The Doings of David and Peter

V  THE EDUCATION PROBLEM

“Well,” said the childless friend, consolingly, as she gazed in mild surprise at the two apparent gutter urchins who had appeared most inopportunely to cheer her departure, “you'll be getting the boys off your hands soon. You won't be sorry to send them to school.” 

I smiled falsely, but her words struck home. Without a shadow of doubt I know that I should not be glad to have them off my hands, that I hated the very idea of passing them to the care of some other, however qualified, but I also knew that I could shelve the question no longers It must be faced. Before many months the representative of an interfering Government might be standing on ay doorstep, and plans must be made to satisfy him. 

Hot, of course, that the subject had been overlooked. Some four years ago, when David was only a few months old, his father had, in all seriousness, laid down such statements as: "He will have to win a scholarship if he wants to go to the University", and on the coming of Peter he had made equally grave decisions as to the advisability of reserving the University training for David, whose appearance seemed more scholarly. But since both boys had been on their feet the subject seemed to have dropped, immediate problems having acquired too much importance. The time was ripe, however, for a discussion, and I broached the subject to David's father. 

“Better send him to the Elementary School,” said he. "He'll get educated there, which is more than you can say about the local private schools.” 

I looked doubtful. "I didn’t go to an Elementary School," said I, with happy memories of  a jolly governess for my early days. 

"I did," said he, “though it was called the Board School then." 

Knowing that, by scholarships and practically unaided, he had achieved the highest degree his University could offer, it seemed impolite to belittle state education. Besides, I knew nothing of it. So l resolved I would find out - not only about state education, but about all other types of education.

First, the boys and I surveyed from the outside the local schools. They were grey, forbidding structures, built many years ago. Round them were bare, usually sunless playgrounds, in which crowds of children overflowed at playtime. We pressed against the railings to watch, and, as the whistle blew, I counted the children to a class as they passed in - forty -- fifty -- forty. It seemed incredible. Could those ordinary young women really be so super-human as to teach forty enquiring young minds at once? Even as I watched, there rose from each side of me the steady refrain to which I was accustomed: “Why?” and "How?" and “tell it again." If it took me all my time to answer the questions of two, had David any chance in a class of forty of satisfying his insatiable desire to know? Maybe, though, these ordinary-looking young women were superhuman ~ their training might have given them a secret I had not learnt. I looked at them more closely as they passed in. The whistle-blower brought up the rear with a colleague, and there came to my ears a drifting scrap: 

“If I'd only know-own that I had to grow..." I shuddered. That dreadful local accent!  Were not even the teachers free from it?

I talked to friends. 

"There's a dear little school in Cross Lane," gushed one. "Miss Roberts keeps it -- she's so sweet with the children, they says Mrs. Herbert, from the Precincts, sends her little girl - only such nice children, dear." 

I considered the boys dispassionately. Could one honestly call them “nice" children? David, at his saintliest, might perhaps, pass, but Peter, incorrigible urchin, with his games, tricks and wide, humorous mouth, must certainly be disqualified. 

I hedged.

 "Is she a certificated teacher?” I asked. 

"Certificated?" repeated the lady in some surprise. "I don't know, I'm sure. But it doesn't matter, does it, dear, with such tiny ones?" 

To me it mattered tremendously. I sought the help of books. They introduced me to Bernard Russell, J Homer Lane and A. S. Neill. I gasped as a new world of thought flowed round me, of which the watchwords were Freedom and Freud. Cheerfully credulous, I swallowed it wholesale, and flung at the boys’ long-suffering father that never, never should they endure the prison system of our state education. He smiled philosophically and asked what alternative I had to offer.

 "A free school," I suggested, and he enquired about fees. 

That had not occurred to me, but there was nothing to prevent my finding out Mr Neill proved courteous, but it certainly came as rather a blow to realise that by the time David and Peter were equipped with clothes and pocket money, and their fees and fares paid, we should have a bare hundred a year on which to live ourselves. Still, quite undaunted, I pigeon-holed the idea for the future, and went back to the more immediate present. 

I discussed it with another friend, an ex-teacher, who again referred me to Miss Roberts’ little school. 

“But Miss Roberts seems to have no qualifications," I protested. 

"Qualifications!" scoffed she. "They make too much fuss about qualifications. I'm a certificated teacher, fully qualified to take Junior classes, and I can't do it for toffee. I hate it. I only enjoyed my senior work. As for infants," - she looked with resignation at her small son - "I'm not teaching him, whatever happens. He's going to school next term.” 

Somewhat bemused by her logic (for what guarantee had she that he would not be taught by another like herself?) I returned to a second perusal of my books. 

Reading with a more critical eye, I began to wonder a little at the ease with which some people wrote as experts. The Russell's, for instance; it came as a shock to find that their babies were scarcely elder than mine, to discover that one lady, writing with authority on the education of children, had borne but one girl, and handed her to others to train, while another, equally authoritative, was childless. Was it really easier to appear in print as an expert than I had imagined?

 "Perhaps it had better be the Elementary School, after all," I confessed. "But what after? Could they go on from there to a good school? Supposing you made a fortune, or I wrote best-sellers? Could they go on to a public school, or would it stand against them to have been in Elementary Schools?"

In silence, David's father handed me a booke It was called “Public Schools”, and I read it chapter by chapter, If there was a side of public school life which had form or comeliness, the author took care to hide it. It described a system so futile and abominable that I shuddered at the thought that my boys might be exposed to it. 

I handed it back, shaken and troubled. 

“Terribly exaggerated, of course,” he said calmly, “but some of it's true.” 

I gave it up. "I don't know what to believe,” I moaned. "It's all too difficult. Suppose we put off school for a year and let me teach David myself. It wouldn't be hard -~ he wants to know. Could we satisfy that horrible inspector that I’m a competent person? 

With the perversity of husbands, he refused to be drawn into a compliment. "You might," he said, "if you could show a timetable?” 

“A time-table? But how could I? We should be learning as we went along, and if we got bored with letters, we'd go into the garden and dig, and learn a bit about plants at the same time. And they learn geography in our getting-up stories from the frieze of the ‘Children of Other Lands’. Am I to put down, ‘Geography and Ethnology ~ 7.15 to 7.45'?" 

He had returned to his perusal of an abstruse work, so my shaft missed fires. Husbands, as I think I said before, can be very perverse at times. 

The more I considered the idea, however, the more I liked it. To go on playing with the boys for another year, not only to be allowed, but to be ordered to sit on the floor with them, constructing, doing puzzles, looking at books, was an enticing prospect. It should be done. My mind was made up. Henceforward I would be my own school. ‘ I sank back in my chair and idly stretched out a hand for my “Nursery World" - the young mother's weekly tonic. As I turned the pages, these words seemed to jump at me: 

“For psychological reasons, Phyllis, the mother is not usually the best person to assume the function of teacher." 

Now, isn’t life difficult?