, calls for immediate action, and we make the following proposals designed to remedy it.
629. We recommend that education authorities should either singly or jointly set up for appropriate areas or regions senior secondary schools of a technical type provided with hostels. These schools should offer -
(1) Rural, domestic and technical courses (also navigation where necessary), but not general or academic courses, leading to School and Higher School Certificate presentation; and
(2) Intensive IVth Year courses of the same types for pupils who have completed three years in their local junior secondary schools.
630. Our reason for recommending an area or regional basis for these technical centres is that in some instances at least the number of pupils for whom a single education authority required such provision might not allow of the adequate equipment and staffing of such a school without prohibitive cost. We cannot, however, define the appropriate area or region more closely, as circumstances will vary very widely and what constitutes a sufficient "catchment area" can be determined only with intimate knowledge of local conditions. We would exclude a general School Certificate or Higher School Certificate course from these centres, on the ground that the provision for that kind of secondary education is reasonably good everywhere and that the function of the proposed new technical schools should not be complicated or distorted.
631. These area schools should have a considerable extent of ground attached, but we are not prepared to say that they should in every case run a self-contained farm. Such an arrangement would have advantages, but it has been stated in evidence that the full value of agricultural training can be secured only on a farm run on a commercial basis, and it may be that in some cases the pupils' needs will be better met by securing the interest and friendly co-operation of neighbouring farmers.
632. While such area or regional technical schools would be the normal type, there might be circumstances where with the provision of hostels a school might meet the normal needs of its locality for senior secondary education, and at the same time provide on a residential basis the advanced technical courses for a wider area.
[page 135]
633. We have no doubt that these area or regional schools should provide a "technical" course in the familiar sense, for it is indefensible that the interests and aptitudes that go to make a good engineer should be denied opportunity simply because of the accident of rural upbringing.
634. We recommend that the science course in country and Highland schools be given a definite biological and rural bias, and that there should be in these schools a wide extension of School Certificate and Higher School Certificate courses in agriculture, as defined by the Scottish Education Department.
635. We have much evidence that such developments are gravely hampered by the present regulations of the Scottish Universities Entrance Board, which (1) demand a pass in a foreign language, and (2) refuse recognition to a Senior Leaving Certificate pass in agriculture. Accordingly, in order that the above two recommendations may not be rendered in part at least inoperative, we further recommend that the Secretary of State should make known to the Scottish universities the hampering effect of existing regulations on certain very desirable developments in rural secondary education, and should urge that these regulations be amended - (1) by waiving the demand for a language pass in its present form in order that there may be room in the later secondary years for both science and agricultural science, or (2) by acceptance of science with a rural and agricultural bias as an alternative to pure science, or better still, (3) by the abandonment of a uniform entrance qualification as required by Ordinance LXX and the framing of appropriate requirements for admission to each separate faculty.
636. Just as the potential engineer may tramp the glen or the hillside, so many a city youngster may be strongly drawn to country life - may, in the words of Mr. Joseph F. Duncan, "discover a disposition for rural occupation". We share his opinion that "this disposition should be encouraged", and therefore we recommend that the other authorities either individually or in co-operation should follow the lead of Glasgow and make provision for the boy or girl who wishes a full secondary course including agriculture.
(2) JUNIOR SECONDARY COURSES
637. When we turn from the senior secondary school to the junior, from the provision for the few to that for the many, the picture becomes far less satisfactory. There are two great defects in the short course rural schools: (1) The persistence of a far too bookish curriculum, and the failure to develop adequately these practical activities which are called for both by educational needs of the pupils concerned and by the conditions of country life: and (2) The continued existence of tiny, ill-equipped centres, where there is a semblance but no reality of secondary education.
(a) Courses too bookish
638. We do not suggest that (1) is true of every country junior secondary school, but the charge must be brought against certain rural areas and against the Highlands generally. It is notorious that most three-year schools in the Highlands have made it their main function to prepare their ablest pupils for passing on to the senior secondary school at the IVth Year stage, with consequent neglect of the much bigger number of non-bookish boys and girls who should be their primary concern. So persistent has this distortion of function been that we doubt whether it will be cured by anything less drastic than the centralisation of all academic pupils from the age of twelve. Daily travel and
[page 136]
residence away from home at this early age are not to be lightly proposed, but such centralisation may prove the only way of compelling the short course schools to turn to their proper and important work and of ensuring that staffing, accommodation and equipment are adjusted to the needs of the children for whom the schools are designed. The necessary change will take time, and the obvious fact that the raising of the school age will aggravate all that is wrong in the existing situation makes it urgently necessary that reform should begin immediately.
