I pass frequently through the stream of children pouring out of a large and handsome suburban school. It is not in a slum. There are broad green fields on every side, and there are vast and beautiful public spaces not far away. But the homes from which many of the children come are squalid, and the street-scenes, especially in front of the local inn, are often disgusting. On more than one occasion I have heard the men openly talk of their practice of unnatural vice. I have seen a girl of ten watch her intoxicated father misconduct himself with a prostitute, while the mother--whose attention was called to the fact by the child, in the mono-syllabic language of the district--chatted with a neighbour. And I am not surprised to notice that, when the children burst from school, which they hate, numbers of them break into foul language, indecent behaviour, and fighting. Their world, outside the school, is one mighty drag on the teacher's efforts. When they leave school, with brains half-developed and only the maxims of ancient Judæa (at which half their world scoffs) to guide their conduct, when they enter workshops and laundries and join the company of ring-eyed boys and girls in the first flush of sex-development, they shed the feeble influence of the school-lessons in a few months.
The district I have in mind is a very common type of district: a healthy, open suburb on the fringe of London, tainted by one of those older villages in which the poorest workers are apt to congregate. It has an expensive Church-Institute and numerous chapels. You may see the thing in almost any part of London, and most other towns. I have a vivid recollection of passing from a Catholic elementary school and strict home in Manchester to a large warehouse thirty-five years ago. There is little change in that respect to-day. A very few years ago a Manchester boy passed the same way; and a month or two later, his father told me, he returned home chuckling over a "funny story" about Christ. The school fails, not from lack of devotion in the teachers, but because the child learns more in the street, and often in the home; and these lessons are, somehow, more congenial.
Now if we are not satisfied with this comparative waste of effort and sterility of result, we have to consider candidly the ambition of the educationist. He wants to turn out a young citizen with an active mind, a sound body, and a character prepared to resist the more degrading influences of the world he will enter. He cannot carry out this aim in the case of every child entrusted to him, but he can in most cases, if the State will help him. He must have his children properly nourished: neither underfed nor stuffed with coarse food by ignorant mothers. He must have them seasonably clothed and shod: again the mothers need instruction and pressure. He must have, not only drill and more natural forms of exercise, but more control over the children outside of school-hours; he is already beginning, with great promise of good, to walk and play with them, to take them to museums, and so on. He must have adequate medical assistance, and must have the support of the law in counteracting dirty homes and careless parents. He must keep the child still a few years longer at school, because a child only begins to be really educable at thirteen or fourteen. He must have the encouragement of knowing that the more promising boys and girls will find the avenue open to higher schools, and that the community will make some serious provision of mental stimulation for the adolescent and the adult. And in order to carry out properly this large and promising scheme of training he must have twice as many colleagues as he has, so that each may be able to give individual attention to pupils, and in order that too great demands be not made on their hours of rest.
