The NURSERY SCHOO L MARGARET McMlLLAN Hatt (EolUgc of Agritulturc At CJorttell aniaerBiti) Jlliara. Sf. f. Cornell University Library LB 1328.M22 The nursery school 3 1924 013 415 363 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 341 5363 THE NURSERY SCHOOL MWOB'wo'HmiKiVJ ■J 'A a '^aueccvKsid &£!£. THE NURSERY SCHOOL BY MARGARET McMILLAN WITH A FOREWORD BY pkof. patty smith hill OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY I92I NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & CO. Pirst Issued, 1919 Reprinted, 192 1 [All Rights Reserved] FOREWORD By PROFESSOR PATTY SMITH HILL Director of Lower Primary (Kindergarten-Primary) Education, Teachers' College, Columbia University, New York City Here is an epoch-making book which all who have to do with the welfare of children cannot afford to overlook. It is truly an inspiring and absorbing account of an experiment in child-saving which " warms the cockles of the heart " with its evi- dences of intelligent insight and sympathy in dealing with the " toddlers " and young children in the slums of London. At last the world seems to be awakening to the fact that human destiny is largely shaped by the nurture or neglect of early infancy and childhood. Miss McMillan presents a most convincing study in the power of early environment, which provides for health of body and the refinements of beauty, saturated with all those human values which make for morality, and mental, and emotional health. The importance of early influences has been appreciated by people of rare insight, or sympathy, in all ages, but society at large even to-day is vi FOREWORD singularly blind or indifferent to the practical out- come of such facts. We are inclined to look upon what is vaguely designated " disposition " as a foregone issue determined and controlled by the mysterious forces of physical heredity. The emotional habits of happiness and amiability or discontent and irrita- bility ; the habitual attitudes of affection and confidence, or antipathy and suspicion ; the feelings of selfishness and malice, or generosity and goodwill toward man- — are established in the dim beginnings of life by the social ideals and standards of those around the child. This influence which Professor Mark Baldwin calls " social heredity " has, in all probability, as much to do with the making of dis- position and personality as the forces of physical heredity predetermined at birth. When Dr. Maltbie Babcock was making an effort to prove the power of the human will in controlling one's natural tempera- ment, he said that while we may not be responsible for the disposition we are born with, we are for the disposition we die with. Even so scientific an observer of child life as Dr. John Dewey says : " Especially precious are the first dawnings of power. More than we imagine, the ways in which the tendencies of early childhood are treated fix fundamental dispositions and condition the turn taken by powers that show themselves later." {Education and Democracy, Dewey.) How slow the world has been in learning this ! FOREWORD vii Education seems to move from above downward, the earliest and most impressionable years being left to chance, or positive neglect, centuries after later childhood and youth have been provided with the best that education can provide in guidance and environment. If the findings of Mental Hygiene and Psycho- Analysis can be depended upon as pointing toward a future science of the power of the unconscious forces of life, they will go to prove that we have abandoned the most formative period of hiiman life to the uncertain forces of chance experience. Froebel and Montessori were wise in turning to the pre-school age as one of untold educational possi- bilities, but the Nursery School movement in England has improved upon their plan in pushing education back into the pre-kindergarten years, when neglect is most expensive both to the indivi- dual and society. We must give full credit to the earlier efforts to care for infants in the creches and day nurseries in England and other countries, but Miss McMillan's work has little in common with these. While she is aware of the fact that to neglect human life at the period when greatest susceptibility to disease is at its high-water mark, is the most expensive and tragic mistake a nation can make, she sees beyond this into the demands of the human spirit. Such national neglect is not to be measured only by the thousands of little Uves snuffed out at the viii FOREWORD dawn of existence, but by the sickly, wrecked physical and moral specimens who survive to a bare existence, which leaves them incapable of coping with life, and a burden to themselves and society. Life is more than meat, and man cannot live by bread alone. Thousands of infants die in institu- tions where the physical environment is far superior to that of the average home, providing all that makes for the welfare of the body. This mysterious missing element of human affection and devotion must permeate the atmosphere of any institution which hopes to save the souls as well as the bodies of little children. Miss McMillan has proved that the children of poverty may not only be saved, but that they may be worth while to themselves and society in their survival. Rural life Avill always be impossible for large numbers of families. When the parents earn their livelihood in our great cities, it is neither possible nor advisable to sever the bond between children and parents by sending the little ones to the country, except for short vacations. While these short vacations are better than nothing, the children quickly lapse when brought back to the city to continue their neglected existence in the squalid environment of the children of misfortune. Miss McMillan saw that it was impossible to keep large numbers of children in the country, so she created a garden spot in the slums of the city — FOREWORD Ix literally a child-garden. Her transformation of a London " dump heap " into a paradise of childhood is a stroke of real genius. Another interesting thing about this miraculous transformation of slum surroundings is the com- paratively small outlay of money put into its equipment. A minimum of money goes into the buildings. They are little more than " shacks " or shelters set in a garden of flowers and trees overlooked by tenements of the lowest order. Sunshine, open air, baths, food, sleep, play, and work in beautiful and happy surroundings — these are the great means of education she employs. The money goes into land and good teachers, who are nurses as well as teachers. The number of children to the teacher is kept sufficiently small to make it possible to preserve the individuality — the personality of every little child. The best medical attendance is provided, clinics being an important part of her scheme of education and not only death, but disease is kept at bay. These tiny toddlers with clean, well-nourished bodies, living in the open, surrounded by intelligent and sympathetic care, soon leave little for the physician to do. Strange as it may seem, these little children from the worst slums of London — when they enter the regular school at eight years of age — are straight of limb, broad-shouldered, tall, and so far as can be seen now are as normal in mind and heart as the children of the so-called X FOREWORD privileged classes. This seems so logical that we wonder that society has come to the realization of it so slowly. A few years ago, a survey of the homes of children below normal in weight, height and class standing, proved that a regularity almost mathematical could be counted upon in the relation of weight and height to the one, two, three or four roomed homes from which they came. {Hygiene of School Children, Terman.) If this be true, why should we be astonished at the beautiful children made possible, when they are rescued from these squalid homes and placed in gardens of delight, in sunshine and flowers ? Walt Whitman expressed it long ago when he wrote : "A child went forth one day, and what he saw he became." We can almost imagine the thousands of little lives struggling to survive in the slums of our great modern cities, unconsciously offering the prayer of Matthew Arnold : " Nor let me die, before I have begun to live." The little children of Miss McMillan's Nursery School not only live but have a rich abundant life of health, and happiness, and beauty which should be the birthright of all the children of all nations and races. It has been said that the test of civilization is the attitude toward young children. Most superin- tendents are absorbed in the problems of secondary schools or in industrial and educational vocations at the cost of the younger children in our public FOREWORD xi school systems. The finest buildings, the costliest equipment, the most highly-trained and highly- paid teachers are procured for high schools. If funds run low, the younger children are usually the ones to be sacrificed. It is almost invariably the fate of the youngest to be housed in the most insanitary, and the most unsightly buildings, herded in the largest classes and crowded in ill- ventilated rooms, with overworked, underpaid and often the most poorly prepared teachers. Civilization demands a new environment for our youngest children — a new type of nurture and education — a high standard of teaching, teacher- nurses or nurse-teachers, who understand the right of the youngest in our democratic society to " life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Miss Margaret McMillan, Miss Grace Owen and others have been pioneers in this great movement for saving and educating the babies of England. State funds are now provided for the education of mere babies and the training of teacher-nurses in the Nursery Schools. When will America awaken to the fact that her babies are left to chance, and that as Professor John Watkins, of John Hopkins University, says, if we wait until the child is three years old, it may be too late to form those habits of physical, mental and moral health, which are the foundation of character and citizenship ? 1921. .^AC„,iL'MCM,LLAX AX THE ACE OP NIXETEEX BORX OX LADVlJAV. rJIED OX LADVDAV [l-cice Dedicatinii DEDICATED TO MY SISTER RACHEL / cannot think that thou art far." " Educate every child as if he were your own." Rachel McMillan. PREFACE This book was written in response to a desire expressed by many people in every part of the country for some help or guidance in the starting of Nursery-Schools. The need for a book on this subject is certainly urgent. Not merely a few children, here and there, but hundreds of thousands are in dire need of education or nurture in the first years. For lack of it all the rest of life is clouded and weakened. The fate of vast numbers of little children given over to all the dangers and horrors of the streets, and in homes where no real nurture is possible, was brought very forcibly before us this autumn, when after a holiday we found that one-third of aU our nursery children were diseased, and obliged to spend a week at the clinic ere they could come back to our school. We set about the treatment and restoration of the few. This book was written in order to urge the nation to set vigorously about the salvation of the many. Nursery-Schools, we are often told, are in the experimental stage. This can hardly be true, for the experience of six or seven years' work has 7 8 PREFACE jrielded convincing proof as to how nurture can be given. It has indicated beyond all question the kind of environment that should be secured, and the means — very simple means they are — by which all the dangers of bringing many little children together can be avoided. The next step need not be tentative. It should certainly not be timid. There is a tide in the affairs of nations which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. The flood tide moment is here now. Not by cautiously adapting small houses and leading into them large groups of forty to fifty little children can we solve this great problem. How we should approach it, and what we should do I have set forth, as well as I can, in this book. In the last chapter I have tried to thank those who helped me in the work of the School-Nursery. In this foreword I wish to thank my friend and publisher, Mr. Dent, for his unfailing courtesy and helpfulness, and Mr. Brian Rhys for invaluable help in the arrangement of my manuscript. The illustrations in the book, other than the photographs, were prepared by the first and second- year students of the Rachel McMillan Centre. CONTENTS rXGK FOREWORD BY PROF. PATTY SMITH HILL . V PREFACE ....... 7 INTRODUCTION . .... 12 PART I CHAPTER I. THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK . . 15 II. THE NURSERY-SCHOOL ... 21 m. PLAN OF THE BUILDINGS ... 32 IV. THE GARDEN 44 V. DIET 50 VI. CLOTHING ..... 54 VII. WHAT TO DO FOR A TODDLER . . 63 vni. A winter's day in the toddlers' CAMP 70 IX. the three and FOUR- year- olders 83 X. MORNING WORK .... 91 XI. COLOUR 100 XII. FORM ...... 104 XIII. FORM CONTINUED AND LEADING UP TO READING AND WRITING . .109 XIV. ARITHMETIC, OR PREPARATION FOR SCIENCE ..... 122 XV. THE DINNER HOUR . . . .129 XVI. A TEA PARTY AND A HOMELY EVENING 134 XVII. THE CAMP IN SUMMER . . .138 XVni. WHEN THE SHADOWS ARE FALLING . 145 XIX. THE SEVEN-YEAR-OLD . . . 147 9 10 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAG» XX. GUY AND THE STARS . . . 154 XXI. GtJY AND THE MORNING . .164 PART II XXII. THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHERS . 171 XXIII. SKETCHES OF A FEW TYPICAL CHILDREN AND THEIR HOMES . 181 XXIV. DENTAL AND CLINIC TRAINING . 187 XXV. PHYSICAL TRAINING AS PREPARATION 196 XXVI. PSYCHOLOGY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE TEACHER-NURSE . . 219 XXVII. HISTORY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF A NURSERY- SCHOOL TEACHER . 235 XXVIII. HAND-WORK AND ART TEACHING , 252 XXIX. GARDENING ..... 262 XXX. MEDICAL ATTENDANCE IN NURSERY- SCHOOLS ..... 264 XXXI. ATTACHED AND DETACHED SCHOOLS 269 XXXII. FINANCE OF THE NURSERY-SCHOOL 274 XXXni. INFLUENCE OF THE NURSERY-SCHOOL ON THE HIGHER SCHOOL . . 280 XXXIV. EFFECT OF THE NURSERY-SCHOOL ON THE TEACHING OF UPPER SCHOOLS 286 XXXV. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT IN CAMP . 297 XXXVI. HOLIDAYS ..... 305 XXXVII. THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN . .317 XXXVIU. TO THOSE WHO HELPED . . 347 INDEX 355 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS CHILDREN AFTER THE BATH IN THE RACHEL MACMiLLAN MEMORIAL ROOM Frontispiece PAGE RACHEL MACMILLAN AT THE AGE OF NINETEEN facing 5 DRAWING OF THE CAMP .... 35 QUEEN mart's VISIT TO THE SCHOOL facing 56 DESIGNS FOR SEAMS AND EMBROIDERIES DESIGN FOR EMBROIDERY . SPEECH DIAGRAM .... CHILD PUTTING ON SHOE . CHILDREN IN THE BATH FRAMES AND GEOMETRICAL INSETS facing 109 PATTERNS ON THE BLACKBOARD . . 119 SCROLL DESIGNS AND LOOPED PATTERNS . 120 MEDIAEVAL DESK ..... 121 CHILD ASLEEP ON CAMP BED . . .132 PENCIL DRAWING OF THE CAMP BY A FIRST YEAR STUDENT . . . facing 171 RIBOT'S DIAGRAM OF THE IMAGINATION . 231 II 59 62 66 88 89 INTRODUCTION This book sets forth the brief of the Nursery- School as the public is beginning to understand the term. There were Crfeches before. There are Baby- welfare Centres ; there are even Baby Clinics, and there are Infant Schools. Tlie Nursery-School is a new departure, and is distinct in aim and method from all that went before. It was placed on the Statute-book as a part of our educational system in August, 1918. In 1917 Mr. Fisher had formally opened the Memorial Room of my dear sister. Now in August, 1919, I send this book forth launching it in a troubled hour, though the peace-terms are signed. The theory of all that is worked out more or less in this book is contained in a former book, Education through the Imagination, published for me in 1904 by Allen & Unwin. In it the whole subject of child psychology, centring as it does round the early-developing power of creative imagination, is dealt with much more fully than was possible in this volume. Theory and practice alike owe much, if not all, of their original impidse to the work of Edward S6guin, an exile from France 12 INTRODUCTION 18 finding refuge in America, but waiting for full recognition of the value of his labours for at least thirty years after his death. In 1896 when I first made acquaintance with his work it was impossible to buy a copy of his book in England ; and I was obliged to come up from Bradford to London in order to read his work in the British Museum. Edouard S^guin was a teacher of defective children and a follower of Pinel, Itard and Esquirol. Absorbed in the great task of drawing the idiot and the imbecile from the abyss in which they are plunged, he was led by his toil for these to lay bare and expose many of the processes whereby human beings are prepared for a human destiny. Near the teeming ports of the New World he saw the exiles of poverty, of tyranny, and of despair arrive from every European country, and having been faithful to the poor idiot, he had a gift in his hand for this new world, and for every freed people also of the old. We also hope we have a gift for the millions who are not idiots, not sub-normal, but who are yet driven back from the outgoing life of civilised humanity by the poverty or rigour of their lives. Nearly forty years have passed since Seguin's death. Sixty have gone since Froebel left this world. It would be absurd to say that nothing has been discovered, nothing invented, nothing im- proved in the work of child nurture and education 14 INTRODUCTION since their death. In 1859 Broca discovered the speech centre in the brain and heralded in so doing a new era in psychology. In 1896 a new classifica- tion of children became possible, by the discovery of finely localised and independent brain centres all affecting the individual's powers of learning each of the three R's. It would be strange if we fell back entirely on precedent when so many workers and investigators have made possible a rapid advance. Every teacher is a discoverer. Everyone is an inventor, an improver of methods, or he is a mere journey-man, not a master ! I have taken my environment where I stood. Our life's raft is on a stream that never pauses, that never stagnates, whose banks show ever the new landscape, and lead ever forward towards the horizon that is yet to be unveiled. If in this hour of rapid change and transforma- tion we can give any guidance to our generation my sister's work and my own will not have been in vain. THE NURSERY SCHOOL PART I CHAPTER I THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK The subject of this book divides itself into two distinct parts. First there is the Nursery-School, and all that concerns the children who attend or will attend it. And, secondly, there is the Teacher, Student-Teacher and their preparation and training for the new work. Hitherto everything has been a little confused in the discussion of these two beings — ^the child and the teacher. There were no Nursery-Schools proper, certainly no outdoor nurseries, and the Student- Teacher and her affairs were all strangled some- where in the midst of the " progressive " ideas put forth in regard to children. So confused, so blind indeed was the general view on this whole subject, that many people supposed that training of any kind was unnecessary— that any kind of nice, motherly girl would do for a nursery-teacher. Nurseries were to be, in other words, a dumping- ground for the well-intentioned but dull women 16 16 THE NURSERY SCHOOL of to-day. More enlightened thinkers made other mistakes, and showed faith in " a few lessons " tacked on to various orders of training as a pre- paration for work which is the foimdation of all social and educational success. In order to make the nature of the work clear I have therefore divided this book into two sections — one being devoted to the nurture of children, and one to the training of Teacher-Nurses. These should, if treated seriously, correspond to or dovetail into one another. For example, if we speak of sensory training for little children, and really mean it, we must devote some time, and thought, and effort to the voice-training and visual-training of our young teachers. And this is the only way by which we can get the training for children. It may be said at this point that already the Training Colleges are giving the education needed by our elementary and nursery teachers. These colleges, it is claimed quite rightly, make greater demands every year on the personnel of their students. The unfit in mind and body have long since found their doors closed to them. The most gifted women are engaged as Lecturers and Prin- cipals. And the examinations become every year more rigid. All this is true and is not in dispute. What we ask is this. If it be true that we believe in sensory education, and motor training for children as a condition of all future advance. THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK 17 how can we give this training to teachers in large classes at all ? Human beings can leam a good many things in massed classes, but they cannot have sensory training in masses. At first each must be taken alone. The teacher or trainer will have to leam where she is herself as a sensitive being. Having fo\md out how she breathes, and moves, and speaks, and sees, how far her own sense memories are developed, she must start with work that is all designed to help her, and only after a while it may be possible to let her join a small class and work with others. As she improves she will grow more and more fit to work with others, but at first she is alone. Can this work be done in any large college or centre ? I do not think that teachers can be trained there to give sensory training to children. In order to do this well they must first have a sensory education themselves. • • • • • I have one other criticism to make of existing colleges. Teacher-students have to take their theory first and their practice afterwards. They go to college and then they go into an elementary school. There they have to learn things that do not come in books. The head mistress has to begin and teach the newly-arrived student-teacher a new art — ^that of takinglarge classes and managing them ; so that the children not only obey her, but learn certain things within a given time. What the student learned at college then floats away per- 18 THE NURSERY SCHOOL haps like an unmoored boat on a stormy coast. The things that were memorised go first, and are seen no more. Worst of all, the soaring hopes and bright aims that beckoned her on in early youth fall like birds over the Dead Sea. Who has not seen those broken wings under the smiles and under the resignation of teachers no longer young ? It is the brightest and best who are apt thus to lose hope and heart. They have been obliged to do things in the wrong order — to proceed fronx the unknown to the book-known. Ours is only a centre, not a college, and yet we do not make this mistake. Our students begin by working in every section of the nursery. They get to know every child and how to help him by living with him. We were a little sorry for the first girls who did this, and did very little study of a book kind for a time, and they were perhaps sorry for them- selves, but at last it became clear that they were learning a new art and getting ready to learn a new science. The washing, the feeding, the training in table manners, the listening to toddlers, the talking to three-year-olds, were not drudgery, but illuminating, wonderfxil tasks, opportunities such as no one ever had before. They were done not as mere labour, but as a preparation for mental work, and not as only ministering to bodies, but as a means of finding how the instrument of mind, the brain, develops and is helped. When at last the time came to give this work up (as it did at THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK 19 the end of the first year) there were many regrets ; indeed, there was a feeling of loss. Our students now have only two or three hours' practical work in the day. The rest of the time is spent at lectures and in study. Later they will do no practical work at all. There is no danger now of mere cramming or memorising. Everything learned is big with meaning, and is lightened by a thousand memories that give it new interest. It is always our best students who are eager to go back to practical work again, to observe first hand again, to learn by doing once more. For them the shelters are a kind of laboratories ; they have eyes opened now to see what is going on there. And, since everything must be said now, even the most brilliant teachers have something to learn from these more practised students. They have to become as little children and learn, before they can in some ways come fully abreast of their pupils in the new work. Our College is not a large one. It now numbers thirty students ; forty will be our maximum. We have to limit the numbers, and so principal and lecturers can get in touch with each, and give each the kind of help she needs. This is a good thing for souls if not for statistics. The Board of Education has so far recognised the work done here that from Easter, 1919, they will pay a grant for one year's finishing course, added to the training of two years taken in "their own 20 THE NURSERY SCHOOL colleges," and will endorse the certificate of all those passing the final inspection. Meantime we have our own three years' course students for whom no grant will be paid. They give us our chance. They are our own product. We want to have them come to us with a good general education, having passed the Cambridge Local or other test ; they shall remain three years. Eager as we are to equip the trained teachers, everything we do that is our very own we will have to test and prove in the education of the girls who are not teachers yet. These free lances form a new outpost of the great teaching service in this country. In a later chapter I wiU try to show how they are trained. CHAPTER II THE NURSERY SCHOOL The year 1918 will stand out in the history of Education with even greater lustre than 1870. The Forster Bill decreed that, sooner or later, every child should learn the three R's. Mr. Fisher's Bill decrees that every child shall, sooner or later, have nurture as well as teaching. Between the passage of these two Bills lie nearly fifty years of struggle and anguish, of brave effort — ^yes, and voiceless sacrifice. The movement that reached its climax in the Bill of 1918 quickened its pace in the nineties and passed a goal in 1907 when the Medical Inspection of children was made part of our school system. But the History of Education is really the History of Democracy, and as the people advanced slowly in social hope and faith the level of their demands in education and nurture rose with the tide. And yet we are still bound to answer a very simple question. Why, we are asked, do we want Nursery-Schools ? Should not every mother take entire charge of her little ones till they are of school age ? Is it not her duty to remain at home and 21 22 THE NURSERY SCHOOL to devote herself to them? At every moment, and certainly at every meeting, this question is asked, so it may be well to answer it here. Nurseries and Nursery-Schools are wanted simply because little chUdren want nurses. They, being children, need that very important kind of early education called Nurture. Can this be given, and given entirely by, let us say, the average mother ? The well-to-do mother never attempts to do it alone. She engages a nurse, perhaps also a gover- ness, perhaps a schoolroom maid ; a great many engage a cook, also a housemaid. All these mother helps work in a spacious house, with, probably, a fine garden. I don't wish to continue the parallel. It is too cruel. The working class mother in her tiny home has no help at all. Yes, the man and woman in the street, the aver- age wage-earner and his wife, have been developing new susceptibilities and needs for many years. They are wonderfully like the rich man in every- thing but the difference of income. For example the rich man buys a motor car, but the poor man needs a tram or bus. The rich man has a fine library in his house, the poor one likes to have one in some street near his home. He tries to do collectively what the wealthy man does alone — and both have one end in view, the satisfaction of known wants. Well I in the fullness of time nurseries also have come to be wanted. True, there is no mention of the word nursery in any of THE NURSERY SCHOOL 28 the newest plans for workmen's dwellings I But there are rumours now of collective nurseries, where children can be gathered in safe and pleasant places, close to their homes and mothers, and under the charge of trained and educated nurse- teachers ! It is the private nursery enlarged, and adapted to the average family's needs ; and there is no reason at all why it should not rival any private nursery in its homelikeness and efficiency, or why, for that matter, it should not one day be presided over by the mothers themselves ! However that may be, I have been asked to deal with the question of Nursery-Schools, to set down in order what I have found out in the conduct of such a place before and during and after the Great War, to show what may be desirable or necessary in the choice of a site, in buildings and equipment, in feeding, and clothing, and the daily round of bathing, sleeping, play, work, and leisure ; to deal also with the mind work of the class-room and the nurseries ; the methods of teaching the usual subjects and others to children from one to seven years old ; to deal also with the question of staff, and the training and education of young teachers, and with the relations of parents to the Nursery- School : in short, to break new ground on a vast and new subject. It is from every standpoint a very large question, I assume in the start that the Nursery-School will, if successful, change 24 THE NURSERY SCHOOL and modify every other order of school, influencing it powerfully from below. Knowing all this I might even have shrunk from the task, but the experience and efforts of which this book is the result have cost much. They were paid for finally by the sacrifice of my dear and noble sister, who poured forth all her resources, material and also spiritual, in order to begin and develop this work, and who died exhausted and alas ! perhaps saddened by the long fight, on her birthday, Lady Day, 1917, just as the plans for the extension of our Nursery Centre were passed. I dare not therefore fail to complete the task begun and continued with her for so many years ; nor can I forget in anything I say, her great and brave axiom, " Educate every child as if he were your own." The kind of school planned in any given place must take account of the particular as well as the general needs of the children and mothers. For example, a Very crowded industrial centre where mothers and fathers both go to work cannot be treated exactly as if it were a suburb, or a nest of small shopkeepers. The Nursery- School of which I have experience, and of which, therefore, I must often speak, was started in a very poor, very crowded district in the south-east of London. The workers of this place are largely casual, and, saVe for such training as is given in large factories for the making of boxes, tin cans, packing cases, and the like, unskilled. There are THE NURSERY SCHOOL 25 a dozen public-houses within a stone's throw of the school, and some of the streets are quite dark and very noisy after dusk. All this makes the experiment more, not less, valuable ; the work is as difficult as it can well be, and if success can be Won here, it can be won anywhere. Such an environment breeds a great crop of evils. The clinic we started in 1908 at Bow and removed in 1910 to Deptford has been crowded for ten years with thousands of children suffering from diseases that can easily be wiped out for ever. True, the clinic, as such, cannot make any kind of war with the causes that breed these diseases. It cures them again and again. It does not prevent and cannot prevent their return. We opened at last a large bathing centre. Here children are made clean and well, but even they come back again and again. Now a large system of Nursery-Schools, if properly equipped, would cut at the root of all this misery. It would bring up a race of children with new habits and new needs. It would open the eyes of mothers to things they have never glimpsed at all. We say it would do all this, because we have seen it done. Now in ten years the clinic has not wiped out any disease at all ! It has not emptied its own waiting- room I Yet the Nursery-School has swept its children far, far from this old world. It is imthinkable that any of these should attend the minor ailment 26 THE NURSERY SCHOOL clinic. It is unthinkable that they should even cross its doors while they are here. Often they pass near its door. After luncheon and in the afternoon the gate of the Nursery opens, and a troup of lovely children file out and pass, a river of beauty and grace, up the dim alley, and across the sordid square flanked by public-houses. Women stop in their hurried errands ; men coming to and fro, or standing idle by the street comer, turn softened eyes on this line of nurtured children ! Are they really children of this neighbourhood ? Did any one of these ever run in the gutter, or linger, shockheaded, near a dirty close-head ? We need not ask such questions now. Already the past is far away. These children come to school every morning clean and fair. If they all take the school bath it is because they love it and will not, if possible, forgo it. And how do they differ from the well-groomed nurselings of Hyde Park or of Mayfair ? Certainly they should not, and we believe, do not differ from them through any lower standard of purity or nurture. Thus far we have won already in the Nursery- School. * * * * * The fust open-air Nursery was started years after the Camp school for older children, and both are the result of work done in the school clinic. While all around us hundreds of anaemic and weakly chOdren pined and strayed in the dim alleys and THE NURSERY SCHOOL 27 muddy streets, there was in front of our doors an acre of waste ground which the L.C.C. had bought as a site for a three-decker school. We asked for leave to use the site as an open-air nursery, and leave was granted. " Only you can't have it long," we were told, "for we shall want it soon for building purposes." If buildings could save us we had a good many here already. All around us they rise. Huge and very high schools with stone staircases and asphalted playgrounds. Tier upon tier of humanity, all thrown back daily at 4.30 into the street. Far be it from me to say that miracles are not worked by teachers behind these walls, but the hour had come as it seemed to try a new road. So in March, 1914, we moved the Nursery- School we had opened in Evelyn House garden to the Church Street site, having first cleaned the ground as well as we could, and put up the first large shelter of corrugated iron : and then for the first time we had the first condition of any great advance — ^that is, a site or space to live on. Children want space at all ages. But from the age of one to seven, space, that is ample space, is almost as much wanted as food and air. To move, to run, to find things out by new movement, to "feel one's life in every limb," that is the life of early childhood. And yet one sees already dim houses, behind whose windows and doors thirty to forty little ones are penned in 28 THE NURSERY SCHOOL " Day Nurseries " ! Bare sites and open spaces, let us find them ! Surveys are made for various purposes in every city. We know that free spaces lie between many streets and thoroughfares. A railway ride from Whitechapel to Barking, for example, will show you large spaces, lying idle, the ground broken here and there perhaps by allotments, but for the most part all unused. In Deptford itself, perhaps the most thickly settled district of south-east London, we are surrounded on all sides by waste space, There are small pieces and large. There is a waste space in front of the camp, and one on the right of our hostel. We had a big dumping-ground behind the camp opening on the recreation ground, which we cleared to make the camp itself, but there are other places ' close by. Thousands of acres lie waste to-day in our crowded cities, and there has been no very serious effort yet to find out why this is so, how they can show how they can be brought into use. Yet bold surveys have been made. It has been found possible to open vast parks even in London, great open spaces that are the lungs of a district. We have these in Deptford close to the thimdering street, green, health-giving, and for the most part empty. Through the long hours of the summer day our recreation groimd here is empty. We have now to clear spaces that will not be empty. In these spaces we must have not only flowers and grass, but children. They THE NURSERY SCHOOL 29 must be, not empty, unused places but, as far as possible, the annexe of many homes. The Nursery itself should be attached to homes, otherwise it is not a Nursery, but only a receiving station. Haw dreary when one wakes in November to set off walking or wheeling through chill, wet streets, carrying a little child to a nurse. There is no need for such pitiful journeying I A covered way, paved or asphalted underneath, could be built out from every house or block of houses ; and along this path little children could be taken by guardians or even by the teacher-nurses them- selves every morning. In this way we can get nearer what is best in the good private nursery, viz. : the nearness of the mother, and also her co-operation and even control. No one has a right to ask that she part from her little one, and we shall not part them if this thing is well done. It is not enough to have show-days and f^tes, visits and formal talks. Show-days are exhausting as Mrs. Poyser found out long ago. They are no part of the work-a-day life of joy and labour. A Nursery-School is, or should be, a part of the home life. Ours is overlooked by a hundred windows, and often there is a crowd of eager faces at each, but every moment a face appears, glances out and goes. These are English people, the children's children perhaps of those who knew Marlowe, and danced with him on the village green close by. This is good Queen Bess's area. They 80 THE NURSERY SCHOOL loved open-air drama in her day. Well, stni the people love to go to the pictures, having no outdoor summer plays any more. The nursery is for them a kind of return to the outdoor theatre ; it is an open space, a garden, a school. Above all, a place of life and movement and action. The recreation ground near by has only trim paths. That is not enough ; no one walks there. There is no spectacle But here I No one passes the gate without looking in. All day there are groups near the entrance and eyes watching through the palings. They make me think always of the queues, waiting to go into the theatre. Here in London there might be a gay drama played out continually under the eyes of admiring mothers in all quarters. " It's better than a play," said a poor woman, hiding a jug under her apron, " better'n the pictures." " Come on," cries a man at the comer, " come an' 'ave a look at the kids." This is not child-study, perhaps, in the strict sense, but it is joy in the beauty of childhood, and joy is the beginning of much, particularly among the descendants of the people who liked good Queen Bess. ***** " How do you select your chOdren ? " ask our visitors. We do not select them. Mothers come to our doors, and, if we have room, we take their children of one to seven years old, with only two THE NURSERY SCHOOL 81 conditions. First, they must be free of all in- fectious diseases, and secondly, they must be normal. The slighter ailments and preventable evils we take in hand and settle before entrance, as I will explain. Once inside, the child comes under the influences of the great healers, earth, sun, air, sleep and joy. It is a point of honour with us to make every child so well that he needs no doctor. CHAPTER III PLAN OF THE BUILDINGS In planning the buildings for an outdoor Nursery- School, we have to think of three, perhaps even of four stages of childhood. Early childhood ends at seven, that great milestone noted by the leaders of all great races and religions, and now by those who tell us that brain-growth stops here. During the great war, when the grant was paid by the Ministry of Munitions, we did not let go the tiny hand of the infant of days, or toss it away when the little traveller was two, three, or even five years old. Though the Bill says three to five, we will not think merely of one or other of its stages, but of chUdhood as a period of existence ending at seven. Otherwise we are not students at all, and are like mothers who care for their children at one age, but ignore them at another ! Childhood is a time of change, of swift trans- formation. As an infant a little one sleeps much. As a toddler he wants to run and range all over a large place. At three or four he has become another person, with new needs and desires, and later still he is a schoolboy. That is why we have 32 PLAN OF THE BUILDINGS 33 to plan so that the children do not interfere too much with each other's lives, while at the same time these lives are not isolated or wrenched apart one from the others. They should meet often as in a family, in the gardens, at playtime, in visits to each other's shelters, and even at other times. In planning the shelters we have to think about the weather also. It is not a fearsome thing to dwell on ! The best health records of the open-air nursery are always in winter, in January not in June ; in fog and frost and rain we have the cleanest bill of health. " Nature never does betray the heart that trusts in her," even in winter. Still this trusting does not mean that we are to expose our children to hardship. Not only of bright summer mornings when the garden is gay with bright processions and groups playing among the flower-beds, but of winter afternoons when it is soon dark, and of cold and wet mornings, we must think without fear. And we know now that we think of them all without any shadow of fear. The buildings should face south or south- east, and in order to have this, the line of the rooms or shelters must be straight, the walls at either end shaped in butterfly form to catch all the sunshine possible. The building may be of poelite or some other composition. PoSlite is fire-proof ; it is of a soft grey colour, very pleasant to look at. And with strong blue c 84 THE NURSERY SCHOOL or red painted woodwork it makes wonderfully pretty rooms. In pre-war days it was sold in large sheets that cost only 7s, 6d. each, and these make good strong walls, which can be roofed ovei with wood-ridged asbestos, giving a very pretty, gay effect. The street-like appearance of the shelters may be broken up by long awnings, or paved cloisters that offer shelter to children in rainy weather, or on sunny afternoons. Opposite is a picture of our camp building, drawn by one of our students. It shows the outlines clearly of one shelter. In planning for bad weather it is well to put up an outer wall if possible, to shelter the buildings from northerly and easterly winds, and in front there should be terraces to break the force of southerly gales in winter. The front of the shelters should be open most of the year, but sliding glass doors or screens may be fixed in about the •time when the days grow very short. If there is plenty of top light the screens do very well. Only on six or seven days in last winter were the screens and gables closed. The back or northerly wall, the only one that is in all the year round, has a deep opening behind it where the roof slopes down so that a current of air is always coming in from this quarter without making any draught. There should be low gates and fences to the shelters of the yoimger children, and a very low step running right along so that tiny feet can pass in and out without hindrance or risk. Overhead, PLAN OF THE BUILDINGS 35 5 -o p. ~ u ^ 36 THE NURSERY SCHOOL where the walls stop, the open wooden framework is seen, and there the air flows in a free tide. During summer the gables are open and on many days also in mid-winter I The gables should have movable screens put in on the same principle as window blinds or screens. The walls are in mov- able sections in the corrugated iron shelters. Our walls lie out most of the summer, but poelite does not lend itself to this treatment. Any private nursery is part of a larger thing. It is part of a home. The collective nursery should be also, so far as possible, a part of the homes around it, from which its children are drawn. In order that mothers and children can pass to and from this nursery which belongs to them all and serves them all there might be a number of covered ways leading from the houses, as I have already said. " Covered ways " are quite a feature of this new kind of building. They might in some places connect the shelters with the bathrooms and offices, but they are even more useful and necessary for mothers who have to face the snow or rain of a winter morning. Well I The building we will say is up ! On the fair smooth floor the sim flood falls on summer days and on winter days too ! But let us say it is summer. Through the open gables, and open spaces of the easterly wall, rustles now the green and tremulous curtain of leaves, and in front, though we are in a slum district, it has been possible PLAN OF THE BUILDINGS 37 to give a vision of radiant flowers, of happy bird- life, of noble trees even to the children. Within the shelter only space is wanted, space for little feet that run the whole length of the room and back again as a new and glad experience. Space to trundle hoops, to play at ball with little hands outstretched and missing always, but always eager 1 Space, the joy of joys under the sun flood ! That is life and it is sweet. All the furniture is planned so as to give this sweet freedom. The stretcher beds, made of stout canvas, are buttoned on to a simple wooden frame with collapsible legs. (See illustration, page 132.) They can be all packed away in a big cupboard or cupboards, which hold from forty to a hundred of them. The cupboards should be built in. This leaves space and everything can be packed away out of the reach of dust. Our toddlers' cup- boards run the whole length of the back wall of the shelter. They hold a vast number of toys, and make a shelf too for the many things they want to handle. The toy-tables, with high bordered edges, fold down into small space, and can be easily stacked away too. The little chairs, so light, can be ranged in small space. In fair weather, not only the glass screen, but even the low lattice work wall in front is down, so that, as we saw, with one tiny step down the toddler can be in the garden. The low step and the low gates are useful. The m THE NURSERY SCHOOL toddler loVes to lean on the fence. The little child learns to use the step, too, going up and down very carefully at first. He learns also to climb on the outer stones of the long terrace, to jump from the flat stone at the end, and on the low lattice he can slide along when he is learning to walk. If the true story of a toddler's days were told it would be more thrilling perhaps than anything ever written. On what a sea of wonder does he adventure forth every morning. How vast is that garden with its big blowing flowers and great bushes. How strange are the winged things flying about the flowers like moving blossoms themselves, and never waiting to be touched ! How wonderful is the life of the meadow, and the birds that pick the hearts of the young green things. The rabbits, the tank, the great clouds to which we are sometimes asked to lift our eyes, the vault of light, the shadows on the white walls ! The rustling trees with their great branches, the stones that we gather and carry to nurse in wet pinafores ! The pools after the rain into which we diligently go ! What wonder and joy that will never come again ! But to go back to our buildings. The bath-room shotdd open off the nursery proper, all being of course on the same ground floor. It is convenient to have a wide sliding door, that- never bangs, and never gets unhinged or out of order. The bath-room should be enclosed or indoor, but furnished with big windows looking PLAN OF THE BUILDINGS 89 south. White pot baths fitted with hot and cold taps do very well, and they should be so high that the nurse need not stoop in bathing. They shoTild be furnished with a wooden plank on which the child can sit. This plank can be buttoned back when out of use. There must be a high table on which the children can be dressed. Ours runs along up to the window, so that Tommy can hail his friends in the interval of getting his vest and knickers on, and Ted can watch his rabbits while he submits to having his hair brushed. The offices would open out of this room and be all indoor. There should be plenty of towel-pegs, and tooth- racks. The bath-room of a toddlers' room should be large enough to allow all the children to occupy it at once. This is very important. The shelter of three and four-years-old children should differ a little from that of the toddlers, and it would be very easy to put up a beautiful one which would show its purpose at once to even the careless eye. It should be like the toddlers' nursery in being large, and sunny, and built so as to be open at the sides, gables and front in mild weather. One or two sides may have the same kind of cupboards, large, and built in, Down one side and above the low-hung blackboard should be lockers so that each child should have his own locker and shelf. The few pictures should be hung low. They cannot be too good of their kind. 40 THE NURSERY SCHOOL They should be pictures of things that the child has seen or can at least understand, and drawn or painted in simple masses or outlines. The tables should be big enough to seat four or perhaps six. Bigger tables can be used in summer when dinner is taken' in the playground or garden. In this nursery and also, of course, in the other there should be comfortable low chairs for the nurse- teacher, who will want to gather her flock round her knees, as in a home nursery, not talk at them from a distance. And there should be a piano ; if, as in one nursery school, some teachers learn the violin it will be a great joy. For very little children appear to have a great love for string instruments. The bed-lockers need not take much space. They look like big wardrobes at the end of a shelter, and can be made of poelite (like the walls) with plain wooden framework. The shelter should have wide low steps that look a little like the Dutch stoep of the wooden houses of settlers. The floor must be concrete underneath and boarded. The gables may be fitted with movable screen or mov- able glass. Opening off the larger room there might be a play-room fitted with toy cupboards, and with space for doll-houses, etc. This is not quite necessary, but otherwise the shelter should be very spacious, as it will have to serve for sleeping, dining, playing and work-room, and indeed every PLAN OF THE BUILDINGS 41 nursery almost has to be used for all these purposes, A room of forty feet by thirty wide is not too large for a family of forty children. The restless little hand of the toddler has won great things and made wonderful progress in the second year ; that gay and fruitful progress need not be checked here. There should be writing boards all along the walls, but even that is not enough. For children use the hand, as they use the Voice or the tongue, not in mere lesson time, but all day long and in every kind of play or work. The occasion to use it is always arising, and being so we must make provision for a natural activity. Some, at least, of the tables should be writing surfaces, so that one may draw, or write, as one speaks, wherever one feels one has something to do in that way. I had blackboards put up even on the outside garden walls. Thus by constant practice, not by set lessons, our three-year-old will learn the basis of many crafts and arts just as the toddler, by the same method, learns one language, and it may be two 1 In the evening hours a child will want to draw, or paint, or work, or listen, as in any happy home. The ideal of such buildings should be home life, not school life as we know it. Low chairs for the nurse, who is mother and sister for the time ; pictures and prettily coloured walls and light, musical instruments, flowers and an atmosphere of joy and love. That is what is required for the 42 THE NURSERY SCHOOL child of wealth. It is needed for the children of all classes. Older children up to five or six may use a rather different kind of bath from the toddlers. We use a concrete shower bath for the older children. It is cheap and simple, and can be filled from showers above, but it is fitted with hot and cold water. Here children of three to five may be bathed in sixes or even in dozens, finishing off with a clean spray of warm and cold water. Any outhouse can be fitted up as a bathroom of this kind, and the walls whitewashed and fitted with towels and racks, the great luxury being found not in glazed tiles and fittings, but in a full and free supply of hot and cold water at all hours. There shouJd also be a hand-washing place for the children of three and over, with low basins fitted each with hot and cold water-taps. On plumbing we should spend so that washing would be made easy for child and nurse-teacher and dirt become a thing for which there would be no excuse. A laundry room too is a necessity and also a drying-room. The shelter for children over five differs from the others in that it is frankly a school. It must have lockers and specimen boxes and geography and history play tables. This in summer should be a lovely room looking out on the fair garden, and in winter it should also be gay with its glass screens and southern frontage. The children see these PLAN OF THE BUILDINGS 43 rooms all day long, just as their parents see the gardens, and they should give them sunny and fair impressions of work-a-day life and the beauty that may be a part of it. Our camp-school was lacking in some things, but how pretty it was I Pigeons about the arches, and all day long we looked on the rustling green of the recreation-ground trees. We were not allowed to go as a school into the empty ground, but we saw the grass. It was a real open-air school. Now it is far better equipped but we do not see so much grass, or sky. If our boys slept out in the shelter they would not see the fairness and the splendour of the sky as we saw it. They would not, perhaps, even have such ideas on building and architecture as the old boys will have ! All the rooms of the upper as well as the lower school should be bright and gay. The kitchen should be open too, with glass sliding doors for bad weather. There is an arcade, or covered way round all our buildings. Paved underneath, it is a good place to play in, to sleep in also, a cloister too at certain hours for students. CHAPTER IV THE GARDEN The Nursery-School garden is planned to meet the needs as well as the natural desires of young children. Trees. — These are not merely a joy to the eye. They offer shelter in wet and in sultry weather. At the eastern side of the shelter, trees should be planted. In towns the plane tree seems to be the best of all, its big leaves offering a real curtain to temper the heat of summer. In the playground and along one side of the nursery they should be planted. Limes, mulberry trees and planes appear to do very well in the most crowded district of south-east London. Walls. — One long wall should be kept for fruit trees. If there is no southern aspect left when the children's buildings are up a space of the western wall should serve. Currant and gooseberry bushes, a run of raspberries, and a few apple and pear trees help children to visualise a garden as no flowers can. How often in later life will their thoughts go back to the first garden, which, surely, must be as rich as we can make it. 44 THE GARDEN 45 Greenhouse.- — ^This may seem a luxury, but it is needed as a class-room. It can be of very simple construction. Our little camp boys built our greenhouse, and painted it, simple as it is. Plants can be kept that make gay the tables in winter, and it is a good place too, for toddlers to look in at. Terraces. — These are not only beautiful. They are very useful in breaking the force of wind and rain storms. In the sloping stone wall of them rock plants grow, and flowers like the wild con- volvulus. The first researches are made at the terrace, where the toddlers embrace the great warm stones in summer, and also seize at times a blossom or even a rooted plant. We must begin researches somehow ! The terrace makes the arcade a very sheltered place for the children to run in or to sleep in summer. The Herb Garden. — ^This is a very useful as well as beautiful part of a Nursery garden. It may be planned in or near the kitchen gardens, and it requires very little care after the seeds are sown. Many herbs are only too apt to grow fast, and take more than their share of space. Balm for example will soon overgrow a garden. Herbs are usually grown for seasoning. We grow them for their scent. Fennel (" You take it with fish," says our gardener), which grows high. Mar- joram, thyme, rue, balm, rosemary, mint, can be grown from penny -a-packet seeds. Rue can be planted safely anywhere without fear of overgrowth. 