(b) Ill-equipped Centres and Centralisation
639. In drawing attention to (2) we are much less concerned to apportion blame than to find a remedy. The facts are not in dispute. All over the Highlands and in many sparsely populated areas especially in the South, little groups of children who have completed the primary stage are kept on in one- and two-teacher schools, which lack the staff, accommodation and equipment for the education of children over twelve. In effect these children are being denied secondary education, and if such arrangements continue, the plain intention of the 1945 Act will be flouted, the abuse becoming the more flagrant with the raising of the school age.
640. Three factors have gone to produce this deplorable situation.
(1) Where centralisation is most difficult and costly, financial resources are most limited, and rightly or wrongly the education authorities concerned have shrunk from the expenditure involved despite the special grant available. The formidable nature of their problem must be frankly recognised, but we hold that the nation's intention clearly expressed in the Act cannot be ignored, nor must difficulties of finance justify the refusal to Scottish children of their statutory right to secondary education. The financial provision of the latest Grant Regulations should go far to ease the situation.
(2) Some parents in remote areas have proved completely unwilling to let their children leave home, and it must in fairness be remembered that till now the authorities' powers have been limited, since the parent had a "reasonable excuse", and therefore could not be successfully prosecuted, for failing to provide efficient education for his child if there was no public or inspected school which the child could attend within three miles of his residence and if the education authority did not provide reasonable facilities for his conveyance to and from school. Under the Act of 1945 a further limitation is placed upon the plea of "reasonable excuse": it can no longer be successfully pleaded if the authority arranges for the accommodation of the child at a boarding school or in a hostel, home or other institution, or makes other arrangements for board and lodging for him.
(3) There are the stubborn facts of geography and distribution of population. In Argyll, for instance, some half of the 150 one-teacher schools are so situated that to concentrate the children is well nigh impossible. We appreciate the extent of the undertaking and we have no facile solution to offer. But in the measure that secondary education is admitted to be not a luxury but a necessity in the child's interest and society's, the difficulties or centralisation must be overcome, even if the means adopted are costly and laborious.
641. To determine what minimum degree of centralisation will suffice, it is necessary to answer the question - what is the smallest size of school in which three years of secondary education can be given? And the answer will
[page 137]
not be helpful, unless it is borne in mind that secondary education (especially in the short-course schools) must provide facilities for practical work and also the necessary conditions of community life and activity. The importance of the latter is often over-looked. Two or three older children remaining in a tiny school of little folks miss almost everything we mean by education except the formal instruction. We have expert evidence that only when at least ten or a dozen children of like age are present do a class spirit and the possibilities of play and community experience emerge.
642. Normally the rural secondary centre must be linked with a primary department, and we are satisfied that the smallest combined unit in which the needs of the secondary pupils can be met is a school with five full-time teachers plus visiting specialists. Unfortunately, it is just in the more scattered areas that the use of visiting teachers is most wasteful and least satisfactory, and we believe that the staffing of these small schools will be greatly strengthened by our proposals* for the training of semi-specialists, i.e. teachers who combine a class or general subject qualification with the ability to teach physical education, music, art, domestic, technical or rural subjects, so that the employment of visiting teachers can be correspondingly reduced.
643. We are convinced too, that the adequacy of these small rural schools depends on the provision of two all-purposes practical rooms for boys and girls respectively, and that the equipment of these rooms must be considerably more varied and extensive than has been general hitherto. Where two practical rooms are provided, there is saving of teachers' and pupils' time, because the practical work of boys and girls can be synchronised.
644. There is, however, an alternative way of dealing with the problem. In certain parts of Aberdeenshire the road system and the spread of population make it possible to establish at certain points small schools which are purely post-primary and to bring the pupils to them without their having to travel more than eight to ten miles. Such schools, with an annual intake of forty or more pupils and allowing of some sub-division, must be considered a decidedly satisfactory form of provision. The same general considerations as to staffing, accommodation and equipment would apply to them as to the combined primary and secondary unit, and the staff should be the equivalent of not less than four full-time teachers.
