THE DALTON PLAN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3149, 25 December 1922, Page 2

THE DALTON PLAN.

The most significant movement in education that lias taken place for some time is now being carried out by Miss Helen Parkhurat in the Children'* University School, New York. It is called the Dalton Laboratory Plan. How it came about and its relationship to education, not only in Great Britain. but in other countries —are matters at the present moment that deserve attention. The fact that educational systems have always been the prey of faddists and fanatics has naturally made it essential that it should be protected from all those enthusiastic people who come forward with new ideas, otherwise it would tend to become much worse than it is. New ideas must be received with caution. A proper conservatism is a real bulwark, not to be despised. Dr T. P. Nunn, Vice-Principal of London University Day Training College, has written' an introduction to Miss Parkhurst's book "Education and the Dalton Plan," The difficulty of explaining it correctly, even to the most intelligent readers, is very great because there is at present so much confusion about the whole subject of education, because there are so many prejudices, and because to take any part of the plan and endeavor to make it plain is sure to meet with objection from those who have fixed ideas of their own, or who are exploiting ideas of their own. One is tempted continually to ask the question, When will educators ever learn never to accuse anybody of anything? I have seen boys utterly ruined! because there was fastened upon them early in life the implication that they were "no good," or that they were deficient in some one particular. The truth is that no human being is so defective that he cannot, by a proper course of love and sympathy and rational' environment and health-restoration, become useful. At the very beginning of this whole problem the word defective, or anything suggestive of deficiency, ought never to be mentioned or even thought of. The importance of the Dalton plan in this respect can scarcely be overestimated, because it is a plan of mutual' helpfulness' on the part of the pupils themselves. The moment a newcomer appears he is shown by the others what to do and how to do it in the most direct and sympathetic way. for children have understanding minds more than is generally supposed. The fact is that children, bad as they are often made out to be, know what) the defects of our school system are themselves much better than the parents do because of their intimate contact with it. And they manage to get out of it a great deal in the way of learning, in spite of these very defects. They worm tilings out of one another. They achieve very early in life proprietary instincts about their schools. They know innately that the schools belong to them, and that their own fathers and mothers are paying the cost. In fact this is dinned into them pretty continually by the same fathers and mothers. They rarely talk about this, however, because they are usually inarticulate. But the attitude is there, quite marked when one gets at them. Now we are continually told by experts that the average intelligence is low. Some say not more than fourteen years of age, some say twelve, some put it as low as nine. In the army tests the result, was quite bad. The proportion of illiterates was indeed alarming. Since the war the number of illiterates has been decreasing. There is truth in all these statements, but not the whole truth. And the great fact should be repeated that intelligence is not nearly so important as character, and, even in practical affairs, not so necessary. The elder J. P. Morgan, one of the most acute financiers, emphasised the necessity cf character as collateral. "The greatest quality," says Lord Northcliffc, "is persistence," and persistence is an outgrowth of character. Extraordinary people, who can acquire great aggregations of facts in incredibly short spaces of time and who can as glibly recount them, arc highly interesting, but unimportant. The important people are those who get things done. And 1 the people who get things done are people with trained senses. That is what counts: co-ordination of muscles, the big muscles and all the intricate little muscles in all parts of the body—muscles that move tbe eyes 1 , muscles that concern themselves with the hand and the auditory apparatus, minute muscles that nobody ever heard of. When everything lias been said, it is the health of the child that counts most. It is practically impossible for a healthy child 1 to go far wrong. The highest education in the world isi the ability to know how to keep well. "When you learn that, everything else is easy. Character, our greatest asset' any way you care to look at it —professionally or commercially—is acquired only by Kelf-discipline. Self-discipline comes from the harmony a human being sets up between himself and his environment, and this must be built upon the proper development of the senses. All of these things are trite. They are perfectly well-known to everybody who has had any experience. The difficulty lies in the application, and the reason why the application is so diffi-