46 THE NURSERY SCHOOL The chOdren love the herbs. The toddlers press their leaves with their tiny fingers, and come into the shelter smelling their hands. The three-year- olds do the same. Kitchen Garden. — ^Here vegetables for the table should be grown. Potatoes, cabbages, parsnips, beetroot, parsley, onions, radishes, carrots, rhubarb and marrows. They are needed as part of the children's food, and nothing trains the mind and fills it with wholesome memories better than the carrying out of all this work in their sight, and with their help. Even the toddlers want to help. They follow our gardener, Mrs. Hambleden, down the paths, and into the drills ; and very early and without formal teaching of any kind they learn to know the names of the things. " Where is the beetroot ? " visitors say, " where are the par- snips ? " And the three-year-olds walk to the right bed or point to the right place. Apparatus in the Garden.' — ^This is always very simple, and is often improvised. A student leans a plank for instance against a box or seat, and up this plank our little ones go. At first holding a hand on each side, then letting go one hand, and at last walking up and down alone, always, it is true, watched and prevented, but allowed to go alone ! Bib-Stall- — In view of the great uses of stretching and swinging exercises a rib-stall is fixed on a strong part of an outside wall. It should be near THE GARDEN 47 the bath-room. The rungs should be wide and low. Still better is the rib-stall horse. It is made of stout wood poles made in double lines, set apart widely enough to let a child sit astride the top. These things should not be kept on the asphalt, but fixed somewhere in a space of turf, or sand, so that a tumble wUl not mean anything serious. Sand-pits. — ^In a large nursery there should be a pit for every section. It should be bordered with wide, low concrete, on which a child can walk easily by balancing. The children should be trained to keep the sand in the pit. Jumping-off steps. — ^These are wanted so much by little children that they should be put in wher- e'V'er one can find a place for them — at the end of terraces, and as post stumps near the gates and pits. Some must be very low, and others higher. The Rubbish Heap. — Every child needs a bigger world than the one we are getting ready for him. Our green plots and ordered walks are good and right, but who does not remember that he once liked to play in a big place, where there were no walks at all, and no rules ? Therefore, a Nursery garden must have a free and rich place, a great rubbish heap, stones, flints, bits of can, and old iron and pots. Here every healthy chUd will want to go ; taking out things of his own choosing to build with. Shallows. — If there is no pond in the Nursery- 48 THE NURSERY SCHOOL School garden it is very incomplete, for children love water and will make every effort to reach it. Ours has no pond, but we have hollows scooped in the concrete, and here our riverside children are glad to sail boats, and also to paddle. If a pond can be scooped out in a shady place, and the pond-life watched every day, the educational opportunities of the garden will be doubled. A Stretch of Grass for the Toddlers. — ^Lawns are not made in a day, but we must try and get some grass for our children. There is no other way but to dig clear, drain and sow a stretch of grass, or to turf a space. The latter method, however, is expensive. We, that is staff and students, with the help of some casual labour, cleared a space for grass near the mulberry tree. It has not been a great success, this lawn of ours, as yet. Though the toddlers play happily we have to trust mainly to the shadowy paths, the arcade, and the waste place near the rubbish heap. The Flower Garden. — Children love a wilderness. So one large plot should be allowed to grow wild but many beautifiil things can be planted in it. The flower garden proper may be trim and have pretty edgings. The children's own garden should be a place where they can work without fear or making some disorder. In the rockery and if possible in other places Nature should have her way. Tool Shed. — This shed should be fitted with low THE GARDEN 49 racks and pegs for little spades, sand shovels, pails, rakes, and watering-pots. Over the toddlers' sand-pit there may be pegs and a shelf for pails and sand spades, which are the only garden tools they will be able to handle. If possible low, wide steps should be built in the Nursery garden, for little people who are learning to go up and down. CHAPTER V DIET It is a mistake to think that all " poor " children are under weight and underfed. Some are too heavy. And a good many eat too much, though a great many are, on the other hand, much too light and eat too little. The remarkable thing about most of the imnur- tured is that they eat the wrong kind of food, and at the wrong hours and intervals. There is hardly a toddler who does not appear on the first day loaded with bread-and-butter, or jam or treacle- stick apples ; this is not the only cause of rickets, but it is one link in the chain. Furthermore, the life of many children is so inert and so imwholesome that they do not digest well. This is true of many well-cared-for children behind model dishes in model schools as well as of the poor and neglected. They sit about. They are over-clothed. They do not bathe often or regularly. They do not run and shout in the open. They sleep in stuffy air. They are not interested and are half alive. They sit and move and walk in a state of dull, half-aliveness. Therefore, any 50 DIET 51 question on diet plus digestion must take in all our life in camp, where, as we can now prove, rickets and anaemia have short shrift and where children, who used to hate wholesome food, get very hearty appetites. First of all we take away the jam-pieces, and the cmmby bags, or in any case arrange that they will not be brought to school any more. The children have breakfast at 9, after the bath. They have dinner at 12, and supper at 4. Breakfast and supper do not vary much. I get the oatmeal for porridge from A. MacKenzie, King's Mills, Inverness. It outstrips all qualities of meal ever tried, and we have tried a great many ; we have also tried various preparations of oats and cereals, always with the result that the children's weight fell. Oatmeal should not be eaten with sugar. It can be cooked slowly in a bran-box, or chaff-box, but this splendid meal does not require the long boiling needed for inferior grain. It should be slightly salted, and stirred with a wooden spirtle. It should be kept in a dry place and in a wooden box. If a child cannot eat porridge, he should have slightly toasted brown bread, not new, with good margarine, or butter if we can afford it 1 Crusts should be given to all so as to help the teeth and encourage chewing. So crusts must be got ready in the oven. For breakfast and supper our children have milk, and they all get to like it 52 THE NURSERY SCHOOL sooner or later. For supper we give bread and jam as a change from butter, and sometimes stewed fruit, or the remains of a light dish left over from dinner. Raw apples are given as often as possible, and we wish they could be given every day. The dinner is varied. The same dinner is not given twice in one week, and there are always two courses. Here is the menu for a week. Monday. — Soup made of bone stock and vege- table, also oatmeal. Sometimes this soup is made with lentils and sometimes with barley. Pudding : Milk rice, or cornflour with barley. Tuesday. — ^Haricot beans and onions with boiled potatoes. Pudding : Stewed rhubarb. Wednesday. — Suet pudding with currants or jam, or treacle, or honey. Thursday. — Soup : Vegetable. Pudding : Maca- roni with jam. Friday. — ^Fish, or hard-boiled eggs, with boiled potatoes. Out all day in moving air children are always hungry at meal-times, but no food is given between meals. In summer they have fruit from the old mulberry tree, and we give small spoonfuls of orange juice. Also stewed apples at times, and raw apples as often as we can afford them. Fruit and fresh vegetables are needed by everyone, but especially by growing children, and most of all by children of the poorest class in cities. Their DIET 58 bones are literally starved of mineral salts. They suffer from starvation in the way of nitrogeneous food and of all that Nature supplies in green food and fruits. Bread, bread, and always bread in surfeit is their portion. Our fresh vegetables, meal and milk work marvels. Within two years we had registered over 70 cures in rickety children. None, even of the poorest class, who have been two or three years in camp show any trace of this condition. How easy then would it be to make rickets disappear altogether 1 CHAPTER VI CLOTHING In the bath-room all children drop the liVery of poverty and become the kindred of the fairest, the blood brothers of Murillo angels, of the cherubs of Italian masters, and even of the Greek gods. All this happens when clothes are slipped off. Why then do they wear these things ? Some of these ugly clothes actually leave a real mark. The foot suffers early. Nothing is more enchanting than our babies' feet, but it is rare to see an older child who is not more or less flat- footed. Heavy, hard boots encase the delicate little feet, and weigh down the pretty instep. The children have no use for their feet, moreover, save for locomotion. They never touch Mother Earth, the rich Mother whose touch is magnetic, and who gives not only com and flowers, but currents of new life and wakening thrills. They never run on cool grass, or warm earth, save of course in our own open-air nursery camp. They have no use (for educational purposes) of the lower extremities. In this way people grow dull. In 54 CLOTHING 55 any case they cut off sources of impressions and life. We want a firm to undertake the making of soft and properly shaped boots for all children. These need not, as we said, be used in all places at all times and seasons. They are needed in winter. They must be used in all seasons on the pavement. In camp they need not be worn all the year round, and perhaps not at all for six months of the year. This would be a saving in shoe leather and make possible the spending of a little more on better- shaped shoes and boots. Shops do not as a rule cater for the poor at all, save in the way of making a poor, cheap article that will soon wear out. It is not cheap. It is dear in the long run, but because she is harassed the poor mother has to buy it. That is why Mrs. Glasier Foster has opened the Educraft shop in Evelyn Street, Deptford. No boot-shop of the same order is yet to be found in Deptford. The need grows ever more urgent. As long as children were huddled away in big classes and in huge schools it did not matter so much what they wore. But in the Camp School clothes matter a great deal. They must, in winter, be warm. They must, in summer, be fair and light. They must always be clean, for on most days the sun flood is there exposing everything and the garden is gay with flowers. We have to get things that 56 THE NURSERY SCHOOL will lift the children of the gods sheer out of the gutter. And how are we to get them ? Vests,i knickers, stockings, pinafores, frocks, coats, over- alls. Who is to do this work for thousands and tens of thousands without insulting the pride and love of mothers ? Here are the mothers' own daughters standing by, like Miriam, and ready with help. Elder sisters can do the work without begging anything from " charity " ! They are doing it now. Miss Cole, Headmistress of Westbury Council School, Barking, sets her girls to work, and lo ! in a short time we had woollen vests and woollen stockings for a hundred little ones. Nothing daunted they next tackled the whole question of little boys' clothing, and soon we had shirts and knickers, and practical brown overalls trimmed with hoUand cuffs and belt. If anyone doubts the power of a ten or twelve-year-old girl to turn out smart kits under a good teacher, they may care to look at the photo- graph of a group of our boys taken with Queen Mary. There is, of course, no embroidery on the boys' overalls. The dressing of our little girls is another matter, but the school girl tackles that also. Here the Headmistress turns to the specialist, and the 1 Jerseys are very useful even for the youngest children. They keep the arms and chest warm and there is no trouble with buttons and fastenings. All our babies wore them in winter, and also little hoods. Thus covered they were out in aU dry weathers. CLOTHING 57 specialist is with us in the person of Miss Helen Swales, once the embroideress at a West End shop, but now ready to put her gifts at the service of the people's children. The materials used are strong, durable, fast-dyed Sundour, natural cloth, Wincey, serge, calico, just the kind of goods a poor woman needs, the goods that last and are not deceiving. Above all the manufacturer of Sundour, Morton of Carlisle, offers a wonderful boon to mothers. He is in sympathy with the new movement, and is prepared to give his cloths at a reasonable figure, but above all to supply only the best. Into this material Miss Swales and her helpers put fine work, knowing it is not going to be torn or faded in a week. Nothing is put on, moreover, that is not good solid sewing with fadeless stout cotton in fine dyes. Nothing is made that cannot be put often into the wash tub, and that does not stand hard wear. The Camp colour is blue, the radiant blue of the summer sky, but we do not regiment even with that. The artists are not afraid of colour. Soft greys stitched with mauves or reds, hoUands edged with blue or rose, hoUands slashed with green and orange and scarlet, darker garments embroidered with blue, white even, for gala afternoons. No two garments are alike, and each appears to have something gay and brave in it. Yet the cut is always smart. There is no suggestion of freakish- ness or dowdiness, and none of mere lapse into 58 THE NURSERY SCHOOL peasant forms all out of harmony with the Strange New Spirit. Readers who care to see the style of dress should read Mrs. Glasier Foster's book on Educraft Needlework, and Margaret Swanson's Educational Needlecraft, published by Longman. The child form does not vary with the fashion of dressing. Limbs free, skirts short and loose, with embroidery in the right place (this is always under the neck, and near the wrist and also perhaps at the seams). Miss Swanson and Mrs. Foster are at one on these points. The latter has swung far from the peasant embroideries of many lands. She has gone " back to Nature " for the evolution of all her designs and patterns. " I begin to draw," says the writer of The New Needlecraft, " but I do not know what will come. Only I know that I must keep my lines straight ! " Thus from the beginning, the element of Revelation is not driven out. Wonder is allowed to break through the Very humblest work. The writer, or embroiderer, does not always know whether she is going to evolve a curve or a petal. Here are a few of the first lines (for seams) and designs (for embroidery). Nothing can exceed the joy of the little ones in getting into their pretty clothes ! " It is like going to a party every morning," cried one child, and this is quite true. The teacher-nurses them- selves are nearly as gay as the children, and they CLOTHING 59 DESIGNS FOR SEAMS AND EMBROIDERIES 60 THE NURSERY SCHOOL have made their ovm. contribution to get the best results. One teacher — she has charge of the three and four-years-old — ^has a great stock of ribbons, and also of hemmed and embroidered linen strips for tying up hair. She loves to turn out her children well. The hair must shine like silk, the teeth must shine like little pearls, the nails must shine like shells. Ribbon and pinafore must match, and the foot-gear, when shoes or boots have to be worn, must shine also, so as not to spoil the pretty toilette. Nothing can be prettier than the sortie from the bath-room on a June morning. The children are at last in harmony with Nature's own scheme, gay as the butterflies or the blossoms that greet the sun. It is strange to see how quickly and how com- pletely even the poorest children get used to pretty clothes. These are the symbol of new life. They make one realise oneself a part of the new order. How hard to be thrust out again. There is only one sad moment in our school day. It comes at 5.30 or thereabouts when the children lay aside their pretty school clothes and go back to the old clothes, laid aside and forgotten all day. Of course we do not all have this experience. The well-to- do child merely doffs her pinafore ; but many, alas ! have to disrobe in earnest. The lights go out then in more senses than one. At six o'clock our school is not the school of an hour ago. Again we are poor children, and the shadow falls on us as we CLOTHING 61 pass out, unrecognisable almost as the children of the day and of the garden. It is true that all the labour and effort to raise the standard is not lost. Few or none of our children will come back dirty, while a few years ago and less, seventy-five per cent, were verminous. We should not record this, we should forget it. But the heavy duty is laid on us to tell all, to hide nothing, so that all can be remedied. Formerly we did not change the clothes on Saturday. Then some children were dressed prettily in clothes they had bought, but others had only the old rags. They saw the gulf open again on Saturday as they looked at others and then down at their poor worn clothing. " Come here, Wini- fred," we called once to a tall girl standing in a path behind the roses. But she looked down at her sordid boots and worn clothing and shook her head. Surely this dull, half-strangled shame and pain should be taken away now, once and for all. Here as in everything, it is the magic of love that finds the way. The Educraft shop would be a mere place to sell goods at a profit if it stopped here. It will not stop here. Standard kits are made at the lowest cost and of the prettiest style and colour, and these are sold to parents, who buy by instalments of 2d., 3d., or 6d. a week. In a few months the home-dressing should draw abreast of the school-dressing. The heavy woollen caps and hood, the heavy winter coats our little ones 62 THE NURSERY SCHOOL used to wear on June mornings, the ugly mufflers — went. The hard and dreadful boots should go. Already we see a few children trip out of an evening looking as much like children of the day as possible, and on one recent morning in Jime the school gave us a delicious shock. It came back clean and radiant, almost like a school of the West End ; Monday morning had the grace of Sunday ! The clothes were not fragile, however, like the cheap laces and secondhand silks of yesterday. DESIGN FOR EMBROIDERY CHAPTER VII WHAT TO DO FOR A TODDLEU In the Toddlers' Camp we have young girls. They have some good qualifications for the work. They talk, they sing, they dance, they are young and happy. The toddler begins his day with a bath. The student-nurse talks to him : " This is our shoe ; we will take it off ! And our stockings ! O, see what a lot of little funny things — ^toes ! A big one, that is the mother, and one-two-three-four children." The girl chatters on merrily and the little one listens and at last makes sounds too, and this is the way to learn the English language. In the water he is busy. He fills the sponge, he tries to wring it. He lets the water pour through his fingers, and the nurse laughs, and plays with him, which is almost as important as the giving of the bath. Meantime, the nurse is not only a merry girl — she is a student, and working under a head- mistress. She will observe first : The circumference of the head. The width of the chest. 63 64 THE NURSERY SCHOOL The length of the limbs. The condition of the skin. The state of the muscles. The doctor and head-mistress will have a fuller record. 11 there is anything gravely wrong they will know it. They will have noted the presence of rupture, or traces of infantile paralysis, or rickets, or adenoids. And the student will know how to observe these ailments also, under supervision. But as I have said already, our toddlers have so little wrong with them, and are treated so promptly, that they offer a poor field indeed for pathological observation. She will keep a record however, and weigh her child weekly on the scales. Let us look at this little man in his bath ! As a matter of fact, he is not a little man at all. His proportions are not those of an adult. The head is very large (the student will measure it round the forehead, and also the length from the back to the chin). The body is long in proportion to the legs. The student must take the chest measure- ment and the limb measurements, say once a month. And from these she will learn something about his progress, and also about the stage of life at which he has arrived. The brain is still growing. It is, therefore, in a very susceptible state. No strain can be put on it. He is busy learning, but as yet and for a long time he learns mainly not by thinking but WHAT TO DO FOR A TODDLER 65 by experiencing, that is through the sympathetic system. The student will get to know many things : she will know when he makes the conquest of a new word : when he tries, for example, to put on his own shoe, when he begins to wash his own face, and even his own hands, and to all this she leads him on as she talks to him in the bath and in the dressing- room. A toddler's hair is lovely. With soap and water and a soft brush we keep it lovely. The scalp should be softly rubbed or brushed as well as the hair. The teeth must be washed, up and down, and across, and the brush, after being rinsed, put in the rack set out in the sun to dry. And our toddlers will try to do this, and will put the brush in the rack. The toddler should wear a soft vest, loose knickers and bodice, and in summer an overall. He need not have stockings or socks and shoes on all the year round, but in winter the legs should be covered by woollen stockings or gaiters. Toddlers are always trying to get hold of the new world they are in, and all their waking life is spent, when they are well, in doing this. There are ways of helping him and here are some of them. Walking. — We take our toddlers in at one year old. At that age some cannot walk. Some try to walk, and the student is glad to help them. She knows that it must be a great moment for 66 THE NURSERY SCHOOL the little creature, that in which he takes his first breathless steps, and we do not desire to hurry or to delay this moment. For if we hurry we do mischief, but if we delay too long the child's body grows too heavy for his legs, and then the great weight falling on the weak leg muscles may induce bandylegs. Speech. — ^A little child's babble means nothing SpeccK Cmtte. o- o Hotor ^ HaiAcL SPEECH but nonsense to the ignorant. To the more enlightened it means a great deal — ^nothing more or less than the awakening and functioning of the motor speech centre which is setting in motion the muscle-controlling centres on both sides of the brain. At first he makes sounds that are almost simple reflex actions, but soon the auditory centre sets up a connection with the speech centre. Kathleen, standing with Tommy on the drying WHAT TO DO FOR A TODDLER 67 table, talks to him, " Button, button ! " or even " Button my shoe ! " Sometimes a little phrase comes out quite new and fresh. Delighted, Kath- leen repeats it. Perhaps he does nothing of the kind ; he says a word that tells how another road is tunnelling itself out in Tommy's brain — ^that is the attention centre which controls the lower centres. Tommy at fifteen months old is mainly in the imitative stage, pure and simple, when one repeats or echoes what is said without troubling about meaning. This is called echolalia and sometimes lasts a long while, but it will not last long in Tommy, who is very intelligent. The infant in crying uses vowels, but the first words, such as ma-ma, pa-pa, ta-ta are consonants before vowel sounds. They are doubled nearly always. Tommy calls his nurse na-na and some- times with ardour na-na-na, tripling the sound. That is how he practises. Wise people say he shouldn't practise. He goes on and learns fast. In what order should the sounds be learned ? There is no rule that binds all cases, but progress is usually from without inward. Thus we begin with the labials : Labials p, b, and go on to Dentals dz, Linguals 1, r. Gutturals g, k, ch the Sibilants s, c, and Nasal sounds m, n, 68 THE NURSERY SCHOOL F and V require a movement by the lo^rer lip, drawing up under the front teeth. Formerly it was believed that we should teach little children to say big words like adults. Now we know that this is not natural or reasonable ; a child who says " gee-gee " instead of a horse is simplifying things so as to make his task possible. If we want to help a toddler we must begin where he begins and follow him in the path along which Nature is leading him. Encourage him to say his labials well and with energy, and even to shout them as well as double and triple them, which he does with great delight. Bo-bo, Ba-ba, Ta-ta he calls out and later Button, Bud, Big, Bat. It it of course useless to give these as drills, but many occasions arise in the course of a day to exercise him in labials and in other sounds which should be taken in the order which is marked out by the special powers or weakness of the little creature. And even this order cannot be laid down absolutely, for in nothing do little children vary more than in speech development. Some begin by gutturals, others with linguals — ^roughly speaking " th " and " f " remain faulty in older children to-day, while " 1 " and " r " are badly used by most town children. " V " and " W " used to be more generally confused in Dickens' day than they are now. By movements of the Up upward and other gymnastics practised in schools, teachers as well WHAT TO DO FOR A TODDLER 69 as nurses have done a great deal to help children to say " f " and "v." Every case, however, is a separate study and sometimes we have a child who needs no help other than that offered by good example. Habits. — In the forming of new habits our toddlers have shown all the responsiveness of a human nervous system. How far this can go, how responsive they can be we did not know till we tried the effect of regular clock-work habits. All the toddlers are clean and regular in their habits. All go to sleep at the right moment. They are obstinate in doing things now at the right time. If his bed is not ready at 12.45 Billie will sleep on the table or floor. Table-Manners. — These may be made perfect. The toddlers are glad and proud to eat nicely, to hold the spoon well, and spill nothing, to make no crumbs, to say " Ta " after being helped, and to pass things to one another. They do all this every day. They do it well. CHAPTER VIII A winter's day in the toddlers' camp In order to show the opportunities that arise all the time, I may be allowed to describe here in parenthesis a winter day in the Toddlers' Camp. It is a day to test the camp — a bitter day in mid-January. Yesterday a cruel fog hung over the streets and clouded even the garden and meadow. To-day the cold is bitter, but the fog has lifted. Clammy drops no longer fringe the eaves. On the new lawn with its privet border, where the stark old mulberry tree raises his arms against the rosy ball of the sun, sparrows have come and gone all the morning, chirruping and fluttering over the new turned earth, now covered by a light fall of snow. Inside the shelter it is warm and bright. The blue bath-room door is drawn back slowly, for it is 8.30 and all the toddlers will soon be out from the bath. There are twenty-five of them, ranging in age from twenty months to two and a half years old. Already a little golden head appears in the door- way, and a pair of grave blue eyes looks down the 70 THE TODDLERS' CAMP 71 wide.empty room, with its shining floor. A rosy- gas fire burns in each of the stoves, but it is turned low, for strange as it may appear, the shelter is warm. It is January, but here it is never very cold, never damp or chill, and the little one in the doorway is warm and glowing. He gazes out at the shelter, and then over the damp garden where the birds are talking, advancing at last with slow steps. Then folding two tiny arms on the top he leans over the low gateway. He looks at the red sun hanging in the sky, and at the bare mulberry tree and dreams. . . . Two, three little heads appear at the doorway and soon the whole nursery of toddlers are in the shelter. They have their breakfast of milk and then the day's work begins. Some run to the cupboards, some linger at the low lattice that runs along between floor and path. Their faces glow with health, but they ar( a little quieter than usual this morning. The teacher, the head of this section, comes out of the bath-room. She seats herself quietly in a big low chair and nearly all the children run to her. Harold, the oldest boy, goes to a big cupboard and brings out a toy. I have time to note his beauti- fully shaped head, and grave quiet face. He looks at me from under level brows with his earnest eyes, and only after a little encouragement does he come forward and show his toy. It is a tiny train and he has fastened a string to the engine, " Does it run ? " 72 THE NURSERY SCHOOL No answer. Harold puts doAvn the toy, draws it a little way, and comes back, waiting. " Have you seen the big train at the station ? " " No." He is quiet then, but suddenly the blue eyes lighten and the face grows rapt and eager. He puts his hand on the top of the engine. "No 'moke," says the grave lips in a whisper. A little dark fairy (aged two or thereabouts) dances up with a doll in her arms. It is Rebecca, our Jewish child, whose mother brings her every morning all the way from Stepney. Her graceful, little body, dark eyes, sparkling and intelligent, and her dark pale face stand out in any group. Dressed in warm knitted wool from neck to ankle, and neck to wrist, she is a reminder of the strong mother instinct that has brought the Jewish race through so many troubles. " Mine dolly," she says, holding out a doll she has dressed. " Nice, nice baby," she adds, pulling its bonnet straight. Near the gateway, with tearful face, stands the new child, Edith. A great gulf divides her from all the others, and the cause of this great difference is plain to be seen. Poor Edith is uneducated, whereas all the others have undergone a long, serious, and wonderful course of experience — mostly happy but not altogether free of efforts and unpleasantness — ^which has opened the silent doors of a new world to them. They obey mysterious THE TODDLERS' CAMP 73 inhibitions, they follow paths that poor Edith's feet refuse as yet to tread. She will not play, she stands alone, turning away from the smiles and caresses of the young girl students in the bath-room. To-morrow it will be different, she will not refuse the new things offered. This is Edith's first day. The head teacher of the toddlers sits in the middle of a large group. She is a trained and certificated teacher, and here, in this room for very little people, she still trains and teaches all day long, but in new ways which she has had to learn. She talks, and she listens also. Once when a group of toddlers runs to her suddenly, and begins to " talk " to her eagerly, putting their little hands on her knees and fixing their eyes on her face, she gives herself up entirely to listening. They have been looking into the fish tank where there are newts. They try hard, without any words hardly, to tell her about this new thing, and she understands and sympathises. " Fith ! Fith ! " cries a child of two years old, who lives a full and crowded life of a morning : " Fith ! Ted saw ! " Tommy, who had escaped into the garden and there gathered stones, comes to her with his clean pinafore full of wet things, which he proceeds later to throw on the floor in the ardour of experimental research. How are children to learn the properties of matter save by experience ? The stones are always put back in place. 74 THE NURSERY SCHOOL This little world is a kind of mirror of the bigger world outside. It is not all swept or garnished and made ready and perfect in every way. Here, for example, is an exhibition of wantonness. Before a great cupboard full of toys sits a new child, Terence. He picks from the gi'eat pile of things one toy after another and flings it down again. His distressed face shows that he has no real pleasure in any of them. He is a pale and very fretful newcomer ! All the children are playing. Some are wheeling carts. Some are buUding. The head mistress has fouad a great ball as big as a football which was made by her mother in the Christmas holidays. It is made of pieces of velvet, silk, calico, satin, wincey, leather, and the little ones try to name some of the materials. They do not try to name things long, but they handle the ball for a long t me, hiding it, throwing it and catching it, rubbing their small faces against it, and later teacher gives out smaller balls of wool and cotton and india- rubber. Tommy, the beautiful little fifteen-months old boy with soft dark eyes, full of shadow and mystery, loves only two toys : his ball and stones. As we have said, he has a passion for stones. He gathers them outside. He hoards them in a big bag. He ranges them on the floor and holds them tightly to his heart. He throws them at other children also, but always in the way of research, not un- THE TODDLERS' CAMP 75 kindness. This passion for stones lasts out for a lifetime in many people, and was very keen in the North and West of Scotland, as well as in Ireland, where there were many sacred stones and amulets and mystery -stones. It is snowing fast. The ground is white and the children pause, and even run to the fence to watch the great white flakes. The arcade is dry yet with its low roof hanging over like an umbrella, and the children stand watching, watching, with lax muscles, in that state of reverie which we note in them every day, and which is becoming to us a condition as well defined and deserving of respect as sleep. On the white shelf of the cupboards, near a musical box, Victor is sitting. He is our oldest toddler — ^nearly three, and very musical. A stodgy- looldng dark little lad with a very steep back tc his head, and a rather sullen mouth, he melts and lives for and answers to one thing — music. When the record is fixed he sits rapt, while the sweet notes flow out over the big shelter. Victor will not run or play while he can listen. He sits still. He rubs his small hands. He gazes long- ingly at the box. Harold gathers up his trains and walks up to look contemplatively, not at the musical box, but at Victor. It is impossible to doubt that this nursery is unique in its opportunities, in its variety and interest. It is so large that there is no crowding 76 THE NURSERY SCHOOL and no haste, yet it presents a much larger field for choice and initiative than a private room could offer to any mere family group. And although there is free play, yet training and teaching are going on not only every hour but every moment. All the games are brought to an end when a sudden burst of sunshine transfigures the camp. The sky opens like a great blue flower, birds chirrup in the privet hedge, and the children run out, helter-skelter, with shouts of joy. Up the arcade they run, deaf to the voice of the young girls at the bath-room window, away, away, obeying a voice more urgent than theirs, with little cries, and huriying feet. Something happens at the memorial room gate. There a class of older children are dancing to music, and the room is all alight with gay little forms moving in harmony. How they dance — ^these big ones 1 And this music ! Victor grips the fence tightly, and the long row of toddlers form in a line and lean over the top bar, which is nearly as high as their shoulders. They stand entranced, still as a picture. A young girl calls them : "Belle! Charlie! Harold! Victor!" No answer. " Nay, let them look if they want to," says the Yorkshire teacher who is their Head. " Don't waken them. Let them be." Don 't waken them ! Is this sleep then, this long, quiet, absorbed watching of the little children ? It is like sleep in its vague absorp- THE TODDLERS' CAMP 77 tion, its helpless abandonment. It is the reverie of those who still feel mainly through the sympathetic system, that great central motor tramway route, as S^guin called it, of the nervous system. On this great route most of the traffic of life is still done. It is a route that is well beaten out, and broad, and safe, and yet the traffic is heavy. After tea on this same day Victor began to sing the new song, Margaret danced the new dance as a kind of aside. Rose learnt some of the words. It was a surprise. No one had taught them. Gently as the bud bursts, as the leaf opens without any kind of programme, by a process we cannot even trace, so rapid is it and so stUl, this was done. It is thus little children learn one language, or it may be two (for two are learned not as a task of double strain, but by the same quiet movement and process). It is thus they learn to walk, tc handle and to hold, to take possession of a new world without formal lessons. To understand and give the right atmosphere and opportunities — ^that is our task. It is a quarter to twelve o'clock. The children come flocking back into the shelter bath-room and the before-dinner ritual starts. It starts at the same hour, at the same moment every day, and every sensitive little nervous system learns to know this, to expect it and form habits that are fixed a little better every day. Here is the right 78 THE NURSERY SCHOOL field for routine, here in the basement of the nerve structure. When the children troop out at twelve they are made ready for the next event, ready with clean hands and nails and faces, and eager to fetch bibs (though we cannot tie them on yet), to carry mugs or spoons (though we cannot set tables yet like the older children). Now we are seated at the low table. It is a pretty sight. Charlie, a two-year old, who has been with us all his life, sits at the top of his table, the sunlight glinting on the soft curls. His dark eyes shine with happiness and he clasps his hands and looks joyfully at the great tureen and plates on the side table, and then out into the garden. " More ! More I " he calls out, addressing himself not so much to the teacher-nurses as to the whole scheme of nature. The children are served. They have already had a long course of manual training. These little hands that will soon draw and paint and model are already far on the road to all these arts, for, though they do not yet handle a pen, they handle a spoon perfectly. One little hand is kept below the board. With the other the toddlers proudly hold and use the spoon. Sometimes it is the right hand and sometimes it is the left. The left hand is used quite as much in the shelter as the right. What a child does with one hand he is trained also to do with the other. The children eat cleanly and slowly. (Only little Edith, the THE TODDLERS' CAMP 79 newcomer, a stranger here, eats anyhow, will not say " thank-you," or even " ta," will not pass anything, cannot even use her spoon.) Yet for all the ritual is so well learned, the natural joy of life is not dimmed here, nor even restrained. Charlie, grave and observant, when the first helpings are given, grows more and more radiant as his own turn draws nigh, and shouts like an enraptured cherub over his good dinner. After dinner there is toilette drill again, and at 12.30 twenty-five little people are tucked into twenty-five little stretcher beds. The screens are drawn over a little, for the winter wind is rising, and flurries of rain lash the sodden terrace and dark flower beds. The children sleep calmly, the tranquil sleep of returning or established health. Not a cry, not a murmur from the toddler beds. Even if as in the case of Tommy, sleep does not come at once, rest comes, and the bright dreamy eyes scan the roof with its open gables, and the swinging branches of the trees by the garden wall. Then suddenly the dark eyes close. The nurses will have a pause in their busy day for two hours or more. • • • • • Getting up time is not sudden or sharp. It is a gradual process, wakening, in a nursery. The older children open their eyes first as a rule, but sometimes we get a child who sorely needs sleep, and he is allowed to sleep on. What can we 80 THE NURSERY SCHOOL give to these fast-growing brains that is better than rest ? We look at the calm little faces, and the meaning of these tender words comes to us with a new power : " He giveth His beloved sleep." At three the nursery is astir. Our Yorkshire teacher is telling a story. Kathleen, our Yorkshire girl, is dancing, to the delight of some toddlers who are joining in. She sings and beats time Avith her hands and they beat time also. Another student is making toast at the fire, surrounded by a group of little people all eager to help. They do help. They take hold of blunt knives, and try to spread butter. They cut toast, they carry plates, and range the slices on them. Near another fire a young artist -girl student sits caressing Teddy, who comes always reluctantly back from the world of dreams. With what tenderness does this girl draw the little one back to waking life, plunging herself into the dim dream atmosphere with him, and how he clings to her as to a raft floating in on a tide. " My Teddy always call her when he wakes in the night," said a grateful mother. " He useter wake crying. Now, never." Victor is awake now. Also Moses, Ted, Bobbie and Christopher, and no one but the heaviest sleeper can fail to hear the noise they make, as two of them charge up the shelter, drawing two little ones after them in a train, while the rest bring up the rear in a two-wheeled car. The snow THE TODDLERS' CAMP 81 has stopped. The red sun is westering, and the more boisterous children are sent out to run along the covered way and back. Supper is served at 4, and at 4.80, when the short dark winter day is closing in, the shelters begin to glow in the darkness. No shadow must fall on the camp. It is the hour when in well-to-do houses children come down to mother. Here they flock round the nurses and listen to them. They play with and sing to them — and not all in one language. Soon on our staff we shall have a young girl from France, and she will sing the songs that used to be sung in Avignon in the time of the Popes, the gay, bright songs of our neighbour nation. We do not think this will " spoil our English." We think it will improve it. Clothes are changed at 5 and at 5.30 the children troop away, fetched by older children as a rule. The Nursery-School is not yet a part of the home. We dream of happier endings to the winter days. Meantime, not only mothers, but fathers also, and, indeed, all the workmen and soldiers of our district appear to take an interest in our camp. The workmen stop in their hurried walks to look in. Above all the soldier fathers come again and again. One of them, wounded to death in France, asked that his children might be sent back to the Camp. Again and again we have had heartening words from the trenches. " Hold on ! " writes one, " this thing has come to stay." V 82 THE NURSERY SCHOOL One of our children, Florence, learns fast. Her father came home from France on leave. " I'm blest," he said, " if she didn't speak French to me. I gave her a penny and she up and said ' Merci ! ' You could have knocked me down with a feather. And me just left France where I felt a fool not knowing the language." CHAPTER IX THE THREE AND FOUR-YEAB-OLDERS The life of the three to four-year-olders varies a good deal from that of the toddlers. The great desire for movement, and the impulse to touch and handle, are not less noticeable in the older children, but they find new ways of gratifying these desires. The shelter is planned so as to provide opportunities. There are small tables here roimd which little groups can sit, and many of these, as we have seen, have a writing surface, so that the children can write just as they speak, not in one set lesson but at any hour of the day or moment when they have something to express by writing ; and there is more — ^blackboards down the walls of the shelter. The toys are different, and there are play-houses and specimen cupboards, and the pictures are somewhat different. All the shelves nearly are low, and the things on such a level that little people can handle them and dust them. At first we thought we would have a time-table, but we have given it up. We have a programme, and the hours are fixed for all big events like dinner, sleep, play and work, but our play and work lost 83 84 THE NURSERY SCHOOL so much force and interest by being snipped into little sections that at last after some hesitation we gave up the snipping altogether, and allowed ourselves to be interested in things. We begin the day in every section by bathing and dressing. The children over three and under five have their own bath-room and shelter, while those over five are in the camp-school opposite, and have their baths, etc. But the ritual for both is the same, though the older children do the work more rapidly and more easily than the younger ones. Bathing and Dressing as hand-work, — It is strange to note how " hand-work " has become more and more an academic subject and, after much tacking about, has crystallised into a large group of occupations. Some of these are of great educational value, such as modelling ; and others, such as pin-pricking and drawing from prick to prick, are of little value, and are even harmful to young eyes and young nerves. What one notes first of all is that hand-work is taken in a number of ways that are not related to the children's own workaday life, though they doubtless played a great part in the life of bygone races. Basket- making, bead-threading, pottery, weaving belong to this group. Of recent years new apparatus has been added — tying drill boards, buttoning boards, lacing boards, all that Seguin invented for his poor defective THREE AND FOUR- YEAR OLDERS 85 children, and refinements of these. All these are useful, but the great opportunities of life come in living so as to do as much as possible for oneself and others, and children can begin all this work by dressing or helping to dress and undress themselves, and by doing everyday things in the nursery. Our children enter the bath and there, as a rule, we find how helpless, weak and uneducated are their poor little hands. They sit down and splash a little, or stand idly with limp arms waiting for someone to come and help them. And I have sat in committees of really able educationists who said it was no part of a highly-trained teacher's work to go and help them in this case. It is forgotten that this limp hand has a brain centre, that indeed it has not one but many. A large part of the brain is involved in this limpness. These centres like all the others are developed by use, and their waking is not even a local event. It is something that makes a stir all around and far away. How we persist in thinking, even after we have learned better, that these are all water- tight, and also that some should be the care of underpaid nursery maids and ignorant people. Seguin developed the intelligence of an imbecile by simple and mechanical arm and hand move- ments, so that, after a while, the poor empty eyes and fallen jaw and wretched hanging head became the head and face of a boy who looks almost normal I It is high time that our best teachers should apply 86 THE NURSERY SCHOOL the teachings of physiology in the bath-room and dressing-room and look upon these as what they are — ^great class-rooms, full, offering, not mere apparatus but something better, that is opportunity. There are twenty-six movements involved in the common task of washing, and another twenty or so in dressing, and our children of five on entrance cannot make five, in some cases, out of the forty- six ! Yet they should make them all at the age of three, and be as expert at five in them as in walking, moving or jumping. And they would be glad to learn. At first one has to take hold of the neglected hand as Seguin took hold of an imbecile's hand or arm, to flatten the palm, to place the wash- rag, to rub the soap on and show the child that he must not then (as he nearly always does on entrance) allow it to slip into the warm water. He begins of course with the face. (Left to himself he may start with the feet.) And in patiently trying to get him to wash, one is struck by the beauty and variety of the movements we have to make. The arch of the eye, the curve of the ear, the backward movement behind the ear, and the strong circular movement round the neck. We do all on the blackboard in drawing and call it a lesson. We do it in the bath-room and call it getting clean. We swing circles on the black- board ; now we swing them on the chest with soap and then with water, and draw hard rubbing lines THREE AND FOUR-YEAR-OLDERS 87 down the limbs with smaller circular movements at the knee. The swinging movements of the torse in and the upward movement from the shoulder and below the arms, the strong movements involved in washing the hair and rubbing the scalp, and the many finer movements involved in cleans- ing nails, hands, and at last the feet, the lifting of one foot and another, and arm movements, the exercising under the shower, accompanied, as it always is, with shouts of laughter, the fhst shock of the cold shower and the new pride every day in one's power to face it' — all these are not only useful for health. They mean experience of the great massive exercises and sensations, many of which occur in minor forms in other lessons, but never with the same fulness, and never with such a rich volume of incoming and outgoing life. The tooth-washing and hair-brushing are done by the children, but are overlooked. On coming out of the bath, our children above toddlerdom, that is three years old and over, have to dress. At first the three-year-old can hardly be coaxed to pick up any garment. When he does so he holds it wrong way up. After a time of patient work he pulls on a vest, and then looks helplessly at knickers and stockings. He has to learn to balance, to place the knicker or bodice right way up, to put one limb in and then another. Stockings take time, he has to learn to pull ; to learn the use of the brush and comb takes a long 88 THE NURSERY SCHOOL time. But after making dabs at the hair for weeks, the four-year-old can brush the hair more or less and handle a comb. Here is a picture of a child putting on his shoe, drawn by his youthful nurse. There are drills for lacing, button-fastening and the tjdng of laces. Many years ago I made cardboard slits with tapes across and used them to teach the fastening and lacing of boots. This kind of apparatus is very useful. Far more im- portant is the daily need for putting off and on boots and stockings. This CHILD PUTTING ON SHOE ^^^^.j^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^ done in camp at least four times every day, and in winter it may have to be done much oftener. Every child over three should do it himself. Some- times one sees a school where children take the afternoon sleep with their boots on. The reason they do this (and it cannot be a very good thing for the beds or for the comfort of the sleepers) is that it would take too long for the staff or the children to put the boots off and on ! A confession of failure. , Opposite is a picture of two of the children in the bath. THREE AND FOUR- YEAR- OLDERS 89 In every out-door nursery school there is work to be done, and the children should do as much of CHILDREN IN THE BATH this work as possible. Certain morning tasks are given to everyone. The feeding of the rabbits and birds, dusting, watering and the arranging 90 THE NURSERY SCHOOL of flowers or changing of water in pots and pans. Also some have to go the round of the garden and pick up every piece of waste paper and rubbish that spoils the order of the place. My dear sister used to go the rounds with children every morning. Outside, the street was dreadfully littered. CHAPTER X MORNING WORK Lesson on Rhythm and Breathing taken with Children from four to seven. Breathing is itself a great rhythm, and it has been weakened and troubled in so many. Our teacher looks at her new pupils. Some are inclined to get rigid. Their faces are apt to freeze. Their movements are awkward and timid. They smUe and their eyes are fixed. Her first lesson is one to restore breathing. 1. The children lie on the floor. They wear no stiff or tight band ; the feet are shod in soft shoes, or in summer they are bare-footed. They lie quiet, and the teacher speaks to them gently and gaily. Then she asks them to close the lips, take a deep breath and breathe out quietly. She goes round to each little figure, and laying her hand lightly on the chest shows them how to breathe in the right way, using the diaphragm, letting the large muscles get free and move. The children do this exercise five or six times. 2. They learn to walk. This is not done by 91 92 THE NUHSERY SCHOOL telling them to " keep straight." Or to " keep the arms down." They have to learn at first to do two things which are very easy, and very pleasant ; and yet they, poor children ! have been forgetting how to do these easy and pleasant things, that is, how to relax, and how to use the large muscles. They have to learn how to hold the head up, not by stiffening the muscles, but by leaning the head back comfortably, how to relax the arms, how to walk from the big thigh muscles, without stiffening the leg, and in order to do this certain moral events have to come about. They must cease to feel any fear or anxiety. The teacher counts, with a slight emphasis on the first beat, one — ^two — one — ^two. And the circle of children swings oft, walking as they, perhaps, never walked before, freely, lightly, merrily. 3. Walking on Tiptoe. — " You are fairies," says the teacher, and they walk on tiptoe as lightly as possible. At first many of the children can hardly balance themselves at all, and one notes that the instep has fallen through lack of exercise. 4. The teacher now sits down to the piano and asks the children to keep very still. When they are all Very quiet, and listening, she strikes a sweet chord, which seems to vibrate somehow through the loosened, sensitive little bodies, bodies that have long been misused, or swaddled, or stiffened unnaturally. " March now," says the teacher, " loud with one foot, softly with the other. One, MORNING WORK 93 two." She plays a very simple march, and counts with their singing. This is the end of the first lesson. Already, at the end of it, the children have new memories of marching. They are full of wonder that the new lesson brought freedom, and very soon this pleasant memory is going to be deepened and multiplied a hundredfold. Only every lesson begins by breathing in the new way, a way which will soon become habitual as we dance, and shout, and jump and run in the garden. Second Lesson At first we do not know even our own little bodies, and cannot tell the right foot from the left, or one hand from the other. 1. We march to music. 2. We run to music. 3. We run, first loudly with full steps. 4. We run lightly on tiptoe. 5. We run loudly when the music is loud, then lightly when the music is soft. In order to do this it is necessary not only to march or run but to listen. Here then we break into a new exercise, and the effect is seen in Ruby's brightening eyes and in Fanny's eager face. The latter is a graceful little dark creature of five. She is overjoyed that life has suddenly opened into a new garden for her. Hitherto her natural grace and gaiety were all neglected and useless ; now she expands. Her dark eyes overflow with happiness. 