645. To sum up, we recommend that in future schools should not be accepted as meeting the requirements of the Code† in regard to secondary education, if in numbers, staffing, accommodation and equipment they fall short of one or other of the types we have described; and that, with due allowance for immediate difficulties, the necessary policy of centralisation should be enforced with no avoidable delay.
646. It will be clear that the degree of centralisation we desire is the minimum necessary to allow of genuine three-year secondary schools, i.e. we wish to centralise not in large town schools but in relatively small schools that preserve a rural setting and atmosphere. When residence is necessary our evidence is that in general the provision of hostels is as satisfactory as and less costly than the setting up of boarding schools. Where pupils must travel, we recommend that the distance by cycle should not be more than four or where the going is exceptionally easy five miles, and by bus, one hour's journey including walking time.
*Report on the Training of Teachers (Cmd. 6723).
†See footnote to paragraph 12.
[page 138]
3. Equipment, and Teachers of Music and Physical Education
647. Lastly, for the enrichment of rural secondary education we recommend - (1) more generous provision of either semi-specialists or fully qualified teachers of music and physical education (the poor gait of many children proves that country air and fare alone are not enough); and (2) much fuller provision of pianos, gramophones, wireless sets, projectors and other visual aids. As these are necessary equipment and not desirable extras, it is the clear duty of the education authority and no other to supply them.
4. Conclusion
648. It will be evident that we can recommend no simple or uniform pattern for the organisation of post-primary schools in the rural and Highland areas. In some cases functional schools will best meet the situation; in others, what are omnibus schools at least in the limited sense that they provide both long and short courses and deal with the whole normal intelligence range. Much as we might wish it, it is clearly impossible that all rural secondary schools should be five-year centres, since such a policy would either be prohibitive in cost and wasteful of staffing, or would involve a degree of centralisation most undesirable on social grounds and certain to arouse opposition.
649. Amid the complexities of rural and Highland secondary education, we have thought it best to concentrate at this time on two big problems - how can the work of long-course and short-course schools alike be given the necessary practical emphasis and a sensible relevance to the environment of the pupils; and what is the minimum disturbance of the life of little isolated communities that will make the provision of secondary education possible at all, and thus satisfy the requirements of the Act of 1945.
650. We hope that our proposals have kept within the bounds of the practicable; and we suggest that, after a period in which the education authorities have been given that freedom to experiment which the great diversity in conditions requires, it should be remitted to a future Advisory Council to review the effects of our recommendations and the progress made.
CHAPTER XII
THE INSPECTORATE
651. We have both a general and a particular reason for devoting a chapter of our Report to the Inspectorate; the first, because of the part H.M. Inspectors have played and will, we believe, continue to play in the development of education in Scotland; the second, because we are recommending major changes in the examination system which presuppose the work of an Inspectorate unimpaired in quality and adequate in numbers.
652. If the Inspectorate of a bygone generation had a somewhat authoritarian, and at times even an inquisitorial, cast, the explanation is to be sought not in the personal qualities of the talented men recruited to that service but
[page 139]
rather in the function assigned to them and the conditions under which they had to work. Their rigour was of a piece with the autocracy of the headmaster and the coercive force of the external examination. All alike were features, and it may be necessary features, of a national system of education rapidly expanding and having to consolidate its standards as it grew. But the changed educational outlook of the last quarter of a century is clearly reflected in the present attitude and work of H.M. Inspectors of Schools, for whom it can be confidently claimed that they enjoy what official status and authority alone could never compel - the trust and esteem of their co-partners in the work of education.
653. The confidence of the schools in H.M. Inspectors rests on their qualifications for the work. Always fully adequate in scholarship, and often highly distinguished, they are required in every case to have given a sufficient period of service. in schools to leave their teaching skill in no doubt. If in respect of one part of the educational field, namely the primary school, there is a departure from this sound principle, that but serves to throw into relief the general wisdom of the Department's policy. The goodwill of the schools towards H.M. Inspectors results from the sanity and enlightenment with which the latter approach the common tasks, from their evident desire to come to terms with the realities of the class-room and to bring to the solution of its problems the fruits of experience rather than oracular pronouncements.