cult is because of the universal l tendency, wherever there are collections of human beings, to create systems built upon commercialism and greed. The point made by some critics against Miss Parkhurst and her plan is that it is too easy; that it offers not enough resistance. The "spare the rod and spoil the child" school is still in existence. Its advocates believe that too much is already being done for the child. They hold up their hands' in holy horror at the flapper, decry the degeneracy of the young, and point to the dame's school as a symbol. One can examine Miss Parkhurst's school from top to bottom, and will not find anywhere a mark on the wall. On one of my visits there, a pencil fell off a table, unwotticed by the group. A little tot-—not over six, in passing, saw the pencil fall, and stooping, picked it up and silently replaced it. That sort of thing is so common there that it lie unnoticed King George in full regalia might go the rounds of that school, and unless his approach had been advertised, nobody would look up. All that sort of thing is bad, say the old brigade. If children begin to teach themselves, if they take a genuine interest in their studies, if there m no sound where they are gathered together, and if they remember what they learn and it is useful to them' in their conduct, such progress is "agin nature" and must be radically wrong. What is the use of any school where there is no noise, and no bad behavior? ft is assumed by the old brigade that people learn how to behave themselves only by learning how first to misbehave. We go into hanks and see the clerks doing their work in silence. We don't see bank tellers marking up their desks with knives, and throwing chewed paper balls' at one another. Yet if children in schools don't do these things, if there is no occasion for punishing them, then they are in a bad way. And to be candid, I still entertain many of these old-fashioned notions myself. There must be some rough stuff. The old-fashioned licking had its usee. Mis* Parkhurst agrees with me in substance. But her point is a perfectly simple one. She is concerned, not so much with that terrible abnormality "child psychology" as she is with economy of time. Like all people of vision, with her form is everything. This is true of art, it is true of music, it is true of golf, it is true of business. The executive concentrates at the right spots, is never in a hurry, gets things done. Observe a child, and you will discover that he isn't really so continuously active as you think. For one thing, he sleeps a lot. When ho plays, he plays intensely, and when he rests, he rests completely, like a good animal. Thus a large part of the fractiousTiess, the nervous display of force, the "cutting up" of children, come from energy repressed and misplaced. In the case of Miss Parkhurst, she was in the beginning confronted by an emergency, and used her wits to solve the problem. Miss Parkhurst was the daughter of a hotel keeper. She began her work as a rural school teacher at £7 a month. She found heerself with 48 pupils on her hands. And she related: "Necessity compelled that I provide occupation for seven grades, while I gave an oral lesson in one." That was her problem. Being a girl of originality and discernment, and unfettered by formal notions, she solved it in a, practical way. She got the older pupils to teach the younger ones. She was able to get it over to them that it was their job as well as hers. She made them help solve it for themselves. She discovered that it worked, that they were not only willing but eager to learn, and when they found they were actually learning for themselves. they were all the more eager. Later, with Montessori, she acquired a long pedagogical experience, but her idea still stuck to her. An opportunity came to try it out in Dalton, .Mass. It Was proved. Then she started it in her present school, and two years ago it was introduced into England. Miss Parkhurst's school seems to be ike other schools at first sight. There are teachers and there are grades. It is only when one conies to examine it that, the difference is evident. Each pupil contracts to do a certain job by the month. He may do it as he likes. There it is, put before him in clearly defined words, on a chart, termed a, contract assignment. His time is his own. He can wander from one room to another. It is up to him. There is a workshop fitted with material and tools. He can pass all his time there if ho likes and "make things." He can move along the easiest way. But if lie chooses the easiest way. the penalty stares him in the face. And moreover, so do the other pupils. Publie (ipinion is against him. Tho result is invariably that in a very short time he finds himself and begins to work with the others. The saving in time and energy is enormous. There is no radical change in the substance, but only in the form. "It isn't what you say, but how you say it," is in itself an old saying and still holds ifood. Form is everything. It is hardly to be expected that human beings are <joing to acquire anything worth while without hard knocks. There is still no royal road to learning. But life is short, and time is fleeting, and after all. to put it in a nutshell, the whole problem of education is to avoid waste. Two old men of radically different temperaments sitting together at the end of their lives discover that they are agreed about the main points. Tho'v agree that moderation in all things is best, that money, while highly important, isn't everything, that charactet counts more than cleverness, that work is the greatest antiseptic, tbat good health is tbe greatest asset, that worry is folly, tbat plain living and lining and friendship and children are better than excess, strife, and vanity. One of them learned all this'at fifty. and the other one didn't learn it until sixty. The ten years wasted by cue may represent the difference iii their early education. What educat : on should do for us, therefore, is to fit lis :is soon ;is possible to live our lives in ;conformity to the great laws of tho universe, which— though men may come and men may go—-run on for ever.