OUTDOOR SCHOOL.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 11152, 19 December 1901, Page 2

OUTDOOR SCHOOL.

Keqhlet Ssowbkst, cc. th» Esglkh luxBT&iTBD lUtuzncs. At Stanbnry, in Bronteland, one may see echool taught ont of doors. Hot that youngsters sit on the grass and do their lessons on their knees like eating at a picnic. Hie first impression yon get is, in fact, that they are running wild. In that ebanning book, "Eyes and No Eyes," Grant -Allen said thai one'shonld "neve , let schooling interfere with education," so o5 they go birdnesting and botanising, getting on terms ■with Nature. In Board schools, at all events, that is a novel war of teaching. How my Lords at Whitehall were brought to allow it might be an interesting story with a moral; but ] they not only do so, "tiey are now giving leave to country schools everywhere to follow this excellent example. Other schools here and there helped to s>et it, bait this schooJ is one of the most original pioneerSjl Although it looks as if master, boys, aw! girls w*re ail in a conspiracy to play truant, you must not rnn away with the idea { they are wasting time. They are nafcoralj ists. This is what has opened thejsjfts of ;. my Lords, for one thing. The folk at Stanboiy began to learn from Nature just five years ago; and though theyall wear clogs, and the lasses shawjs instead of tats, and talk a dialect of Anglo-Danish strange to Southern ears, some not yet in their teens know what to seek afield in all seasons of

tbe rear. What is more, tisey know the elementary science of it. Impossible i or this country to produce Hare-tons and Heafhcliffs any more—if, indeed, it ever did so!

One afternoon a -week is the limit of soch rational learning. Bst unoSSciallr. there are "wick things" in tbe school itself—tadpoles and pond"snails, <md water-flies Latching out in big bell-jars, ehrysalids from which they will watch the butterflies push out, to flutter with instant eagerness at sight of the first flowers, and most miraculously begin to feed and fertilise. These and a small mnseum of mosses, ferns, the twigs of flowering tree 3, rare plants, winged seeds, and local fossils are all the ch£dren"s own collecting. They have miscrocopes to see with. At playtime there are always some who crowd about the bell-jars •with microscopes instead of running out. And each Isas a pair of home-matfe ntedles for the examination of leaf-buds and seed-caaes—sewing needles stack into bits of wood. It seems ttaey took to the science of natural history like ducks to water, and Mr Edgar Pear, who is one of his Majesty's Inspectors of Schools for the West Hiding, got the master to make a sketch of his methods for the Duke of Devonshire's department. On an April Friday vrhile the trees were bare we saw the school go -down to a beckside under Wuthering Heights. In tbe second picture Stanbury crests the middle hill and Heathciiif s honse is up on the moors behind it to the left.

They were not in procession like a yoong ladies' seminary, but trotting away aad scattering as they pleased with laughing faces—happy youngsters, nine to thirteen years of age, the older ones "half-timers" —a typical Harworth troop of these days, when mills are smoking. Bγ the beck the master blew a whistle, and* they nocked about him.

"I came down here this morning before breakfast," he said, "and found some birds' nests. If I showed yon where they are, how then? Would you all keep slipping away to see how they were getting on, and make a regular track, and scare the birds? .

Chorus of "No, sir!" naturally. Hβ led the way. It looked like flying" in the face of the Wild Birds' Protection Act.

As the boys thronged about the first nest eagerir, I said to him. "You don't seem to think they'll take the eggs?" Mr Bradley gave an odd little hap r y laugh. "They'll see thafc the , eggs are never touched," he said. "When lads come up collecting out of Keighley, these of mine hang about and threaten to tell the police." I admired, and the 'esson began. "What is the nest lined with?" "Plaster." In the North we don't often say "Sir." ''Eggs of that colour in a nest made like that are laid by a certain bird. What bird do you think it is?" "A thrush, " "There are several kinds of thrushes." "A song thrush!" That is the right answer, but only one boy speaks. It appears thafc this is the first lesson on the subject; and so the master goes on, telling them how to know one kind from another. Two more nests are inspected. • "Now," he says, "you will see what you can find as we go up the beck, and Pll call you together somewhere by the mill." And away they go, botanising on their own accounts. The Brontes were not so much in sympathy with the rude society about them as to" be aware of a deep-seated love of Nature in the West Riding people. There is less rudeness already than in their day, no doubt; Methodism and education have done wonders, but I have found an almost poetic attitude towards all beauty of landscape, and a genuine affection for Living things, in many a countryman for whom neither education nor Methodism had done anything. Mr Bradley himself was a naturalist born. He is a nephew of the old poacher who figures in a tale of mine about the hamlloom days, and he worked in the mill until he was seventeen. I have no doubt that this new teaching of which he is a pioneer will easily, and by a natural appeal, do much to civilise rural England, if it cannot arreettbte to wnward drift of population. We scrambled up the beck-side. The children seemed to be finding things everywhere, although, there were neither opening ! buds on thef trees nor many flowers in the [ trrass. They called to «ne another in the dialect. Its use is not discouraged; plants are allowed their common names aa well as their scientific ones. . .

By tie mill—a ruin in which looms -were driven by water-power in Charlotte's day— we had a taste of what -the children really knew. Some visiting teachers were as much gratified as we who looked on idly. The treasure-trove included catkins of alder, and larch, and willow palm, flowers of coltsfoot and dandeQonj frog spawn, seed of the sycamore germinating, mat inoee, wild sage, polypod fern, skeleton leavee from a couch where the snows had newly melted, and by some chance a caterpillar. The youngsters huddled round in a picturesque group—it might have been one of the old Irish hedgeschools—and one by one the master called for specimens and asked for facts about them. Here is a shorthand record of part of the talk—

"Ah, here's-a lovely thing—Herbert can always find something choice. What is it? ,, "This is the hazel in flower." "How do you know it?" "By the pink brash. It hw a smooth stem."

"And if it were alder, what difference would you notice? Who has some alder? Tell mc how you know it." "The pistillate catkin grows at the back of the etaminate."

"Point out the parts of the twig you have." And a small child of twelve indicates this year's amd last year's seed-cones, the points where there will be £eaf-buds, the catkins ; tells about fertilisation and how the seed forms; and is led on with rapid questions— "Where are the seeds from this cone?" "Scattered, perhaps, into Hie beck." "No good any more, do you mean?" "Yes, if they got carried down and left in the damp soil somewhere. ,, "How do you know they are carried down? "We've seen corky seeds floating." "There is a very big seed we have at school that does the same thing." "The cocoanufc." So it went in. They seemed to know a marvellous deal of science of the right elementary kind, typical, leading on to a study of Nature's great variety of methods, and it interested them. There had been live and pleasant teaching doubtless; if a child confused staminate aad pistillate, it was "Never mind the hard words now ; tell us •whiohibears the pollen," and what they knew"sras always the interesting fact. Life is bo much more real than books that this kind of teaching only needs to be kept simple and it fascinates. They go out of doors, too, to learn geography," and to measure land and haystacks. Who would not be a country schoolboy?