94 THE NURSERY SCHOOL Apart from the two factors of intensity and of quality that distinguish sensation there is another factor, feeling or sentiment. This is called by Wundt, the tone of the sentiment. Not every sensation has tone or feeling. Most of our children have been having toneless sensation in school, and that is why they appear dull. Pleasure and displeasure are states that pass one to the other across a point where neither is in evidence. In certain exercises, such as those cited here, the teacher sets swinging a kind of pendulum that passes and repasses this inert point with glowing energy. This is one reason why the lesson has great value. Third Lesson The breathing lessons now include nose-breath- ing. In order to see that the nose is quite clear, the teacher may test it by a lighted match held well away from the nose. All the handkerchief drills which go on in the toddlers' and other camps are finding their uses here as we proceed to go further and further in defining the fimctions of a nose ! 2. Marching with ^/-m-MoVements. The children now begin to march to music, making a very simple arm movement as in other drills, up, down, up, down, in time with the steps. Three Movements. Here two arm movements are introduced. For example. Arms forward. MORNING WORK 95 up — out. Forward, up — out. This offers sur- prisingly little difficulty to children after the first two or three lessons. 4. The teacher sits down to the piano and plays nursery rhymes, the children singing. "Little Bo-Peep," " Cock-a-doodle-doo, My dame has lost her shoe," " Hickery, dickery, dock," " The north wind doth blow," etc., etc., and the lessons now end always with this singing, the children dancing also and even acting the song, but without actual training or teaching to begin with. At first and for some weeks it is not easy to measure the progress of every child. They are reticent of new-found power. They seem to hide it away at first. In the fij^st days they would not follow the songs, and I believed they did not know the words, but when I started to say a line or two, and forgot what came next a chorus of Voices helped, and finished the verse correctly, one dark-eyed little girl leading the others. :{e :{: He :{: :{: The work now drops into three sections. Gym- nastics, music, speech. In so far as the first of these is concerned it divides itself into two parts, the part which gives the power of control, or obedience in response, and as the counterpart of this, liberty. The work recalls the writing and drawing lessons in that it encourages large swinging movements from the hip and shoulder. Henceforward the child 96 THE NURSERY SCHOOL will run and walk and dance with his whole body. His laugh will not be a mere grin leaving the upper face rigid. The music, the response, the joy of life will surge through him. It is a deliverance. The little creatures we will now assume march in time, keeping the rhythm or beat of a very simple measure. They know the left foot from the right, and the right arm from the left without thinking about it. The teacher now wants to introduce them to the signs or notes of music, but not by giving them music books to pore over. Miss Evans makes notes of strong paper. She cuts out a minim, a crotchet, a quaver, a semi-quaver, and gives one to every child. They learn by doing, that is by clapping, or marching ; that a minim lasts while one says 1, 2, 3, 4. And that a crotchet lasts while one says 1, 2. A quaver while one says 1, and so on. Taking the very easiest beat she hangs these notes up and plays them, and the children dance them. In a very short time they begin to know the values as well as the names of these notes, so that in the upper class a child should soon be able to hang up a stave and dance it. This is how the reading of words began, and if it is a good thing to work with letters before one takes to books, it is also a good thing to work with notes before one opens music books. As for the sol-fa notation, it offers no difficulty, for here the teacher falls back on the child's animism, and makes of her class a living scale. MORNING WORK 97 " Here is Doh," she says, " a very strong man. He is the father of this family, rather stern but good. Come out, Albert," she calls to a very determined-looking boy, who comes forward with solemn strides. " Now, darling mother is the high Doh ! " she cries. " She always says what father says, and is so sweet and clear. Marian 1 " Marian, a tall, fair child, goes to the end of the room, and then the family are called out. " Me," a good sister, " La I " who cries for nothing, " Soh ! " a merry boy, "Te," who clings to mother, and " Ra," a bright baby boy. " Fa " very delicate, stands close to " Soh," and each learns his own note. He sings it, he sticks to it, and then he sings it with others. All look at one another with joyful eyes, listening to the fine sounds they can make together. They change notes or places till all can sing the scale, and this is the moment to take out the sol-fa chart and begin to read it ! Our teacher does not, however, force the pace at all. It takes some time to get back the natural joy of childhood to some of our little ones. Simple rhj^hm exercises are taken and the six and seven- year-old dance easy dances, but the work is very largely loosening of stiffened muscles and rigours, and the setting allow of natural feeling. Down in the meadow the children act the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and in wet weather in the large shelter they act fairies in a wood. Miss Evans gives a 98 THE NURSERY SCHOOL them little bells. And they have to skip and run so lightly that the grass will not bend under them. Sometimes she and other " robbers " run in and chase them, and then the camp rings with laughter that has new notes in it, and seems to launch the children far away from the strident life of the streets. Speech. — Seguin in one of his books tells how once upon a time a very frail, very pale little girl went to the Sorbonne, and told the director that she wanted to be an actress. " Poor little thing," he said, " you are very ill. Can you recite any- thing ? " "Yes, sir." "Well, try," he said pityingly, and she began at once. " Deux pigeons s'aimaient d'un amour tendre." " That will do ! That will do," he cried, leaping from his chair. " You are a great actress. We must give you a training." He was right. The little girl was Sarah Bernhardt. She had genius. Some have talent, and all have some power of expression, the degree of which is fixed more or less by the kind of training given in childhood. Our children, no longer afraid to move, must learn also to speak without fear. A great part of our work is to listen to them, and to make so that they will speak to us. This begins in the toddlers' room, where big people are not too busy to listen : now in the madst of older children we say every day, " Tell me what you saw in the street." " Tell me what you did yesterday. You have been to a tea-party. Tell MORNING WORK 99 us about it," " Your father has come home from the war. What did you do ? And did he tell you anything about far-off places ? " At first we get very little, indeed, no response from the new-comers. They do not even say " Yes " or " No." They answer by nodding, or shaking the head. To this state of mutism are they reduced. We send them to feed the rabbits, to feed the birds, to play with the cat, and then we say, " What did you see at the hutch ? " " Tell me about pussy." Not Hilda to be sure, not Ruby, not Cecile, but these have been with us a long, long time and have had the silvery talk of our free-lance girls in their ears and the com- panionship of an older teacher in the four-year- old section. Inspectors say of them, " They are well-spoken ! " In the upper school, the six or seven-year-olds go further. They listen to stories from history books, to tales and legends. Then round the camp fire in the evening and also in class they will tell these stories themselves. CHAPTER XI COLOUR Children vary much, as do adults, in their feeling for colour, but it is a sense which can be educated in early childhood. We begin with two contrasting colours, say blue and red. I have squares of wood, about 3 inches wide and long, coloured and varnished. 1. First of all, two of these are placed side by side. " This is blue," we say, and " This is red," as S^guin said it to his scholars long ago. 2. Then we give the children a square of painted red cardboard and say, " Put this on the red wood," and " This on the blue." 3. Then we ask, " What colour is this ? " All this is done with pairs of contrasting colour. Blue and yellow, red and green, violet and yellow. These are the first exercises. 4. The second group of exercises introduces scales of colour. At first the scale is small, but later new shades and tints are added. We have a scale of six for the primary colours. The child places them in order. The standard 100 COLOUR 101 or middle blue comes first. The tints are ranged to the right, and the shades to the left. A child is then asked to arrange the scales of different colours, which he does with pleasure, as a rule, for most children love to handle the pretty var- nished squares. 5. At this point we introduce the wheel. It is a Bradley Martin one, bought, I think, in New York, but it could be furnished here. It is spun by a turn of the handle at the back, moving the wheels held by an elastic band, and spinning a disk. The disks are of every colour, and there is a black one and a white one to make shades with and also tints. The disk is split at the top to make possible the introduction of a black and white one, or a disk of another kind to make broken colours. The teacher shows the children how to spin the wheel, and lets them see how by altering the disks, or the quantity shown of any disk, she can make colours, and new colours at will. This is a great moment. The child feels that he can make a colour come, and this by movements that are even more pleasant than the handling of a brush. All the children want to see what they do, and they hold up one colour, and then another. We select, say, a standard blue, for that is easy, and when it is spun we say, " Make it lighter." " Make it darker." The children have to find this lighter or darker blue among the blocks on their table, and by-and-by some at least get very quick at 102 THE NURSERY SCHOOL noting the exact tint or shade. This is the time when the scales have to be made larger. 6. The children are now dealing with colour as a thing depending more and more upon quantities. We put one chOd at the wheel. He is very proud of his position and eager to do well. Only we must be careful to give one order at a time, and to make it such that he can carry it out perfectly. We say, " Put half the white disk on, and- half the black." When the child spins this we arrange the scale that begins in black and ends in white. We then say, " Put more white on," and when we have three-quarters of white spinning we find the light grey tint. We also begin to measure and say, " This is a quarter." One chUd after another then goes to the wheel and we say, " Put a quarter of the white disk on," till all know how to do this quickly. 7. We now begin to experiment with the disks. We say, " Put on blue and red, and see what will come ! " And, " Put on green and yellow, half and half." At this point the children want to make colours themselves. They want to shift the disks about and make their own discoveries. And this is surely what we want them to do ! When the tablet scales no longer offer any illustra- tion we have the garden to fall back on with its sea qf colour. We sit at the wheel with a hue of deep purple and say, " Find a petal or flower like this." Then the hunt begins, and this hunt COLOUR 103 implies not only that a child remembers a colour, but that he recognises it. The wheel is set every day for a new colour, and at last even the three-year-old will try to match it. At six years old, or even at five, a child is ready to use a paint box. Before six it will be better to use only crayons and chalks, and in the four-year-old section paint-brushes, as well as pens and pencils, are out of place. CHAPTER XII FORM Of all the " occupations " modelling is perhaps the oldest, the safest and the best. To begin with it falls back on the oldest sense, the basal sense of touch and the muscular sense. Begun as the little child begins it, it cannot put any strain on the finer nerves or muscles. He uses his hand mainly at first, particularly the palm, not the fingers. The ball is here as elsewhere the first form. We give each little child a piece of clay and show him how to roll it between his palms. That is the first exercise. Next we take a piece of clay and roll it into long chains, for to make chains as to make balls is childhood's deep-seated impulse. And by the time he has done these two things he can go in the garden as well as the shelter, and find he can make many of the things he sees there ! Worms and twigs, stones and ropes, also links and balls, all the things he has a special love for. He can pierce his ball too, and make a bead of it, or turn it into an apple. At this stage he will want to use his fingers 104 FORM 105 more, and can be taught how to scoop clay, and make a cup or bowl and put a handle to it. The little potter, now fairly started, will want to make a hundred things, pots and pans, aeroplanes, and men, houses and baskets, nothing frightens him. Least of all is he afraid of modelling men and even armies, and there is no need to stop him, for the object of helping him is, not to make him into a sculptor or even into a potter, but to make a path for his creative energy, and develop his power of observation. Nevertheless our children keep close to the things they know well. Some martins build high in the wall above our shelter, but the nests are so high that we hardly see them. The children modelled the nest and the little birds in it, but without enthusiasm. On the other hand they have made marketing baskets with great gusto, also potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes, bottles also, and jugs, cots and little chairs. I think that this bold variety is like the ceaseless chatter of very young creatures who have not yet learned to speak. Talk of short hours ! We go on all day. We model children, men, women, nursery-schools — ^nothing is too hard ; why, we also makes aero- planes, drays, horses and red-riding hoods — in short, any or everything that passes through our busy little heads. It does not trouble us at all that our men do not look right, and that the boat or the bridge spanning a river near the sandpit are 106 THE NURSERY SCHOOL not all that we can wish. We are imitative now as we never will be again, and take a thousand subtle impressions and stimuli from the human beings near us, which this work helps to make fast. More than any other place our children love the great heap of stones and builders' rubbish that the masons have left behind thenx after building our extension. To put up some kind of house, to fix some kind of tent, and to sit inside — ^that is the aim and desire of all the children of five and over. And the making of this house is a more popular occupation than any other, except of course the making of mud hills and trenches and the filling of dams and rivers. Here again the making of apparatus shows how educationists have traced the instinct and inter- preted it. There are very expensive articles in the market with leaden floors which cost a great deal of money, and do not leak. Nothing could be better except, possibly, a spare piece of ground in the meadow or in a comer of the playground where charmels could be tunnelled and rivers set flowing without the aid of lead. The first houses are of course very rude. They are caves. Our children of five and six have made five caves, or ancient dwellings, and have created an England all round it such as in their opinion existed long ago. Stones and earth are piled up to make roads and hills. There are bushy forests of twigs and a river with planks thrown across. FORM 107 Clay was used to make mammoths and other fearsome animals, also men and women, and a child is playing near the covered opening of a cave. A piece of skin is the covering of the door. A great deal of eager consultation, thought and hand- activity went to the making of this big village. The same may be said of tent dwellings with forests all around, and clearings for camp fires. With might and main the children have worked at these, and have taken the wondering three and four-year-olds to look at them. Miss Stevinson, the head-mistress, giving much sympathy and interest, but not joining the working teams. It was not she who said either that the ancient Briton or his wife might want a pot or a pitcher. They drank, of course, with their hands at first, but this could not go on for ever. Down in the meadow there is a place where, by digging, you can reach the soft reddish clay. Our boys made an oven one day, and lined it with this clay which hardened in cakes. They began to make the models after that, beads and acorns, cups and jugs, bottles and pitchers. Then the older children began to look more critically at the clay early Britons, the babies placed for safety in brown twigs or forests, and the hippopo- tamus and cave bear in the big " early Britain " at the comer of the gardens. The pipes were not good enough — ^nor the pitchers. It was the moment now for appealing 108 THE NURSERY SCHOOL to our artist lecturer, and what she did will concern our teacher-students even more than the children, and will be touched on in a later chapter. The teacher was responsible, not for the work but for the release of the power that embodied itself in the cave-men's new country. Miss Stevinson's book on this subject can be had from the Cambridge Press. r— ^' — or-^.r" 1 K^^'"^' iMiMai r '' ' ■■ { f )>, ■1^ 1 fe.V. i ^..:.' tii,.- r^llpaaafe FRAMES AND GEOMETRICAL IXSEIi \Face page 109. CHAPTER XIII FORM CONTINUED AND LEADING UP TO READING AND WRITING SiSguin's method of teaching defective children by insets has been followed up by Dr. Montessori and applied to the teaching of normal children. Many years ago I had insets made also, on wooden trays with legs giving space for the hand to be introduced below so that the circles, triangles, cones, etc., could be pushed down or up. These trays of mine were inferior to those of Dr. Mon- tessori in that they soon got out of order. I have now a heavier wooden frame, flat, and varnished, where coloured geometrical forms are arranged in scales. Those used by the youngest children or toddlers are all arranged in scales, and are useful for exercises in the comparison of size. Only later are the frames with different forms introduced, such as circles and triangles, or later triangles and cones, etc., arranged alternately. These insets attract the toddlers mainly on account of their bright colour. The nurse-teacher places them at first in the right order. She builds 109 no THE NURSERY SCHOOL them up, putting the smallest on the top, And even in the baby room she will give little lessons on colour : saying, " This is green," and pointing then to the grass, or " This is blue ; see the sky ! " The children like to place bright insets and show no difficulty in learning to name them, but this exercise cannot go on very long because we can introduce only a few forms, and I think that for practice in the comparison of form we have to depend mainly on the clay work, and on fitting in letters. We have a Very long alphabet board made of polished wood which we lay, not always on a long table, but more often on the floor. It is fitted with big letters nearly three inches long which were covered with a tinselled French dust which rubs off and leaves the surface rough. Unpainted wood warps and does not stand cleaning, but it is best to have the letters painted, vowels red, consonants blue, after being first roughened by denting. Then a child can trace the form quickly blindfold and using all the fingers. He should work at first with a few chosen letters, and it is an advantage, not a disadvantage, for a group to work at one board. The letters are arranged as S^guin suggested in contrasting couples. 10 to start with, for this is the perfect pair. Then AV, OQ, BR, KY, YV, GC, MN, ZH, DP, EF, IJ, LT, YX, US. We repeat letters to form contrast or suggest likeness, READING AND WRITING 111 The children are very happy fitting the letters. The older children sometimes help the little ones. Very often in the evening they run to us with a picture book, and say, " Look, this is like a letter we know." At this stage we name the letters, and indeed we name them when the need arises or seems to arise. When a thing is known it should be named. Reading. — ^The letters, which I originally had made for the trays, were kept in big wooden boxes, each with 26 letter places. These we still use, and I think they form the best means of teaching reading and spelling, their use making appeal as it does to three distinct senses, the mus- cular, the tactual, and the visual. Falling back on these, particularly on the earlier senses, many of our pedagogical difficulties fall away. In teaching reading and writing, as in teaching everything else, we have two objects in view. First, we are trying to enrich the sensorium and secondly we are trying to give new motor control. These last gifts are worth more even than the power to read and write, for the arts of reading and writing as well as many other arts can be easily acquired through their possession. " The whole world," said Thoreau, " is on the side of the sensitive." The whole world is on the side also of those whose motor system is educated. We can't deal with anything freely till we have 112 THE NURSERY SCHOOL a good many clear impressions and fixed memories about it. I will try to describe the means through which we attempt to have these. Here is a table on which the five-year-olds build words with letters. The big wooden boxes with 26 compartments each filled with letters are on one table, and the children go from one table to the other building up words. The teacher has a reading-book for this kind of drill-work. (We use Sonnenschein's. It may be that McDougall's is as good.) The point is, we must keep to a reasonable order or sequence in learning, just as the book-learners do. The children put down A T. We say put C before it or B, then it makes "CAT" or "BAT"! When these words are learned we take others, " MAT," " HAT," " FAT." The work is drill. The book used is a mere drill- book. The other or imaginative side of reading is carried on in another fashion and with other aids. Both are needed. Each is desired also, at last. Children love hard work, but they hate confused and confusing work. The room is not silent like a book-class-room. There is much movement, as the children slip from one table to another ; or as often happens, go to the black- board to write what they have built or placed. Older children may love to be still in working. We are five years old and obviously depend more on our muscles. Some of the children can deal with only one word at a time. They take it to READING AND WRITING 113 pieces. They put it together again. They write it. They also look at it, but this is not the " look and say " method for they look at it sometimes in pieces. And why should they not see it thus ? Every great educator agrees that to break a thing up into its elements and then make of it a unity again is a splendid mind exercise. If mathe- maticians find it good to do this with figures and forms, why should we abandon this method when we come to the learning of reading ? Spelling is just the analytic side of learning to read, and the dreadful crop of bad spellers that have come into existence in the last twenty years and are driving so many teachers to look for simplified spelling are proof that we have failed somewhere. Simplified spelling may be a good thing. But the exaggeration of difficulties cannot be good. A weak visual memory cannot be good. An utter dearth of useful impressions in regard to any subject is not good. That is why we have our alphabet boxes filled with wooden letters which stand some handling. They are about a quarter of the size of those used by the three-year-olds, and one can write a whole sentence with them on the table. How long does a child need to work with such material ? That depends on the child, on his age, on his past, on his health, etc. Intelligent children outgrow the material Very rapidly. One boy of six came to us who had been ill all his life, and had 114 THE NURSERY SCHOOL never even learned his letters. He began to use the small letters at once, and in three weeks he was able to cast them aside and take to easy books. There is almost nothing we can fence away utterly from the waking powers of even very young children. Our three-year-olds find picture books with printing in them and cry out " this is an L," or " this is an A," with great glee. They sometimes find out a little word, and are very pleased with it. Do many children " explode " into reading just as Dr. Montessori's children exploded into writing ? There is no doubt that they do, or that the dealing with concrete letters and the building of these words does away very largely with all spelling difficulties. Training of the Visual Memory in Reading. — We are still at the age (five and six) when the reading of small or even big print is not adapted to the needs of the young eye with its long vision and its need for vistas and long ranges. So when the children can read (wooden) words on the table and even sentences, they exercise their new powers by other means than the study of books. Here is a large box full of long slits of cardboard on which words and also sentences are printed. The children look silently at the word. If it is a noun they run to the thing named softly and touch it. If it is a verb they do the thing it tells them to do. " Run," " Jump," " Fly," " Sleep," READING AND WRITING 115 " Read," " Be Silent." If a sentence is held up they read it silently, and do the thing it tells them to do. At first everything is a kind of command or instruction : " Sit at the table," " Take up your pencils," " Touch the blackboard." Every one looks eagerly at the cardboard slits, because they want to know what they have to do. The exercise is varied in other ways. Tlie children are shown a cardboard slit and are told to look at it for a few moments, and then are sent away, to write it from memory. During these exercises the room is full of movement, and yet it is silent, and the children are very busy ; they are not being talked to much. They are testing themselves all the time. Whenever I think of this exercise I think also of Guy, a boy who attended the camp for years, and who threw stones at the door when he was — for some reason — excluded, and came back by dint of asking. He brought the keenness and the " flair " of a hunter into his school work. With his warm dark eyes, bullet head, his strong little jaw, and turned-up nose all covered with freckles he had a kind of magnetism. You wouldn't expect it to look at him. Yet it was there. He had lived a nomad life for years — in and out of school, and could not read though he was eight years old. He started off at a great pace, not with the wooden letters (for he knew his letters), but with the cardboard slats ; and during 116 THE NURSERY SCHOOL the lesson no one was so eager, so attentive as Ghiy, In playtime, too, he ran, with other boys, to the teacher's side. " Show me slats," he cried, " Let us see if we can read them." And he did read them all day, and without fatigue. " (Jo to the mulberry tree," " Fetch a sunflower leaf," " Find a new rose out." In three weeks he could read an ordinary book, and the game and work he loved was over. He set us to wondering whether our set programmes and study hours do not keep children back. Guy cared for nothing but reading and writing till he could read and write, and in playtime as in school time this far from studious boy insisted on going on with his work. In learning to read in order to know something or to do something, one gets into the habit of understanding the thing read. One expects to understand it. One associates the written symbols with definite objects and actions, and this is a great advantage. The six and seven-year-olds, who have books, love the books because they understand them, and enter into the new life that is unfolded in their pages. Writing. — ^This art should be taught with reading, being as it is largely a question of muscular memory related to the recognition of form. The learning of each art is simplified by half, when they are taken alternately as parts one of the other. Our dear toddlers are anxious to start. We READING AND WRITING llT* give them chalk and a black dado in their nursery, where they most faithfully and eagerly proceed to make as much scribble as possible. Once, in the days when we employed nurses, the toddlers were forcibly deprived of their chalk on account of the fact that some wanted to eat it. The more ardent workers however found a way out. They moistened their index fingers with saliva, and proceed to draw with new vigour. They are no longer reduced to these straits. The three-year-olds begin writing by swinging circles, and drawing strokes with either hand, and from the shoulder. At first they use the whole body, including the tongue, for this exercise, but later they gain control, and draw creditably with one hand and the other. The order is as follows : — First, circles O ; Second, perpendicular strokes ; Third, sloping strokes ; Fourth, the joining of these : L T A V. It will be seen that in the fourth stage of lessons they can draw many letters. We now proceed to half-circles, ovals, and curves. By the time we can do these we are able to print the alphabet. Over and above the printing of the alphabet, however, we can now draw many things. Ladders, pens, worms, balls, tents, candlesticks, etc. In the beginning we call this work muscular control work. It has as its aim merely the form- 118 THE NURSERY SCHOOL ing of power to stand steadily on feet placed apart a little, power to move the arm and hand without swaying the whole body ; but the niuscular control comes so fast that in a few days or weeks we see little children swinging circles and dramng lines with great energy. It is natural they should want to do something real with the new power thus won. So they do free drawing, but this free drawing, so long misunderstood in our school, is free only because new power has been won. If we cease to win new power, the drawings may go on for years (as we see them go on in many infant schools) and show no progress. The child can now draw on the blackboard the patterns shown opposite. By learning to draw strokes, curves and circles he has already turned the key of the great treasure house of form in the visible world. Henceforward his " free " drawing may be indeed free from the dreadful chain of weakness and helplessness that trails after so many little ones for long years. Drill for the winning of motor control is one thing, the education of the aesthetic nature is another. But the latter is cruelly handicapped when the former is held back. The musician who is an instrumentalist knows this. The painter, the sculptor know it. The teacher who has to give lessons in writing or dictation or even in reading and spelling knows it best of all. The children are not encouraged to rub out. READING AND WRITING 119 fi tilll X l~f"l~~ I ~f-~l I //a\\-^\ u ° u /.v;\/A PATTERNS ON THE BLACKBOARD 120 THE NURSERY SCHOOL They go over and over the figure they have drawn not three or four times, but twenty or thirty times. They turn a circle first in one direction, then in the other. They draw with the right hand, then with the left. Later they draw with the right. e/(9\@. SCROLL DESIGNS save in the few cases that are truly left-handed. They take scroll-drawing as a preparation for script. Such exercises as these are given, and later, figures. These are followed by patterns formed of loops : — oo LOOPED PATTERNS and finally by letters O P R S B U, &c. At this point a chUd is ready to write words. READING AND WRITING 121 He is then building them on the table, and every word he builds from " cat " or " bat " onwards he goes and prints, and later writes, on the black- board. After the scroll exercises, there remains nothing but to get the children to reduce their writing, to get it smaller and smaller, till at last they can go into half -text in books. By that time the form is so well known, and the power to make it so well won that writing has no difficulties any more, and we can begin to use copy-books. I haVe supplied a movable desk that is an exact copy of the writing- rest of a mediaeval monk ; this form saves the eyes and saves the spine. It need not take more space than the ordinary desk. It is used only when one class is taking writing. Here is a copy of the desk. It can be placed on an ordinary table and there is a groove on the top for the pencil or pen and the inkpot. MEDIAEVAL DESK CHAPTER XIV ARITHMETIC, OR PREPARATION FOR SCIENCE The first two R's — ^Reading and Writing — appear to have very little in common with the third. They are very largely concerned with the develop- ment of sensory experience and motor control. The third R depends at first on these things also, but its evolution and aim are different. Also, with the exception of prodigies of course, the gift of dealing with form and number appears to develop later, and to be present hardly at all before the fifth year and to make a great step forward only somewhere about the ninth. We, therefore, do not attempt to carry this far, while on the other hand our training assumes that every normal child should master the arts of reading and writing perfectly before leaving the Nursery School at seven years of age. Language and hand- work are, in the beginning at least, very closely inter-related. The mere fact that the two brain centres that have to do, one with speech and the other with movements of the right hand, lie close to one another and are fed by one artery, indicate how the hand, and especi- 122 PREPARATION FOR SCIENCE 123 ally the right hand, worked out a subject that is not called manual now, but is set apart from manual subjects. Words, as well as tables, were made at first largely by hands. And in the teaching of number also we return to the hands as the organs of the first progress. Our toddlers' finger games are the beginning, among other things, of mathematics. Here, as in language-learning, the little things know how to begin. They use the index first with great vigour. All day long our " Charlie " and " Tommy " have this pointer outstretched. In the garden especially and in the meadow, when not otherwise in use, it points, points to every new thing that swims into the child-world. Number games are not tried on these little hands, though sometimes near the end of toddlerdom one hand is held up and then another, one foot and then another, and a student nurse will say, holding them up in play, " One hand, Two hands." Otherwise toddlers' hands are so very busy, and a toddlers' head too full of other matters to think at all about number. The three-year-old is ready to begin counting. He knows we have three rabbits, for he feeds them, and watches them in their houses. He counts the shelters too, and the birds in the aviary — ^there are only three. He points to the four fishes in the fish-tank, and above all he uses his fingers, the first counters, to number these things, and 124 THE NURSERY SCHOOL Very good counters they are. When, at last, he makes three or four straight strokes on the board to stand for them he is crossing the frontier. No longer is number, as at first, a quality of things in the world. It is a symbol for them. The teacher talks about hands and fingers. Once upon a time people wanted to count two — " two wolves " for example, " coming to eat us." " Four sheep lost." At ten they stopped, because they had only ten fingers, so we also stop there. We have a decimal system. We write two figures for ten. Visual Number Drills. — ^The teacher puts four stones on the table. The child looks at them and says how many there are. She then places six, eight, ten. The child reads them off. 2nd Exercise. — The children now sit down, each with a little bag of stones, which the toddlers are pleased to collect for them. The teacher says " Put down six stones." " Put down five." When they can do this quickly, with numbers up to ten, she says — 3kd Exercise. — " Now put down five and take up three. How many are there ? " This drill can be done with big objects. But small stones or beans are handy for table and fioor work. 4th Exercise. — "Put down three pairs of two's." And later, pairs up to five and six pairs. Let the children look and then turning away give the number. The table with counters should be PREPARATION FOR SCIENCE 125 a little distance off. Then they can run back from it. When they can do this quickly and easily, we give the plus and minus signs which they like Very much, and they go and write the answers to ques- tions on the blackboard. At this stage, having a little store of number memories, they begin to visualise. That is, the imagination is awake and active. The drill for speed can now be done. The teacher sitting opposite the children with their work in sight will say " Put down six — ^ten — ^five. Put down six and take up five. Put down six twos. Two threes," and so on. And now having given such practice as will help the imagination she can give up the stones altogether and ask, " How many twos in six ? " Out in the garden there is so much to do in counting things that the occasions come all day. " Take three pails and fill them with sand." " Take four little spades over from the tool-house." " Count the big rose-trees on the dug-out top." " Fetch five spoons." " Lay three places for three new children." " Jump on the see-saw twice." There is counting going on all day in the meadow, in the sand pit, in the herb garden. As the writing power develops too, there is no new thing to learn in figure writing but only a new application, and when curve drawing is reached (which it is in a few lessons) we can write all the 126 THE NURSERY SCHOOL figures — 1, 2, 3, 4 — ^and the rest. And the other way of writing figures, that is, by putting letters to stand for them, that we have learned to do already in the first three writing lessons. Meantime, the meaning of weight is learned through actual strains on muscles. We have many small tin boxes. These we fill with various things — one has stones in it, another marbles, another clay, another sand ; one has almost nothing in it, and another is empty. The children are asked to range them in the right order, and we know if it is rightly done by opening the box. It is after such exercises as these and kindred free exercises in lifting and moving things that the kitchen scales may be brought out and a balance set up. Even this is not always necessary, for children make the balance themselves by placing a short plank over a stone. In this way they learn to measure a pound's weight of anything, half a pound weight, etc. Having arrived at this point the children are on a level with the Greeks of the time of Homer, for these knew the balance, and called the unit of gold a talent, even though they had not yet stamped coins and dispensed with the need of verification. As they could not weigh things always, however, in a balance, they used the hand and the eye to determine weight in every-day life, and so the measure of value was really a sensation and every transaction depended on hand and eye training. PREPARATION FOR SCIENCE 127 The keeping shop is a favourite game, and it can be used to give very good results' — more especially, if money is brought in and all the usual business of buying and selling is allowed to go on. Our children are used to going into shops, and they like to handle real money, not toy coins. So we have real pennies, half-pennies, sixpences and shillings, and they shop in earnest. We have paper and string for tying parcels and do a great trade in sand. We are not afraid to introduce our children to fractions. " Here is an apple, can you have less than one apple ? " " Yes, indeed," cries Jim, looking hungry. " You can haVe half an apple." He cuts it in half. And then, everyone being keen on the subject, we proceed to deal with quarters. The idea that the unit can be anjrthing you like to fix comes as a sort of relief to many children. Their mind seems to course back and forth across the former barrier, like a thing released. At this point, too, the changing of colour wheel disks forms very good practice. Measurement.' — From babyhood almost our little ones have been comparing sizes and weights, ranging things in order of size, putting squares and triangles into places that fit them. From toddler stage our little ones get some notion of space too, first by having a large space to move in, and by going out in the garden and looking to the east where the sun is in the morning, or to the west 128 THE NURSERY SCHOOL where he goes to rest. Later when he is five years old we proceed a good deal further. We begm to measure things in a very primitive way — ^that is with our hands, our fingers, our foot, or our fore- arm. " How long is this box ? " "As long as my hand twice." " How wide is this flower-bed ? " " My foot, ten times." " How long is your pencil ? " " My finger twice." Very soon the children begin to see that fingers and feet vary in length, and that is the moment to tell them that once upon a time other people found this out and made fixed lengths and called them by name. A yard measure can be given then, or a foot measure (only as it is, we explain, a grown-up person's foot), and then the measuring can go on apace in the garden and the meadow as well as in the school. When the child has had much practice he can discover his own tables, multipli- cation weights and measures tables. Later, at seven he will write them down in a book. CHAPTER XV THE DINNER-HOUR The three and four-year-olders are at table. Is it worth while to listen to them, and look at them as they sit on this January day in their north- facing shelter ? Yes, it is worth while. They are in the poorest shelter of all, the shelter we put up when our funds were at ebb tide. The walls are low. The floor is uneven. The beauty of the children glows triumphantly in this poor setting, like roses in a broken cup. A sweet ripple of tender Voices rises and floats over the play-ground and gardens, accompanied by soft piano notes played by one of our students. To music " Thank you for the world so sweet. Thank you for the food we get, Thank you for the birds that sing. Thank you, Lord, for everything." This little grace, sung by thirty-four little Voices in the open shelter near the snowy gardens, has a strange, almost a weird charm I Whence has it come, this fair young life that sings in the winter morning ? It has come from, it was hidden in, I 139 130 THE NURSERY SCHOOL a slum. And now it shines like lilies in the sun. It sings and its Voice gives a new and yet intimate meaning to the world. Here are the world's redeemed children — ^the children of to-morrow. Redeemed they are. The toddlers across the way are enchanting. Between these and the three and four-year-olders, however, what great spaces have been traversed. The three-year-olders can talk. They want to talk at table. And no one says " Be quiet," or checks one's first little steps towards human sociability and good fellowship. The four-year-olders are scattered among the younger children, and so Betty, a very intelligent child of over four, with rosy cheeks, rather sharp blue eyes, and thin red lips that shut tightly, is seated opposite Sam, nearly a three-year-old boy, fair-haired, with full cheeks and bright dark eyes. We listen all the more because it is instructive as well as delightful to hear. " Betty," he says, " have you washed your hands ? " Betty glances at him impatiently over her spoonful of pudding. " Of course, Sam," she answers shortly, " you saw me yourself." Sam goes on eating gravely for some minutes after this snub, but gathers new courage. " Are your hands kwite c'ean ? " he says im- perfectly. Betty glances at her faultless nails, THE DINNER HOUR 181 " Of course they're clean. What funny things you want to talk about, Sammy Burridge," she says trippingly. There is a long, long pause. " Cook says her hands are c'ean," says Sam, struggling with dim thoughts. " She hasn't time on them. I was playing, and 'she sent me away. ' I haven't time on my hands,' she said to me." " Betty," asks Sam suddenly, " what is time ? " Betty's blue eyes grow very large : some very conclusive answer may be hovering near her lips, but she says no word. " Time is dirt," said Sam very earnestly, " that's what it is." (Sam does not take in the meaning of Time, or other abstractions. You don't gather grapes in February, even off a good vine.) Betty puts down her spoon, looks at him, is on the point of speaking, but changes her mind and says nothing. The children fill the shelter with merry prattle. The talk is of ribbons, of toys, of my new boots, of pudding, and of mummie. But they are silent at a word from nurse. The tables are cleared. Beds are taken out and soon every bed holds a bare- footed little occupant. They are warmly wrapped in blankets. We are now in a garden of sleep. The toddlers will not wake for two hours or more, and the older children will not waken for an hour and a half. If, by any chance, a child does waken, he or she will lie quiet with bright eyes. This did not happen 132 THE NURSERY SCHOOL at first nor for weeks. Children, unused to the midday rest, tossed about when awake and had no kind of peace, but after weeks of regular lying down at the same hour all the children, even little Tommy, who is fourteen months old, and who cried nearly all day at first, sleeps soundly, and gets up when he wakes, fresh and gay as in a new morning. It is well worth while seeing how this sound sleep and rest has been won for all of our many children. CHILD ASLEEP ON CAMP BED To begin with the bed is comfortable. Here is a picture of the camp bed. The children are tucked in warmly with blankets, but their shelters, though heated by stoves, leave something to be desired. They were built when no authority would help us, and the youngest children had the best of everything we possessed then as now. Yet how deeply and peacefully this little field of elder children is sleeping. On every little face a great peace has fallen, and the shelter has an almost awe-inspiring stillness. One could "hear a pin THE DINNER HOUR 133 drop." Grace, whose face lately expressed pain and distress always, now looks as peaceful as the others. Deep she has sunk beneath healing waters, and one has all the time an impression of rallying powers, of deepening life, of roots striking firmer and deeper, and of joy. The bare garden looks empty, but the quiet shelter seems to hold a great secret. Near her table, and with a blue screen for background, the young student left in charge busies herself over needlework, her white veiled head bent a little. CHAPTER XVI A TEA PARTY AND A HOMELY EVENING At four we sometimes have a tea party. The toddlers are nearly always the guests, and they send over the toast they have made. With neat hair and solemn faces they set forth from their shelter, the younger carried by students over the wet places ; the elder children leading the little ones. They are received with ceremony by the three and four-year-olds, and are led by them to the little tables. What gi'eat occasions these are, and how seriously and joyfully do the older ones take on their duties as hosts. The toddlers, too, are proud of their own manners. They do not fight or snatch. We know that. They say " Ta." They wait for the others. They even pass the plates ! Mothers beholding them are full of admiration. " Look at my Syd, he takes one piece. Long ago, at home, he'd have taken the plateful ! " Some laugh and some ignore it all. We think it very interesting, very charming, very important, remembering that " manners makyth man." We have now arrived at that hour when, by 134 A TEA PARTY 135 most schools, the children are abandoned, or, if this is in many cases a wrong word to use, when they are handed over to their parents and guar- dians. It is half-past four, and as this is mid- winter the chill dark has fallen. This is the hour when all we have learned becomes a joy to us. It is the hour that was imaged in the " Cotter's Satur- day Night," in the homes of cultured, but poor folk, in many lands. Outside, the frozen paths and flower beds glimmer in the faint light of the dying day. The winds moan drearily over the meadow and gardens. But inside there is warmth, and light, and cheerful talk. Some children pore over picture books I Others listen, with quiet faces, to a tale, and some are building houses, or playing with the doll-house and its furniture. In the shadowy distance some are playing ball with a student. This is a nurtur- ing home — or as near it as the people in our street can get in these days. Some of the best kind of educational work of the whole day is going on now. Sometimes mothers come in and join us. The shadows are deepening. But our children are not going to be hustled away. This is the time when in our shelters, bright and well-rested girls come on duty, and the heads of the various sections arrive also, for we are at one of the nodal points of the day. This is the hour when we have to make our nursery a true home- place for our little ones, reproducing for them as 136 THE NURSERY SCHOOL far as we can all the light and joy, and the com- panionship which is the birthright of some and ought to be the birthright of all. In the toddlers' shelter as we know, Nurse Pauline is playing the r61e of mother and elder sister. Round her knees are gathered a crowd of little children, and her manner and ways become more caressing as the night falls like a pall over the garden. Hers is a fine shelter with bright fires and drawn glass shutters, through which a plash of yellow light falls on the dim arcade. ]\Css Salter is not so fortunate. She has a bigger family and less room. Her shelter is warmed by stoves and lighted by rather dim lamps. A cruel visitor once said : " But this is a ramshackle place ! " No matter— it is a very bright place to-night. The chintz-coVered lockers and ottoman, the blue- draped shelves, the whitewashed pictured walls make a braVe show, and the stove throws out a good heat. And the Teacher of this shelter is sitting below a great coloured picture of King John, signing the Magna Charta. If our homes were behind the shelter and our mothers could pass through the back wall doors, this would be a very fair substitute for the best kind of children's home schoolroom. But our homes are not part of this building. At six we must face the darkness of the street, we end the evening after all in a crowded room, and fall asleep at last, it may be, in a crowded bedroom. A TEA PARTY 137 No matter I The idea of nurseries for all, school- rooms for all, happy evenings for all little ones, has come and having come will not depart again. We shall try and try again. For what is Housing Reform if it means only the putting in of a scullery or bath-room, or giving a few more inches of cubic space for everyone ? All this is very good, but it does not mean life. We shall try like the unwearying sea to win at last a new and higher conception of home as a place that must include Nurseries, talks round the fire, stories, games, music, and something more that makes all these shine as memories for evermore. CHAPTER XVII THE CAMP IN SUMMER Colour Work and Gardening It is blazing June, and roses are ablow over the arches and in the beds. All the curtains and screens are down except for a few hours at midday, and the shelters have their side walls out and stand like skeletons of houses, as they are, in the great heat. In the early morning hours, the toddlers are out in the herb-garden, or in the walks near the mulberry tree, and down by the terrace and hedge. They look gravely at the shiny leaves of the rose bushes, at the fiery petals of the great tiger-lilies, and at the convolvulus starring the terrace with snowy bells. In the herb garden, they pinch the balm and thyme, and smell their fingers gravely thereafter. They sniff up marjoram and fennel perfumes, and squeeze the green-blue fronds of the rue. The three and four-year-olders too love the scents of the garden, and can tell a few with the eyes shut. The newcomers seem to have no smell at all : but that of course is not so. They 138 THE CAMP IN SUMMER 139 have as much sense of smell as the others, but their attention has never been drawn to any such things so they appear to have lost a sense. The cloudless sky above us is spread out day after day like a blue flower. The planes and lime trees and the old mulberry have still the fresh green of early summer, and the beds and arches are now at their gayest hours. Gold and green, purple and white, rose and blue, meet us at every step : and the children look at this new- born wealth of colour with wonder. It is surely the moment to fix these glorious tints and shades in their memories and make of them living memories. The Colour Wheel is set turning. Flowers are brought into the shelter, and children name the colours and show tints and shades. They fill the vases themselves, and arrange the flowers, and sometimes a child, otherwise not brighter than the others, will show a gift for colour. It is easy to test and feed the colour sense now. The sun lights up the yellowbowl of the eschscholtzia field behind the bungalow, and in no paint box, on no wheel, can we find such gold. The violas seem to glow deeper in the afternoon sun, and the red poppies flame under the dark wall like goblets of fire. Children are drawn to this living colour as they cannot be drawn to new pigments. Tommie, aged fifteen months, tries to speak of it, holds out his hands to it, is stirred by it to the depths of his baby soul. 140 THE NURSERY SCHOOL Even in January the toddlers used to point little fingers to a great bowl of white and green on the table. " 'Nodrops ! " said Charlie, an enchanting two- year-old. « 4; « « 4: Gardening. — As summer draws on the activity of the whole camp circles round the teacher-gardener and her assistant. At any hour almost you may see a queue of little ones following down the path or crossing to the beds where she is at work. They are eager to help too, and basket in hand pull up weeds, sow seed, water, and do errands for the gardener. And though no set lessons are given, even very young children of three and Tinder begin to know the vegetables as well as some of the flowers and to name them correctly ■ '•' Where are the carrots ? Where is the parsley ? " ask visitors, and wondering, grave-eyed children will lead them where the carrots grow and the parsley. They eat radishes in the beds too, and their little flaxen heads and their blue eyes can be seen athwart the waving potato bed or down near the rhubarb patches. And some consciousness of the labour and patience needed to make things grow takes root in their young souls, and appears in the willingness and sympathy with which all try to help to the limit of their powers. This deep and thorough initiation into the THE CAMP IN SUMMER 141 world of nature — ^the long summer days with the rain, the sunshine, the soft winds, the heat also, the rainbow, the rapid growths and slow growths in the beds and borders, the grown-up people busy yet not too busy to say a word to little people standing knee deep in grass or behind vegetable beds that look like forests, does far more for education than any mere school can. The old mulberry tree with its heavy crop of dark fruit, the planes with their great leaves that give shadow, the lime tree delicate and sweet smelling, all play a great part doubtless in the future of our little children. The leafy domes are worked into memories that will survive the events of threescore years and ten, for child memories are perhaps the most permanent things we can ever have. The three and four-year-olds have gardens, but they are not parcelled into thirty-four strips. The snipping of the garden into plots is a little like the snipping of things into school subjects. The joy of the garden is that it is a big place where all kinds of things are going on ! It has sidewalks too, and belongs to the three-year-olds. It belongs to them more or less collectively, and there in spring they weed and dig, sow seeds, water and watch the growth of their own flowers or borders of vegetable?. ' The events of the border give rise to a great deal of talk, and reports about growth and budding, leafage and bloom. Here 142 THE NURSERY SCHOOL too children can watch insect life, make acquaint- ance with ants and aphides, as well as worms and caterpillars. The silkworms are a source of wonder and interest as they live through their romantic life stages, and the bright yellow sUk is wound and treasured at last in one of the speci- men boxes. Butterflies are a joy to the toddlers as they live their bright brief life in the sunshine. The three and four-year-olds know them as grubs and have some dim wonder as to their ama2dng transformation. In their long dreaming in the beds and down the walks and in the meadow they are learning gardening just