654. It is difficult for the layman to realise how varied the duties of the Inspectorate have become, how far indeed their functions have outgrown their name. They remain, of course, the agents of the Secretary of State, charged to keep him informed as to the work and state of the schools, and, as in the past, the public may very properly look to these holders of His Majesty's commission to ensure that all who are entrusted with the education of the nation's children are about their business with honest diligence.
655. We have spoken of the special function H.M. Inspectors have long performed in the conduct of the Leaving Certificate Examination. Our proposals assign them a similar role in the examination for the Higher School Certificate, while their first-hand knowledge of the schools and ability to assess their work will he a necessary factor in the operation of the arrangements for the award of the School Certificate also.
656. But increasingly in recent years the Inspectorate have come to be looked on, and have come, we believe, to look on themselves, as above all consultants and collaborators, able to bring to the problems of any one school experience culled in many, and to contribute to the solution of difficulties a judgment at once disinterested and well-informed. To stimulate by discussion and suggestion, to spread ideas and be a link between school and school, to provoke the unreflective to thought and to awaken healthy doubts as to the sufficiency of familiar routines - in such service lies the most valuable function of the Inspectorate, and we would stress the very special value of its guidance and encouragement to the hundreds of small schools, where teachers, often inexperienced, are working under conditions of difficulty and isolation.
657. In another direction also the duties of H.M. Inspectors have multiplied. The widely expanded functions of the education authorities create the need and the occasion for constant consultation between the Inspectorate and the Directors of Education, and there falls on the Chief and District Inspectors a volume and variety of administrative tasks of which the public and even teachers are little aware. We see in this liaison work with the education authorities a valuable and necessary function of the senior personnel of the
[page 140]
Inspectorate; but we are concerned that it should not become unprofitably burdensome, and we accordingly recommend that for H.M. Inspectors, as for heads of schools, such adequate secretarial help should be provided as will ensure that no part of their time and energy is deflected from its proper purpose.
658. We have sought to make clear our conviction that the Inspectorate has done much for Scottish education in the past half-century and will continue to playa beneficent and important part in its development, but we believe that, if their contribution is to be as fruitful as possible, certain changes are necessary.
659. Firstly, we think that the service is not now happily named. Inspection is and will remain an admitted function of the Department's officers, but it is only one among many, and not the one to which an enlightened public opinion will in future attach any primacy of importance or dignity. Moreover, the present name is not welcome to the teaching profession. Teachers have as a rule the friendliest of feelings towards Inspectors as individuals, but professionally they dislike the conception of an "Inspectorate", and see in the perpetuation of this name some derogation from their own status. With this feeling we sympathise, nor can the objections be countered by a mere reminder that teaching is a public service. The justification for the name is to be found in past history not in any present necessity, and we find it hard to believe that, if certain other professions which have attained full stature and status were to come under public control, it would be felt necessary in the nation's interests to subject them to any comparable form of oversight. Above all, the name Inspectorate suggests incomplete emancipation from certain outmoded ideas as to the nature of education, and there seems no doubt that it engenders in some teachers a feeling of subserviency which spoils their relations with the Inspectorate, through no fault of the latter's. For the reasons given, we recommend that the Inspectorate be renamed His Majesty's Educational Service, the members of the service to be known as His Majesty's Education Officers. We do not, however, approve the insertion in the title of the word "Advisory", which stresses one single function unduly and at the same time mutes completely the proper note of authority.
660. We have indicated our opinion that inspection remains a recognised and on occasions an important function, and we are equally sure that there are times when H.M. Inspectors ought to report with great frankness. But we confess that the hurried, routine inspection of a succession of classes followed by stereotyped report seems to us a time-wasting practice yielding profit to no one and calculated to bring the whole business of inspection into disrepute. We recommend, therefore, that it be discontinued and that H.M. Inspectors be left complete discretion to examine with thoroughness and report with candour where circumstances require it, and for the rest, to devote their time to more constructive functions.
661. It is not enough that the qualifications of H.M. Inspectors should in all cases be high. They must also be relevant to the duties to be undertaken, and, as we have pointed out, this sound principle is not sufficiently observed in regard to the work of the infant and primar