as they learned a language by processes and methods that recall the transformation and work of the digestive and alimentary system, and that calls for little help and should have no interruption from us. One recalls in watching them, and in answering the first wondering remarks and timid experiments, the words of Seguin : — " How few little children are allowed to remain by the side of patient and gentle mothers or nurses, touching, dreaming, and emerging at last from this bath of sweet emotion and reverie, thinkers, doers, inventors, saviours." :¥ * it! * if In the summer mornings all the children, but especially the toddlers, are glad, looking forward to the long, long day with all its wonders. The little ones run about in the grass. They climb THE CAMP IN SUMMER 143 the plank laid across the garden seat under the mulberry tree, they run down the hillocks in the meadow, and swing or ride under the streaming plane tree. In summer evenings the older children are " fey," while the little ones are getting sleepy. What is it to be " fey " ? It is a Highland word that expresses a state of ecstasy accompanied with a touch of abandon and foreboding, a state that gives a kind of misgiving to joy, and raises in the same moment all the physical powers as if to meet and conquer everything. Children dance almost wildly on the grass while the great red flower of the sunset fills the west with glory, and makes a vermilion sparkling between the lime boughs. They laugh. They shout. They " do not want to go home " and above all " do not want to go to bed." The staff allow this mood to be expressed but they are ready also to play games in the gloaming. Sometimes the younger children of four are eager to join in these games. There is plenty of eye-training in the throwing and catching of balls, and this goes on in the play- ground and meadow, the students organising little games with sets of three and four, or sometimes taking a shy or awkward chUd alone and giving him some special training. The new-comers are a little astonished. They have to learn not to pitsh, and how to play fair. And these lessons are not the least important of the day. 144 THE NURSERY SCHOOL Soon all the chDdren will depart. They are already waving goodbye from the open gate where tired mothers, elder sisters and neighbours' boy and girl nurses pass in and out. Is the street outside into which they are now pouring at all touched by the life of the garden-nursery ? Yes, it is touched by it constantly, for the life-rivers of the garden are always pouring out to the threshold of homes. The teachers visit. They know the homes. They know the mothers and even the fathers, and it is their constant desire and aim to make the home life resemble in many ways the garden life ; and to make the clothing, the feeding, the sleeping hours, and the training methods as much as possible " all of a piece." And surely they are succeeding ! For nearly every young mother likes to have a word with the students and staff. " Tommy " and " Charlie," " Margaret " and " Hilda " give good-night kisses as they go out, and Bertie our youngest, kisses his hand a dozen times to his nurses in thanks for the good day. CHAPTER XVIII WHEN THE SHADOWS ARE FALLING We do not always go in gladness. On winter nights when the wind is moaning there comes a sad moment. It is the moment when the little ones have to change their clothes and go home. Not all have to change. Some have good under- wear and overalls, and water-tight shoes, but not all. Some can buy our good clothes by weekly instalments. And some can pay nothing and have poor clothes. My dear sister used to find things for these, but we lost a great many garments even when wages were very high. It is not the child's fault, but it is someone else's fault when a little one has to put off the pretty school garments, the embroidered pinafore, the bright hair-ribbons, and put on the heavy dark raiment of poverty. Sadly they wait, looking out on the darkening garden for the arrival of boy or girl nurses. Some- times a baby greets its mother with joy. But often an older child weeps, puzzled to know why her life divides itself into nights of gloom and over- crowding, and days of light and pretty clothes, K U6 146 THE NURSERY SCHOOL and toys, and the company of fair young girls and sweet-voiced teachers. Now and again a child demands to stop on, to experience the night of the new life. Before the war they did not go away. We had a night camp, Then the war came, and the raids, and we closed at night. We had our gayest evenings before the war. This ending in shadow marks the place where the wave of progress is stayed. The next wave will go farther. With a little planning of covered ways and porches the Nursery-Schools and nursery might, and will be, an annexe of the homes. Along these ways mothers, yes, and fathers, will come to fetch their little ones. Already the shelters are an attraction. True, the beer-shop and public-houses put up a fight for our people. True, we are in a noisy place and are afraid of holidays. We are afraid of the way people " enjoy " themselves. Yet the school has found its best friends among parents. In a poor place they have given this year over £412 towards the upkeep of an outdoor Nursery- School. Let us go on. The children will one day pass from the bright nursery into a clean and bright home, and they will not change before leaving into home-clothing, but go and come in with pretty pinafores and in good shoes. Our students are getting ready to deal not merely with childhood, but with environment. CHAPTER XIX THE SEVEN-YEAR-OLD It is said that the Nursery-School child should leave the Nursery -School at five, and go forth into another kind of school. That is a strange proposal, for a five-year-old is in the full swing of a life movement that does not change to a new key till seven years have passed. To drive him forth is to send him out untimely. Haste spells ruin all the time, and this kind of haste is not going to help us at all. The Nursery-School teacher has specialised in Infancy. Infancy does not begin at two or end at five. What is going to be done then about her training ? The answer is simple. We must try to do the right thing, even if the powers that be are not quite ready to make this easy. We have to keep on trying to show that our new nursery teachers should understand the child of one year old, and be ready to take up the training also of the child of seven, and that their training should provide for this, and not less than this. The seven-year-old is the flower of the Nursery- School. This flower should be allowed to bloom, 147 148 THE NURSERY SCHOOL to show itself and be recognised. The mere sight of such children, massed or looked at individually, is a new revelation — a thing England has not seen yet, or any other country. And what are they like, these wonderful boys and girls that have been nurtured as well as educated till they are seven years old ? Have we seen them, or their heralds. Yes, we have seen the heralds. We have the first fruits already. They are here. They are nearly all tall, straight children. All are straight indeed, if not tall, but the average is a bs^ well-made child with clean skin, bright eyes and sUky hair. He or she is a little above the average of the best type of well-to-do child of the upper middle class. So much for his or her physique. Mentally he is alert, sociable, eager for life and new experience. He can read and spell perfectly or almost perfectly. He writes well and expresses himself easily. He speaks good English and also French. He can not only help himself, but he or she has for years helped younger children : and he can count and measure and design and has had some preparation for science. His first years were spent in an atmosphere of love and calm and fun, and his last two years were full of inter- esting experiences and experiment. He knows about a garden, and has planted and watered, and taken care of plants as well as animals. The seven-year-old can dance too, and sing and play many games. Such are the children who will THE SEVEN-YEAR-OLD 149 soon present themselves in thousands at the Junior Schools' doors. What is to be done with them ? I want to point out, first of all, that the elementary school teachers' work will be changed by this sudden uprush of clean and strong young life from below. Either the Nursery-School will be a paltry thing, that is to say a new failure, or else it will soon influence not only the elementary schools but also the secondary. It will provide a new kind of children to be educated, and this must react sooner or later, not only on all the schools, but on all our social life, on the kind of govern- ment and laws framed for the people, and on the relation of our nation to other nations. This new seven-year-old then is a kind of new coin of the realm. We look at him as he stands in the open air in front of the open shelter, busy in work and play that sets free in him a great under- ground wealth of sympathy. He has in the little book shelf over the specimen boxes the well- thumbed story books that tell the romance of a life he is living anew. Here is the history of " The Tree-Dwellers," the tale of the times when life was what he likes it to be — a continuous adven- ture in which one is never really anything but a conqueror. He does not fight with wild beasts, but he gets as near it as he can — makes flints, and bows and arrows, and shoots these last against the outside blank wall of the big shelter front where no little children are or can be. He also makes a 150 THE NURSERY SCHOOL house, and finds clay to make pots, and he sends great rivers flowing down between the clay hills and the stony valleys. He loves Hiawatha too, and draws designs just like Hiawatha's on the big tent, and he reads the story of " Ab " and the " Then and Now " stories, not only in winter near the camp school fire but in summer in the play hours. What he reads he understands. The words are real, and send electric currents through his tense little body. He is not likely to memorise or make " howlers," since all the words are full of meaning and polished bright by constant use like new coins. Not that our new seven-year-old is a prodigy, or can do wonders in " sums " or grammar. He is not a wonder at all, and sometimes we may even think he ought to do better in school subjects, in view of all the love and service that have been given to him. Yet it is not merely by looking at his drawing or his sums we learn that a great abyss separates him from yesterday. Rather do we begin to feel it when we see how far remote his condition of life is from the condition and life of yesterday's street imps ! He has none of their cun- ning or adroitness — ^they are "smart," "bright," " cute." Nothing is matured in him to the point that one can say " He is clever." " He is as quick or as able to help himself as a grown-up person." On the contrary, nothing is so obvious as that he is still a child. He is full of hcld-back forces ; all THE SEVEN-YEAR-OLD 151 his powers are working in darkness yet, from which something rises only now and again, or may not even rise at all, like a promise. He can spell, however, without the need for simplifications. He can speak English and can understand French. There will be no need to simplify things overmuch for him when he gets into the junior schools. The abyss between him and the child of yesterday yawns deepest of all when we compare the state rather than the attainments of one with that of the other. The nurtured seVen-year-old is a stranger to clinics. He knows very little about doctors. He sees the dentist, but has hardly ever, or never, had any treatment from him. Our bathing centre for the verminous, our skin clinic over the way, are places of woe which he has never entered, and will never know. Our streets must be cleaned so that the young eyes of the new generations may look on them without wonder. The public-houses that fill these streets with drunken noise and horrors must go. If this book is not mere nonsense from cover to cover, it is a voice calling at the moment when a new coming is near, " Make straight in the desert of these awful streets and alleys a pathway for the young." They are to be got ready in garden- nurseries for a new life, a new world. The old world must change around them. It is changing slowly. The pace is going to quicken and quicken, and soon the dark life of the slum will begin to 152 THE NURSERY SCHOOL sicken and languish near the door of the new centres of nurture. To this end, however, we have had to come out of the existing elementary and infant schools. We had to come out, taking the teachers with us, not because we wanted to break with these schools, but because we coidd not present the new work and the new ideal in the old building. The asphalted playgrounds, the high and strong walls are too hard, too unyielding. They may be broken up and adapted later on, but the new work cannot take root and show itself as a new growth in such a hard and unkind environment. It is best that the first illustrations of a new kind of infant school should be given, not as an annexe of the existing school, but as a new extension of home, and in cleared spaces of the crowded city. Later, when the real nature of the work is known, it will be safe to try and adapt existing schools — which, however, cannot be at all like the real nurture centre, well thought out and planted in a garden. The seven-year-old little girl is also a first fruit of a new order. She is here already, and she is charming. In ruddy health, with silken hair and pearly teeth, she speaks with a tripping sweetness of voice inflection and accent good to hear. And what a charming little mother she is to the younger ones ; playing with them, helping them in their struggles to dress and undress, to lace boots and button them, and laying the THE SEVEN-YEAR-OLD 153 table with the air of a responsible woman ! She has all the charm of a well-to-do child and a new charm added to it. All her pretty, graceful ways are touched by solicitude. Tenderness, like the perfume of a garden rose, breathes out of the heart of this little windflower. She can read, write, draw and sing as well as her brother. She can dance much better than he. She can garden but she keeps more to the flower beds, and her early dwellings and pottery are as good as his. She listens and can relate any story she has heard, but will soon interrupt or turn away if she does not understand. In boy and girl alike there is a new unwillingness to say things, or do things, that have no meaning. When such children go out in their thousands, in their tens of thou- sands, most of the elementary schools if not all must get ready for a new task. It will be in some respects a much easier task than is the labour they now tackle. In other ways it is perhaps harder. Above all it will be much less disheartening and have a lure that is absent to-day. CHAPTER XX GUY AND THE STARS In midsummer the little houses in our back streets become very hot. People do not always open the windows then, because many have long for- gotten that windows can open at all. The front door is wide, however, and in the doorway and on the hot pavement children play, and women linger, till the light fades. Guy and his brothers usually range over the streets, but to-night Guy played near the door of his own home in Rosemary Lane, which is, perhaps, the hottest, the dirtiest, alley in the south-east end. Why did he keep so near home ? For an excel- lent reason. Jim, an old Camp-boy, who had slept out for four years, and who had enlisted in 1916, and who got a medal at the front for bravery ; Jim, the hero of Rosemary Lane, had promised to sleep out with him to-night in the large Camp- ground. " We shall go there after sundown," he said. " There are trestle-beds. We will fit them up and go to bed in the open." Guy was so glad that he did not even smile. 1641 GUY AND THE STARS 155 He had not slept nor eaten any supper because of excitement and joy, and though he was now playing hopscotch on the dirty pavement, he was keeping one eye always on the alley — ^near where at any moment Jim might appear. The sun went down last night in great splendour. It was a red sunset, and all the sky was stained up to the zenith. After sunset a little wind got up. " It will rain," said Guy's mother, standing on the doorsteps with her bare arms folded, her dark eyes lighted up with a gleam of mischief and with furtive pleasure, too, in her son's happiness. Guy trembled. A large and very dirty woman at a neighbouring door screamed out suddenly. " He ain't comin'," she cried. " Down't ye know he's gone on night work at the box factory ? " Guy fro^vried, but grew pale under the tan. " Down't tease 'im," said a younger woman, tall and mild-eyed. " It's a shime." Almost in the same moment a tall, shockheaded, young man with handsome features and very bright, twinkling eyes appeared at the Close head. He was in his shirt sleeves, and carried some grey old blankets slung over one shoulder. It was Jim. Guy rushed at him. " Well, Md," said the young man, with indulgent pride, shifting his blankets a little higher, and looking round on the company of admiring women and children. " Hot ! an't it ? " he observed, 156 THE NURSERY SCHOOL nodding to a young mother who had a group of blue-eyed little ones round her, all blue-eyed, dark eyelashed and with very pale, anaemic and dirty faces, all pretty, and giving an impression of trampled flowers. The young mother looked approvingly at Jim, but made no answer, " I've been hauling the beds right out into the open," said Jim cheerfully. " Are ye ready, Guy ? " " He^s ready, I think," said Guy's mother, leaning the back of her hand on her hip, and look- ing down at her son with grim pleasure. " Can't eat nor sleep for thinking he'll go in Camp to-night. Mind ye behave yerself ! " she added, shaking her head at her son, as if conscious that joy was a fearful stimulus to wrong-doing. " Else ye'U never go again, I'll promise ye." " Well, come on, Guy ! So long " said Jim, looking around him like a lord. The two passed down the alley, followed by the wondering gaze of the whole neighbourhood. Women came to the door, children surged up and followed from the streets and green, and lined up to see them pass royally through the Camp-gate and close the door behind them. Guy spoke no word. He had often heard how, long ago, boys used to sleep out in the Camp- ground, and now the wonderful thing was going to happen to him. No, a better thing was happen- ing to him. He was in a larger camp now, with a garden full of flowers and a wall of trees in the GUY AND THE STARS 157 distance and a dug-out, and new buildings, open on every side and painted in white and blue. And into the wide open space that was the play- ground Jim had drawn two iron bedsteads, on which he was now arranging the coverlets. A breath of sweetness flowed over the garden. It came from the briar rose beds under the fence and the hillock over the dug-out with its dim flowers. Guy slipped between coarse, clean sheets, and lay down under the stars. It was strange at first. He looked round uneasily as if for the narrow wall that had always penned him in at night. He drew the coverings up, but flung them loose again because the night was so warm. Jim came and sat by him on the bed, and looked at the troubled face and bewildered dark eyes. " Like it ? " said Jim, tentatively. Guy drew closer to him. " It's very big, isn't it ? " he ventured. " Big," said Jim, looking round with the air of one who has seen greater things than these. " Of course it looks big to you." Guy raised himself a little as if taking courage, and he looked round the garden, and away at the line of solemn trees. Then he glanced upwards, but his eyes fell, and he looked again at the dark flower-beds, and the half-covered arches, where young rose trees had been hindered by a frost. Jim, dimly conscious of every movement and impulse in this long-swaddled, half-strangled child 158 THE NURSERY SCHOOL of the gutters, folded his strong young arms calmly, and looked up at the sky. " If ye come to stars now," he said, " there ain't a finer sky going than Deptford's. Not if ye took a ship and went right round the world. I've been to India, ye see, and I've been to Egypt and France, so I ought to know." Guy looked up timidly at the sky. The deep, dark vault was strewn with light clouds like broken fleece, and they moved as if someone were driving them, and through the broken fleece here and there a star sparkled. Southward and almost overhead the full moon rose. She was half-hidden now behind a larger bank of cloud, through which she looked forth, all dazzling like some glorious face, veiled, and distressed by the blowing wind. All round her the clouds shone like silver. And all this beauty was changing and moving, and even hurrying, and the poor little slum-dweller looked up at it as if in fear. " Lie down now, Jim," he said, in a low voice, " and tell me about it." " About what ? " said Jim, wondering. " About that," said Guy, pointmg with one arm, or rather by one movement of his half-covered shoulder, to the sky. " I never seen it before." " You look at it then," said Jim, trying to remember what he had been told about the stars. " Look at it a bit as there ye lie." It was worth some looking at, the sky ; the GUY AND THE STARS 159 hurrying clouds were quiet as if they had reached a harbour. Great stretches of blue lay between their white still fleecy hills, and the moon shone clear in a blue expanse. The boys lay down side by side. The street was very quiet, and the Camp very still. All the students had left in the morning. " That star right over us is the Polar star," said Jim. " You see it wherever ye are, a-shining down on ye, and them two stars at his side point always to him so you can't miss him. That's the Plough," Jim went on, pointing to it. " Ye never saw a real plough, did ye, kid ? It's a thing farmers turn the earth up with before they put seed into the ground. Well, anyway, it's shaped like that. That whiteness you see all along the sky is a mist o' worlds. Thousands and thousands of them. That's the Dog-star, blazing away there in the south. It's nearer us than most of the others, and them two yellow stars right over yer head, I've forgotten their names, but I think they're called the Twins." Guy made no answer. He listened, awe-struck, but allowed himself now to send his wandering eyes over the vast dome that stretched above him. He looked out as one who sees for the first time, who moves his limbs for the first time, astonished not only by the new world but also by himself Suddenly he fell back a little, trembling. " What's up ? " said Jim, anxiously. 160 THE NURSERY SCHOOL " I saw one falling," said the child. " It fell, and some one caught it like a ball." Jim looked down at him, smiling. " Can they — can they tumble on us ? " whispered the child. "No," said Jim stoutly. "That they can't. They're kept well in their places. Some of them are big worlds as I tell ye, with suns and moons of their own, worlds so big ye couldn't sail round them in a year. You haven't a notion yet how big the worlds and suns are ! " Guy was silent. A little wind stirred the lime trees near him, and through the dancing leaves he saw more stars looking down in golden beauty. " Ye haven't been to school long, ye see," said Jim, conscious that he had himself left the Camp- school before his fourteenth birthday. "Ye couldn't know very much about the worlds and the stars yet. Years ago I used to sleep out with the other boys, and we saw the sky every night just as well as if we'd been shepherds looking after sheep on the lulls. We'd a teacher too, and he could tell us no end o' yams about the stars. Mr. Norman his name was, and he come from the North. He used to go to Greenwich Observatory. It's quite close, ye see. There, where the trees are, is Greenwich." " I don't care about Greenwich," said Guy. " I want to know why the stars don't fall." "As I was saying, this is a place where ye GUY AND THE STARS 161 could learn it all off, and see it all if we slept in the right places. I been to Egypt, and to France, and they don't know any more there than Mr. Norman did ; only the people at the Observatory know more I suppose than he did. Anyhow there an't any better sky anywhere than this sky," said Jim firmly. " Jim," said the child, dreamily, " I want to sleep out all my life. Never in a room no more. No, never more." His voice trailed off into a whisper, and his eyes closed, for sleep arrived now, very suddenly, very imperiously, after the long vigil. Jim settled himself down too, glad that his knowledge of the heavenly bodies was to be put to no further tests. Around them as they slept the garden seemed to waken to a new, mysterious life. The flowers poured out their perfume in the darkness, and above in the vast arch of the sky great changes took place, moving on every hour, every moment in majestic silence. It changed, it showed a brighter dust of stars, its clouds flitted away and massed themselves in new flocks, and at length, but long before the coolness of dawn the stars faded away, one by one. All the fields of heaven lay empty and gray, awaiting a new guest. He came. The east crimsoned, and below the deepening flush a great jewel glittered, blazed, and rose higher. Jim sat up in bed. " Waken up, kid," he said, laying his hand on Guy's shoulder. " Time to get up." 162 THE NURSERY SCHOOL Guy stirred, opened his eyes, saw Jim, and was filled with a sudden rapture of joy. It was the " joy of the waking " of the Red Indian, the gladness that comes in childhood or early youth when one remembers a new happiness in the first moment of return. Guy had never felt it before ; he would never perhaps know it again. He sat up and looked around him, smiling. Starlings twittered and flew in the old wall above the sand pit. The nasturtiums over the dug-out wall, the blue lupins and the early hellen- iums shone out in the pure light. " You go and have your bath now round the back there," cried Jim, " and then you'll help me with these beds." Guy came back looking fresh and radiant. It seemed to him that a new life must begin now, a life worthy of the joys of the night in the open. He moved the beds under the awning, folded the blankets, and questioned Jim with bright eager glance. Wonderful to see, Jim was not overjoyed. He was somehow changed. He was anxious to get back to work. " Where do the stars go to in the morning ? " asked Guy. " They hide themselves, o' course. They wait till dark, and then come out again." " But tell me," said the child. But Jim cut him short. " No ! No ! Come now ! Your mother GUY AND THE STARS 163 will be calling for you soon if you don't hurry Are ye ready ? " " Ready ! Yes," said Guy, but his face fell. They were going out then to the old world, to the old life. A group of men stood outside the gate, unshaven, dirty, their hands buried deep in their trousers pockets. They looked stupidly at the two boys as they went by. At the alley head Guy and Jim parted company. Guy went up the lane by himself. The doors were closed now, and the lane was quiet and empty, but Guy's mother was standing on her doorstep waiting for him. She was more untidy than usual, and her face was stained with dirt and tears. " Your father came home drunk," she sobbed. " He struck Albert and me. He's sleeping now." Guy stood looking at her, his cheeks fresh and rosy, his eyes shining and yet clouded with fear. He seemed longing to balance her dark tidings with something glad, but he could not. He felt the black inrush of the old life, and stood looking at her helplessly. " Where you been," she whimpered, wiping her eyes with her apron, " looking so jolly ? You ain't got no feeling for me," she sobbed, touched by something in her son's face, and giving way a little. " He struck me and said this place wasn't fit for pigs. I ain't had no sleep. ..." "Mother," said Guy suddenly, taking her by the skirt. " I seen the stars ! " CHAPTER XXI GUY AND THE MORNING The next evening, as Guy was resigning himself to a night in the crowded family room, Jim's shock head appeared above the dusty sill. Guy's heart bounded, and his mother's face lightened. She came out to the street door. " He's that uplifted," she said, " he can't speak o' nothing but stars ! " Guy looked up hastily at the grey sky, and then down at the troubled, and yet hopeful face of the mother. It was quite plain that she shared Guy's joys and was eager to let him have any pleasure that came his way. " I hope," she said, " he ain't a trouble to ye. I know that you old campers are different from t'others. You bothers more with th' little 'uns." " Me, oh well ! I can't abear sleeping indoors on summer nights, and he's company for me," said Jim modestly. It was late already, so their departure was unnoted. The street had new concerns to-night also, for it was Saturday, and there was a great GUY AND THE MORNING l65 crowd in front of the public-house and a dance in the upper part of the close. Jim and Guy locked the gate, and drew out their beds and lay for a while listening to the tumult. Up to a late hour they listened, and then a great silence fell, and the flaring lights went out. " In here you might hear a pin drop," cried Jim, sitting up and looking round, " but them stars o' yours ain't going to shine to-night. It's a strange thing," said Jim, running his hand through his dark hair till it stood up like brush bristles. " Ye may plan and plan, and then ye don't get what ye hoped, but something quite different." Guy, lying out in the open onee more with his friend, was too happy to think of complaining, though he looked upward in vague wonder. It was too true then ! They would not shine to-night. The sun had gone doivn in great splendour, but the sky looked indifferent and cold now like a spoiled beauty, and not even one star shone in its cold, grey vault, which, however, was lighted, more or less dimly, by a thin, pale moon. Guy sat up and looked at the trees all a-quiver in the fresh wind, and at the broom rocking near him in the lupin-bed. " How did people come to build them little houses where we sleep, Jim ? " asked Guy. " Why did they build them at all ? " " Storms. Cold. Rain. Wild animals," said Jim shortly. " Don't ye know there was wild 166 THE NURSERY SCHOOL animals once going about here all night. Wolves, cave-bears, monstrous wild beasts." Guy opened his eyes wide as if he saw the monsters, and drew the clothes over his head a little. " It's not cold to-night, Jim," he said, after a while, " I am quite warm. And there are no wild beasts, only a black cat on the wall, and a white one in the dug-out garden." Jim did not answer, and Guy tried to keep his eyes wide open, but they closed at last in spite of him. The chill, grey sky looked down on them, and the wan moon, all unattended. All the trees and the tall bushes trembled and rustled, and then were still. And all night as they slept with the cool air on their faces the sky changed, and quiet stars came out and looked at them sleeping. Out in the streets there was no sound, no murmur ; then at last, soon after dawn a tram came swinging down the road beyond the northern shelter. Its shrill whistling noise woke Jim. " Get up, kid," he said, laying his hand on Guy's shoulder. " It's time." Guy turned sleepily, but seeing the sky and the roof of the bungalow felt a sudden rush of joy and sat up. " Go and have your bath," said Jim. " Hot and cold water they have here, and ye feel different after it." GUY AND THE MORNING 167 Guy came back after a while, fresh and glowing. Jim had drawn back the beds, folded the clothes in a heap, and lighted a fire in a square of stones. He was boiling tea in a pan. On a garden seat near by he had set out some buns, slices of bread and margarine, some half-ripe plums, and a pot of brown sugar. " I'll show ye something after breakfast," he said, as they sat eating, Guy squatting on the ground, looking as if he expected wonderful things to happen for evermore. " What is it, Jim ? Can we stop here all day, and sleep here every night ? " " Go on," cried Jim, scornfully. " See that railing on the top of the little house ? " he went on, pointing to the roof of the hostel. " You can see fme things up there, I'm going to take ye up. Get on my back." Guy scrambled on Jim's shoulders, and Jim climbed by the windows on to the roof and behind the railings. The sun was rising, and the grand curve of the river shone crimson, reflecting all the glory of the sky. The Strand looked wonderful, bare and clean with the green water lapping low on the shingle, and with a strange quiet like a place seen in a dream. More strange, more beautiful even, were the pillars of Greenwich Naval College, beyond gates all a-glitter, backed by ardent crimson, where the sun was low. In the midst of the glory the sun shone 168 THE NURSERY SCHOOL above the horizon, like a great jewel, but the towers rose white and pure, drawing the eyes higher and higher to where they soared above the crimson lances. " Jim," whispered Guy, " What is it ? Where are we ? " " I told ye," said Jim triumphantly. " We're in Deptford. There aren't finer stars nor finer sunrises, nor a finer river anywhere. I been in Egypt, and I been in India, and in France, and I ought to know. I seen it when I was a kid in the Camp-school," cried Jim, whose English had pure intonations, but whose verbs were out of hand. " The fellows that see it once never have any rest again." Guy gripped the railing with his hard little hand. " What do they want to do, Jiiii," he said, bewildered. Jim shook his head. " Dunno," he said, " Dunno properly." " Do they want to go away," hazarded little Guy, " to go, well, to India, and France ? " " I been there," said Jim sadly. " There ain't no better sky there than here. Tain't the sky that's wrong here," said Jim, " nor the stars, nor the river." Guy still gripped the railings hard, and his freckled little face was overcast, and more puzzled than ever. He gazed out on the river's path of shining gold. The two young people, the child GUY AND THE MORNING 169 and the youth, looked down the river's path of shining gold. Then Jim picked Guy up and made the descent rapidly. Guy's mother was almost cheerful this morning. The adventure of her son in the night camp ground broke up the dull tenour of her life and she woke with a dim, pleasant feeling that there was some- thing to get up for. So she washed at the tap, and did her hair, and lighted a fire. There was a kipper or two, also, bought overnight for Guy and Jim in case their camp breakfast left them hungry. The poor crowded room wore almost a bright look when the campers got there. " Back, are ye ? " said Guy's mother, smiling, " Seen your stars again, I suppose," she added, rallying her son. " 'E's star-struck, I tell him." " They didn't shine last night," said Jim, putting his blankets down on a chair. " It was a bit of a sell last night, wasn't it, kid ? " He went out slowly, and the mother looked at the scorned kippers. Somehow the cheerful break- fast she had planned had not come off. Guy drew close to her. " Mother," he said softly, " we seen the sunrise." End of Part I. jm PART II CHAPTER XXII THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHERS Not long ago it was held by most people that any nice motherly girl would do as a nurse for little children. The well-to-do classes believed this, so they engaged a good motherly woman, who in some cases turned out Very well, because she had some natural gifts. Often a young woman of humble education was taken on as a nurse, and a great deal of mischief was done in a quiet way, mischief that no future education would ever really undo. As for the working-class mothers and fathers, their children were left to them alto- gether, and without help or hindrance they did what they could. Parental love was believed by even great thinkers like Herbert Spencer to be a tremendous safeguard. Without discussing the Tightness or wrongness of these views, we can now open the records or reports of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education and others. It is sad to learn that in some districts a fifth or more of all the children born, die in early childhood. Many of the survivors are to be seen in our new school clinics, and the records of the doctors and nurses all tell one tale. The causes that killed so 171 172 THE NURSERY SCHOOL many do not spare the children who appear to escape. They are maimed and weakened. Above all, the work of the Open Air Nursery- School has flung over the evil results of bad environment a pitilessly searching light. We compare our regular attendants of years standing in the Nursery with the newcomers, and with the average child of the district. Then the truth cannot be gainsaid. The Nursery child has a fairly good physique. Not only do his neigh- bours in the slum fall far short of him : his " betters " in good districts, the middle-class children, of a very good type, fall short of him. It is clear that something more than parental love and " parental responsibility " are wanted. Rules of thumb have all broken down. " Parental love " without knowledge has broken down. Child nurture has not broken down. It is very highly skilled work. Here and there on the world's surface comparatively good results may be had indeed, even in poor districts. Connemara mothers may do more to keep down infant mortality than a finely-equipped clinic and a brace of medical officers of health in Bradford. These good results are due to natural feeding to start with, and life in the open with simple diet to go on with. These things depend not on choice, but on accident. They prove that in some places it is difficult to go Very far and very fatally wrong ! In most places it is only too easy to go fatally TRAINING OF THE TEACHERS 173 wrong, and that is why our children's death-rate is still so high. If " Parental responsibility " is limited by the degree of intelligence a parent has or has not, the responsibility of a " nice motherly girl " is limited in the same way. Certainly we did not at first realise how large and Varied should be the equip- ment of people who aspire to give real nurture to children under seven. That had to be learned gradually, now we know that the help, not of one, but of various specialists is needed. Also that in no other trade or profession is every kind of real skill and vision so useful as in this work. Our results in this camp are said to be wonderful. They do not come without any kind of effort. There is nothing occult about them, but they mean labour of every kind. They can be won for the millions of young children in every land and district. Many workers will have to co-operate. Dentists and (at first) doctors, specialists, trained teachers, and mothers will have to co-operate. At last out of all their help and striving will come the new and beautiful thing that is going to change the face of the world. So there is need, first of all, of training. What kind of training ? Are we to turn to Spencer or Herbart, Froebel or S6guin ? Who is to be the supreme guide and teacher ? We answer, " All of these," in the sense that we may learn some- thing from each. None of these in the sense we 174 THE NURSERY SCHOOL should follow any one of them blindly. Our task is new. It has never before been attempted. The arts our new teachers have to learn are not so much as named in any scheme or almost in any syllabus of to-day. All the examinations of our leading societies, their diplomas and certificates and distinctions, steer clear of problems we haVe to face. All the teachings of the greatest men and tvomen halt long before they come abreast of our needs. There- fore we have to do our own research work. Sensing the trouble all round them, vaguely conscious of new demands made on them, teachers stand to-day in a kind of dream. Many fall back on old cries. " We are not going to be nurses," say many voices. " Why should we go far in any subject but child care, if we are only going into nursery-schools ? " ask others. Before each we stand to-day with a new gospel. These cries as of wanderers emerging suddenly in a cloudy place call for guidance. We must not be afraid of seeking, or of telling what we know. Most of our children are ill. Many are half- alive. That did not matter yesterday. There was no Nursery- School legislation, and no new desire to give nurture. Mr. Forster's Bill of 1871 set out to give us a people who can read. This was done. Most people can read nowadays. The new Bill goes farther. The new BUI in effect says, " Most people, all people at least must have TRAINING OF THE TEACHERS 175 nurture," which is the beginning of culture. The teachers stand a Uttlc aghast. This nurture is Very well, but it is not their business. Not their business I Then nothing of the greatest things, the removal of disease and vice and dullness, is their business ! They are not going on then to lead us, but only to find a simplified way of spel- ling ? And we have just discovered that it is not only their business, but that all they have learned and done has prepared them to give nurture. The teacher of little children is not merely giving lessons. She is helping to make a brain and nervous system, and this work which is going to determine all that comes after, requires a finer perception and a wider training and outlook than is needed by any other kind of teacher. Others are going to teach a big girl history or a big boy Latin. She is going to modify or deter- mine the structure of brain centres. So we had first of all to work out a new art in the only way possible, that is by taking on new tasks and doing them with a new motive. We took young girls and some older girls also who were already certificated teachers, and said to them. " Forget that you were teachers, forget even that you are students, and try to help these children." Tlae little ones were delicate. Many were dirty. All had more or less bad habits in diet and behaviour, and everyone went home at night to its parents. These teachers who were 176 THE NURSERY SCHOOL now nurses had many things to learn that are not taught in training colleges. They had to bathe and dress, to feed and take care of the children. They did all this as the nurses had never done it. Their work was, as we say, " blessed." They began to teach, not writing, but washing, not art, but how to use one's hand, and lo ! this was true education. This was not merely service, but the means for research. Perhaps it would be well to dwell on this success a little. We were reminded of it at once when, after a year's work, our students went back to books and paint-boxes, and the usual work of students. Teachers better trained and better educated in many ways took their places. The school fell off at once. The nose-drUls ceased, and the hair was not so pretty. The school became a poor school. Again the children were poor children, they matched the poor walls instead of glowing like flowers in a cottage garden. On the other hand, the teachers who had served, began to teach the three R's with great success. One of these, not very well qualified, excelled all the others in her results. Why ? We do not know. But should we now go back to the old order. Oh no ! We had found a better one ! There was something lacking in the training of yesterday and having caught a glimpse of better things one could not go back. We must take the culture-work of yesterday and give it a new foundation. TRAINING OF THE TEACHERS 177 Seguin, our greatest modern teacher, learned by teaching defective children. They opened to him the doors of new truth. Our teachers go back to the poorest class of child and serve him. Into dark homes they go doing work that is new to them, and lo ! this work opens new doors to them, and they see what was hid from them in former days and in more " cultured " places. There is no risk in these visits, for the whole adult population is friendly, and the nursery holds them by strong ties through the love both places have in common for their children. Yet the first wave of new experience is new and startling. There are mothers who drink and fight and stay out late, so that the little ones are locked out. Teddy's mother was one of these. She lives in a cellar, and neglects him for long spells, when she is out " enjoying " herself. Yet she is sug- gestible, and our Miss S. has got a hold of her somehow, through her goodness to Teddy. Miss S. dives into the cellar and makes a glow there with her soft fresh face and bright uniform. " You do look like a posy coming m," says the heavy-eyed woman in the gloom. " You make me think of the country." And after a few weeks Teddy makes her think of the country every evening, when he comes back all fresh and rosy from the nursery. Our Miss S. has rigged up a cheap apparatus for heating water in the cellar and she has got Teddy's mother to give him his 178 THE NURSERY SCHOOL bath at the week-end, and to wash his home- clothes, and send him in bright and sweet on a Monday morning. She has done this for other children, and she has done it by getting friendly with mothers. Full of resource is this " lass from Lancashire." She encourages a kind of rivalry in the matter oi clothes and hair-dressiag. " Patience was so spotless to-day that she did not have a bath ! " " Rosy was a picture this morning when she came in at the gate ! " And she describes Rosy. Per- haps it would be trivial to write down all that she says and does, but the result of it all is not trivial. It is to be found in a troop of little children who lighten up the streets like a posy, and who make the idle men standing at the comer gaze at them with a wistful, half-stupefied air, as if a waft of something new and long forgotten had come down the air. It is Miss S.'s glory to see them turn in at the gate looking as fair and fit as any children of the best suburbs. To send them out looking so fair is a triumph. To see them come in so fair and so sweet, is a greater triumph. The week-end falling away has to be tackled in nearly every case. At first nearly all the children used to come in on Monday morning with the diges- tive system all upset. Teddy's mother did not relate all this to anything she had given him to eat on Sunday. In a friendly visit one can tackle this question and settle it, if only the friendship is TRAINING OF THE TEACHERS 179 real and strong enough. Teddy's mother will do almost anything for our Miss S. Some of the children of our school were nearly always heavy-eyed and weary. They had short and troubled nights in crowded and foetid rooms. Adored and lovely toddlers were cherished all day ! How did they fare at night ? " I heard Tommy crying last night in the street. It was eleven o'clock, dark and cold, and I heard his voice in the street," said Tommy's nurse. In this case also nothing is much use except the magic touch of a new friendship. Under it miracles can be wrought ; the dirty staircase and poor rooms can be cleaned up, and a corner found for a little bed. Even if there is noise all round his bed it may be screened from glaring light, and Tommy may be placed in it at eight o'clock. Some children began to come in bright-eyed of a morning and without any gross signs of wrong feeding. Our students have to know their new neighbours. They have to get some idea of housing, of the cost of food, and the needs of a family who live always on the brink of a financial precipice I They must not turn their eyes away from the horrors of a bad neighbourhood, just as a nurse may not flinch near the battle-front or in the hospital. They are quite as safe in a slum as they would be in Bel- gravia — ^in fact, a great deal safer. This we have proved by experience, and by the fact that we have slept and still sleep with open doors in the 180 THE NURSERY SCHOOL heart of a so-called " bad " neighbourhood. But the grim street, the public-house, and pawnshop area, the drunkenness, the cruel rack-renting, the epidemics and high death-rate concern the teachers just as bombs and gangrene and broken limbs concern the nurse in a war hospital. CHAPTER XXIII SKETCHES OF A FEW TYPICAL CHILDREN AND THEIR HOMES Jerry came to us as a baby of five weeks old, very sickly, white and miserable. As time went on, however, he turned into a pretty little fellow with soft fair hair, that was brushed up into one large circular curl. His dark eyes grew soft and bright and affectionate. The Head of the Toddler section took Jerry to her heart. He got fat and winsome and merry. His diet and the fresh air and regular hours made short work of the rickets that threatened him. He had convulsions twice in Camp. On Monday mornings he is never very well — the result of being at home over the Sundays. Jerry's home is a cobbler's shop. It is dark and very dirty. His grand-uncle sits there in a very hot kitchen, an old man with a noble head and piercing eyes, but extraordinarily dirty. The kitchen is small, and the window, which looks out on a dirty court, is never opened. Jerry's mother is a handsome young woman of twenty-eight, very plausible. She goes out charing and owes 181 182 THE NURSERY SCHOOL the camp nearly £3 (we charge 2s. a week). The Head goes to see her sometimes, and makes all kinds of efforts to get the home cleaned up. All in Vain. Jerry sometimes gets really ill on Sunday. The Head appears on Monday and tries to get things done for him. The mother is almost very weU-spoken and civU, but she never pays. She does not wash Jerry, and when she is asked for money, she threatens to take Jerry away. Now Jerry is very beautiful. He adores his nurses. They a lore him. When he is kept away the camp is like a flower-bed in June with no rose in it. Dennis lives in a worse street than Jerry's. It is a huddle of houses with dark, greasy lobbies and hideous black stairs leading down into cellars. Dennis's mother lives in one of the cellars. It is so dark that when one goes in one sees nothii^g for a few moments. Then a broken wall, and a few sticks of furniture appear, and a dark young woman with touded hair and glittering eyes looks down on us. Dennis is a great pet in the Nursery. On his firm little feet he runs all round the big shelter and garden, exploring and enjoying everything. Reserved as he is, he breaks into a kind of singing on bright June mornings, the wind blowing his soft top curl over his forehead, his eyes alight with joy. In the evening an older sister comes, and carries him back to the cellar. He looks pale on Monday, but the camp life will steer him safely A FEW TYPICAL CHILDREN 183 through healthy childhood if he is not taken away. His father works sometimes, but drinks. The 2s. a week is paid regularly by the mother. Not far down our street there is an old house with top stories and garrets. Families live all the way up, and the back windows look out on our camp. They are nearly always full of heads. All day long faces come and go, looking out at our Camp and the children in the garden. But in the top room where live the Donagues, whose boys, Henry and Geoffry and whose girl Amy are in the Camp, there is no curiosity left. The mother is out working all day, and the father has left them, or rather the family has got away from him. Where has he gone and why ? Six months ago Mrs. Donague, a tall, fair woman with bright, dark eyes, lived in a state of great excitement and happiness. " He " was coming home from the war. The children got new clothes. The house was en fSte. Amy had never seen him. She was a baby when he went away, and now the Camp had turned her out a lovely little girl of four, with soft clear skin, radiant dark eyes, silky hair, tall and strong, and very intelligent. She spoke tripping English and could say French words too : " Je t'aime, papa ! " for example. The mother, not to be behind, had taught her to say, " Welcome home ! " " Why ! what grand children," he would say, " I didn't know I'd such a fine little girl." Well, he came home at last, after many 184 THE NURSERY SCHOOL disappointing delays. He came and the clothes were still fresh, though they had been taken out and put back again three or four times. There were gay doings for a week or two. He treated them all, and took them out to the pictures. Then he got drunk and beat his wife and terrified the children. They got so frightened of him at last that the mother separated from him. She works for them, but she cannot pay 6s. She works, and is dis- tracted at times. The good days are gone — except at the Camp, where Amy no longer shouts to the wonder of all, " Je t'aime, papa ! " Our little Moses lived in a cellar too, but he is dead. It was a very dark, cold cellar, in an old house down a back street. Moses came to the Camp when his father was at war, and his mother was working at munitions. He was so overjoyed to see the strange, bright world in there behind the dark fence that he learned to smile in a very little time, and to wave his tiny, thin hand in triumph ! Among the yoxmg nurses was one, a Scottish girl, who took him into her keeping and made of him before the winter was over, a merry, chubby little fellow. In his dark eyes there was, I now think, a look of something grave and deep and earnest. I saw him after he left when his mother was explaining her husband's views. He looked at me earnestly with his dark eyes. Those baby eyes now hidden for ever have a way of following one about. Tliey A FEW TYPICAL CHILDREN 185 are not to be forgotten. The father came home, and he had views on the duties of motherhood. He wanted his wife to leave the factory and look after her own child. He did not move from the cellar. There was a hot spell of weather in June. Moses fell ill and died. " I wish," said the mother, " I'd left my child at the Camp in spite of his father." And we wished it too. The Scottish nurse-student who went to see him in the hospital wished it. Moses will not come again into our garden. Here is Jack, who gets bigger and jollier every day. He does not live in a cellar, but in the dark back room of a house in a wide street. His mother is delicate and takes in sewing and Jack used to sit " quiet as a mouse " on a stool at her feet all day, winding spools or putting pins into a cushion. Frail, with white, thin hands he was, and he trembled as he spoke. After a month in camp he did not tremble. Still later he got so noisy that his mother said she would take him away. " He used to sit still for hours," she said, " but now he has that much life in him that I can't abide him in the room." We pointed out that perhaps it was better to be a little boisterous at the age of six, and she agreed, cheered a little, but a little doubtful, with eyebrows raised as she bent over her seam. The poor back rooms and cellars are sometimes homes after all. There is a brave woman in one 186 THE NURSERY SCHOOL house, struggling, hoping, bearing all things. Even thus she cannot keep her children safe from all the danger of the streets. They grow up, sharp in certain ways, ready for every kind of thing that comes along, eyeing human faces as an old sailor eyes the doubtful seas. Our new and highly -trained teachers from schools that take only the well-cared- for children of wealth and leisure are astonished. They face new problems. It is not their method or their aim that falls short. It is their experience. We must widen the experience of our best teachers. We must send our best out, on the uncharted social sea. To-day we are like a Power with a splendid fleet locked up in port, some of the best ships always at anchor, CHAPTER XXIV DENTAL AND CLINIC TRAINING The dentist of the Clinic near our Nursery- School examines the teeth of all the children once a month, and reports on the state of every mouth. To keep the teeth in good order is of course the business of the Nurse-teachers, and this they do by seeing that the brushing and washing is done every day and night at the right time. This, however, is not enough. In view of the Very great import- ance of this work the teacher-nurses require special training. How are they to get it ? In the old, old way — by real work, not mere theory and reading. At first we had our dentist, Mr. Magraw, to give courses of lectures to our students and to illustrate these as well as he could by things he brought from the clinic. No doubt these lectures were of use to the students, but it did not open their eyes to the real use and value of the work, still less did it give them much power to help him. At that time we had a trained nurse helping at the Dental Clinic but the arrangement did not work very well. The war called up many of the best to give their services in the hospital or 187 188 THE NURSERY SCHOOL the field, and there was no demand for such posts as this. We sent one of our students to do the work. This was a new thing, but everything is new at first. The dentist took one girl student to serve for three months in the Clinic. The experiment was a great success. The hours were not long, — 9.30 to 4 with an hour and a half free at midday. Our student did not give up all her work as a student, and in a few days it became clear that she would soon do the dental work as well as any trained nurse. After three months we sent another, and then another. At last as a final test, we sent our very youngest student, a girl of barely sixteen. She got a splendid report before her time was half up ! This proves, I think, that there is nothing to prevent our giving this very useful training to a great number of teachers ! And if this can be done it is clear that the dental work in schools will be enormously helped and forwarded. For though the students will not be qualified as dental assistants, their eyes will opened to the importance of the work, and they can act in some measure as dental scouts and inspectors • for the dentist in the schools. This, surely, is a very great service to buy at a cost which is not a cost at all, but a saving ! The student attends to the dentist and his patient. She cleans his instruments, attends under directions to fillings, and stands by while DENTAL AND CLINIC TRAINING 189 he is at work mending and filling, etc. Sometimes he will stop to draw her attention to any interesting or important thing, and she hears what he says to the patient. She learns at an inspection how large a number of poor children have broken teeth, in how many the shape of the mouth is quite deformed, also how nature mends teeth herself when the health is improved and does it with great success. Every week the student goes off to a big school with the dentist. He inspects over a hundred children and when these come up for treatment the student knows something about them, more especially about the bad cases. Such work and such visits throw a flood of light on the teaching she receives from the dentist in class. We send every student to school inspections, and the "free-lances" go for three months to serve in their turn. When the lessons start they are eager. The course is not a long one — only twelve lessons. It is as practical as we can make it. Children come in, and the students look into the mouth and are shown what to look at. The dental course of lectures and observation work with Mr. Magraw is as follows : — Brief description of the jaw-bones. Structure of a tooth. Development of the teeth. Eruption of the teeth. Disorders connected with teething. 190 THE NURSERY SCHOOL Defective formation of the teeth, general and local. Effects of feeding in infancy on the shape of the palate and dental arch. The effect of adenoids on the growth of the jaws. Caries. Salivary glands, saliva. Disease arising from oral sepsis Oral hygiene. After these lectures the pupils sit for an examina- tion paper. Work in the Medical Clinic. — The training in the Clinic means work in the Clinic. The head of this work is the Clinic nurse. She may not care to give any kind of teaching, and indeed she is far too busy to attempt formal teaching. She can accept help, and this help has been given by our students, who are welcomed in our Clinic. In the minor ailments room the real meaning of preventible disease comes home to the young student as never before. Even in the waiting- room she has her first initiation. There, ranged on seats by the walls, sit scores of sufferers who are ill because they have never had a nursery. Blepharitis, scabies, impetigo, conjunctivis, skin diseases of many kinds — ^these are not seen in our school. They are seen in the Clinic. Thou- sands of these cases are seen yearly, and are treated here and in the bathing centre. But they DENTAL AND CLINIC TRAINING 191 come back again and again. And why do they come back ? Because the children have no nursery, no nurse, no baths, nothing that can be called a home. Our students learn how to note these diseases and what to do for them, but above all they learn that they need not exist at all. If any child came to seek entrance at our nursery doors who was suffering from one or more of these ugly things, our nurse-teachers must know what to do for him or rather where to send him. Our Principal need not send them far, because my dear sister said long ago, " We must get a Clinic. We must have a bathing centre." Our student has to learn about what is done there for at least a month of her training and as part of her craft. Into the Clinic pour other cases : children with cuts and bruises and wounds that are allowed to get septic : cases of minor accidents, too, burns, as when little ones fall on a fire grate-bar or have hot water spilt on them. All these children suffer because they have no nurture, and it must occur to our students that if all children had nurseries we should need very few clinics, save perhaps for teeth. It is part of their training, however, to treat those burns and scalds and cuts and bruises however they are come by ! A torrent of adenoid and tonsil cases rush through our Clinic. In one year, several years ago, we did over 700 operations for these ! And the student learns by watching this great stream as it passes. 192 THE NURSERY SCHOOL She even goes into the operating room. She learns then why we have nose-drills, why we have paper handkerchiefs hung on the walls so low that every child over two can reach them, and why we do other things that may seem, at first, unnecessary. In the Clinic she leams that a great many children are more or less deformed before they are twelve years old. Who would have thought so many young backs were crooked, so many young insteps fallen ? Yesterday it was easy to hide all this, but in the nursery, in the bath-room, one can note these things if one's eyes are opened. Our students' eyes are opened — ^they see what happens when there is no nursery — ^no observation at all ! The Clinic torrent shows a great many cases of gastro-intestinal trouble, of chest diseases, colds, coughs, bronchitis, dilated bronchi, old lung trouble, suspected tuberculosis and enlarged glands. The chest troubles are the most common of all among the ill-housed. Yet how needless is this suffering. In the Camp Nursery in the dead of winter we have no colds. The student leams what can be done and what cannot be done for those who have no nurse and no mother who can give nurture. Here, as in the nursery, she learns to diagnose rickets and anaemia. But as the nursery cases are few in comparison, and as they get well so fast, she has a wider field for observation in the Clinic. DENTAL AND CLINIC TRAINING 193 Only the Clinic cannot deal with all the cases. It can put teeth in order, and heal up ears and throats, and prescribe glasses. It cannot work out the cure of anaemia, much less can it plunge underneath the current and deal with causes. Many of the anaemic cases are psychic cases ; and none of them can be dealt with by drugs or advice. Neither can they get much good from holiday trips of a fortnight or three weeks at the seaside. She learns that many are curable, but also that the holiday measures of to-day will not do. Only a new kind of life will cure them, and that after, not months, but years. All too brief as it is, the experience in the Clinic is priceless for the young student. She sees there the problems of her own day. She sees, also, how they are dealt with to-day, and she knows that young as she is she is called upon to be a pioneer. The experience offered her is not, I think, inferior to that of a hospital. (Certainly the work done in the Deptford Clinic during the past nine or ten years rivals that of a hospital.) It is offered to her, without delay, and in a form that makes possible a rapid review of many kinds of diseases and treatment. Above all it makes clear to her what can and what cannot be done in a school clinic. She knows the Value and also the limitations of such places. She sees the part they have to play in the new education. But now she sees also where their work ends, and 194 THE NURSERY SCHOOL how even as clearing stations they are baulked until the schools and camps, the homes and nur- series, come into being that will at last empty their waiting-rooms. And surely this is a great part of her training ! 4: 4: iK * « How, it will be asked, can this training be worked into a short course of a year ? It has not been done in a year-course. We are not even recognized as a college. Our three-year-course for free-lance probationers counts as nothing from the grant-earning point of view. All our clinic students were three- year- course girls. The Medical Clinic begins at 9.80 and ends at 5 o'clock. Two shifts of students can attend in morning and afternoon relays. The time spent might vary from one to two months. Only free-lance students — that is the girls who do not come as certificated teachers from college for a final one-year training, could spend a longer time in the Clinic as their training goes on for three years. Short as the time spent in practical work is, it lights up all the lectures and teaching on physiology and gives them new meaning. Over and above this practical work there is of course the work in the nursery and Nursery-School. A doctor attends here every week, and at first it was thought he could give a good deal of help to the students in the half- hour following these visits. Our toddlers, how- ever, get quite well so fast that this part of the DENTAL AND CLINIC TRAINING 195 scheme was all spoilt. And as for the older children their rude health and muscular limbs are as we have seen truly insolent. The doctor goes away quite humbly and hurriedly every Wednesday, and the girls have no chance of learning anything much in this way till they go to the Clinic. CHAPTER XXV PHYSICAL TRAINING AS PREPARATION Physical training — as distinguished from remedial work — may be taken with one of two aims. It may be given so as to accustom children to the word of command, or it may be taken as one great means of training a chUd to control himself. In the case of mere rapid obedience to a word of command the limbs are brought into play. If the aim is the giving of self-control quite another and more far-reaching kind of training has to be gone through, and the use of the lungs and the diaphragm play a very important part in the whole work. A rapid survey of the young girls who come to us for training proves that many leave school with serious defects and ailments, which have -been long overlooked. One, for example, has been allowed to grow a very crooked back, another is injured by constant stooping, and these must of course go through a course of remedial work. Of the others one may say with truth that the character as well as the health is affected by the breathing habits they have formed. In order that they may, later, take 196 PHYSICAL TRAINING igt care of little children in this matter they must themselves undergo a new training, and this training cannot be given in " a few lessons." Something may be done in a year, but a year is a very short time, and no real teacher would pretend that she can give what ought to be given, and do what ought to be done, inside 10 or 12 months I Breathing. Babies breathe rightly as a rule when they are bom. How then do they fall into bad habits ? The teacher at the Deptford centre, Miss Rose Evans, gives a novel explanation of this which may quite well be the true one. " The first frown," she says, " the first angry shake or harsh word sets up the breathing that we call nervy breathing." Certainly we see those depressing emotions, such as fear and sorrow, make the breath- ing irregular, or even stop it altogether for a moment or two. Sobbing, quick and long carried on, follows shame and grief. Believing this as she does, it is no wonder that our voice specialist is the arch foe of fear, and is never tired of showing her students that to be very happy means calm, deep breathing, while calm, deep breathing means in nine cases out of ten good manners and good conduct. The training begins by saying good-bye to stiff collars and waistbands, and by the wearing of loose bodices and wide skirts. Thus freed our young people lie flat on the floor, close mouth and lips, and take a slow even breath through the nose with- 198 THE NUHSERY SCHOOL out raising the chest. This first exercise already means for some girls the use of long, long-abused or neglected muscles. When no more air can be taken into the lungs without straining, the mouth is opened, and the breath is let out quietly and steadUy. This is the first exercise in Madame Behluke's book "The Speaking Voice." Over twenty years ago I had one of her teachers engaged for the Pupil Teachers' Centre at Bradford. The work was begun there with good results. It was never carried far enough to show even a little of its true value, and perhaps, in view of the large number of girls trained at the centre, it could not be carried far enough to give anything like the real harvest. This cannot be said at Deptford, however, for the Rachel McMillan College is small, and the classes taken are small. Here, after many days, the fruits should ripen. The three exercises following the first vary the breathing gymnastics a little. The pupil learns to let the breath go quickly, to let it out slowly, and to use with the new voice that is beginning to come already the long abused three vowels that were uttered before we tried to make our first word, and are now to be won anew — ah — oh — oo. And then a half-dozen exercises follow in inhaling. At this point mirrors are introduced and nine exercises are given for nose-breathing. They are so important that it may be well to give them here. PHYSICAL TRAINING 199 The pupil looks into the back of her own throat which possibly she has never done before. Her teacher also looks and notes the state of the soft palate and uvula. Then the pupil takes a short quick breath through the nose. The soft palate will fall on the uvula. The breath is expelled forcibly out of the open month. The soft palate will rise. Teacher and student talk over what they have seen, and if more help is wanted the teacher must find it now. In the following eight or nine exercises the pupil lies down : — 1. Inhale quickly through the nose. Exhale very slowly with open mouth. 2. Inhale quickly through the nose. Hold the breath while you mentally count three slowly. Repeat five times. 3. Inhale slowly through the nose. Hold the breath while you count three. Let a little of the breath go to " La " whispered. Retain the rest of the breath for a second. Let it go as before to " La " whispered. 4. Same as last exercise, holding the breath while counting four. Let the breath go suddenly while saying a vowel. Repeat five times, changing the vowel each time you let the breath go forcibly. 5. Inhale through the nose. Let the breath go in three divisions pausing two seconds between each. As the breath goes say the vowels " ah," " oh," " oo," one to each division of breath, stating 200 THE NURSERY SCHOOL the tone exactly as the breath begins to go. The vowels are to be said quickly and sharply, without any click before the sound. 6. This exercise is to be taken sitting or standing. Slowly inhale through the nose. Retain the breath while you mentally count three. Close the mouth, all but a small aperture. Hold a lighted candle about 10 inches from the mouth. Let the breath go so gently that the flame will not flicker. A small feathet may be used instead of a candle. 7. Slowly inhale as in last exercise. Open the mouth and breathe out against the flame without making it flicker. 8. Sing " ah " without flickering the candle flame. 9. Repeat, using the vowels in their order, an, on, oo, ai, ee. The pupils may now get up from the floor and use chairs. The head up, without stiffness, the hand trained to note the movement caused by the breath coming to the base of the lungs. Later the right breathing will be automatic but it takes longer in some people than others. The work even at this stage opens the eyes to a great many things that existed yesterday unnoted. Our girls know, by experience, that the nose, far more than the tongue, is the unruly member of little slum children. For little slum children are not only very late in speaking; they suffer dreadfully from nasal catarrh and have, as a rule. PHYSICAL TRAINING 201 no handkerchief. At first then, and for long months, we have to have special nose drills for those who do not come up from the toddlers, but come in from outside ; every twenty minutes, for a time, we had nose drill in the three-year- old shed. Paper handkerchiefs are used, as we said, and these are tied in large bundles and hung ready by the shelf-corners and along the walls and are burned after use in the stove. The first practical use of all the nose-exercises and breathing drills is that it makes our students willing to take all this trouble in training the little ones to keep their nostrils free. They know the meaning of it now and what it is going to mean for the children later on. As they are allowed, once at least in their training, to attend at the Clinic when operations for adenoids are done, they know how one evil leads on to another, ending at last in a gruesome operation. Ah ! how gruesome it is, and what a contrast to the scene in the hall and gardens where the girls are learning their beautiful craft. There, every exercise, or drill, ends in a kind of fete. There the intensive work is full of hope, and is starred by intervals of abandonment. Shouts of laughter often peal from the voice producer's room' — ^indeed the house rings at times. As for the children their drills are taken in the meadow, because in the play that follows they are so merry that the head of our Nursery-School, Miss Stevinson, has 202 THE NURSERY SCHOOL to make a proviso now and again : " I want the children to come to me in a quiet mood," or " Please don't let them get too merry in the hour before this lesson." And sometimes, looking at those dancing feet and sparkling eyes, and listening to the pure laughter and ringing voices, we remember that out in the street people " enjoy themselves " by getting tipsy and losing all trace of humanity. This shall not be to-morrow. However, we must now turn back to the students ! ***** Having given her short breathing drill, the teacher will look at her class, or rather at each girl in the class, and will be likely to make certain notes. To begin with, the girls are probably very self-conscious and, in many cases at least, all the movements are very stiff, while shadows of fear flit like ghosts through the rigid halls of memory. All this is in some of those young faces. Others of a bolder sort, call up a look of firmness, as of putting one's back to the wall and being ready for anything. Seeing them one remembers the drilling of infants in school of not so long ago, when every little figure marched from the knees, his shoulders high, his arms stiff, his whole little body frozen into a terrible imitation of stark soldier- dom ! It was to be seen also in Gtermany a while ago, in older classes. Oh, to chase the shadow of this far away I To bring humans back to human attitudes and human feelings. That is our aim. PHYSICAL TRAINING 203 Our teacher begins to chase the fear phantoms at once. " Begin to dance ! " And we begin at first to dance from the knees, " From the thigh ! Come ! Swing out your limbs I " shouts a musical voice rippling with life and laughter, and the lower limbs swing a little clear. " Fling out your arms I " and arms are perked out from the elbow. " From the shoulder ! " Out they go at last. The teacher sits down to the piano and plays. She plays beautifully, jubilantly. " If you would smile ! " she cries, and later, as a wan smile dawns, " Laugh I if you can ! " and we laugh, but in a ghastly fashion. We cannot forget that we are " at a lesson." If anyone looked in at the door we should turn into iron. Rusty keys must have turned surely on the young life that dances here so stiffly, so sadly. And behind this young womanhood there is a world of children who do not dance or sing for joy, and who work to time-tables all the time and play to order in stated ways in a narrow place. No wonder the breathing is shallow and the back weak, and the body organs and sides tied up into sluggish bundles. " Throw one arm over your head and take hands " goes the strange order. " Now change to the other hand ! " And in the natural scuffle there actually is some natural laughter. "Very good," cries the teacher at last, coming down on the final chord. " All this is very hoydenish," one may say ; 204 'THE NURSERY SCHOOL " is it necessary ? " It is as natural and necessary as yawning when one has been in close air, or as stretching one's limbs when one has been lying for ages on a cramping bed. These first dances — and also those that follow — should be taken in the open air, and when the blush of healthy rose is on the cheeks and eyes a-sparkle with innocent fun and joy, one can go back to work again. The cxilture side of the work follows the restorative, as noon follows morning. The exercises taken are short, so the work may be varied, all the more because every part of it acts and interacts on the rest. From the first almost the teacher begins to tackle the matter of language. Our girls are drawn from every part of the country, and their speech is on the whole certainly no worse than that of the average girl from a good middle- class home, and with secondary school training. This only means, however, that the teacher has to overhaul everyone in the use of vowel sounds, and so begin at last to get something that deserves to be called pure utterance. One of Emil Behnke's aims was to make his pupils sing pure vowels on notes in the middle com- pass of the voice, and Miss Evans has the same end in view. Singing is, as we know, a prolonging or holding of sounds or the making of sounds into tones ; and in this lengthened speaking (which is singing) the conscious shaping of the mouth and all its parts is needed for purity and beauty of tone. PHYSICAL TRAINING 205 " You may always stand by form, rather than force," said Ruskin, and the teachers of beautiful speech stand by form all the time. They, for example, make one girl get control of her writhing lips, her utterly untutored tongue ; they make another tackle her upper lip, stiff as a board. To start with the right shape of instrument is the aim of the speech lessons. About twenty of these vowel singing exercises are taken. They are, as I said, all designed to make the vowel pure through getting the lips, tongue, etc., to take the right shape and make the right movement all the time. This is drill. It is physical drill just as much as Swedish drill, and it has to be taken every day and practised, and applied in speech till at last one hears no more ugly "cah-eeks" for "cakes" and " dyely " for " daily " I The Cockney child has a harder task than the North Country girl or boy, for he has linked his vowels in nondescript sounds anyhow, whilst the North Country children, in spite of other grave errors, have escaped some speech traps by falling long ago on the plan of half chanting their vowels or lengthening them in speech. In order to help the work, which is often tedious, and to evoke new attention power. Various means are taken which will be described a little further on. The lessons are not allowed to become too fatiguing. Above all the old Shadow is not suffered to fall. The opportunity for free expres- 206 THE NURSERY SCHOOL sion is given often, and always after drill. " Let us Jeam a little poem," says the teacher, and we learn this one. The year's at the tpring The day's at the mom, Morning's at seven, The hiU-side's dew-pearled. The lark's on the wing. The snail's on the thorn God's in His Heaven — All's right with the world ! The girls stand in a circle and each one speaks one line. At first the expression is forced. The emphasis is rather ugly, having no real feeling behind it. Yet there is plenty of feeling in these young hearts. It has been long forced down into some underground cellar of consciousness. Their inner life is muffled in weeds. We call that " being reserved." The joy of youth " reserved " and hidden away like a thing to be ashamed of ! The desire of the world in a stuffy cellar ! Nevertheless, a little ripple of joy gets into the voices at last. Eyes lighten. The whole body takes part, as when Kathleen runs out to look at the grass, or Katie breaks into a cry while the lark is soaring, or as when a far-off sweet- ness as of music behind the hills arrives at last in Mabel's rapturous " God's in His Heaven." All this is strange to hear. Voice Exercises and Dramatization. — These are taken to the piano accompaniment, and are framed PHYSICAL TRAINING 207 so as to give control over the out-going breath, but the first two, sung in crotchets with crotchet rests on the ascending and descending scale, teach the pupil to take as much breath as is wanted and no more. They are followed by quicker movements of the larynx and tongue in semi-quavers with crotchet rests, and later by whispering exercises for final consonants (these having, of course, no need for voice at all but only vigour of lips and tongue). At last the pupils begin the singing of intervals ; and then vocal muscles and ear are trained together. The work is hard. It needs courage ; it tests the patience and faith of the worker. It sounds foolish at times to the un- initiated. I have heard inspectors say that it is foolish. The results are wonderful and pay for all. On a Saturday morning the hostel is crowded with students. They make a noise as of a crowd, and passers-by wonder what is going on behind the opaque windows. It is Julius Caesar's death that is going on and the crisis of a government. All the lower hall and corridor is packed by a restless Roman crowd, and Brutus is on the staircase at grips with the hour. All this is there. The hurry- ing crowds and the figure on the stairs have some- thing about them that puts the blue-and-white uniforms in the background somehow. Brutus is more or less Brutus. His Voice has inflections that move and arrest. It has notes in it and a 208 THE NURSERY SCHOOL strength in it that were not there and could not be there a month ago. All the voices are new. The vowels are pure, and there is something more strik- ing than pure vowels — emotion more or less true. * 4: * * * The work is helped very much by being carried on in another language. All these girls have learned school-grammar, but do not speak French when they come, nor do they understand it truly, so they have to plunge into speech, taking a header into La Fontaine's fables, done into simple French. They take the story down to dictation. They learn it by heart, and then they act it. All that is true in English is true also in French of speech and of in- flection. And as I said, the French does not hinder the work. It helps, and helps much. Humans are humans in any language. In the fable of the " Cruel Ant ' ' some girls as grasshoppers awaken pity and tenderness. Some are ants that make one glow with love for the erring and distressed. Some are bees that are adorable and show what Christ- ianity is ! All this in French that is not English- French any more I Even these results are minor things. The great thing is that the pupil is changed, is transformed. The emotions are set flowing in a natural way in channels that are neither broken nor dammed. Some of the pent-up force that was driven under and showed itself only in nervous strain, in anxiety, and self-consciousness is now moving on to new PHYSICAL TRAINING 209 ends. Faces become calmer, and more gentle, the movements are no longer violent or restrained, the movements of troubled, half-frightened or half- defiant young people. Stillness is possible, and in the new and restful atmosphere created by the new personalities waking all round us new feelings can be expressed. Visualization in speech and recitation. The pupils learn by heart many beautiful poems. " O to be in England," " Flower in the crannied wall," " Our England is a garden," " Hail to thee ! bright spirit," " Where the bee sucks," etc., etc. When the words are mastered and spoken with purity the opportunity for a new step onward has come. In order to take it one must see the mental pictures in the poem. And as every mental image has motor elements it is no sooner fairly presented than the face should reflect something of the words. This reflection comes slowly at first. The pupil is self-conscious. Something gets between her and simple expression. Trifles dis- turb her. A visitor might throw her all off her balance. But the power to see, to be absorbed, and to reflect mental states like a clear river with the trees mirrored in it, is won at last. Then it is a new world, this class-room. The gates are lifted up. The King of glory can enter. The glory of literature, of song, of the Unseen, the music of harmonious Life crosses and recrosses the cleared o 210 THE NURSERY SCHOOL threshold of consciousness. Our girls were never other than the true wild roses of England, a little spoiled by strangled growing. These wild, frail blossoms can be cultivated into something more radiant and lasting. We cannot describe the change. It has to be seen and felt. The health improves. The expression changes — ^the personality appears to fill or blossom out. This new promise is not belied when the mouth is opened and the melody of pure vowels is heard, the subtle inflections, too, of a voice that has feeling in it, and the richer tones that come when true feeling finds an outlet in a natural and healthy body. All this people enjoy or love to hear and see. That is why they stand in queues and pay money to go into the theatre. For they hear and see nothing else there, except, of course, scenery and lights. They went in former days to hear and see it without the lights and the scenery. Joy, grief, love, wonder — all these things belong to humanity. And the human beings who can express human things well are the world's desire. We can find this power of expression, however, in nearly everyone who has any training and some freedom. It is far more important that we should find it in our teachers than in our actresses. And if all we are now saying about sensory training for children has any meaning, we must now give this training to teachers. Mimes. — These were at the very fountain head PHYSICAL TRAINING 211 of all romance. They were loved and practised in far-off days by people akin in heart to our children. And now children love them and take to them as in the days of the " Chansons de Geste. ' ' " Be a carpenter," " Be a dustman," " Be a blacksmith." One and another fall into place and become the man we want to see personated. In order to do it quickly there must be a rapid turning over of the memories one has of the visits to the carpenter's or the blacksmith's shop. One polishes up these memories by use just as one polishes up silver by rubbing it. When this kind of thing is done well and quickly we go on to story-telling. Story-telling. — The art of story-telling is very largely the art of impersonating or acting. The story is in fact a spoken drama. Its power and beauty lie very largely in the voice, the gesture, the manner of the teller. Long before a book is opened every child's eyes have been often fixed on her — on the one, be it mother or teacher, who is better even than any book, because she is the living page. Even the dullest eyes watch her face, just as in the baby-room the very little ones watch the nurse's face and answer every change in it. So we must train our nursery teacher to tell a story. The gestures should be slow as a rule, and the story-teller at leisure, having time and being care- free to give every word and inflection its true value and meaning. The best time to tell the 212 THE NURSERY SCHOOL story is in the evening, not in the morning, and the children shoidd be round one's knee, not at desks I Sensory training being well in advance always of motor power, the lookers and listeners or children soon get a stock of mental images all charged with motor elements. They will tell stories too. The older children should tell tales every day to the little ones, and also to the teacher. Dramatization. — ^All the old nursery rhymes lend themselves to acting of some kind. " Jack and Jill," "Mother Goose," "The Old Woman that lived in a Shoe," " Old Mother Hubbard," and scores of others. There is of course a much wider treasury than these at hand. Children can mime the life that is in the best tales. They never cease to dramatize the life that is around them. They are themselves the great mimeurs. Do we not see them in our own camp acting the life of the streets and giving faultless imitations of drunken men, of fighting women, and also of raids ? The teacher has to supply the right material — ^that is all. ^ 3t: 4: 4: :{: Music and Dancing. — Music is a language, and a very clear precise one to those who can understand it. Mendelssohn wrote to an author who composed verses for the music of his " Songs without Words " : " Music is much clearer, more definite than words, and if you will explain it at all by words you will make it all dim and PHYSICAL TRAINING 213 meaningless. If words could say everything, I would not compose at all. Some people think music is obscure, that you can understand words always. I think it is not so at all. Words are vague things for me, ambiguous, unintelligible, if one compares them with the true music which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words. Music expresses definitely what words express indefinitely." The instrument of instruments is the human body, and the big muscles have to be played on first. The students have to learn themselves how to express the pulse of any given piece of music, by walking and marching. They have to keep time with arm movements, swinging from the shoulders, and by counting measures and pulses in short phrases and dancing for a given number of measures. Variety of movement begins very soon, just as early as phrasing. All this is set forth in Miss Marie Salt's appendix to the Aural Culture book of Stewart MacPherson lent to me by Miss Evans. This is a real language, the real language for some, and children, even very young children, are ready for it. For the sense of rhythm is as early as the rapid development of the muscular sense. Schumann, at the age of eight, made musical portraits. By certain turns and cadences of varied rhythms he expressed the character and even the whims and tricks, the gestures and faces of his play-fellows. Everyone knew these portraits when they heard them played. 214 THE NURSERY SCHOOL even those who had no special gift for music. The genius, as I tried to show in my book Education of the Imagination, is not outside the natural law. Charles Darwin did not write about the Origin of Species at ten, nor did Newton study the fall of an apple in his pinafore. This language of chUdhood, however, has not been learned by the average chUd. He was not allowed to get hold of its alphabet, nor to read its words, still less to say anything original in the new medium. And yet with only a very small number of words one can say things of one's own ! A few words will explain a little how Mr. Dalcroze encourages children to do this. " Simple music is played to which the pupils march. As they grasp the beat they make it by an accented step ; when this becomes easy the corresponding arm-movements are added, and the strong beat, at this stage, always the first, is marked by full contraction of the arm muscles. Practice is given until at last the pupil can stop suddenly, discontinue, accenting with one or both arms, or with one or both feet, substitute an arm movement for a foot movement, insert an extra accent either with arm or foot, or do any similar thing previously agreed on. By repeated practice of such exercises complete automatic control of the limbs is obtained and the ground prepared for more advanced work. It is at this stage that the simple movements to PHYSICAL TRAINING 215 indicate tunes and notes are learnt. They may be likened to the alphabet of the method. The elementary exercises are its accidence, and the advanced stages its syntax. The teacher has to learn this language, to get clear thoughts — images of the movements in correspondence to rhythms and to give expression to them." Instrumental Music. — During the first year a child depends not merely on his teacher as teacher, but also as one who can do things he cannot do. If, for example, she can play the violin and piano, and draw a picture with sure touches, she brings new elements into his life, and nothing is more charming than his joy in her power. Above all, the violin-playing is a joy. The first pure, vibrant notes seem to thrill along the young nerves, waking them like a soft hand to a new morning. It gives them new memories, not of images but of feelings, and for some children these tones have meanings from the first and enrich the listener just as he had learned somehow a new language. Nearly all listen to the violin or to a stringed instrument at once. Some listen to the piano. The amount of interest and wonder and joy depends very much on the player. The Principal of the Rachel McMillan Nursery- School began by giving violin lessons. This instrument, the best of all, requires the longest training. It was given up on account of the pressure on the time-table. 216 THE NURSERY SCHOOL We tried the piano. The surprise of this work was that not one of the girls could play at all well, and could not even dream of improvising. This was not serious in so far as the teaching of the subject is concerned. The children of a Nursery-School need play no instrument but that of their own little bodies, and they indeed require all their time to get it in tune. But it is serious in that it cuts off a great source of joy, and also because, hearing no really good playing, children have little chance of getting their stock of tone memories enriched. Time must be found for the learning of the violin or the piano. We may have to fall back on the latter as the instrument which can be learned in a short time. Seguin did not care for it. He wanted string instruments — ^the zither, the mandolin, the harp . . . and bells. We have three pianos and we have at least one teacher who can play on them beautifully. A Studenfs Specimen Lesson. Not only the children but the teacher also wears an Educraft overall. She is a dark-haired, dark- eyed girl. She is dressed in radiant blue, em- broidered in tangerine and wine colour and orange that bring the spicy and glowing South athwart the wintry morning. As it is winter the children are not barefooted, but have soft old tennis shoes or slippers on. The whole place is agog with PHYSICAL TRAINING 217 rollicking sailor-men, arms folded or akimbo. They dance as sailor-men dance. Away they go in circles that swing and swerve and laugh. " Nothing is wrong " says the teacher. And she says this astonishing thing several times, because it is one of her great aims to set the joy of liberty palpitating in these little bodies. Now the scene is changed. There are no more sailors. Who are these dainty people all a tip- toe gliding through the place ? They are fairies in a wood. They have bells in their hands and they ring them softly. Then their own laughter rings out sweeter than the bells. How they laugh, and is there anywhere sweeter music ? The teacher chases them, she catches hold of one of the fairies and the laughter breaks out, drowning the bells. Now they are moving to a measure, and the teacher's voice rings in short and also sharp commands. It is not modem, this sharpness, but the children appear to understand, for they are not perturbed though eager. Drill work seems to slip into all the work of the older children and to be foreshadowed even in the life of the younger ones. But it alternates with something very different. Power making and power using alternate all the time. And the dancing is always a thing that includes the whole body, always the legs move from the thighs, always the arms swing from the shoulders. 218 THE NURSERY SCHOOL That is why the face never freezes, the body never stiffens. " We are three Jolly mariners That sail the wintry seas." sing trios of the children to others mounted on a platform. Yesterday some of these children had difficulty in balancing. Some were flat-footed, some had the frozen look of children who had never known abandonment, who have never laughed, never danced with the whole body. Now every little creature is alive in every line. From head to toe they turn, they whirl in obedience to an inner impulse, not a sharp command. Miriam, the best dancer of all, yields herself up to the rhythm and rush of the music, her dark head thrown back a little, her dark eyes glowing. Something, is it not a soul ? — appears to lighten and glow through the little swajdng figure and flame in her uplifted face. Near her, a heavier child, Grace, is dancing with much grace, but obvious seriousness. A year ago Grace could not stand erect. She was just released from the grip of meningitis. All that is far away now, forgotten in the swirl of happier memories. Guy, on the right hand, dances gravely, almost sorrowfully, as conscious that all this is a very sad falling away from the tasks and pleasures of a boy who can read. The music stops. The student has a long, long way to travel, but she has made a start. CHAPTER XXVI PSYCHOLOGY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE TEACHER- NURSE The whole training of the teacher-nurse must of course be planned with a view to giving her new light in regard to the stage of life through which her children are passing. Without this knowledge and training she will always make any "system," however advanced, barren, for she cannot see the great life ocean from which it has been thrown up. With it she can make her own system and develop it all through life. In short, the teacher, like every other artist, must improvise. She must adapt and even discover, or else be a copyist to her life's end. The great feature of a child's mind as compared with an adult mind is that the former is more purely, though not more strongly imaginative and busy in all his waking life with a kind of inner drama. Reason is still in its infancy, and imagina- tion its herald, and also its mother, holds the field almost alone. He likes fairy tales and romantic stories. He wants to play all day as busy men and women like to work all day. All this does not 219 220 THE NURSERY SCHOOL mean that he has more imagination than he will have twenty years hence. On the contrary his imaginati'on, like everything else in him, is very young, very undeveloped and in many ways very feeble ! Yet it is always in evidence, always the thing to be noted in him. It is because as we said in the first years reason is still less developed than is the imagination. Reason is a later growth, depending very much as we shall see on the previous upspringing of the creative power. The latter gives the reasoning powers all its oppor- tunities, for it provides the materials without which there would be nothing to reason about. " Imag- ination," said Goethe, " is the herald of reason." When man could not explain nature in any other way he created myths and legends. When the child is too young for our world of adults, he makes toys and creates a world of his own. Not that the imagination itself appears without fore- runners. It is made possible through other things, as we know, through memories which are its raw material. Before it can appear there is first the power to make simple adaptations, also the senses are there, and sensory memories, instincts, and some trace of will. Among these memories the creative impulse sweeps at last. It sweeps through the granary of mind images, selecting and com- bining. And how does this great movement of life come ? What is it ? What is its origin ? There is present in every image certain motor PSYCHOLOGY 221 elements. This is proved every time the mouth waters at the sight of dinner. It is proved also in every great crisis. The sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done. Nursery-School teachers are specially interested in this quality of mind. Every mental image, then, wants to project itself, and a child has less power than an adult to prevent its projection. This is his state, and it explains in part why he is so active, so rest- less even, and why he is so often the victim of his imagination. He has to use his small store of mind images. He has to use them because they are charged with force, and the power that will bridle them is hardly born. In the act of perception two things happen. First there is the impression from outside things acting on the nerves, and then from within there is something added to this impression, namely the memory of former experiences. A child deals with these very freely. Nothing interferes to prevent him from adding as well as taking away : and it is the added things that make the illusions with which he is always playing, and which, even if they seem to us very foolish, are for him very real, and also very important. So vigorous do his mental images appear, or so helpless rather is he to curb them, that they very often take possession of him. We then say he is the slave of his own fancies, but if a child has no fancies we should have in him 222 THE NURSERY SCHOOL a future duUard or an imbecile. Little Louis Stevenson, lying awake half the night, saw very clearly all the clothes hanging in the room take the shape of people. Everything is alive for the primitive man. Everything was alive, too, for the gifted Greek. The woods were full of dryads, the streams were peopled by nymphs. In Scotland, the land of poets and dreamers, and doers, and inventors — " Up the airy mountain Down the nishy glen, We daren't go a hunting For fear of little men." This state of mind is seen in all gifted as well as in primitive peoples, in all the gifted when they are young. We are inclined to shorten youth and childhood ! That is the misfortune of the poor. The chUd of to-day sees his illusions curbed as fast as they rise. He is often prevented from using his own powers because older people want to hustle him forward. Left to himself he has all the same a strong tendency that is a power to give life to everything round him, even to the stones in the road, or the letters of the alphabet. " This is O with his brother Q," said one of our children at the letters inset board "They are like one another, only Q has a tail." And again, " S is a fat boy. He is always laughing." And again, a little boy who mirror-wrote E so that it faced F in this way, a, called out suddenly, PSYCHOLOGY 223 "Look at F and E. They are talking to one another." These children had been with us a long time, many years. They are never found among the neglected. Albert, a little waif of the street, aged five, who has a beautifully shaped head, but hard, sad blue eyes, laughs at these children. He has no illusions. He has been allowed to run the street since his babyhood, and he knows what he has to do when he is locked out. Our elementary school teachers know this type of child. They are not deceived by him, and he understands very well that he cannot, as he says, " kid " them. The teachers who come to us from schools attended only by the children of wealth and leisure do not understand Albert very well. Indeed the most cultured of these, and especially the most efficient and highly trained, un- derstand him least of all. And how indeed should they find anything in their experience to fit such a monstrous fact as the arrest in mere babyhood of the master power ? Just because they are teachers and allowed to teach, not merely to drill and manage, they have been always consciously or unconsciously trying to prevent their little pupils from being as Albert is. " Shades of the prison house begin to dose about the growing boy." They are here to postpone this clouding that comes even in the morning I But the shadows fell on Albert in his cradle. Long ago, in his 224 THE NURSERY SCHOOL cradle, he had to reason about a few things. He is always reasoning and wondering how he can " do " his elders. Our hope for him is that the teachers who do not reason with him will reach him where he sits in his cold prison, and give back to his starved and nipped imagination some of its natural spring and force. How can she do this ? And how will our students do it ? They, the students, will have to do consciously what the best teachers have done intuitively, and they will have to deal, for the first years anyhow, with already spoiled material, and will have to diagnose as well as teach. In order that they may do this they must have very definite teaching as well as training. They must have not only a general course in psychology, they must specialize in the study of childhood, that is the study of the imagination. Yes. And they must understand arrest ; that is not always due to defect but often to misfortune. They must be able to diagnose as teachers. Briefly, then, we may say that the study of the imagination falls under three great headings. In order to cultivate the creative power there must be first materials, that is, memories, or mind images. We have to furnish besides, precedents, and lastly, we have by every means possible to secure alterna- tion, for in this field as in every other, progress depends on rhjrthm, on the regular in-drawing and out-going movement of life. PSYCHOLOGY 225 Memories or mind images are the raw material which we have to gather and multiply before any advance in play or thought or work is possible. Where these fail the brain stops short like a grazing horse before a ditch. Or it leaps the ditch, but yet get no food from it by that performance. That is what many children do when books and symbols are thrust into their hands untimely, and that is what we want to prevent now with our big garden and meadow, our night camps and visits to the Zoo, our free play and our apparatus, our pets and our new life. The children who enter our schools are as a rule poor in memories. Many of them do not know a chicken from a duck, and for them every bird is a hen, even the stuffed owl on the shelf. Yet they are hungry for mind- material. They begin to collect it at once in the garden, just as our poor little rabbits, when taken out of the hutch, begin to burrow at once in the sand-pit. Through the poor little hoard a wind begins to move almost at once. The motor elements in every image declare themselves. Outward, outward in haste — ^the inner life wants to project itself. Often I hear our three and four-year-olds imitating the voice, the speech, and gestures of our teachers. I hear it going on with great vigour in the gardens, without concealment and certainly with no desire to be rude, or to give offence. They play out the life of the camp. They put paper handkerchiefs or dusters on their heads 226 THE NURSERY SCHOOL and are nurse-teachers. They are mothers. They are visitors. They are the gardener in the potato patch and the plumber who has come to look at the pipes. The play grows in vigour as they laimch far out from the old life. In play the wave of inner power advances, rein- forced by all the desires and the joy of childhood. The play itself cannot go beyond the mind-images that give it life. Albert fights and teases his companions. He thinks and plans out new ways of teasing and outwitting his teachers. They supply him with no new experiences, no new memories in this field. He falls back from their inscrutable calm every time like a ball in a racquet-court. They take him to Greenwich Park. What is to be done ? He looks at the deer. He throws stones in the river. Meantime we all see the park, and the deer, and the river. We go across the street and visit a blacksmith's shop. One day we go to a little croft, not far off, where we see cattle grazing, not going to the slaughterhouse; also ducks on a pond, and chickens not in a coop in a back yard but in a real bam yard. We go two or three times to this place. One day the older children go to the Zoo. The little ones do not go so far. They look at the picture of a fox and call it a dog. Miss Stevinson has free times for the older children. They go about the garden and school and take up any occupation they feel drawn to. PSYCHOLOGY 227 The picture books are getting to be more and more in demand. Children go away and look at them in groups, but sometimes a child goes away alone, and turns over the pages with a dreamy face. " I feel," said the teacher one day, " that you will not see much progress." She was wrong. I did see progress. More than progress — ^transformation. Formerly these children were always " in mischief." They quarrelled and fought every- where, in the sand-pit, in the play-ground, and, furtively, in class. Formerly they told tales on one another as a staple part of their day's work. Now they tell no tales. They are all busy. Some are absorbed. At certain times, for a little while, they dream over their books, or forget everything else in trying to make some kind of tool or toy. Albert looks puzzled — disconcerted. He looks out at this new world like a sailor battered by storm, and ignorant of the language. He is trying, however, to make a bow and arrow. He knows they are not sold in the shops, and that he will not be allowed to shoot the arrows at Peter, his elder brother, and natural foe, but he approaches his teacher humbly. " Mith 'Tivinson," he says, " Where do they live, th' Injuns ? " Power roots itself, we say, in precedent. This is true of the greatest genius, and of every little 228 THE NURSERY SCHOOL child, of Shakespeare reading the stories of the classics, and founding his plays on them, and of our four-year-old learning to draw strokes and circles. However great the creative impulse of life may be, it needs, not only mind-images, but, in the beginning, models or modes of using them. When we have helped a child to draw lines and curves and circles, we have to give him also first aid in the use of these. In order to do this one must not only take his hand and guide it, one must have power to go far beyond all that he can yet imagine, and be able to draw and model oneself. Unnecessary perhaps, for some teachers, this is necessary for the Nursery- School teacher, since her pupOs are so dependent on precedent or example. * * * * * Alternation.' — ^Rhythmic beat, or pulse must be established in learning as well as in life. The process may be expressed in two words, " Gather- Use." It is best here to turn to examples. About twenty years ago, " free " drawing began to be taken in junior and infant schools, and much was expected of it. Nothing much came of it, however, for the drawings did not improve. Children carried on this kind of " free " work for years, gained nothing, and at last flung the whole thing aside. Why did they fling it aside ? Because they were learning nothing, only marking time. " Freedom " to play is nothing, PSYCHOLOGY 229 if one has nothing to play with. The new material that should have been supplied in lessons, the new power that should have been won in drills (into which a child will throw himself heartily) was lacking. But who can live on nothing ? The ennui and hopelessness that always follows where there is no alternation came to the young artists. The imagination was starved. Guy and some other boys fell into my hands for three weeks in the summer of 1918. Guy was nearly nine years old, backward, sullen and troublesome. He could not read or write well, and I began to teach these subjects, beginning by writing, but giving the two R's alternatively in the same lesson. At first we took wooden drills, endings with such sounds as ed, ad, od, ap, putting different letters in front of these, and then writing the words, and then finding them in the reading-book. In a week Guy made rapid progress, but on the second day he shed tears. " You are too severe," said a teacher, but Guy cried from vexation because he could not get on fast enough. On the third day he cheered up and worked for two hours without stopping. I did not hinder nor urge him. In a week he began to read sentences, and then we took cardboard games in the garden. Wherever I went the group followed, Guy always leading. They read and fetched leaves, stones, books, beds — everything asked for. I held up cardboard slits for only a moment, " Fetch the 280 THE NURSERY SCHOOL barrow." " Bring a sunflower leaf." They attended with lynx eyes fastened on the slits : they hunted the words and captured them. Guy made a full end of his reading difficulties in three weeks. He wrote a fine hand. Going at this pace he would have arrived at scholarship soon, but at this point our work together had to stop. The sullen look came back to his face. His dark eyes searched my face reproachfully for a few days. Then he avoided me. It was as though he thought : *' You have deserted me. We had started to go a long journey to a fine place. Now I am not going there after all." Guy was ready for drill, ready for drudgery, ready for suffering if only he might go on. Go on and live. Go on and play. He is one of tens of thousands. Alas ! it was a time of struggle. I had to put up a fight every day for money to run the first open-air Nursery-School, to find labour and equipment, and deal with the weather, to make a public opinion that would keep our venture alive and give it a chance later on. I would have liked to go on, to see the quickening pulse of life, to watch the swell of coming power. " Why do you waste your time on little boys ? " said a friend. I ! Waste my time ; privileged to swing in the movement of life I Life higher than the stars, greater than the ocean ! Oh, teachers of to-morrow, will you think of things so ? At least we know now what teaching might be and how, one day, progress may be steady and PSYCHOLOGY 281 unfailing. Human progress will be like the in- coming of the sea. ***** The imagination develops at first slowly, then very rapidly and comes to its highest point some- where in early youth. During later childhood and youth another power is rising. It is the reasoning or correcting power of the mind, and it comes abreast of the other before manhood or thereabouts. Then begins as a rule the decline of the imaginative ribot's diagram of the imagination power, which, however, brings the other sooner or later level with it. Ribot has expressed this in the following diagram. The dotted line stands for the reasoning power, the straight line for the imagination. The latter rises rapidly, is checked for a little at 10 to 12, rises again swiftly at puberty and then runs level, failing after the onset of middle life and declining in old age. Reason rises later, follows level with the earlier power, during the middle life and is conditioned 232 THE NtmSEHY SCHOOL by it, all its strength and growth dependent from the first on the mother-faculty. " Where there is no vision the people perish." Intellect perishes. There is nothing for it to live on. «F * H: * * And is youth then only a flash — a spark put out early in some children ? Is there no hope of anything? Only disillusionment at the end of child- hood, when children cannot make believe, and at the end of youth, when some believe nothing more ? Yes, there is hope. For this state of dis- illusionment does not betoken wisdom, but only decay. In the diagram a dotted line runs parallel with a straight one. The imagination does not always fail after youth is gone. It keeps on past youth, throughout mature life, on into old age. The diagram shows the dotted line persisting from Y to O. This represents the case of those in whom it does not fail. There is no old age of the mind for the people in whom this takes place. They are the poets, artists, thinkers, inventors, dis- coverers. They create and recreate at an age when others fall back into tradition and routine. " These are men of genius," it may be said. What is genius? Genius uses powers that exist in all though they do not develop in all. The child plays. Youth dreams. In adult life some invent and discover. The great PSYCHOLOGY 233 work of the teacher is to prolong childhood, and to get children ready for a long youth. They have to make possible, to make certain an undergrowth of fresh creative life from the cradle to the grave. Their opportunities will hardly come in the drills and lessons. There have been many child- discoverers. They all discovered, they all invented, when they were playing, or trying to play. The making of pottery was probably due to the play of children taking shards out of the fire. One great improvement in the weaving machine was due to the fact that a little spinner wanted to go to play one day, and made a little peg for fixing his thread so that he need not keep " minding " it. A great discovery in optics was the result of the delight of children who broke glass in a certain way in play. Turgot, a writer of the eighteenth century, declared that if we wanted to put up monuments to inventors we should have to raise many to animals, to insects in particular, many to children also, few to men, and on most of the monu- ments the word Chance would be mentioned. All this means that to the unexpected, the unforeseen, to thinking-at-a-tangent, to idle observing, and the open door in consciousness our race owes nearly all its greatest advances. But the number of these side thoughts depends on the activity and vigour of the inner life, that is on the force and swing of the motor elements present in every image. In the upper school (for children over five) 284 THE NURSERY SCHOOL our head-mistress has widened the scope of play, and so far as possible, allowed all the work to be represented in it. With shovel and hammer, twigs and clay, stones and earth, water and sand, the children construct the Britain of long ago. Caves and cave bears, forests, rivers, men dressed in skins, and babies rocked in trees, they play out what they read in Ab and Hiawatha. In Miss Stevinson's own book on history-play (published, as I said, by the Cambridge Press) this work is carried on with ever improving materials. Norman keeps, mediaeval villages, homes built of bricks at last, and people in real woven clothes appear. This does not hinder Alfred from modelling aeroplanes, while Albert, true to the impressions he has got from the street, feels that a place should be left for the pawnshops. CHAPTER XXVII HISTORY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF A NURSERY- SCHOOL TEACHER We are free to approach this as well as other sub- jects from a point of view suggested to us, not by learned professors, but by bright-eyed children. What notion of Time has our Tommy got, as he flattens his small palms and nose on the bath- room window and gazes out dreamily at the terrace and mulberry tree ? Does yesterday exist for him save as something very distant, vague and separate, as were, a little while ago, his own toes or feet ? Does he connect day with day and send his thoughts wandering back along the links ? It is for him the time of stable memory-making ; memories that will outlast and imderlie all later learning ; but for this very reason, perhaps. Tommy is conscious very little of yesterday save as a time when we came to play with him or basely neglected this duty and privilege. The order of things we know already. First, sensations and memories ; later, some wind of emotion that moves over these like the spirit over the dry bones and makes them live. That first 235 236 THE ISJURSERY SCHOOIi ■wind is raised by the loVe and service that surround a baby from its cradle, and which are given, first of all and before all, by the mother, but later by nurses and companions. Thus the love of country is bom in association with another and stronger feeling, the love of home, and this in its turn is bom of the love of one dear presence or more. The earliest feeling is very strong even in the poorest of our children. As they grow older some may be reluctant to leave the garden or nursery and plunge back into the noise and grime of the back street that is " home." They may suffer at home, may be relieved to get back to camp. In spite of all, every child, but more especially the youngest, are always glad to welcome mother or child-nurse in the evening. Every other feeling melts in the joy of seeing mother. It is very clear to us that in all, or nearly all, this strong love of one person is the centre of the emotional life. On this love a great deal can be grafted ; indeed the root of all the " humanities " is here. It is true that the child is just as ready to accept evil as good and to embrace all that is worst in the home environment so long as it gives him no direct pain or hurt. But the thing that enshrines the vile street, the horrible alley, the stained floor is distinct from the stains and the vileness. It has sent thousands from the slum areas to die for an ideal, even though they knew no material life that was at all worthy of any such sacrifice. HISTORY 237 Our Tommy and others have found new supports for their first love in the garden in which they spend their days. With new memories, new con- tacts, we see them build up an emotional life that only requires from us a certain constancy in order to be lasting. The toddlers are quite ready and able to form relationships with a large group of people. If, however, we cease to visit them for a week they show very great coldness. In holiday time when they leave us for weeks, there is more than coldness. Some of the children show a kind of anger. They turn away from us in the street. For toddlers and even for three and four-year- olders there is no history but the story of what we did to-day. Yesterday is already far away, but what was done yesterday seems to have a power over to-day that is new and peculiar to this age. For this reason it is necessary that some at least of the staff in every section should be 'permanent. Also that there should be no holidays in the sense of going away and leaving toddlers to their old fate. All this, it may be thought, has little or nothing to do with History. A little thought will convince everyone that it has everything to do with it. We have seen that the little ones start well. They care a great deal for the people around them. They make them the central figures in the whole drama of life. They care a great deal t oo for light and colour, that is, for scenery and decoration, if they can get these : but like the audiences of the Eliza- 288 THE NURSERY SCHOOL bethan era, they wUl do without much in the way of decorations if the real centre of love is there. What hinders them now from going forward with a will, and learning all about home and kindred, as in early childhood they learn languages without any strain, but with great perseverance ? The answer is that the supplies fail somehow. They cannot get on for want of material. Supplies fail early, and altogether for a large section of the children of the poor. Books do not tell them what once upon a time even the humblest father could tell his children. " Where was you bom, mother ? " said a seven-year-old boy to his mother one day. " Me," she cried, startled. " I dunno what place 'twas exactly. Somewheres about Cross Street." "Was father bom there too?" asked the boy. " Him ? No. I dunno where he wur bom. What strange questions you ask I " cried the mother, who lived from day to day and from hand to mouth. The boy's face fell. His quick, warm interest swerved from that hour. He had met a blank wall and the past darkened as if a curtain had fallen. It is Vain to hope that this failure of supplies has no effect on children. It saps the root, how- ever vigorous the root, of family love, and leaves it scarred and injured. " Where is your mother," I asked once of a poor little slum girl. She looked puzzled for a moment. Then recollecting she said dreamily, " She drowned herself, last year, in a HISTORY 289 dam." No sorrow, no horror, was in her face or voice. It would be wrong to think she had never felt anything of that tragic death. She may have wept for her mother. Her tears as well as the cause of them were long forgotten. Troubles had pattered down like hail on her since that black hour. They, too, were almost lost to memory now. The passing hour had an instant and complete empire over the field of consciousness. It was to be wiped out, like footmarks under deep snow, to-morrow I Supplies do not fail in the same way for children of a more privileged class. They have grand- fathers, even great grandfathers, and they learn if not of their mighty deeds, and few even of these have done mighty deeds, of how they wore their hair and managed their horses, and smoked their pipes, and folded their sheets and planted trees or did not plant them. They love to hear all this and to feel they belong to " an old family." What is it to belong to " an old family " ? Just this ; it is belonging to people who are worth thinking about and being remembered for a long time, at least by their own children. At the bottom of all respect for these and desire to possess or belong to these, there is surely something deeper than mere snobbery. It is a dim consciousness that life is not a trivial thing, not a mere scurrying across a stage and ending in utter darkness, but a play with some kind of relation and meaning in the Acts. 240 THE NURSERY SCHOOL The poorer folk in big cities have lost not only the traditions but also the memorials of their fathers. In their homes there is often nothing that has any associations at all beyond those of the second-hand shop or the pa-vmshop. Many cottages had memorials a while ago. They are bought up by the rich, but their real value cannot be purchased. It is lost to them. Perhaps the owners were poor and had to sell. Perhaps they caied too little for the work of their fathers : anyhow it is lost. Is it really natural for our children to forget the past utterly in this way ? I do not believe it is. Last summer, and every summer at the end of term the Council school boys and girls are all massed in the great school hall, to see the managers or Council members give the medals and prizes, and to sing patriotic songs and hear speeches. The year just closed has ^een a very strange one, greater, stranger than amy date in the English History books. People wM name it in days to come, as we name the year or, the battle of Hastings or Magna Charta, but mor^ solemnly and in a lowered voice. The L.C.C. did not give medals this year, nor many books, but there were a great many certificates. Far more wonderful to think of than the certificates was the Roll of Honour. Every school has one. At least one school had a very long list of boys who had died for their country, laying down their young lives in the first rush of HISTORY 241 hope and desire. I had to give the certificates, and it seemed a fitting time to speak of the children's own kith and kin, their fathers, their own yoimg brothers, and their father's fathers, too, who had lived in this place, and made it the cradle of British valour. These boys and girls had no family crests, no mottoes or quarterings, but their kin had done gallantly and they loved to hear of them. What an audience they made, with their flashing eyes, and tender lips and motionless bodies. Like a beautiful harp they answered to every wind of remembrance. If any word or command had reached them from those who had died for them they would have taken it for a motto. Every family and every scholar would have taken a motto, and tried to live up to it, and become a " good family " as we say because of that memory. This is what the young, glowing faces told us. It is true they did not sing all the patriotic songs that followed with very great enthusiasm. That is because they did not feel enthusiasm of the same kind then. The sentiment was far ahead of any- thing they had experienced as yet. They had not had time to reach so far. They begin with home and blood ties ; but they would not end there, if we could let them go forward. How and where do we begin ? In the Nursery. The Nursery-School teacher must talk to her children about mother, and also, as fast as she can get to know it, about all that is good in the Q 242 THE NURSERY SCHOOL family history. She comes on the scene at a moment when doctors and sociologists are collecting data about family and racial history. Her business is not merely to collect the data of people's lives, but to give them back a natural interest in their own past, to give them what is best in their own family histories, and thus to use it as material in education. In every nursery there is a store of good material, and the friendship that is knit up between nurse, teacher, and mother will soon unearth it. " Mother did not always live in Armada Street," said our student teacher Gladys, one day to Teddy, " she lived in a beautiful place far away in Kent. There are fields far bigger than the park, and a great many trees and gardens and fields with plants growing on sticks. Mother lived in a little cottage with thatch on it instead of slates " " What's thatch ? " asked Teddy, whose eyes were now getting bigger and bigger. Gladys tried to show what thatch is by putting a mat over the doll-house roof. " It is like that, but not quite like that," she said. " Anyhow there was a little window that opened outwards, and mother used to sit there sometimes and knit or sew. When she put out her hand there were roses, and below in the garden great red currants growing near a fence." " Why, miss, you might ha' been there with me," said a tall, erect, dark-eyed woman at the gateway of the shelter. She wore a dusty cap, HISTORY 243 and a very threadbare coat, discoloured and frayed at the wrists ; but her face glowed. " You been in Kent." She added, " Anyone can tell that." " Oh, no," said Gladys, " not anywhere in Kent, but here." " Seems to me it's like my own little sister talk- ing to him," said the mother, looking at Gladys with misty eyes. " She would be just your age now ! and she used to go hopping with me." " Why didn't ye tell me about them currants then ? " asked Ted, stoutly of his mother. " You never told me." " No, that I didn't. I had to 'am the living for four of you," said the mother. Then looking at Gladys. " My Florrie would be just your build. Ah ! I an't thought of her this long while. She died o' the newmonia at twenty." These sad reminiscences cast a shadow on the three for a moment, but the mother soon dried her eyes. " I like to talk to ye," she said. " Brings back old times." Gladys has the flair of a coming historian and geographer, surely, for she is interested in learning not only what one's mother did fifteen years ago in Kent, but what one's father did four years ago in France. Sometimes she forges ahead and gets to know what one's grandfather did sixty years ago, as, for example, when she went down the street and got to know Billy Dobbs' great-grand- 244 THE NURSERY SCHOOL father. That was her very finest exploit. Billy's great-grandfather is well over seventy. He is an old barge builder, and knows all that is to be known about timber, and the hewing of it for small craft ; and all that was done about the docks and on the river long, long ago. " When I was a little chap," said Mr. Dobbs, " no bigger 'n Billy, I use ter work at the docks. Learned my trade from my grandfather and learned it well, though he hadn't no schoolin'. And I sang in the Church choir." " Did ye sing well ? " asked Billy, anxious to bring out the strong points in the family history. " Use ter sing with the best of them, I did," said the old man, " for I had a voice like a bell, and might ha' bin a choir leader myself. Well, we didn't *arf build ships in them days o' fine timber, and the biggest we ever got on the stocks was the ' Great Eastern.' " " How big was she ? " asked wondering Jim. " Big ! Why," Mr. Dobbs held out his arms. " Ye might have put London inside o' her in a manner o' speaking. And what was put inside her was a cable as would run from here to Ameriky. Well, she was finished down at the docks yonder, and they got her on the stocks then, but whither she'd ever get off again was another thing. We thought she'd bide there like the church, for ivvermore." HISTORY 245 " But then ? " said Billy, who had heard the story before. " Go on, Grandfather." " When one day, 'twas a fine Sunday morning in spring. We was singing, us boys in the church, when crick-crack ! there was an orful noise like breaking o' a china shop with a timber yard smash- ing up next door. Parson threw up his hands, the boys stopped singing, and lots on us dropped our books. People swarmed out o' the pews. All of a suddint it had come to us all, ' She's off the stocks ! ' That were a day 1 " " Did she go to America ? " asked Jim. "She did that," cried Mr. Dobbs. "Laid a cable under the Atlantic as was the wonder o' them days ! " Mr. Dobbs had a great success, as great as Hiawatha, or the Tree-dwellers, and even greater, so that I think he and the like of him should have a place beside these classics in every Nursery- School for evermore. itt * * * * Two things point the way to us like finger-posts, so clearly that it is hard to go wrong. First of all, the children do care for their own people, and like to hear about them, and what they did when they were young. The very little ones only care to hear about mother, and later, perhaps, father. The seven-year-olds like to hear about grandfather. They like to see the house where he used to go to school, and to see a picture of the garden at the 246 THE NURSERY SCHOOL back of his father's house. It is there yet, this garden. Another street is called Wellington Street. Grandfather used to meet a tall man here very often, with a hooked nose and very rugged eye- brows. He was a Duke, and they called the street after him. Such fine company, too. Children have a passion, we know, for drama. That is what their play is from first to last, almost. They want to " dress up " and live over again, not only the life of the people round them, but the life of people who are near them, only because they had to do things in simple ways. They want to make caves and drawings on walls and rocks, to build, and make bows and arrows, to dress up as cavemen and Indians, to make a fire and an oven and rude pots. Much more do they love to take their kin and their neighbours and play out their life and works. The play of real emotion among real memories is, we know, the basis of any genuine mental progress. To throw away all we feel is to become poor. For the mere learning of things by heart, without emotion, is like the rolling about of balls on a billiard table. Nothing is stable there. Nothing grows there. But in the hot-bed of mother and kindred love things do root ; they grow and grow. At last we come to all very interesting and beautiful things by this route. It seems also that we come here, as it were, round HISTORY 247 a corner in our work, and find our students ready to help us in virtue of the training we are giving them for another purpose than history-teaching (that is sensory training). All this voice-training, dancing, colour work, and rhythmic movement, all the story-telling, too, in a word, all their training as artists will enable our students to start, at last, the popular theatre where children and grown-up alike can see the black curtain that shrouded the past lift higher and higher. Down here in Deptford we are the nouveau pauvres. We live, we say, in a poor place — near the slums if not in a slum. Yet every square yard of the place we work in has associations with a great and dramatic past. Our poor green below the parish room was once gay on May-morning festivals, Avhen Christopher Marlowe tripped it there with the shepherd maids. The street called Watergate Street led down to the brilliant Strand, where Court ladies disembarked in the time of the Merry Monarch. The noisy and stained street where our Clinic is now, was once the abode of Court ladies, and on the site of the houses behind our meadow, Queen Elizabeth knighted Drake, and perhaps welcomed Raleigh. If we forget all this, in looking at our children, we are reminded of it when we open our register ; for there are the grand, old names — " Drake," " Herrick," " Cooke," and " Suckling." Our grandfathers' great -grand- 248 THE NURSERY SCHOOL fathers may have known Evelyn, the great diarist, and talked to Pepys, and said good-morning to Grinling Gibbons. They took part, it is certain, in great doings. After all, this was the Court area in the most brilliant reign of England's history. We have Adam's mantelpieces, and old gardens behind pawnshops, with fig-trees growing in them still. So the curtain may go up any day on home scenes that yield to none in beauty and interest and appeal. At first it may go up on scenes the old people can remember, and can give advice about as to staging. It is pleasanter to ask for advice than to give it. And appeals make real friendship more possible. Grandfather, in the front stalls, keeps a critical eye on us right down to the begin- ning of the nineteenth century. There he swings loose it may be, a little afraid of his own fine ancestry. For we no sooner start the work here than the slum of to-day is washed back and soon forgotten in a swirl of light. Here are fine people and wonderful doings that amaze us all. Slums indeed I Our home is the home of statesmen, craftsmen, inventors, discoverers of new worlds, travellers, ladies, admirals. I am not going to describe all that. The scope of work is only limited by the growing powers of our young students. They must, at first, take simple themes. They have to remember, also, how love of home HISTORY 249 and kindred gives its true interest to all. The Nursery-School teacher has to deal with that, so as to give meaning later to the school subjects. The students working under artists have no great difficulty in staging simple pieces. Even if they were not so happily placed, other workers are here, ready to help them. In Mr. Mitchell's book, published by Dent,* there are simple directions as to how to rig up a stage, or make a background ! and he has given samples of every kind of head- dress, footgear, dress and armour, so that the style and period can be fixed on at once, and carried out by very simple means. The Visual Drills of the Infant School there are preparing a fine audience for later scenes and tableaux. This kind of work is the true approach to history and literature and English. It does not take the place of book work. It gives life to the books and the reading and the dictionaries. And lest it be thought that I minimise the value of books and also of drill, let me say here that all this dramatic work should run parallel with a new drilling and practice in English. This book is long enough, and cannot be made any longer ; but if there was space I would try to show how the student teachers' training in English might be carried on intensively, after the manner of the Larousse series for the French language, and, above all, as in his wonderful little " Livre de • " Shakespeare for Community Players." Rot Mitchell; 250 THE NURSERY SCHOOL Style." There is no space for that here. But all that has been said here leads up to a training in the mother tongue, which certainly can only be given in small classes, that is in small colleges. The emphasis in this book must be on the imag- inative side of all subjects. We cannot move forward too fast on pain of losing the torch that is the light of all our learning. We have to go back always, in order to keep that alight, to hold it steady, to wait for it always. To wait for it now all the more because in the past we often for- got it was worth waiting for, hurrying on to learn things that never lived at all in our life and were soon forgotten. « * * * * We are not the first who has turned back to look for the Pearl of Price in education. Seventy years ago and more, Grundtvig, himself so great a scholar, was fired to lift his country out of the night of ignorance in which it was plunged. He opened schools, and sought about for a means of reaching the people, as one tries to reach a drowning person, that is suddenly, and by a strong grasp. It was for the mother love in them he groped, and he reached it by one method. That was the historical. They learned the history of their homes, and ploughs and reaping- hooks, of their farms and holdings now so very modern. Their cow-houses are like laboratories, and also a little like parlours. The builders have HISTORY 251 won this forward swing by going back in thought on the records and ways of old time, and the works of their fathers. They sing a great deal in the schools, strong, hard singing it is ; the singing of the field and the smithy, the fisher and the bearer of loads. Going back they won a new desire for progress. They saw where they had stood and whither they were bound. The songs thrilled them, their fathers' songs ! They found a new meaning in them. It is the story of educa- tional progress in every age. Imagination awak- ened, nearly everything is possible. They could not go so far or do so well as persons who had never fallen asleep in childhood, never had their imagination paralysed in its waking hour. Our whole work is to free it in the morning. It may be well to go back for those who are left, for those who are belated, for the injured and the unfortunate. It is better to free our children in the morning of life, to let the creative imagina- tion awaken and rise to win all that depends on it, in the early hours. CHAPTER XXVIII HAND-WORK AND ART TEACHING Some can go further than the others, but the lines followed are the same in outline for both classes of students. They are as follows : — First (a) Drawing from flat and solid objects, from casts and from life (figures, animals, birds, etc.). Also enlarging and decreasing from copies. (b) Memory drawing in connection with the above, also with objects such as pillar-boxes, tramcars and kitchen ranges, shop-windows, black- smith's shop and the main parts of well-known buildings, such as the Tower. These lessons correspond to the looking drills of the little children. The use of them is shown very well when the students go out with a teacher of history. The report after such walks in the beginning is that very few newcomers see much, though in this as in everything else, the development in variety of memory and power is remarkable, especially among the " free ' ' students. (c) Plant drawing — ^also sketching from nature. (d) Design for special purposes and printing. Blackboard work and illustration are taken in 262 HAND-WORK AND ART TEACHING 253 these sections. All students are expected to do some work in each and to use various mediums. They are also encouraged to specialize in any section for which they show any special gift. One girl, for example, can draw what she has seen in the street or on the shelf many weeks ago, reproducing all, or nearly all her impressions. We are close to a noble sweep of the Thames. The students go down to the river and watch the sailing ships and the barges, and later in the studio they draw what they have seen. Some draw not what they have seen, but imagined. The drawings reveal much from the first. One girl draws very clear outUnes, and another with no gift of line has an elfin quality in colour. A few have clear visual memories and power to realize them from the first. From the first also they try to make the common things about them express their own joy in work or life. They embroider without tracery as well as make designs for their bedspreads and window- curtains. They draw illustrations for the history class and they illustrate the fairy tales and legends also for their own lessons. At first these have the almost uncanny look that is seen in the work of very primitive artists. The figures are stiff and gruesome, the light and atmosphere very ghostly. Then as the result of labour, sunshine comes into the work and the figures become human and gay. It is strange that joy comes slowly. 254 THE NURSERY SCHOOL The great cloud of the Middle Ages seems to settle even now on our labour, the cloud that did not rest on the work of long ago, even if it shadowed life. Modelling is the life work and very strenuous life work to which the plastic artist must give all his powers. The teacher cannot take the long, severe training of a modeller and yet she can and ought to go much further than is held necessary to-day. As a teacher she cannot run away from it, because it is not merely a great art, but a great medium of expression, the one most suitable for little children. This in itself must decide her if she has any gift at all to go on. But over and above this there is another fact, so often over- looked. Modelling is a way of learning almost every subject and a very safe one. It falls back on the touch sense, which is the oldest of all, and on the muscular sense, which develops very early. No one ever trusted these old and sure senses in vain. Every now and again we have a startling example of what they can do if they are trusted. Helen Keller's splendid education was carried out almost entirely through them. What is true of this girl, whom we must call gifted, in spite of her misfortunes, is true of all. Through the touch sense we may learn, without risk of strain, sculpture and music, geography and history, letters and nature-lore. Everything that is learned at all can be learned more easily if the old sense of touch is fallen back upon and allowed to give HAND-WORK AND ART TEACHING 255 its help freely. Of late Madam Montessori has shown how useful it can be in training children to read and write, but its full possibilities have never yet been tested — still less have they been illustrated in Nursery-Schools. Miss Blencarn's modelling course for teachers is psychologically valuable in training this sense of touch in a marked degree and also still further per- fecting the power of vision. It also has in view the great aim of developing the creative faculty. The course is begun with casts in low relief of very simple leaves, or with single leaves or flowers from nature fastened against a back- ground. A good deal of practice is necessary with these. The student then has a choice of casts in high relief, or of fruit or architectural ornament. She may turn to modelling a hand or foot or any of the features ; or a profile may be attempted in low relief or side view of an animal. Side by side with this artistic work is given modelling that will be more immediately useful in the school, such as a house, a doll, a cart or a ship. Still the shorter course in modelling can hardly be taken save as an alternative to the other. Our scouting among girls and their possibilities has brought us to this, that we find no two have the same gifts and yet nearly every one has an aptitude and may follow one line in art with profit. A few among our 25 girls taken more or less haphazard 256 THE NURSERY SCHOOL show great promise and ought to train as art mistresses in elementary schools. The longer course (of three years) would take the student far enough to test the higher powers of the subject. It might be, it would be well worth our while to let some girls leave all other forms of art and hand-work, all other forms of teaching even, so as to devote themselves to modelling as a means of teaching all subjects. This has been done with brilliant results, not only with gifted individuals, but even with classes, and even with classes of mental defectives. These have been educated almost entirely through modelling. They learn not only reading and number, but history, geography, literature and art through one, or rather two senses, and with one medium. Yet their models bring out and express not merely the form but also the spirit of what they hear or learn or feel. Their clay pictures are dramas and poems. They hear a poem read. They express it and all it means to them, in clay, and this work has the subtle power of a human voice. It interprets Literature, just as beautiful acting or speaking interprets it 1 That is why S^guin desired that little children should be allowed to handle things freely in their cradle. They are teased and mocked, he said in effect, by far-away things that they can only look at, and he did not care to have pictures in very young children's rooms. The touch famine is in HAND-WORK AND ART TEACHING 257 some of our bigger children. It is probably a be- lated hunger in them. They touch our clothes, and will not be denied. They are sometimes sent away, but they return to handle and feel every garment. They are making good lost time. This old, old sense that deals, not with emanations even, like smell, not with vibrations of air, like sound, or vibrations of ether, like vision, but with simple resistance is the basis of all feeling. The Modeller is the specialist in this kind of work. We must train some to do it so well, that they need do little else, or even perhaps little more. 41 * * * * Let us turn back here to our toddler. From the moment a one-year-old comes into the toddlers' camp the student-teacher begins to think of his tiny hand. It is always trying to get at things, to touch and rub, to press and seize, and if it becomes very timid, and does not point, or stretch out to get hold of everything, that is because something has happened to dis- courage it. The student-teacher is there to encourage. And what are the first things that draw these little hands and eyes ? If one is to tell one's own experience, I have to say that nothing is so much liked as beads. I put them on because they draw cries of joy even from new comers and the little ones are never tired of handling them. They may be given on a strong string, as the child doesn't mind the string 258 THE NURSERY SCHOOL at all, and with it is in no danger of swallowing a bead. He handles it and bites it. He tries to name it. Some of the first clear words are " bead " and " button." Nothing comes amiss to the hungry little hands. They should find hard toys and soft ones, wood and wool, stones and sands. All these are for joy. The little hand should also be allowed to do every- thing it can, to use a sponge, to carry a bib, or even a plate or mug, and also to handle a spoon. Out in the garden it will we know go to the stones if there are any it can lift and examine, but it will take hold of any and everything else, the tall and sappy stalks, the privet hedge twigs, the flowers and the warm cat and rabbits. Above all these, living things, for they move and live, and by and bye it will try to shape the sand in the pit or the clay in the tray, working earnestly it may be for a whole hour in a fit of ardour and interest. The toddlers ' nurse will, as we have seen, have done a great deal for the little hand, in giving it plenty of chances to fetch and carry, in training it to hold a spoon, and carry food to the mouth safely. All this is hand training just as much as writing or modelling, for it is always a hand obeying orders from the brain that is changing the place of things or changing their form. As a student she is to study plastic art and crafts so as to anticipate all he will need and do in the HAND-WORK AND ART TEACHING 259 first rapid years of eager life. And so she has to think not of something in which she must take a few lessons, but of art as a new language which she must understand just as she has to understand and speak her mother-tongue in the nursery. Here again imagination holds the foreground in the mental life of children. Here again it is the herald of Reason. Here again Imagination itself must use materials, and these in the plastic arts and crafts are visual and tactual images. The imagina- tion of the plastic artist then has to do with con- ditions in space — not as in the case of music with conditions or intervals in time. Not only the artist, but the mechanic, the workman and the scientist also deal with relations in space. The great majority of children will have to deal with these relations not only for pleasure, but also for the gaining of a livelihood. They must therefore fill a great part in the scheme of the new orders of education. In teaching drawing, modelling, painting, also in all the hand work, in oral work too, we must remember how the creative imagination will one day use and trans- mute this material we are providing. In giving up any of these subjects we are cutting off supplies not from a painter or pianiste, but from a future man or woman ! The girl students at the Rachel McMillan camp have a studio and are working under a good art mistress, working always with a view to applying 260 THE NURSERY SCHOOL what is learned in the nursery. There is no need to limit or hold back the work on this account. It can never be too beautiful, too careful or eVen too advanced, if the advance is sure. Only it must be done with a view to helping the young artist of seven and under. The short visual drills of the nursery are repre- sented in the teacher's scheme by very similar drills, and also by walks in the street and country, Walks are taken with trained observers. Some- times the observer is an historian or a geologist. Sometimes he is an artist. In any case his or her work is to train the students to see, and to remember what they have seen. This is done some- times by rapid sketches, and sometimes by descriptions in words. It is done also by memory- drawing. A dark curtain is drawn across a shelf and objects are placed there. The curtain is drawn after a few moments, and the students draw what they have seen. At first the majority see very little. This is the verdict not only of artists, but of historians and archaeologists who have walked with them. They take in very little of the general lines and character of a building or street. The details escape them altogether, or they are not seen in relation to the whole. After a certain time they begin to see more, and progress is in some cases very rapid. They go into the country ; they watch the HAND-WORK AND ART TEACHING 261 sailing ships and the barges. And later in the studio they draw what they have seen. Their drawings reveal much from the first. They are not copies, and the copying habit dies. One draws very clear outlines, and another with no gift of line has an elfin quality in colour, and a few have visual memories and power to realize them from the first. From the first also they try to make the common things about them express their own joy in work or life. They embroider without tracery as well as make designs for their bedspreads and window curtains. They draw illustrations for the history class and they illustrate the fairy tales and legends also for their own lessons. At first these have the almost uncanny look of very primitive artists. The figures are stiff and gruesome, the light and atmosphere very ghastly. Then, as the result of labour, sunshine comes into the work and the figures are more human and homely. CHAPTER XXIX GAEDENING Being outdoor people the students must leam gardening, and they have to learn this by work followed by study. From rough work we cannot turn away, on pain of learning nothing about soil. To dig, and trench and drain, and clear ! Even if some have little time for this in their short year course, they must do enough and see enough to leam the meaning and purpose of the work. Mrs. Hambledon, our teacher, has made of our garden and meadow a place where education is going on all the time. The toddlers follow her about the paths. Their little footprints are on places where footprints should not be. We cannot object very much, for they are so eager to help, so anxious to talk, so ready to learn in the garden. In the beginning the students can only leam by work. They set out new beds, they leam to plant trees and rose-bushes, to set vegetables and take care of a modest little greenhouse. Our students do not deal with all this work in mass. One concentrates on tree life, another on one particular branch of plant life found in the meadow 262 GARDENING 263 and garden or beyond it. Excursions are made, and lectures given, and the nature study is cor- related with the gardening in such points as nature of soil, germination of seeds, study of buds, dis- persal of seed and in every other way possible. In common with so many other schools we keep tadpoles, caddis worms, silkworms, caterpillars for the joy and wonder of children as well as the pleasure of the students. Here, as in other subjects, we find natural gifts leading on one student and another to make the choice of one line of work. It is not possible for us to believe that these desires only point to the uses of hobbies. They show rather the place of the meeting of all the waters of desire and power. Progress is through specialization. Specialization must come after the general education is over. That is the normal course. To live is to find one's way at last into the ranks of his own affinity workers. Our junior schools should in the future become more and more centres for specialists. They should be staffed very largely by teachers who have gone far in one line of work. Each of these should take the whole school, not one class in the school, for her particular subject. All the subjects, as I shall try to show, would then be better taught, for they would be taught, if not always by experts, yet always by people who are something better than "experts," that is to say by enthusiasts. CHAPTER XXX MEDICAL ATTENDANCE IN NUKSERY-SCHOOLS The children who enter a Nursery- School should be more or less " selected." To begin with, they must be free from any serious defect in mind, any incurable or grave defect of body. Further, no infectious cases can be admitted. The Principal or Head-mistress should be able to deal with any simple case of common infection, and should observe the state of the skin, and note any sign of catarrh or of sore throat. When any doubt exists the doctor is near. Our clinic is next door, but besides this, we have to have a medical visit every week as a condition of grant-earning. Where the infectious state is due to a child's being dirty and not to actual disease, or where the disease can be easily and quickly cured, the head- mistress should be able to send the child to the right place at once. The Nursery- School should be in touch with a school clinic and also, if possible, with a remedial bathing-centre. All round her she should have the medical help she needs. For example : 264 MEDICAL ATTENDANCE 265 If a child has adenoids or badly enlarged tonsils we have him treated at our clinic in Albury Street, where operations take place on Mondays. If he is suffering from scabies or skin disease, we take him to the bathing-centre on the Camp-school site, and where he can be treated by the nurse. If he has bad teeth, we send him to the dentist. If it is a hospital case, we get him into the hospital, and if he is too weak to be operated on at once, we take him in, give him special care, so that he is soon well enough to- go through the ordeal. In this way we can clear the ground for action. Once admitted, free of actual disease, a child ought to make rapid progress, and look well or practically well in a month. Among our ninety children the doctor visiting our camp weekly looks in vain for a patient. He comes in on Wednesday prepared to spend an hour if necessary. But the fact is that he rarely spends ten minutes. And this is the one test of hygiene in a Nursery- School, that the children are well, and are in no need of a doctor. " If it were not for the glory of the thing," said a woman of her carriage, " we might as well not have a carriage." If it were not for the glory of the thing, we might as well not have a medical attendant. A little while ago, when the question of raising doctors' salaries came before the L.C.C., I ventured to make the observation that our Nursery- School 266 THE NURSERY SCHOOL doctor stayed a very short time ; that though we had over ninety children in camp his weekly visits did not last on an average more than ten minutes. Everyone looked a little surprised, even disconcerted. Next day I found that our doctor does not stay ten minutes. He arrived as usual early in the day, and went into the camp. A moment later he stood at the window of my room, I was writing at a table that screened me from sight. " I suppose," said the doctor to the Principal, " they have been all weU as usual ? " " Yes, all well." " They look well enough," he said. " I never saw such a place ! " and he departed. He had not stayed five minutes. Far be it from me to say that there is no work for a professional man to do in this place. A great work lies in front of him, a field white with harvest, and where hardly a sickle has been put in. This work, however, concerns a field of research that has nothing at all to do with the diagnosis of pre- ventible illness, and with gross defects which are the result of neglect. Our doctor can break new ground, and devote time to the study of psychic and educational questions. He can direct the students and inspect the diaries they keep, which deal not only with the weight of childhood, but with many other things. Here is a sample of a student's diary to be seen by the doctor. MEDICAL ATTENDANCE 267 General state of health. Apparent state of the nervous system. Sensibility to cold. Sensibility to heat. Muscular system. Control of speech. Automatic movements. Walking and balance (power to go up and down). Power to wash — power to dress (what he can do). Power to run. Rhythm. Power to jump. To catch a big ball. To throw it. How he eats. How far he can help himself in dressing. Sense of — Touch. Taste. Smell. Hearing. Singing. Vision. Speech. Power of attention. General Power of — Sensory perception. Comparison. Behaviour in bath. Daily progress. Notes on progress. 268 THE NURSERY SCHOOL The notes, not the lists of pomts to be attended to alone, are important. In these the student writes down the small happenings of every day — the new words that have been mastered, happenings in the bath-room, in the shelter, in the herb garden, all the progress of the day. As her knowledge grows, the different parts of the diary- work enlarge. She traces the effect of diet on a rickety child, takes account of abnormalities, knows what to ask about and learns how to observe. Such work as this tells even in examination papers. It is plain that as these nurseries are multiplied and homes and schools become centres of health the work of our doctors must slip on to new lines. They will concern themselves more and more with the problems of growth and development ; with the secrets that underlie and determine the tem- perament and morale of different children ; with the abnormal, also, and with the problems of teaching, and the new pedagogy. They will instruct students and teachers and advise author- ities. The day of medical nursing will be over 1 CHAPTER XXXT ATTACHED AND DETACHED SCHOOLS The first flight of Nursery- Schools are all indoor places, with the exception of one, though it is only fair to say that some of them have gardens. Slowly, slowly, we, the descendants of people who slept in closed-up places, trust ourselves to the open. The heavily-curtained four-poster bed has gone. Windows are timidly opened. In summer we may even trust ourselves to a camp life in the open. Why and of what are we afraid ? The Rachel McMillan Nursery School is open in December and January without any kind of tragedy looming in the background. The health records are even better in January than in June. Few can trust themselves, however, to the new life. They dare not live in the open and grow up healthy. Meantime the L.C.C. is not only "recognizing private efforts," it is starting Nursery- Schools of its own. These are attached to the existing Infant Schools. Asphalt is to be broken up to make gardens. Perhaps trees will be planted. Hot water will be laid on perhaps, and I think that a grant is withheld from any Nursery- Schools that 269 270 THE NURSERY SCHOOL have no baths. Stretcher beds will be provided, and meals will have to be taken in School if, as we hope, the School is to become a real nursery. As for the staffing, infant mistresses who have tried to help the youngest children in the days when there was little chance of giving them what they needed, will now go on with the work under much better conditions. And perhaps, who knows ? Walls may be taken down here and there, and verandahs and awnings thrown out with sliding glass doors that will let the sun in and keep the east wind out in January. As the aim is changed, and the ideal begins to shine a little clearer, various means will be taken to get away from the old type of class-room. Twenty-five years ago all the little desks and forms were got out of Belle Vue Infant School in Bradford, and light little tables and chairs took their place. We have moved very slowly in these twenty-five years. We are moving faster now. There is another event just beginning to be foreshadowed — ^the founding of new Nursery- Schools on new sites. All the schools are small, forty to fifty children. This policy cannot be maintained. The mere fact that some nurseries will be attached wUl soon prove that the forty- group school is not only costly, but very dull. It is too big to be a family group. It is too small to be a child community. The great hope of rapid advance and illustration ATTACHED AND DETACHED 271 will depend, for a time at least, on the new detached open-air schools. They will start fairly with a new ideal, and as there are no walls to take down, no past tradition to fight against the new, they should become an example and an illustration of how to do this thing well. The organizers should not take any notice of timid proposals to " be out as much as possible." They should build and plan so that the children can be out safely in all weathers. All this does not mean that they need not plan to have shelter. It means just the oppo- site. They must think and plan for shelter and other things, as never before. Architects have a new task, and new opportunities, and they must rise now and be worthy of them. We have tried to show, mean- while, how this can be done even in this day of small things. We have given an illustration as to how it is done in a crowded part of south-east London, and with astonishing results. These early outdoor nurseries can become practising schools. The Board of Education has recognized the Rachel McMillan open-air centre, which gives a final year's training to teachers. These teachers have already taken their certificates after two years in a recognized Training College. Over and above these teachers I have the " free- lance " girls, who have never been to college, and who are taking a three-years' course with me. This course is not formally recognized by the Board of Education, still less is it counted equal to 272 THE NURSERY SCHOOL a college course and endorsed certificate for the year following. And yet, in the examinations hitherto conducted by us, the first three girls were all free-lance students, and two of these were ex- elementary school girls who had not attended any school after their fourteenth year. I do not attach too much importance to these results I They may be very different next year. But one thing we may allow ourselves to say. The future belongs to the new three-year course train- ing. The other is out of date already. It is very possible that the old-world student may know more than the other. She may learn more, not less : but it is all packed on shelves in her mind, and a great deal of it has never been applied at all. It lies there, as we have seen already, in the dark, awaiting the day of experience. Yet even when the day of actual work does arrive, the things seen and done do not always relate themselves quickly to the things learned 1 and so, at first, and perhaps for a long time, perhaps for ever, theory and practice run alongside in the mind and do not form one stream of intelligence. A teacher, facing a large class, is not allowed to know any one of them truly. Our youngest students begin by knowing children and working with them. They start in the toddlers ' room, and get devoted to some toddler, or to many. They must apply all the time. The toddler tempts them to do it. He leads them on by wiles of his ATTACHED AND DETACHED 278 ovm. They must sing to him. They must dance with him. They must think for him. In every lecture they must think, " How will this affect Tommy ? " or, " Can Charlie profit by doing this or that ? " These questions are so different in their effect from the old terrible question : — " Shall I, or shall I not, pass my examination ? " Finally, and this is the crux of the matter : the old-world student had no sensory training to speak of. I do not see how the Board of Education can long refuse grants for the free-lance students. A new order of work and method is being worked out in the new open-air school. They will make a contribution to pedagogy. They will make the new contribution to it. That is why the L.C.C. and the Board must help and encourage their work. An alternative syllabus will have to be drawn up sooner or later. It should be drawn up now when the need for research is urgent. The work costs much. How much it will save, no one can tell. Among the legions of the saved there will soon, in all probability, be scores of children who even from the standpoint of the materialist will pay for the nurture of all the children many times over. CHAPTER XXXII FINANCE OF THE NURSERY- SCHOOL What does the Nursery- School cost ? On every hand this question is now raised, and the answer is not far to seek. The cost of founding the school is the biggest expense of all, and this brings us straight up at once against the land question, which is at the bottom of all the others. Space is needed — ^not bricks and mortar. Space — ^not fine furniture or expensive finishings. Where, in the heart of the crowded cities, that is where it is most needed, are we to find land ? The hunt has begun. On the agenda paper of the Central Care Committee of the L.C.C. on this 17th day of July there are, as I have said, proposals for the opening of attached and detached schools, and over and above these there will be for inspec- tion some half-dozen new sites. These will, we hope, be future open-air Nursery- Schools. As time goes on the hunt, not for houses but for space, will grow keener. And then some new arrange- ments will have to be made as regards private ownership of land, and the cost of this land to public authorities — ^that is to the public. 274 FINANCE 275 It is a hard, bitter struggle. It must go on. It will go on till the goal is reached. Space for the toddler ! He is here at last with his restless feet, feeling his life in every limb. Room must be found for him at last. The L.C.C. is buying and clearing away old houses. It is scouting in unused pieces of ground : it is looking at unused and held-up sites with a view to future needs and desires. One very necessary item is on the agenda paper. It runs as follows : — " That the Housing of the Working Classes Com- mittee be asked to consider the question of setting aside sites, in connection with their housing schemes, for the organization of Nursery- Schools." If this last suggestion is really carried out, there is little doubt that we are nearing success. The Committee can easily plan their houses so as to make them all open at the back on a communal open-air nursery. This is the ideal way, so far as can be judged to-day, of doing this new thing. It gets over the old, old complaint about " taking the children away from their mothers," putting them under their mothers' eyes for the whole day ! There are, then, three ways of getting hold of the land to-day. First, by taking it wherever we can find it. Secondly, by breaking up and planting trees and gardens in parts of our school playgrounds and taking down such walls or throwing out such verandahs and covered places as we can ; and lastly by getting the Housing Committee to plan 276 THE NURSERY SCHOOL nurseries as well as homes for the people's children. As regards the cost of this great item, no fixed estimate can be given. Prices will vary greatly. The time is ripe, however, for a survey of the land in rural and city areas with a view to the opening of many new nurseries. No permanent building or house is needed, except for the staff and not in every case for the staff. All the proposed nurseries, however, include a house of some kind, and we need not object to this, all the more as the children need never enter it. Their place, even in the most severe weather, is not in the house, but in the shelters planned and built so that they may always be in moving air and a large space, and always, when necessary, in shelter. The cost of building a shelter fitted to take, say, thirty-five children was, as we know, only £124 before the war. The same shelter would now cost much more than double that sum — ^probably about three times, £400. Prices will go down in time, but the cost of building an outdoor nursery will be at least £8 per head in capital expenditure. This is only half the actual cost of school-building yesterday, however, as reckoned by Education authorities (yesterday when everything but land was cheap) all over the country. Food. — ^The cost of food has gone up far and fast, but this does not frighten us. At the outset we note with great pleasure that even in the poorest quarters FINANCE <2!tt fathers and mothers are willing to help. Last year— 1918— the parents of the children in the Rachel McMillan Nursery Camp paid, as I have already said, £412 towards its upkeep. This covered two-thirds of the whole cost of the children's food. Yet the food though simple, was of the best, and was not only liberal but varied. It appears that when a large number is catered for, the cost of every little mouth is extraordinarily small. The parents gave 2s. per week and the children had three meals per day for five days and two meals on Saturday. We have a clean bill of health. Keating and Lighting. — This is a heavy item where gas is used. Stoves throw out a great heat, but require more labour than the gas stove. On the whole it is cheaper to have stoves for a school of ninety children, excluding the rooms used by students of the College, but including the necessary firing and lighting needed by the Nursery Staff, totalling £220. Staffing.' — It is to be hoped that the new schools will be staffed largely by young girls learning their craft. All the arguments against this are fast breaking down one after another. To begin with, as I have tried to show, this work can be learned only by the doing of it. Secondly, the young girl has as a rule some natural gifts which she may lose when she grows into a mature woman. And last of all and best, she will and must be under 278 THE NURSERY SCHOOL the tutorship of fully-equipped teachers. The first centres should include one or two specialists on the staff. They should be small centres, not more than 30 to 40 students. We may not all know it yet, but the day is past for large colleges with massed students who never can hope to come into very close touch with their teachers. The cost of staffing would be, to-day, given a proportion say of four probationers to every trained teacher, and a trained teacher for every 30 children, about £4 per annum for every child taken. If the Nursery-School was not a training centre and employed only teacher -nurses, the cost of staff would be higher. It is not easy to see how the schools can be run, however, without some scheme of probationership : and it is to be hoped that the authorities will not favour the engaging of a lower class of girl, a mere attendant, or even a mere nursery girl. Everything goes to show that the time has come for getting only educated and refined personal influences in our nursery-schools. The whole cost of these schools, exclusive of the sum which even the poorest class of parent can pay, need not total more than £8 per head per annum. An outcry may be raised in some quarters against the charging of any sum to the parents for board. This outcry should, I think, be faced. The people were once treated as serfs. That seems to be no good reason for now treating them as paupers. The FINANCE 279 best among the poorest want to pay, love to pay, claim the right to pay. It is the reckless, the unstable, the bad-intentioned, the people who send their children back ill, the unworthy who have shifted their burdens on to us all these years in a great pack : they who broke our hearts and purses and grieved us, by holding the child as a kind of hostage at last and trading on our love for him, it is they who want, and indeed take, everything for nothing. They are not the real people — ^the majority. No, but they are a big minority in some areas. We have a right to make terms with them. And some conditions must be made that will bind not only teachers but also parents to take some new burdens and responsibilities, to send the children regularly, for instance, to send them as clean as possible, to give suitable food at week- ends, to have separate beds and proper hours of sleep and to give some kind of pledge that the child will not be removed save for very good reasons. A Nursery-School of 100 children can be run to-day at an annual cost of £12 per head, and of this sum the parents in the poorest quarters can pay one-third. A Nursery-School staffed by students will cost more, but the greater part of the increased cost would be paid as fees and maintenance of future teachers. An open-air nursery and training, centre, numbering in all about 100 children and 30 students, costs as nearly as makes no difference £2,200 per annum* CHAPTER XXXIII INFLUENCE OF THE NUESERY-SCHOOL ON THE HIGHER SCHOOL At the age of seven our children must leave the Nursery-School. The Board of Education fixed the ages at two to five, but this can only be taken as a very temporary proposal, as indeed only a suggestion by the way. The one-year-old is just as eager for education as the two-year-old, and is even more dependent on the people around him for help and nurture. As for the five-year-old, it is altogether wrong to change the whole order of life at that age unless the order is itself wrong and harmful. To take our five-year-olds out of the garden and thrust them into a big elementary school is a monstrous proposal. Seven is the big milestone. At that age the child makes a pause. A change which alters the whole trend of life is noted by physiologists in a brief sentence : " The brain increases no more in mass, and ener- gizes in a new fashion." Though the science of psychology is very young, yet some of its findings are old, so old that a thousand years ago and more, observant teachers saw very well the change 2M INFLUENCE 281 in a child at the end of the first cycle, and made provision for it. At the gate of our nursery-garden on this great birthday of birthdays our seven- year-old waves us good-bye. For a moment, ere he is out of sight, we may ask here in this book on Nurseries : — " Where is he going ? " He is going to school, but to what school ? To the big Council School round the corner. It has great walls all round and locked gates and asphalted playground and stone stairs leading up to big class-rooms. Into this room we may cast a longing glance, where, all unused to everything he sees here, he begins a new stage of his life. The big school, with its stone stairs and grim walls, is a heritage from yesterday. It has cost a great deal of money, but that does not make it very beautiful, or very suitable, or even efficient. This kind of building was not conceived in the open like the Greek Temple, or even like our corrugated iron shed. It can be changed almost out of know- ledge, and it should be changed. Bowlin g Back Lane Council School, Bradford, is altogether changed. Other schools can be altered too. They will be one or two storey buildings. Their lower walls can be taken doWn and replaced more or less by movable glass doors with an awning or covered way looking on the playground side. Bathrooms can be put in and a hot-water system laid on, and the asphalt can be broken up so as to make possible a garden of some kind ; a pond could be dug, and 282 THE NURSERY SCHOOL one might even see a heap of stones and flints and have space to build and work a little in the open. Alas ! How vain these words will appear to many. We can offer all our children a life and education in harmony with nature only by putting up new schools in a different spirit and for a new work. " The slums must be cleared," we are told " and homes built in more open places further out." Let us begin now. It will be no easier to-morrow. Huts and temporary buildings should be put up quickly to receive displaced tenants. Surveys should be made and slum property taken down. All stretches of waste land (and there are many, even here in Deptf ord, and all around our teeming streets) should be taken over. Above all, the authorities should refuse to put up any more buDdings of any kind in some areas. And for the clearing of areas near the homes, boys and girls might be set to work. Not only in class-rooms but in yards and dumping grounds and back areas one can give hand-work. To pass through filthy places all broken and disordered to reach school is bad for our boys and girls. Nothing they leam will rub out this dailj^ impression of dirt. Classes of children should be sent out with leaders to put up fences, or to clear the place near, to plant trees, to do some public work, in short, however humbly, and to take responsibility for their own neighbourhood. Our seven-year-old INFLUENCE 283 would help. He is used to helping. For a time he will be eager to help, and free from the nipping frost that comes when the desire to live and learn has no free outlets. The walls of a prison-house need not close on him then once and for ever. stc rii sic sic sif School-Baths. — Our seVen-year-old is clean and used to water. If there are baths he will give no trouble. The influence of the Nursery-School will tell here because he will have been trained to bathe and dress himself from babyhood and will require next to no supervision. This will make possible a rapid and effective use of the bath and a great love for it. If there are no baths he will suffer. The sense-training he has had will make him aware of things that the un-nurtured never feel. We must have baths in schools and in homes. The expense need be no bar, for very simple installa- tions can be put up even in the playgrounds or in the basement, and a class of older boys, acting under a good teacher, might even do some of the work themselves ! Better surely to let them do this kind of work and go into the wood-work class also. It would be expensive ? Are we then economical to-day. Why ! we are spending hundreds of pounds every year on transport for verminous children. We (the L.C.C.) engage vans and carry children like helpless lumber to a bathing station. We also send them into a school clinic to receive treatment for dirt disease. In the 284 THE NURSERY SCHOOL Deptford bathing centre the big boys who came to be cleansed destroyed every vestige of furniture in the waiting-room while waiting for their baths ! This was a protest, I suppose, against never having the chance to make anything, not even a tub or a tap I At the clinic hundreds of children come back four times in a year with the same dirt disease. The arrival in the junior school of many well- washed, clean-smelling little people will ma^e it impossible to go on in this way, spending thousands of pounds every year on vans and disinfecting soaps, doctoring and drugs, vermin destructors and renewals .... yet unable, in spite of all, to be fair to a clean child. Clothing. — The effect of the Nursery-School clothing scheme must tell on the upper schools. Boys who have always worn clothes that have gone often into the tub will not put on the evil- smelling, unwashable suits that make the class- rooms of to-day so unpleasant. There will be a new demand for jerseys, washable serge knickers and stout but smart overalls. The girls' dresses, underwear and overalls could be made on the Educraft pattern and of the fadeless sundour and serge in which the Nursery-School child looks so winsome. School uniform should be encouraged for we know what the ideal form of dress is. It does not change. Fashions change and are often ugly. The beautiful human form is the same INFLUENCE 285 in all ages. Even in the average child it varies little : the ideal not at all. Colour and stitching may vary, however, as much as the wearer pleases. There originality may show itself freely. A supply of soft shoes and of stockings, jerseys, under vests, shirts and overalls should be kept in every school so that parents can buy them by instalments. In this way a neglected child can be clothed before going into class with the others. CHAPTER XXXIV EFFECT OF THE NURSERY -SCHOOL ON THE TEACHING OF UPPER SCHOOLS The Nursery-School should make a new junior school possible because it will send out children who are equipped for a much easier and more rapid advance than is the average child of to-day. To begin with our nursery child will speak English, and this in itself means an enormous saving of time. The teacher can begin without any more delay to use and perfect this instrument. She can raise the level of her teaching, and the great strain now borne by so many teachers of simplifying, repeating, straining the voice, perhaps forcing the emphasis will begin to be unnecessary. The teacher will then be free to think of the subject matter of her lessons, and to use her powers in developing that. Who but a teacher knows what a lifting of burdens this will mean ! Then our child of seven can read and has read ; in ninety cases out of one hundred is eager to read more. The modern world of interest and movement and wonder will be ajar for him already, a thing unknown almost to-day, except in our 280 TEACHING OF UPPER SCHOOLS 287 most favoured schools. We shall have to have real school libraries even for the eight-year-olds, great long shelves with thousands of books on them, and here the junior school teachers will send classes to browse and choose their own books, at stated times in the day. No longer need she have the whole of her big class marshalled in front of her. Some can be always in the library, and she will know how to help them when they are there. The joy of quiet work will come into our terribly disciplined schools, stealing in like the morning and breaking up without disorder the half-frozen masses. At a word children can be ready and glad to sit quietly at desks or tables absorbed in work. They can write, model, draw, paint or arrange their collections in peace, and without troubling other people, for they have done this and formed the habit of doing it at the Nursery- School. The variety of gifts and aptitudes will become more pronounced and more respected. A child with a gift for drawing or modelling will not always have to march with a regiment of children who can do little or nothing in this work. Those who have a born love for music will be discovered in good time. Such children will be put in smaller classes, and have teaching suited to their power and promise. " Who is to teach them? " we may be asked. Looking at our small group of thirty young students chosen haphazard, we might feel astonished in 288 THE NURSERY SCHOOL our turn, and say : " There are teachers already among the very few score training in Nursery- Schools who will do this kind of work well ; and who are yet quite ready and able to ntiake up a general staff of specialists. The difficulty of getting children taught now is not that teachers cannot be found who have any special talent. It is that the children arrive in the elementary schools so unpre- pared, so neglected as to their early culture and education that nothing can be known about them for months or years. First there is a long winter of lost opportunity, and then the short school years, only too short for the hurried scramble to learn the three R's and other things ! Given early nurture children would begin to show themselves as more or less unfolding entities after seven, or in any case they would group themselves into various and contrasting types ; and then teachers would have to specialize. There are many simple tests that show a chUd's bent. Take for example the writing or telling of a story. No sooner can one tell or write a story than one tells a great deal about oneself ! Here, for example, is a girl with a gift for descriptive writing. She can already give a good impression of what she has seen or heard to others, and Would be likely to have great pleasure in this work in after years. It would be easy now to give her help, to put the right models before her, and by sympathy and encouragement to make of her a very ardent worker, wrestling for her own develop- TEACHING OF UPPER SCHOOLS 289 ment even in these early years. We see every day our toddlers fighting to master a language and doing it. Why should we think that a nine-year-ol d would never try to perfect this instrument ? The great classification is that which divides us all more or less into two great orders, viz. : — those who observe, and secondly, those who interpret. Some, perhaps, all, do both, but not in equal proportion. The outer world draws and absorbs the former, the inner world is the great theatre of the latter ; and it is of great importance to understand both types for each is in need of help. The child with an observing, outward- looking mind, good in practical work, is as much in need of help as a more emotional child. The teacher who receives them both into her school, healthy, intelligent and unspoilt by wrong treat- ment, would be free now to treat them as indivi- duals, and to help them not by mere specialization, but by sympathizing and helping them to use their real powers. The child who loves drawing could be allowed to use his gift in the learning of history or geography. Above all no one would be kept back because of his weakness or want of ability. The rallying point would be discovered. The stress would be there. To give a case in point. Here is Peter, a child of nine. He taught himself to read in a few weeks when he was six, and from that time on he has devoured books, reading tales of adventure, poems 290 THE NURSERY SCHOOL and even essays. He writes stories and descrip- tive letters in a poor, hurried script, but with a great deal of charm and spirit, and he has never been able to do eVen the simplest kind of sums without great worry. He went to one large Council School after another, and was always kept down on account of his arithmetic being so Very poor. " The boys," he said, with a grieved look on his face, " read baby books." I listened to this complaint. The boy had just given me a spirited account of a chapter in French history. He loves history. He has read many books. " The boys," he said, " are babies in reading They say I am a baby," he said, with a frown. " I am not a baby in everything." I went to the school and had a talk with the head master. After a time it was possible to raise Peter to a higher standard. Alas ! Things were not right, even then. He was still very unhappy at school. " Nothing to read," he said, " lessons too easy, all but sums." And as time went on, he began to develop mischievous traits. His character appeared to change for the worse. He made no progress, even in sums, and had bad reports from school. Surely this is a wrong way to deal with children. To ignore their gift and force them to mark time because they fail in one subject, as for example, arithmetic, in drawing or even in reading, is not TEACHING OF UPPER SCHOOLS 291 only to waste their time. It may sour the heart and damp every good impulse to work and effort. Without trying to specialize too far it should be possible to put a boy into different standards for different subjects. Peter could have been in Stand- ard VII. for reading and history at the age of nine. He might be perhaps in Standard II. or even I. for arithmetic. One great result of the Nursery-School will be that the children can get faster through the curri- culum of to-day. When they are half or two-thirds through the present elementary school life they will be ready to go on to more advanced work. And why should they be held back ? Work now taken only in Central and Secondary schools may then be started in Standards VI. or VII. It is very hard, for example, to find any good reason why all children in Standard VI. should not be learning two languages. To-day this seems foolish because so many cannot even speak their mother tongue. It is this strange holding back that is wonderful, not the idea of going forward and learning what every educated Russian or Finn has to learn from his cradle. In short, the Nursery-School, if it is a real place of nurture, and not merely a place where babies are " minded " till they are five, will affect our whole educational system Very powerfully and Very rapidly. It will quickly raise the possible level of culture and attainment in all schools, 292 THE NURSERY SCHOOL beginning with the junior schools. It will prove that this welter of disease and misery in which we live, and which makes the doctor's service loom bigger than the teacher's, can be swept away. It will make the heavy walls, the terrible gates, the hard playground, the sunless and huge class- room look monstrous, as they are. It will give teachers a chance. The arrival of thousands of beautiful and strong children will bring down the gates. Through the awful and grim corridors the light of joy as well as youth will pass. The bastilles will fall at last by the touch of a little hand. During our first six months our open-air Nursery - School was residential. Our children slept in camp, even on Sunday night, and during the whole time our bill of health was almost perfect. We had only one case of sickness, a measles case, who was sent away, and no other child caught the infection. When the night camp was closed, and the chDdren began to go home at night, the brilliant record of health was dimmed a little. Yet even now the children who have been here for so short a time as one month appear to have, as I have tried to show, little or no need for a doctor. It is rather strange that with results like these before their eyes, the founders of the first group of recognized Nursery-Schools have practically all kept to the indoor type, that eight of the Nursery-Schools are to be started by the L.C.C. TEACHING OF UPPER SCHOOLS 293 and others on the way are merely to " have a garden." " We all want as much open air as we can," said a member of the committee that has the work in hand, " but," he added, " we must think what the children will do when there is a thunder shower." I have tried to show that outdoor schools do provide shelter, that we do not propose to let every child stand in driving snow or sleet all day without any kind of protection, that in short we think a great deal about weather and its changes. And at last people will launch forth on the new venture, and cease to hug the coasts any longer. Our babies will reassure everyone. People look at them in wonder, as at dream children. Is it not all a dream, this vigour, this beauty ? They ought to have pneumonia ! . . . . To return now to our seven-year-old. After all the gradual change and transformation of the elementary school is not the only change we desire. The home does not match the nursery. How often have visitors said : " What becomes of these beautiful children when they go away ? Some return to poor and dark rooms which you cannot make bright and fair. What can you do when the home is really too bad — ^there are such homes. We have looked in at the doors. What ? . . . " Our answer is ready : " We used to have a camp school for boys and girls, and we hope to have one again." 294 THE NURSERY SCHOOL Our seven-year-old on leaving us might then continue the life and education he is now having. He would sleep in the open, and yet be under his parents' eyes, and haVe dinner with them every day. He would have help in the evenings. He would have a bath every day, and be taught in a small class. JThis kind of school was opened here in 1912 in a cleared space where we now have the upper section of our Nursery-School. The history of this school and its results are set forth in a little book called The Camp School, published by Allen & Unwin, at Ruskin House, Museum Street. Ah I if we had it now we should not see our seven- year-old go forth and lose his bloom. (Some of the things he won here, the straight limbs for example, last out a lifetime, but the bloom is soon tarnished.) Rejected still and long despised, vanished now altogether, the Camp School is still the great hope of the crowded and poor places in every great city. No other kind of school has ever met the real and pressing needs of the crowded homes of to-day. None is so easy to run, so easy to finance, so well- adapted to form new links with homes. None can deal without displacement and without loss with well-endowed children, whose latent health and intelligence are now wasted. The Camp School was open all day and all night. It took in all the life, not a fragment of it. It left the cliUd near his home, near his parents. If not to-day, then to-morrow local authorities will come to see that TEACHING OF UPPER SCHOOLS 295 all this is priceless, that no spiriting away of anaemic children can be of such true value to the poor. They will plant these schools in crowded districts, and draw into them a large percentage of the ill-housed. The building of the Camp School cost less than £3 per head in capital expenditure before the war. It was a temporary building and made of poelite and iron like the Nursery-School. My dear sister found the dumping site, and we cleared it, and put up the school. The empty recreation ground was in front, and all day in summer we heard the rustle of leaves, and saw a vista of green from the big single class-room. Opening off the main building there should have been cloak-rooms with racks for slippers and places in which to keep clothing ; also tall cupboards for folding beds, and beyond all this a bathroom with hot water laid on and offices. We had a boiler and a shower- bath shed. The front should have low folding doors for bad weather and the school might be heated and lighted by gas or by electricity. It was slum area. We could not have any grant. We were not recognized. Our teachers took risks in coming to us. We learned that England's children could be saved at a very small cost — ^that here a real home-life could.be planned for the poorest at least. And what fun it was ! What an air of adventure everywhere. At night when all the guests were gone and the children in bed, it was still and beauti- 296 THE NURSERY SCHOOL fill in the shelter. We saw the stars come out. The night air, pure and fresh, passed freely over the sleeping faces of the campers. This could happen again in every crowded area. Each could have its Camp School. The parents would pay for the food. I cannot say more here. I have given all details in the other book. The girls' camp, so simple and even primitive in all its arrangements, was carried on through the rigour of five winters. It was even more beautiful in its results and promise than the other. The nation will have to do it again and on a large scale. For, as yet, there is no proposal even to deal quickly with the housing question as it affects chOdren in any other form, or by any other agency, and even when the new houses are built we must learn how to live in them. CHAPTER XXXV A MIDSUMMER NIGHT IN CAMP The charges brought against our teachers in the past are not charges at all. They do not reflect either their character or their aims, but rather the conditions under which they worked and the social life of the age. They are a reflection on the country, not on the profession. Dulness in middle life : intellectual barrenness in middle life : a narrow horizon and mere teacher-point of view. All this we hear of them, and behind all this as behind a heavy screen is the real man, the real woman, herself, ourself. In order to remove the screen of prejudice we have to bring in not only a new ideal, but new ways of attaining it. The w'orking out of this process is our great task to-day, and in order to tackle it, we have to make new experiments not only in schools, but in training colleges. These have the tradition of the cloister. Some of them are mediaeval in their cold severity, their asceticism. They are, nevertheless, crowded with students. We will have no crowd, no cloister. We will have a small college, and we will place our students in the front fire of the battle, and let them learn 297 298 THE NURSERY SCHOOL from life. In doing this we are, after all, only following Froebel and Rousseau, not to speak of Plato. It is true we are outstripping them also, and going into places in which they did not set foot. " Learn by doing," they said. We have founded our College and taken our fair young student teachers into the slums. It is here that they will have to begin their life-work. This life sea, so deep, so dark and baffling they will have to chart, for, as it appears, no one else has succeeded in charting it. Others took the child as a subject for study, but they will have to deal with the child's environment. Its strange and powerful influence will be part of their business. Having faced this larger problem all the others will become easier. It is safe also to prophesy that our student- teachers will not be called intellectually barren or become worn-out through petty strains in middle life. Moreover, her special gift will be her medium. Let me illustrate this by a page taken from their life here in camp. It is Peace night, and our students are having a choir practice in the north- facing shelter of the open-air Nurserj'. If we had a large hall it is possible we should not be here. The teacher, an artist, is a little anxious, and her pupils are more or less in sympathy with her. However, the sky is stainless. In its great blue arch the moon rides. By her side one star sparkles slowly. The girls with their veiled heads stand under the low iron roof, the low, bright -painted A MIDSUMMER NIGHT IN CAMP 299 paling of the shelter on their left. A full sweet chord is played on the piano, making the silence alive with promise and the young voices break out like a river. They are singing, and the words have a prophetic sound as they fall on the blue dome of the summer night. " I mil not cease from mental strife, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand ; Till I have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land." Is it true ? Can it be true what they are promis- ing, the young Voices that have gained such rich- ness and purity all in one term ? I do not know. Many are going to listen. Many will come to see. They are coming now ! SUently as the moon came in th% sky, a great change comes over the houses round about. There are many houses overlooking the camp, and they have each many windows. All these windows are opened and behind them, like people in the boxes of a theatre, appear many people, women old and young, and men also. The camp is an open-air theatre, the audience perfectly still. It listens as if to Melba or Caruso, in breatliless silence. The singers sing on, and the pianist plays all unconscious " Bring me my harp of burning gold, Bring me my arrows of desire ! " The voices sing bravely now, charged with aspira- tion. One girl has a wonderful voice. The poor mean building seems to tremble and 300 THE NURSERY SCHOOL vibrate. This is a lesson, however, not a per- formance. The pianist, at the close of the song, wheels round on her stool. She makes criticisms. She selects one and another to sing alone. She teaches. She behaves only as a teacher. There is no movementk no murmur from the stalls. " Go into the open," says the teacher at last. " You will sing ' The Mariners ' now ! Go, four of you, and stand on chairs as audience." It is a splendid idea — a real play at last. The windows above, though very quiet, are all astir with joyful anticipation. New faces appear, win- dow curtains are pinned up or taken away alto- gether. Still no sound from above and no one below even takes any notice of the audience or knows it is tl^ere. But now the jolly strains of " The Mariners " ring out and the playground is alive with dancing maidens. Through the chinks of the fence they can be seen from the streets and the rousing music is heard. All this is too much for our friends and boys of the neighbourhood. They swarm up the fence, and sit astride, or balance themselves very cleverly on the corrugated iron shed over the sand-pit. How is one to keep still when such dancing is going forward. This is the time to show appreciation, to encourage rising talent, which they do, with fervid expressions of goodwill and even shouts of applause. Alas ! that this is really a lesson, not a performance . . . A MIDSUMMER NIGHT IN CAMP 801 The music stops. What should now be done by the teacher ? Should she close the lesson ? She has nothing to do with the crowd, with the slum, but only with the students, and it is quite clear that no lesson could go on in this hubbub. A teacher who has an eye only for her subject would close ; but if, O ! if, one could be found who has a wider glancing vision then she need not close. There is consternation and fear at the window. The people there think and say that these lessons are " better than the pictures." Nay 1 They are glad to give up the pictures and even the public-house in order to witness them. Does she see that ? Yes ! she sees that, and she does a very simple thing. She goes to the sandpit and speaks to the crowd on the roof. " Please come down," she says, " I'm going to let you in." There is silence at once, and great appreciation. The windows are glad once more. The swarm is down in a moment and gathered round the gate which is opened wide. " I want captains to keep order," says the teacher. They are forthcoming at once, also a major, a big, strong lad who puts his arms across the gateway. " They won't pass till I give 'em the word," he says. The teacher looks at her wrist watch. " Only five minutes, then you must march them all out." 302 THE NURSERY SCHOOL The major's handsome, dirty face falls. But he salutes. It is done. In five minutes the boys have had their treat, and have marched out in good order. The students are singing again, but the words of the first song drown for me the later music : " I will not cease from mental strife, Nor shall the sword sleep in my hand ; Till I have built Jerusalem " There are good stones, in plenty. We want also, architects. *£■ ^^ r^ Jfi S^ Is this all ? No. The choir practice came to an end early in the evening, while the moon was still pale. An hour passed. The windows were empty. The moon shone like gold. Then suddenly a wild thing wakened outside. Like a lion it awoke and roared terribly. The street was a furnace of wild laughter, and howls half- brutish, half-human. It swelled, that angry tumult, like a sea, it howled and cried, it lifted itself up and broke into long deep sobbings and breaking as of waves on a beach. Yet always above every lull rose a deeper, angrier voice, a tumult as of furies all in conflict tearing up the quiet of the summer night. The camp — a great oasis of peace — ^lay under the moon-light. The students had taken their beds out under the awnings and some were camped in the open space between the shelter. " Were A MIDSUMMER NIGHT IN CAMP 303 you not afraid ? " ask voices of to-day. No, oh no ! That wild thing outside is very well kno^vn to us. We have heard his roar a hundred times. We know we are safe with the people in this neigh- bourhood. In Belgravia, in Mayfair, in Blooms- bury we might not be always safe. But here ! None would harm us. All would rise in our defence if necessary. Have we not seen an army rise out of the gutter here and make the last sacrifice for an ideal ? That was not a mere pose. It was not even an impulse. It was a decision taken after years of lif^, of struggle and temptation, and falling and rising again. Some of the people who took that decision are outside. Some of them are in the drinking shops. Even so they are courteous to our girls. In the West-end we might have pleasanter sights to look at. Here we can sleep with open doors. Yet we are not at rest. We are not afraid for our girls. We are afraid for our palings and for our cabbages. As the night wears on one cloaked figure and then another steals silently across the playground and down the shadowy walks between the laburnums and the young beeches. Are these young girls ? And if so are they not transgressing rules ? Yes, they are our young girls, and they are breaking the rules. They might keep every rule made and be far less disinterested, far less loyal and charming than they are. We have rules like every other college, and one 304 THE NURSERY SCHOOL rule is that every girl shall be in bed and the camp in silence at 9.45. Two girls are breaking rules, because they know that the garden and meadow are in danger. Rockets are going up every moment and the air and sky are of a bright purplish-red colour. White stars burst overhead and trailing comets of red and blue, and yellow balloons of light. " I hoped you didn't see me," whispers our frank Kathleen going past my window on the return journey, " but I want to tell you this. All the policemen are called up to the city. There is no one on the beat, and the boys are round the other side of the orchard. The garden and meadow are quite safe up to the present. I hope they won't be tempted," added Kathleen sagely as she crept into her bed under the awning. The tumult ceased as it began^ — in a moment. It was past midnight when, without warning, all fell silent. The great crowds left the streets and vanished into dark places. Nothing moved or whispered any more. The moonlight fell on the sleeping houses and on the bunting hanging motion- less from poor little windows and from town halls. In the morning we found our palings burnt down, our gardens trampled and rifled, the work of six months undone in an hour. A widow (who was always friendly) was in our garden picking up leaves of broken cauliflower and cabbage. The raiders had not troubled to pull up the cabbages. They pulled out their hearts. CHAPTER XXXVI HOLIDAYS The word " holiday " has a joyful sound to most people. It means going abroad, or going to the sea, or perhaps freedom and play. In the L.C.C. Schools there have been many holidays this term, that is, days when school is closed, and they have been hailed with shouting and cheering. In our Nursery-School the word is a joyful one also, but only for the students and the staff. They are going home. The children too are going home. The toddlers will have a month of damped-down life. The parents will have no help with them. They do not hide their woe. Poor toddlers ! Something has been done to make their home life better. This does not alter the fact that Charlie will go back into a grim room at the back of a grim shop in a grim back street. There will be no more play under the great planes and mulberry where the leaf shadows fall on scores of little heads. No more, when the wind is up, will the meadow be alive with merry shouts. No more gay talk before tea, no news, no wonder, no dancing with K — and G— when in the afternoon the toddlers waken, u 305 306 THE NURSERY SCHOOL This afternoon there was great joy. Herbert had learned to walk in three days and began forthwith to proceed on his own feet and unsupport- ed, down the wide bare shelter, the wind lifting his soft hair, his beautiful little face Very grave and proud ; while over against the bathroom door stood a crowd of admiring students None was so proud as Bride, our girl from Glas- gow, who adores Herbert. She has watched him daily for six long months, and was present when the doctor, shaking his head six months ago, said : " You'll no do much \vith him. It's a peety he lived so long. " Well, Herbert is in splendid form now and fond of visitors. He always laughs at the doctor as if he knew that this learned gentle- man had been mistaken. Alas ! poor Herbert ! Bride will not play with you to-morrow. You will eat at odd times, and you will be crying perhaps at 11 p.m. in the dark street where your mother has sent you with a neighbour. All your days and nights will fall back into a scramble of waking and eating and crying — as of old. Teddy will be in a worse case. He lives in a cellar. Plump and rosy now, he will soon be pale. He will look another chUd in his dirty and ragged clothing. For though he comes clean now in a morning his mother will slip back to the old ways when the nursery is clo.sed. Our G , a student from Suffolk, looks at Teddy sadly. She is one of our free-lances. She came to us when HOLIDAYS 307 we were not recognised, when everything looked dark ahead, when, in short, everyone who helped me was taking a risk. We shall have no grant even in future years so far as I know for such as G . These girls have among other gifts a selfless love and swinging courage that are very wonderful to behold. They are not in the spirit of the new Trades Unionism. Trades Unionism may be necessary ; it can do many things. It can also spoil many things. Does G ever begin to wonder whether at first she was not wrong in doing so much and being so happy ? Was she, or were the others who made the Nursery- School of Wonder possible, wrong ? No, I cannot think so. Whatever happens in the days to come, that bright thing that flowered in the cold of yesterday was beautiful. It is the beautiful thing. It is the Paradisa, the blossom of the Alps, the white daughter of the heights, the thing without which Trades Unionism itself will be as nothing. Meantime G and the other girls and their Head Teacher look at the crowded shelter on the last day of the summer term. What merry, lovely children ! Is it possible that these will be street waifs again ? There is a movement of anger in the camp. "Will you not engage a holiday staff and keep them here throughout August ? " ask the students, and they go on with a flash in young eyes, the beautiful anger of generous youth; 308 THE NURSERY SCHOOL " It would be better not to help them at all than to make them like this and then desert them." 1 notice that the free-lances are the most indignant, the most formidable of all. Their spokeswoman, an older woman, speaks for them : " It is a mon- strous, an impossible thing, to turn children out of a nursery. It is like turning fledglings out of a nest, or people out of their homes. No mother dismisses the nurses, turns her children into the gutter when she goes abroad for a holiday, and yet we are doing this at the end of this month of July." Yes, we are doing that. And if you had not helped us there might have been no nursery like this open in June. Go away and think and play^ — young hearts awake in a troubled dawn. In Suffolk with its broad yellow fields, in Kent where the great weald stretches in purpled glory, in the outskirts of northern towns where the mills hum by the stagnant waters and great chimneys vomit black clouds that stain the clear air, and float away. Go and dream and think and resolve. You are not going to be cogs in a machine — at at any rate you are not cogs now. Go and think and dream,' — ^not only of Teddy and Charlie and Margaret left in the grime and the stony yard, but of thousands of Teddies and Margarets who have never been in any gardens. Now that you love a few children, go and think of many .... You will make the world of to-morrow. , . HOLIDAYS 309 Meantime we answer the stem young eyes as we can. We hope next year to make new arrange- ments. The Nursery-School staff will take its summer holiday in succession. Students cannot do this, for all the lectures cannot be repeated or lecturers engaged in August, even if the students were not better away from this kind of work in this hottest month of the year. It might be arranged, however, that the staff should take holidays in July, August and September in suc- cession, and that in August we might be content with some Voluntary help. The volunteers are not always untrained : and some of the untrained are splendid recruits for the new schools. The Board of Education and the Local Authorities could make things easy by drawing up special regulations for the holiday staff, and above all by offering extra pay to the teachers who remain behind in the hottest month. When this is done we shall not be afraid to meet, in September, the searching eyes of our young child-champions. Attendance. — ^At the threshold of this new school we are met by a problem which the older schools have solved. It is this. Suppose we equip our Nursery-Schools, staff our Nursery-Schools, pay for our Nursery-Schools, slave for our Nursery- Schools, how are we to make sure that our money and labour will not be lost. How are we to have a good and steady attendance ? 310 THE NURSERY SCHOOL In so far as a large percentage of the people in this part are concerned : this problem, as I have said already, does not arise at all ! Mothers are full of joy over the health and happiness of their little ones. We have children who have been in regular attendance at our school for four and five years and even longer. It is safe now to prophesy that if Nursery-Schools on these lines were set on foot all over the country, many thousands of children would be sent every day without fail and there would be no break in their progress. All this is certain, but there are many parents whose children would always be out and in, and who would waste the time and effort and money spent on them. The clauses in Mr. Fisher's Bill dealing with Nursery-Schools makes no provision at all for this great leakage. Attendance is not compulsory. Every and anyone can use the school and use it anyhow. This is not liberty, this is licence. It is not fair to the teacher nor to the administering body. It is not fair to the children, nor is it fair to the parents, careful and careless alike. Nor is it easy to deal with this kind of injustice. It is easy to safeguard parents where Voluntary associations take up this work and start a nurse-school ; parents of the children may be represented on the committee. On the other hand the school is rather helpless. The elementary schools can fall back on their attendance officers. We have no attendance officers ; the system is HOLIDAYS 311 voluntary. The children may therefore be under one kind of regime at the week-ends and another during the week. They may stay away for weeks or be in and out when they please. If in some areas the nurseries are voluntary, and in others attendance is compulsory, there will be an outcry. One thing is certain. If all children are to be saved there must be some kind of conditions and full power to exclude. It is true that this power to exclude will turn very often to ashes in our hand. We want to admit, not to banish. Having won the prize of labour in having a beautiful child, the teacher hates to exclude. It is like flinging a flower in the gutter because someone will not pay for it. Attendance officers have done their work for the elementary schools. For the nursery something else and something more is wanted. The teachers themselves must visit, and to them we must look for that spiritual impulse and touch which shall draw up the weaker elements in our social life and prepare them to go abreast with the stronger. We are the more encouraged in this because they have done it already for many little children. It is their success that fills us with a new desire to make that triumph greater, and to come back for the mother and the father without whom the child will be unable to keep his new-found treasure of sympathy, intelligence and health. Even this is 312 THE NURSERY SCHOOL not enough. We cannot save the children who must need help unless there is power to act. Meantime the local authorities have to frame conditions. In cases where all free contracts are useless it would be necessary to rescue the children by making the open-air nurseries residential After all, this has been done already and was not very costly. The nurse did not stay up all night. She slept, as a rule, all night. The children were not in need of help. They were in good health, and being well, and over a certain age (a few under two years old and the youngest over twelve months) one nurse could look after forty or even more. ***** September 15. I wrote this chapter on holidays late in July, and now it is mid-September. We have reopened our Nursery-School. The new shelter for the three and four-year-olds is up. The students are back. The staff is eager. Where are the children ? About twenty per cent, of them all are in the clinic for minor ailments, the skin and eye disease which, I once said in this book, we could not bear to think they would ever enter again. Some are being treated for ringworm in hospital. And some are in our cleansing centre. Our Principal had to refuse fifteen on the first morning, and to set about getting treatment for them. This we say is the result of " holidays " as we look at the empty beds and chairs, the thinly attended school, HOLIDAYS 318 the half-empty garden. Our students fare forth into the streets and visit homes, looking up other lambs of the stricken fold. After all this is no very great surprise. During this holiday time, which I spent for the most part in Deptford, I have seen more than one of our choicest toddlers taking a header back into the old life. One of these was with a group of older children in the street in charge of an elder sister. It was a very hot day in August. Our toddler wore a great flapping bonnet which would have concealed him, even if he had not ducked his head in a way we know, but glancing under it I saw the once enchanting face, all pale and stained with dirt, and coarsened in some way as if an ugly spirit had got behind it. The beautiful dark eyes looked altogether strange. The lids were swollen. The sweeping, silky eyelashes had disappeared. Instead there were sticky tufts, the hideous sign of blepharitis. His miserable clothes were fastened on with white safety-pins. That is not all, but that is enough. The Nurse at our clinic is busy treating our Nursery children, though, as a matter of fact, there is no legal provision for this. She is doing it so that we may have our Nursery children back again, the children who made the glory of the garden in July. The drug bill for lotions and ointments and drugs for the curing of dirt diseases is very heavy. It runs to £60 a year already in our clinic, and this 814 THE NURSERY SCHOOL sum must be multiplied by hundreds to give the sum we are spending all over the country on these things. There are no baths yet, there is not a hot water tap yet in any of the Council Schools around us. One school sends crowds of children to our minor ailment clinic. They infect one another in the school. They infect one another in the street. Holidays make things much worse, so the street infection must be far worse than the school infec- tion. Yet with vigorous action, with daily bathing, and training with hot water, soap and enthusiasm, all could be changed. Meantime I go back to the half -empty Nursery- School. A great many will come back on Monday, for a great many have been cured this week. There is a new bustle, a new life as of a disturbed ant-hill in many homes. " Nursery-School open- ing again. Such a fuss about every little thing. They can't have a cold in their eyes without all this turn -up ! " With good-natured willingness to oblige, mothers bestir themselves, only half convinced, not half convinced yet, it may be. Some have done well it is true in the holidays. The long strain was met somehow. New " fads " were carried out. New bathing even. The street undid all that, because in the street all played together as before, and the pavements were as dirty as before. We have put new burdens on parents, but they bear them kindly, often in vain, because of the street. HOLIDAYS 315 No ! Never again shall we close in August. It is too early yet to strain the young and tender growth of new desire and new ambition. On Monday every student will put her best foot forward again. We shall come back to the new world, grown a little more beautiful, furnished a little better than in July, with an autumn glow still in the flower- beds ; and there we shall try to forget the sudden lapse into pain and grime. That old world where we seemed to be at home for ever will slip away once more. This new world which we had lost and half-forgotten will be real once more. The Night-Camp Nursery is not, we say, a new thing. It was opened and run in a place that was called " a slum " and near streets where, we are told, policemen did not like to go alone. And nothing could be more unexpected than the results of this experiment. The children and their Nurses were perhaps in the safest place in all London. They were ringed round with guardians. They were protected from every rough wind. There was nothing, moreover, to protect them from in this very much doubted neighbourhood. As for danger from "cold, from exposure, from wet," these evils melted in the light of knowledge. Epidemics raged outside. There was not a case of illness within. No colds, no epidemics came nigh us. It is not easy to see then why we should not gather the children who have no homes into night 316 THE NURSERY SCHOOL camps, more especially as the day-camps could, by arrangement, be used for this purpose. The first open-air Nursery-School was once a night and day Nursery as I have said already. It is true the children went home at the week- ends. CHAPTER XXXVII THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN " Liberty ! What crimes have been done in thy Name " Those who set out to do anything at all in the world must have as a rule some kind of plan of action. " As a rule," I say, because Very great things have been done without a plan, by a simple advance on chaos and old night. As a rule, how- ever, a plan is very useful and necessary, so long as it does not blind one to the aim of the work and so make the means appear to be a greater thing than the end for which they are designed. The aim of the open-air Nursery-School is the salvation, physical, mental and spiritual of the children of this country or of any other country from their cradles and up to the end of the first seven years. That is a pretty bold aim. It means revolution, but such a revolution as will make all the others that came before it appear poor and timid things by comparison. Former revolutions meant the uprising of a people. The people having risen up did certain things, as for example, they changed their masters. They could not and did not themselves pass through the long series of 317 318 THE NURSERY SCHOOL changes in virtue of which they could become a new people. Nurture and education are not given in a day. So the Revolution was, after all, not such a great thing as it appeared to be. The swirling waves returned into their old troughs. Nothing can be more monotonous than is the unrest of those who do not advance. RevieAving all that has been said in this book, let us ask finally what are the things that are holding us back ? What is the method and what are the processes of this nurture and education that is to be the birthright of all ? How will it relate itself to the social life of to-morrow, and how will the authorities of to- morrow, the New Ministry of Health, the Board of Education, and the local education authorities re- cast their schemes for the education of teachers and teacher nurses so as to find through them the solution of many problems which otherwise are likely to remain unsolved ? To begin with we have to set down the fact that, here in our street, Strong Drink is destroying our people. The more we refine our methods of culture the more gross and horrible is the contrast presented to all we do by the life just outside our gates. We try to refine the human voice and the street rings with drunken brawls. We cultivate the sense of smell and the alleys reek with horrible stenches. We appeal to the higher nature and outside men and women drink away every vestige of it and fall lower than the brutes, THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 319 Our housing is such that for thousands of children and young people there is no such thing as growth, no decent passage from life to life stage. Nothing is veiled from the eyes of the young. Birth and death alike take place before them. If modern science has taught us anything at all about education, if the science of mind is something more than a collection of statistics or columns of figures, it shows one thing — ^that the learning of any and every subject is nothing and can become nothing if it is not prepared for and vitalized by the growth of emotions that precede it. And now long before any tide of new affection and consciousness is due, lo ! an avalanche of bewilder- ing facts that rot and rend the very fibre of every young life. In the midst of all this wide- spread horror of outraged childhood not a single boarding school, not one camp or sleeping place of which we can say to a mother " Here, close to you, is a clean bed and an airy place where your little one can sleep in safety," or " There is a place where your boy will have his own bed and sleep in a fair place where only boys sleep," or "let your girls come to the girls ' camp till you can get a house with a girl's bedroom in it." Will it be believed by coming generations, that in these days of over- crowding, we had boarding schools, but only for the rich, only for children who had their own bed- rooms or even a choice of bedrooms at home. The education authorities then had nothing at all to 320 THE NURSERY SCHOOL say about the sending of girls and boys in their teens into one sleeping-room, or with the presence of little children as well as older children in a room where a new life was being born into this world. Books and the three R's, moral maxims, sound training in Theory (all in theory), exhortation, and for the rest a closing of the eyes and a folding of the hands. The old pedagogy had its own methods. It also had its own successes. In some ages, and in some orders of life, it had great success, and reached the " humanities " with a swing, carrying its young people forward till at last they reached the solid ground of a real culture that could make the builders capable of creating out of the poorest kind of place a fit and proper home for any future scholar to live and to remember. This kind of victory was won, however, not in a city of teeming streets but for the most part in bare islands and highlands and valleys set between purpled hills. It is so often forgotten that some of the great things that come with good housing can be had in places of great natural beauty — ^that the sky really is a canopy, that whispering trees are often a good substitute for walls, and that the curse of the crowded city warren is not merely that the tenant is Ul housed, but that he is cut off from all that is most healing and uplifting in Nature. The old pedagogy found a good deal ready to its hand when it began its work. THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 821 When the city pressed its ruder problems home, the old methods broke down a little. The schools got a new kind of scholar who was in some ways a new product. People get used to bad housing just as they get used to drink. The tenants of some very poor houses have big wages coming in. When the war broke out there was plenty of money. Strong drink is always here. People did not drink less because wages were high. When food was very abundant drink was still plentiful. In lean and hungry days it is here, stealing the children's bread. Though, as we know, we have a housing problem of the gravest kind, there is no lack of houses for drinking bars. We have seven within a stone's throw of our doors. No one has grappled with this mon- strous thing so as to destroy it. We protest, many protest. Fiery-eyed missionaries come and go exhorting, gesticulating, reporting. " Your work is three parts thrown away," they say ; but the leader who will destroy the Destroyer must have greater power than these. He must win power first so that he can stand between millions of angry men and the barrels. He must act then as if he had no life to save. No fear, no future. It must be " No " and again " No " till he is silenced. But who would silence that voice ? It would ring down the ages. He has not come. The heavy drays rattle down our street, their casks piled up in tiers. The 322 THE NURSERY SCHOOL streets ring with drunken voices and our babies cry in them at midnight. Marriages are solemnized in church and the bride goes into the public-house in her white hat and feathers. An elderly woman is shouting before a great drinking saloon and the big audience that listen and observe includes a great many school children (for it is holiday time). No inexorable one has risen to say " No." Well ! The new pedagogy is here at last. It deals no more with theories, and maxims, and traditions. It adopts the scientific method. It collects infor- mation, statistics, and has already a rather formid- able pile of already rather dusty books of figures and records. When medical inspection was passed in 1906-7, a doctor rose at a public meeting and declared that the next 20 years should be spent in getting facts and figures about the diseases of school children. The audience did not show any vivid j oy in this prospect . The hunger for statistics is confined, it woTild appear, to a very small section of the people. Perhaps it is a healthy hunger. It is quite true that we want the light that may come through figures, and the next few years will give us, we hope, this kind of illumination. One must be allowed to point out, nevertheless, that we have already more figures than we need. Some of these are getting worn already like old pennies in our hands. We know for example how many children in a given street come to us with dirt THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 323 diseases. We have known this for ten years without reducing the number. We know, too, the percentage of rickety children in a given number of children. We also know how to wipe out this disease as thoroughly as we have wiped out leprosy and small-pox. Of what use is it then to go on measuring the rickety head, to getting the exact dimensions of the rickety body and limbs. Or take the case of adenoids ; we know how to measure the breathing capacity and remove all the evil effects of adenoids. We know that very few chUdren haVe any breathing drill and that we had to close our o^vn remedial drill clinic for lack of funds ! Then as to preventive treatment we know very well the average weight and size and conditions of a given class of young children in a given area. We also know how that the weights could be changed within a month. Yet this radical work is scarcely begun ; and because it is left undone the school clinic is not even a sorting house. Far less is it a centre of research, a training ground for teachers. It is merely a place where two or three ailments get treated, and where thousands of children get relief for the moment only to return again and again within a year. What Agencies does the School Clinic need in order to become first Real Sorting Houses, and later Bcal Centres of Educational Research ? The answer has been given already. It is 324 THE NURSERY SCHOOL briefly this. To begin with it needs to have at its elbow, as it were, day schools that are centres of health, schools furnished with baths and also with dining-halls. Over and above all this it wants in all crowded and poor districts at least a network of residential, or semi-residential schools, all open air, all open in winter and in summer, in holidays and in term, by day and by night. We have already described these and given a sample of a city camp school, so nothing more need be added here on this point. The City Night and Day Camp School meets a far greater need in a much better way than can the best-equipped boarding school in the distant " country." Remedial Drill Clinics, too, are needed, so that the many cases of curvature, flat foot, and other deformities can be really treated. At present they cannot be dealt with and, for the most part, they stream back into the school unhelped. Schools for the Physically and the Mentally Defective are already here. The Psychological Clinic is also needed, since without special study and observation some children cannot be under- stood or helped at all. And finally, and above all, the Nursery-School is needed, for here the major part of all the preventive work will be done. Because of the lack of nearly all these means of health and education, we are observing everything but the child himself ! We ^re noting again and again, not himself, but his THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 325 ailments, his fatigue, his ansemia, his deafness (preventable), his gastric trouble, his eye-defects. Anything but himself, who in this sea of trouble can hardly show himself at all ! A little while ago we used to hear a great deal about overpressure. " Children," we are told, " are being taxed too much at school. They are learning too much." A little observation showed that they were learning on the whole amazingly little ; far less, for example, than the bored, contemptuous boy of the Western Isles of like age. He, to be sure, had never seen a tree, never worn boots, never had anything more than barest necessities : he got to the end of the arithmetic book and wanted new worlds to conquer. It began to dawn on us then that over-pressure was not caused by overwork, but by poor blood, poor lymph circulation, and a general lack of everything that is wanted to make a healthy nervous system. Nevertheless, as has been said already, the new School of Scientific Pedagogy is already here. It is at work in America, in Germany, in Italy, in England. It is led by scientists who are not only inspired by the self -devoting spirit of truth-seekers, but who are also armed with the methods and appliances of the modern scientific laboratory. They are ready to measure not only the cranium but the intelligence, not the limbs and the chest circumference merely but also the memory, the will-power, the capacity for abstraction. Their 326 THE NURSERY SCHOOL work up to the present has been very largely the gathering of observations, the classifying of these. In order that the conclusions may have value, numbers of children have to be under review, and in order to secure this, the observers must enlist the help of the schools and their teachers. They are hampered by the fact that these helpers are not found in large numbers as yet in the schools. The teachers, their true helpers, have not been trained by them. Therefore their experiments and findings, brilliant as they may be, carry very little conviction. Something intangible and pre- cious — ^the intuition that comes through contact with the living subject, is lacking. The very manner in which their observations are made, the place, the personnel, everjiihing has the aloofness that spells failure. Thus, as Binet says, the work resembles a very fine kind of machine, made up of splendidly finished parts which however do not work together very well. It is mysterious and brUliant and complicated, but there is something wrong with it. It is divorced from reality, from life itself. It is, as yet, only the Frankenstein of the schools. After all the real work is still undone, still hardly attempted. Nurture itself is the great experiment. The gardener, the agriculturist, that is the fosterer of the lowlier forms of life on this planet, has found it to be the basis of all experiment. Through THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 827 nurture alone he makes his great discoveries. Burbank, at work in the fields and in the garden, discovers the hidden forces that lie latent in the wild flower and in the common weed. He gets to know the real value of wild berries and roadside fruit not by dissecting and observing them in their wild state, still less studying them under the ravages of green fly and other pests, but by giving them new soil, a new climate, new companions, in a word, new nurture. Then they begin to teach him, offering him new things, opening up new vistas ; and what is true of the gardener as the teacher and trainer of plants, is true of the teacher as the gardener of childhood. What he knows of diseased plants, what he knows of wild flowers may be use- ful enough ; but in order to press forward his research and reach higher ground he must first give them new culture. The open-air Nursery-School, in offering this culture, will clear the decks not only for action, but for observation. Already we see that after a few weeks of new feeding, and bathing, and nursing of poor children all the " problems " are changed. A good many of them indeed go out of existence in a hurry. A great many are left, but many of these are modified more or less, and are ii\ prospect of a change also. Take a very homely case. A boy had bad teeth. His general health was improved by diet, etc. Nature became herself the dentist and mended up certain teeth to the admiration of 328 THE NURSERY SCHOOL our clinic dentist. Take another case of psychic change. A boy came into camp who was sullen and rather vicious. He slept in a clean bed, he ate food that nourished him and at regular hours. Lo ! The psychological problems changed like the sky when the sun breaks out. The suUenness went, other traits appeared, some not good. Such cases as these certainly do not prove that we must stop all research work ! On the contrary they seem to show rather that we have at present very little chance of getting past the threshold. We will break new ground when we give new culture, for then the real child begins at last to come fairly into view. We did not see him before. We saw only his diseases. All this may be clear enough to some people who are in the van. Most people are not in the van, and do not see that there is one. It is almost pathetic to note how some doctors fly from healthy children, how some reformers even fly along with them. " Give me only the sick," they cry, " we have nothing to do with the whole." (And alas ! there are plenty of sick to-day.) Here and there, of course, there is a physico-psychologist who is glad to have the ground cleared so that he may at last deal with a young intelligence, but as a rule the impulse is to run, to run fast to the place where everyone is ill and needs a nurse, not a teacher. Meantime, our young teachers are eager to learn from and even to assist the psychologist who is THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 329 interested in something other than disease and preventible deformity and dullness. They begin to be impressed more and more every day by the richness of the great mines of information that lie near them, and by facts and observations which they long to interpret but whose interpretation lies outside their powers and experience. The old world psychology with its empirical methods does not offer them much help. Suppose they pass " examinations " on these lines. Even that does not help them much. They are like people who have been drawing from old copies and now stand in front of the living model. It is very strange, very new. Yet they are ready to look at this wonderful living unexpected being, and to put down their own fresh and new impressions of him. To report, to gather new information, to interpret in the light of work-a-day elder sisters, in a word, to give life to the barren work of the new scientific school, divorced as it often is from life and reality ! In this book something has been said with regard to the training of those teachers, and some record is given of the training now offered in one pioneer centre. The result of all this work and training is to be found not merely in the improved health of the children in a good open-air Nursery-School, nor even in their greatly increased responsiveness and intelligence ; it is to be found also in the new courage and intelligence of the teachers themselves. 330 THE NURSERY SCHOOL Already, in the first year of training they are, literally, changing everything. Let us take for example the early tests of Binet. Here is Tommy. He has played with and chattered to Kathleen for two years and more, and has now arrived at the age of three with great gusto. He talks, he runs, he looks, he observes in all his waking hours. He is very fond of K, but has long been anxious to teach her things she does not know. Tommy has played in the bath with his toes. He has assisted at the washing of his own face and teeth and nails a hundred times and more. He has made great observations to Kathleen on these and other subjects and he is far beyond the stage when the question " Where is your nose ? " is any test for him. Or to take an older child. Here is Bertie, aged four. He has drawn very good strokes and also circles, curves, ovals of various sizes for nearly a year. Suppose we now draw two parallel lines (a Binet test for four) and ask him " Which is the longer ? " Bertie would not take the question seriously. He is ready for other tests than these ! We must make new tests for nurtured chOdren. But the great gulf between what was, yesterday, and what may be to-day or to-morrow is seen in its fuller contrast when we deal with still older children. Ronald is seven years old. Suppose we put down in front of him four slips of paper, red, blue, green, and yellow, and, touching each in turn ask him, " What is that colour ? " Ronald THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 331 has been dealing with at least sixty different shades and tints of various colours for years, and this test is no longer a test for him. Binet would say to a five- year-old, " Put out your left foot," or " Show me your right hand." That would be a good test for an unnurtured five-year-old. Our Jessie, who has been dancing and marching and playing for two terms with our teacher of voice production and who has often to use one hand or foot or another without any hesitation, cannot be ' tested ' by such a question as this. Yet one cannot say that her culture has • been forced, since at an earlier age even she learned to know all this with no more fatigue or effort than is implied in learning to speak ! Such tests were, of course, given to us only as samples. It will be sad if they harden into dead samples, as did the Froebelian occupations in many cases ! To the student-teacher, looking out over her garden and shelters, many new and varied tests should suggest themselves. She may, for example, ask her five-year-old, " Which is the biggest leaf in the garden ? Fetch it. Which is the smallest ? Show me all the dark blue flowers. Point to the lime-trees. Where is the plane? " StUl in the garden she may give such tests as these to the six-year-olds. "Name four vegetables quickly. Show where they grow. Name five trees. Show me two of these. What is the colour of the Hiawatha rose ? Name a yellow rose. Show two creepers, name them. When did the crocus 332 THE NURSERY SCHOOL flower ? When did the Michaelmas daisy come ? ' For a seven-year-old, " Name all the flowers you know. Name all the vegetables. Of which Vegetables do we eat the roots ? Of which the leaves ? What is the colour of the hellenium — make it quickly on the wheel. What are the months of the year ? When does the narcissus come, the tiger-lily, the lily-of-the-valley ? When is the parsnip ripe ? When did the dahlias flower ? ' ' Most of these questions should be answered by seVen-year-olds who have been in camp two years. A hundred graduated tests such as these can be thought of in the garden. Others can be worked out for the bathroom, the dining-room, the play- room on wet days. And in these play drills, for such they are, the idea of pace as a factor in the growth of intelligence must be present all the time, giving all the exercises that vim and go, which the French call "entrainement," and which on the physiological side means the clearing and tidying up as it were of all the paths of sensory and motor impulses. I do not know how far such work as this can be carried on in and out of school hours. Children have not waited for big people to make tests for them ; they make them for themselves every time they run a race or guess a riddle- It is clear that none of the dangers of over-pressure are to be feared on these lines. It is not by free and rapid use, but by wrong use of the nervous tissue and by starvation of the nervous system with THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 333 all its routes and centres that mischief is done. Just as a child loVes to run fast, loves to jump off a high stump, loves to throw a stone far, just as he loVes these things and for the same reason he loVes to marshal all his memories, to use them quickly, to handle and polish and play with them and feel his life quicken in so doing. 4t 4: iic :ii 4: The opportunities as we say to give new tests, the impulse to make new efforts and experiments do not occur always in the class-rooms. They come above all in the work-a-day life of the Nursery- School with all its varied life and changing side- lights on things and on human beings. Here too the student is roused to observe, to think, and act, and finally to enlarge and vary her experiences. With this new activity will come new problems. New questions will arise and she will desire to consult with trained scientists and teachers. How does the Government meet this situation to-day ? Truth obliges me to say that Government does not as yet meet the situation at all. It does not as yet appear to realize what the situation actually is. The Board of Education requires Nursery- School teachers as well as others to pass two years at a recognised training college. At the end of this time they may receive their teacher's certificate. The Nursery-School teacher may then come to a centre such as ours, and receive a year's 334 THE NURSERY SCHOOL training there, when, if she is approved, she will have a further endorsement of her certificate. All this is very clear, and perhaps very natural. Not in this way, however, can we attempt to do our real work. We came into existence as a Nursery-School with two aims in view. First to offer nurture to children under eight years of age, but also to bring into being a place and a system whereby student- teachers could learn to give this nurture in this most vital, sure and effective way. In order to do this last we had to secure conditions of train- ing that would give the students free and daily access to children and the work of nurture, but also we had to bring them into close touch with trained observers and scientists, and finally because of the work in which they were specially engaged, the work of culture, we had to break new ground and engage artists. All these things seemed necessary, if we were no longer to tinker with old-world fallacies dressed up anew to look like modernized truths. At the outset we find how- ever that Government wants only one of these three things, that is practical experience in the shelters. The art training, the scientific training are " extras." They can be thrown in or left out of the spare time left over in a hurried one-year course in the shelters. No grant is paid for a course that exceeds one year. It is taken for granted that all the rest was done in the existing colleges. THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 335 Now an artist cannot and will not plan any course that will fit into one year. Always the " enfant terrible " of every society, he or she will not merely blurt out, he will shout out the obvious though inconvenient truth, which is that scamped and hasty work might just as well not be done at all, far better not be attempted at all. No master or mistress of vocal or oral work, of any standing at all, will tinker at a spoiled voice in 30 or 40 lessons, and call this training. No one who cares for the great art of modelling, on which children fling themselves as soon as they begin to live at all, will work out a scheme for a year course. Neither will he take his pupils in large classes. At the very threshold of the new work we shall have to part company with those who can best help us if our methods cannot be made to fit with the real needs of learners and teachers. It is the same with the work of the scientific observers, the physiologist. Ideally the doctors or specialists of the school clinics should be the lecturers and doctors of the Nursery-School. They will, let us hope soon, have very little to do in the way of curing ailments that arise in the Nursery- School ; but in the psychological and other clinics where they will deal not with normal but abnormal conditions and children they should admit the student-teachers as they admit students in the Hospitals. They should also receive their reports on normal children, examine their notes, 336 THE NURSERY SCHOOL and generally inspect and direct the science work of the school. Such work would give very different results to those following on the mere lecturing in hall. Yet for such work as this Government does not as yet even give any grant. As already stated we have a case now for the alternative syllabus, we have a case for the three- year course at Nursery-School training centres, constructed on the lines of the Rachel McMillan college. If such a course does not yield good results it can be abandoned. If, on the other hand, its results can be proved to equal or rival that of the best existing colleges it should not be allowed to die for lack of help. At present we are training our free lance students without sure hope of grant, without any certainty even that they will at the end of their training secure the higher posts in the new schools I * * « * * No matter 1 It is here, the thing, lacking which, our whole educational system was like a house built on the sand. It is here, and the nurtured children, however small their numbers, are bound to make a great difference. They make a great differ- ence already shining out like a group of daffodils in trodden grass. How small are their numbers as compared with the teeming millions of the street — the millions that have no nurture. All the more do they present a vivid contrast, waking strange new thoughts in the minds of all who see them. THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 387 The Nursery-Schools are here. An air of doubt and misgiving haunts many of them, but not all. Most of them are very doubtful and come in all of a tremble ! They have retired in some places into rather dingy houses, getting themselves walled round elsewhere in solid masonry, yet with timid peeps nearly always into the open, with gardens, even with verandahs here and there and awnings run up at a venture, most of them looking out dismally enough on the slum- street or roaring thoroughfare. One, at least, faces the river with its never-ending panorama of light and shade, of sweep and swing of dark tide and gleaming water, its banks too by which in days to come there will be many a garden. Timidly, yet boldly, they are opened, and mothers look in half doubtful, yet half assured. " I've heard it 's not just a place for minding 'em ! " They come up our paths tired from the day's washing or work in the factory. " To-morrow I'll be easy in my mind if ye take them in. I thought " (they always say this) " it was only for children whose mothers go out to work." The hot streets are crowded with little children. They swarm on the pavements. They run across where the vehicles go. They quarrel and cry on the doorsteps. When the hot August day wears towards evening mothers shout to each other from courts and open doors, and it seems strange to think that one day behind these very courts, behind y 338 THE NURSERY SCHOOL these very houses, there will be open spaces with grass and whispering trees and that these children's children will all be turned into something fair and unrecognizable, all tended and prepared for a new life. Nay, these very children perhaps may soon look no more across the cobbles but across blooming flower-beds. As women they may fit their voices and their words and their actions to the beauty and sweetness that meets them in their own offspring ! Most strange it is also to think how, at this moment, while the west is glowing, and the stars are waiting behind the blinding light, thousands are getting ready to enjoy the beauty and sweetness of cultivated voices, of beautiful scenery, and of freely expressed life and temperament. They wait in great queues, the hungry multitudes, besieging the theatre and opera doors. Hundreds more prepare themselves in boudoirs and dressing-rooms for the joys of the evening ; and in other rooms, the inspirers of all this hope and expectation know that their hour of life and power has come, and rally to it with all the energy they have gathered since the last midnight. Every stall is filled, the boxes gleam with jewelled women, and the galleries and pit crowds are penned waiting, waiting . . . What are they waiting for ? They are waiting to see and hear the idealization of their own lives, and the expression of something that in them is stifled but not dead. Some (they are the wealthy listeners) take lessons from these very artists or THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 339 their teachers, and ■win something of their sweetness and power for their intercourse and social life. The greater number look on all these gifts as strange and alien things that are no part of the heritage of common people and cannot be won by them ih any degree. A question arises here. The artist who ministers to this craving for enhanced life and pleasure, is this her whole function ? Is she here to give pleasure in this mortal life and for no other purpose ? Has she no responsibility at all for the spoiled voices of the schools, and the hoarse bellow- ings of the slum-street ? It has long been taken for granted that she has no responsibility at all, that every finely trained larynx and its owner must be kept fme and fit for one great order of workers' — ^the giving of joy to joy seekers who can pay for it. The larger human view that shows all children to be artists, and all capable of training mainly through this early developing artist-side of human nature, has been lost, or rather it has never been found and truly grasped. No one who has attempted to bring the true artist into the common school is left in doubt that it has not been found, and that the artist herself has in most cases not eVen begun to dream of the real scope and nature of her mission. " You cannot think," said the aunt of an artist- teacher the other day, " that my niece should come down here, to a miserable, poor neighbourhood, and spend her time on teaching children of the lower-class. Consider ! She herself is a precious 840 THE NURSERY SCHOOL instrument. She is like a very fine violin. Do you want to have her strained and broken in doing work that any one could do ? " These words are so typical that I want to answer them seriously. To begin with " Any one " cannot do the work that the true artist is doing. " Any one " is not trained to do it. Here for example is our Claribel, aged six, a dark-eyed, sparkliag little creature with something in her movements and expression that already gives rise to great hopes. Claribel has got on very fast, developing under the touch of the real artist like a flower in the sunshine. She not only knows the right foot from the left, she dances like a fairy, answering to every subtle change in the music. Her accent is good, her speech tripping, and her character changed. She is happy, like the hart refreshed. She is a slum child it is true, but no one ever proved yet that genius is confined to the West End. Claribel, we will say, is an exceptional child. There are the others however, the average children, not one of them has failed to react to the new and sure touch of the artist hand. There was a time when we listened with horror to an obscene song lilted by childish lips in our Nursery-School. Even the commonest nursery rhyme, such for example as Old King Cole, was twisted and parodied into something foul and shameful. All this seemed natural and amusing and right, not to defectives with tiny craniums, but to well endowed, clear-eyed, THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 341 broad-browed English children of five and six. They were going, quite naturally, through the apprentice- ship of their home and street, and I don't think that the ordinary kind of teaching, nor the sermons and talk of even the best kind of old-time teacher would have stopped all this soon and suddenly. But it was stopped soon and suddenly, not by being talked down but by the advent of quite a new order of things. That new order included certain exercises and certain kinds of work. New power was released in the organism itself and this made war with the old impulse to say and do shame- ful things. Horror would overspread these young faces now if an ugly song came from a comrade's lips ! Talk and preaching. That was the method of the old school' — ^so excellent in some ways but strangled by many words. The artist 's methods are at once mechanical and emotional. She trains the lungs, the larjoix, the muscles, the nerves. She then appeals to the new sense of beauty and harmony, and the pupil is lifted forward as on a wave. It is a strange misreading of all the immediate past and of the immediate future that any one should think her gifts too fine to offer to the millions. The millions, to be sure, have a habit of refusing things. There are teachers, occult and other- wise, who would address themselves for good 342 THE NURSERY SCHOOL reasons perhaps only to a small audience. The artist need not join these. The multitude give her a great welcome always and is faithful to art even in its worst moments and in the deepest abyss. The " people " do not study philosophy or crowd into the technical schools. But they dance, they sing, they love colour at all times. Our most hopeless mother has a piano in her house paid for on the hire system, and a marble figure of a woman on her table behind her dirty and curtainless window. Is there nothing in all this that carries any message to the trained artist ? We have seen that Imagination is the forerunner of Reason. It is also the forerunner of Will- power. Each is motor in its origin and each therefore is akin in its nature. At least we can show that the power released by good art training even in a little child can translate itself into power of inhibition. " The great artist," persists my friend, " is difficult, is exclusive, is over-sensitive. That is in the nature of things. It is the price she pays for her great gifts." All these objections are beside the mark. People are not difficult because they are artists, but because of some defect in their general education. Da Vinci was not difficult, nor Albert Durer, Joshua Reynolds or Schubert. Albert Durer was an all-round embodiment of the whole spirit of his age, almost like Luther. These hasty judgments of the artist have vogue because THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 343 their number is so small and their function is so limited. Admitted once for all to responsible position in our educational system, they would make new history. Above all they would make possible the training of thousands who to-day are put off with " a few lessons." It is not by excluding the best teachers that we can get to know the real worth of our people, or by framing hasty schemes and syllabuses from which the real initiate turns away in despair. Let us go back for a little to the mothers and children in the hot and dusty street. Of these children sixty per cent, or more are what we call normal ; twenty per cent, or more are handicapped through causes which can be easily reached : and the last small group are made up of children who are really defective in some way, physical or mental. Let us now turn from the children to the mothers. At the outset we may say that they have the first claim on their children. We are not here to dispute that claim, we are here to offer help. The culture of plants is a great science and a great art, but the culture of human beings is a much greater thing. If we try to help mothers and to enlist the services of many people for their benefit are we therefore trying to dispossess them ? We might as well say that Burbank and Jackson insulted all gardeners by telling them something new about their plants and their soils. Well, we have started at last. We have Infant Welfare 344 THE NURSERY SCHOOL centres and clinics We have Baby Welcomes and play centres, also schools for mothers. After we have said all we can in favour of these places, we cannot pretend that they represent the new science. If we cannot teach singing or drawing in " a few lessons," much less can we teach child culture by friendly talks and first-aid warnings. Yet we want to have nurture at last. We desire it, just as our fathers fifty years ago desired to teach reading to everybody. What part can the mother play here, she who has the first claim, and who, help as we may, will always have the first place ? First of all. we must provide for her illustrations. Seeing, not hearing, is believing. We take a child from a dark home. We wash and dress and feed it. The mother at first sees only that for him every day now is a kind of Sunday. There is nothing very new in that. Later she begins to wonder why he does not take cold, why being out he does not get pneumonia ! She wonders too why he sleeps every day at the same time. Coming into camp, she sees that sixty other children do exactly the same thing. Why do they do this ? Her question opens the way for the first lesson ; her eyes grow large with wonder. She comes to camp often now. The childi'en do not scramble at table. They come when they are called. They are merry, they are well. This is the mere A B C of nurture, but those who do not see it will not beheve in it, and without a real THE AIM VERSUS THE PLAN 345 Nui'sery-School a working woman may never see it at all. Even after she has seen and learned the first great lessons, charged with fate, she is only a beginner. However high her claim as mother, she is still in the lowest form as regards the science and art of child culture. The young student- teachers are only half-trained, but they are in advance of her. Will the day soon come when she will join in their studies ? Perhaps that will depend on whether we can soon bear to hear the truth ^nd put from us all the weak flatteries, the false sentiment, the falsehoods of yesterday. Why have we not said all this before ? Because there was no question before of giving any real nurture to the millions. There was a minding of children, there was weighing even. In some places the death-rate was brought down rapidly. With the advent of nurture the death-rate must fall everywhere and that sudden drop will be a mere incident. Far more wonderful than the saving of life will be the transformation within a short term of years of nearly all the survivors. This dusty and hot street seems to mock our ambitions. " Less than the best will do here " says a mocking voice. " Clean up these hovels if you can, but give up these high notions of culture." In 1919 we are invited to give nurture, but we will not turn back and say, "One kind of nurture will be given to the rich, another kind which begins 346 THE NURSERY SCHOOL at the age of two and ends at five will do for the poor." And " A three-months' training or a year's training tacked on to a general education will do for the nurse teacher." If that be the real aim, it is sad that some have lived and died to bring it into being. The true aim is to give nurture under the same influence and teachers up to the end of the seventh year. It assumes that every child bom has a right to full nurture during this period. Thousands of culture places must be opened for him : thousands of child-gardeners must be educated for him. And when at last he comes to the elemen- tary school, the country must be able to say " These are my jewels, saved till they are seven, equal in rights till they are seven, guarded and cherished till they are seven, educated on human lines only until they are seven." The voice of a wise Jesuit will then echo back to us reassuringly, "Give me a child till he is seven, then you can do with him as you please." CHAPTER XXXVIII TO THOSE WHO HELPED Here is this book on the Open-Air School. Often while it has been a-writing, storms of doubt and anguish have threatened to overwhelm it, often even in the past six months it was an open question whether our long-tried and hardly won venture would not be swept away. Now, as the last chapter is written we know that it is not going to perish. When the hands that laboured for its birth are dust it wni be in stronger hands. The London County Council has determined that the Nursery-School and the clinics out of which it sprang shall be con- ducted as they are for five years, and that in Michaelmas, 1924, the whole of the school and the bathing centre, clinic and hostels shall pass into the control and possession of the Council. This makes the work safe, and for this we, my sister and myself, laboured for ten years. It is nearly seven years now since we squatted on the Stowage site. It was a big waste of stones, of brickbats and tin cans strewn oVer an acre of earth, all rough and covered with wild growths and half- withered grasses. We cleared a path through the 347 348 THE NURSERY SCHOOL stones and hillocks so as to walk through and have a look at the wilderness and our camp boys played at Indian games there, buffalo hunting behind a broken wall. The place was cleared, and Rachel had the first nursery built. Light and fair it is and planned to give complete shelter in all weathers and to catch the sunshine. Good and gay and spacious, it pleases me to think that her nursery is still the best of all. The years that followed look dark and crowded in retrospect. They began, however, with a burst of sunshine. It was April, and thirty children were in the shelter. Our head-mistress was a teacher, Miss Margaret MacLeod, for our desire to run the place on educational lines was steady from the beginning. We had a gardener, but he did not come every day, and our elder children loved the wilderness around them so much that we did not go after him when he failed to turn up. Within the shelter all was ordered and fair, and the health of the children perfect. In the evening mothers came in to see them bathed and put to bed, and to see the revels too, before and during bathing- time. The shed was so big. The floor was so smooth. The air was so cool and sweet. Two of our children used to run down and up the shelter every evening, naked, keeping abreast and at top speed. Others joined in sometimes, and there was a perfect orgy of movement ; yet there was no noise. I think TO THOSE WHO HELPED 349 now they were enjoying the reaction from a whole Ufetime of half-life, of restraint, of baulked im- pulses and gloom, unnatural at their age. When all the children were asleep, mothers lingered, wonder- ing, but not at all nervous. They seemed very open-minded to new ideas from the first. And then as now many people in the back streets put the babies to sleep in the yard, or in the alley. It is not prejudice that stands in the way here. Winter came, and then War. We were in the danger zone. We had small funds, but we were lured by the ease with which our children leaped into health. It was wonderful to see them rise up and cast away their ailments. Oh, how this lure drew us, and we went on in the teeth of Fate. When the raids began we had a new problem to meet. People do not like to send their daughters to a danger zone, and a poor and noisy district. And some, but not all, daughters, decline to come. A few having come, soon wanted to leave after a bad raid. My sister was never so well seen and known as in hours of peril and times of sorrow and difficulty. She shared all my sorrows. She died, knowing nothing of any success. Her face on the night of the first raid over our district, and before our aircraft was ready to help us, wore a strange beauty. It was a wonderful experience to stand beside her. She had great power to calm people. Her presence 850 THE NURSERY SCHOOL gave courage and peace. The children who were with us never showed any fear, even when our little house rocked, and all the windows and ironwork was shivered. She was so calm, and her love seemed to flow between them and the enemy. She looked young and beautiful on these awful nights. There was a raid even on the night before the end of her life on earth. I would not have said all this of her, or spoken of my own sorrow, but that I feel her presence has not left us. Perhaps it may help others to know that her presence has not left us, and that in some mysterious but altogether clear and definite way she seems to be now clearing away every obstacle, and to move in the stream of everyday life as a guiding and protecting force. In the past two and a half years her work was often in the balance. All kinds of dangers threatened me from within and from without, and yet through all this trouble and danger her work appeared to rise and rise again, threatened, half lost, not over- whelmed, always like a charmed thing, always winning on, and the harbour it makes for is well in sight. On August 3, 1917, Mr. Fisher declared our Memorial Hall open, dedicating it to the memory of my sister Rachel, and in the following year, 1918, his great Bill was put upon the Statute Book. It sets forth that Nursery-Schools, preferably open-air, shall be opened for little children. This TO THOSE WHO HELPED 851 can mean only one thing. AJl the neglected, suffer- ing, dirty little children now playing in the gutter, and near roaring traffic and hooting cars will be gathered into gardens at last. And what can this mean ? A garden-grown humanity cannot be as the humanity of the grime and of the street. It will have spent its first cycle in a place where living things are taken care of so that at least they spring up into things of beauty, and colour, and perfume. Those who do all this culture work will be cultured. The little gardeners themselves, not the flowers or the vegetables or the trees, will be the glory of the garden. As they grow up they will long more and more to make gardens every- where, to mow down and root out the things that destroy, to rear and find a place for all that is beautiful and innocent. To make all this possible at least the members of the present L.C.C. (to their honour be it said) have spared the Stowage site. For its realization the Chairmen of its Committees have gone back on their old intentions, and launched out boldly on a new policy. The work is so new that no one can feel discouragement even though the first ventures hug the coasts, keep close to precedent and are nearly all indoor. That is not the spirit of the Council, It is the last breaking-rope of the old anchors. Two Chair- men of the great Committees have kept a friendly eye on the work from its beginning. These were Sir Cyril Cobb and Mr. Gilbert, who had before the 352 THE NURSERY SCHOOL war planned another kind of school for the site. They came down to the opening of the Memorial Room on August 3, 1917. They explained to me in former days why we could not earn any grant from the school. " In this country," said Mr. Gilbert, " you are free to let the children of the poor die. If you attempt to save them you must comply with the Building Acts and all the bye- laws." Now ours was a temporary structure, and there was no legislation on the matter of Nursery-Schools then. The Chairman of the Sites and Accommodation Committee, Mrs. Wilton Phipps, came to see us in June. It was a gorgeous day, and the toddlers had just had their bath, and were ready to begin the morning. They stormed their way into the hearts of all the officials. Mrs. Wilton Phipps looked at them, and I knew then that she was a powerful friend. Love is a great force. Who can , withstand it ? The Labour party on the Council came down also, and were joyfully welcomed by the entire school. Over 200 people stream into our grounds on visiting days, which we restrict now to the first Wednesday in every month. Finally, thanks are due to the staff : to Miss Mary Chignell, the Principal, who came to me late in 1917 at a time of much sorrow and stress, and to whose ability and generous services the school owes, and will always owe, a debt of gratitude ; to her TO THOSE WHO HELPED 353 sister Mrs. Hambleton who made the first Nursery- School garden, and did it entirely as a labour of love : to the members of the staff, and not least to the young girl " free lances " who came to me in a dark hour. The spirit they worked in is one which makes new things possible. Whatever their prospects in the years that lie ahead, a grateful love will always follow them. We hope to equip them so that their future will be worthy of the first bright impulse and surrender of youth. INDEX Age and school, 147, 345-6 Air raids, 349-50 Alphabet board, iio-i Alternation, 228-30 Anaemia, beyond the clinic, 193 Analysis and learning, 112-3 Ami-movements, 94 Arrest, 224 Artist -teachers, -^39-43 Attendance problems, 309-13 Baths, 38-9, '283-4 Kehluke, Madame, 198 Behnke, Emil, 204 Bernhardt, Sarah, 98 Blencarn, Miss, 235 Brain research and education, r3 Brea.thing, 91, 94, 197-202 Brushing and combing, 87-8 Camp life, 154-63, 164-9, 298-304 schools, 294-6, 324 Cave-making and clay-working, 106-7 Chignell, Miss Mary, 352 Childhood, stages of, 32-3 Child nurture, very highly skilled work, 172 ; requires specialists, 173 ; its fundamental greatness, 175 Child's mind, great feature of, 219-22 Clinics, 25, I5i» i9o-5» 264, 265, 312, 313-4* 323 ; aids to, 323-5 Clothes, importance of, 55 ; made by schoolgirls, 56-8 ; school standard of raising home standard, 60-2 ; paid for by instalments, 61, 145 ; at upper schools, 284-5 Colds, none in Camp Nursery, 192, 315 Cole, Miss, 56 Colour education, 100-3, 127, 139 Connemara mothers, 172 Dalcroze, Mr., 214 Dancing, 76, 77, 80, 203, 204 ; joy of, 217-8 Dental clinic, 187 ; student-assistants in, 188-90 Deptford, associations of, 247-8 Designing, inspirational, 58 Diaries, students', 266-8 Dinners, a week's, 52 Disease that might be wiped out for ever, 25, 190-2 Doctor and his visits, 194-5, 265, 266 ; new work for, 266-8, 335-6 Drama, children's love of, 246; aids other studies, 247-51 Dramatization, 207-8, 212 Drawing, 117-20, 252 Drill, militarist, 202 Drink, 163, 318, 321-2 Embroidery, 58 Environment, the school, 151-2 " Exploding," 114 Expression, free, 205-6 Fancies, normal to the mind, 221-2 Fear, figliting, 92, 98, 197, 202, 203 Feeding, wrong, 50-1, 178-9 Feeling, a factor in sensation, 94 " Fey " children, 143 Fisher completes Forster's work, 21 174-5 French taught with English, 81, 208 Garden, the school, 44-g, 140-2, 2^2-3 Gifts, individual, 253, 287-9 ; their non recognition a waste, 289-91 Government and Nursery-Schools, 333-4 Grace, singing, 129 Grundtvig, 250 Gymnastics, control that liberates, 95-6 Habits, regular, 69, 77-8 Hambledon, Mrs., 46, 262, 353 Handkerchief drills, 94, 176, 192, 201 Hand-work, good and bad, 84-87 ; influ- ence brain development, 85-6 ; special drills, 88 ; toys^ 257-8 History and imagination, 250-1 History-play, 234 Holidays, a mistake in nurseries, 305-8, 312-4 ; rotational, for the staff, 309 Homes, some children's, 181-6 House-building, 106 Housing, 319-21 Imagination, ruler or tyrant, 219-22, 259 ; active in gifted and primitive peoples, 222 ; arrest of, a misfortune and a problem, 223, 224 ; essentials to study of, 224 ; Ribot's diagram of, 231-2 Infectious cases, 31, 264, 292 Insets, 109-10 Inventions made when playing, 233 Joy-drill, 203-4 Joy in the beauty of childhood, 30 in work, 253 Larousse, 249 L.C.C., 27, 273, 274, 275j 347, 351-2 Looking drills, 252, 260 MacPherson, Stewart, 213 Marching, 92-6 McMillan, Rachel, 11, 24, 348, 349-50 3=i2 Medical clinic and student nurses, 190-2, a priceless training, 193-5 Memories, mental raw material, 225 ; provision of by teachers, 225-7 ; short, of children, due to failure of material, 237-9 ; strengthened by family lore, 239-41, 245-6 Memory drawing, 252, 253 Midday rest, 131-3 Miming, 210-1 Modelling, best " occupation," 104 ; its object, 105 ; awakes enthusiasm, 105-6 ; possibilities of, 254-5 ; for teachers, 255-6 Montessori, Dr., 109, 114, 255 355 356 INDEX Mortality, child, 171 Mothers and teachers, 144, 177-80, 343-5 Muscular control work, ri7-8 Music, clearer than words, 212-3 ; in- strumental, a great source of joy, 215-6 Musical child, a, 75, 76, 77 notes, learned by action, 96 Needlecraft, books on, 58 Newcomers, 72, 74 Night-Camp Nursery, 315-tJ Nxu'sery-School, a new departure, n ; to give nurture, 21-2 ; possibilities of, 24, 25-6 ; as annexe of home, 146, 152 ; five too young for leaving, 147 ; exten- sion of, 269-71 ; reactions on upper schools, 280-92 ; aims, 334 ; now estab- lished in London, 347 ; story of, 347-50 Nursery-School Planning : for various ages, 32 ; for weather, 33-6 ; covered ways, 36, 146 ; space and freedom, 37 ; fittings, 37--9 ; shelter for second-year children, 39-41 ; shower-bath for older children, 42 ; shelter for ditto, 42-3 ; arcade, 43 ; sites, 274-6 ; building cost, upkeep and staf&ng, 276-9 ; charge to parents, 27S-9 Nursery teachers, old ideas about, r5-i6 ; training of, a new task, 174-6, 271-3, 334-5, 336 Nurses, incompetent, 171 Nurture, secret of advance, 326-7 Oatmeal, buying and cooking, 51 Open-air Nursery-School, 26 ; should be near home, part of home life, 29-30, 36 ; aim of, 317 ; changes child prob- lems, 327-8 schools, a growing movement, 269-71 Overpressure, due to iU-htalth, 325 Parental interest, 81-2, 146, 177, 337, 349 love, recjmres knowledge, 172 Pedagogy, scientific, 322-3, 325-6 Physical training, two aims of, 196 Play lessons, 143 Pofilite, 33-4 Practice-training, i7~i9, i75-6, 272-3 Precedent, learning requires, 227-8 Programme v. time-table, 83-4 Rachel McMillan Centre, 24-5, 198, 271 Reading, how taught, in, 112, 113-4 Reason follows imagination, 231-3 Reverie, 71 ; deserving of respect, 75 ; its mystery, 76-7 Rhythm exercises, 97 ; expressitm, 213-5 Rib-stall, 46-7 Rickets, .-ii, 53, 181, 323 Rubbish-heap, 47, 106-8 Satt, Miss Marie, 213 Schumann, 213-4 Seguin, Edouard, ri-12, 85, 86, 98, 109, iiOj 142, 177, 356 Selection, 30-r, 26.1. Self-consciousness, 202-3, 20^10 Sensation, factors in, 94 Sensory training, must start alone, 17 Seven-year-old, the Nursery-School type, 148-53 ; will revolutionize upper schools, 149, 153, 281-5, 386-93 Singing nurstry rhymes, 95 ■ in camp, 299-302 Sites, 274-6 Sleep and its awakening, 79-80 Sleeping under the stars, i.'54-63, 164-9 Slum children redeemed, 130 lessons for teachers, 117, 179-80 Sol-fa taught dramatically, 96-7 Space, a need of children, 27, 37 Specialization, 263 Speech, child's first, 65-7 ', order of learn- ing sounds, 67-8 ; encouragement of natural efforts, 68-9 ; improved by vowel-singing, 204-5 Spelling, 113 Statistics, 322-3 Stevinson, Miss, ^07, 108, 234 Story- telling, 99, 211-2 Sundour, 57 Swales, Miss Helen, 57 Table-manners, perfected at school, 69, 78-9 ; appreciated by parents, 134 Table-talk, children's, 130-1 Talk, training to, 98-9 Teachers influence mothers, 177-0 Teaching, objects in, iii Tea-party, school, 134 Teeth, 65, 87, 187, 327 Tests, old and new, 330-3 Theory aloof from practice, 326 Toddler and his student -nurse, 63 : observed in the bath, 64 ; first lessons of experience, 64-5 ; leads the nurse, 272-3 Touch sense, 254-5, 256^ Training Colleges raising the standard, 16 ; two criticisms of, 16-18 Uniform, school, 284 Violin-playing, a joy, 213 Vocal exercises, 206-7 Vowel-singing and pure speech, 204-5 Walking, 65-6, 91-2 Washing and dressing *' hand-work," 84-8 Waste spaces of London, 28 Weather, not to be feared, 33 ; planning buildings for, 34, 36 ; chiltken not exposed to, 293 Wilderness, the children's, 48 Winter scenes, 70-82, 129-33, 134-7 Word-building, 113 Writing, reading and drawing, 116, 117- 21 Wundt, 94 THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH ENGLAND DEPARTMENT OF RURAL ORGANIZATION N. y. STATE COLLEGE Of /.G^iCl'LTUSX CORNEU UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, H. Y. DtPARTii'.LlIT CF RURAL CliGAIilZAT/:! N. Y. STATE COLLEGE Of /GriCULTM CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N.Y.