THE TYRANNY OF THE DESK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15646, 27 June 1914, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE TYRANNY OF THE DESK.

BY EDITH HOWES.

Pebhaps we should all have been better men and women to-day if it had not been for the tyranny of the desk; cevtairJ v we should have been stronger and straighter and more alert. As soon as we were old enough to go to school we were marched between long, narrow desks, and there for eight, nine, or ten years we were penned, our "child's right to be active" denied, our eager curiosities left unsatisfied, our senses left untrained, our education a thing of strenuous effort on our teacher's part, of passive or reluctant acceptance on ours.

We never knew the joy of personal exploration in the world of knowledge, nor the vivid sti. of personal discovery; we had always to receive information at second-hand, never to find it for ourselves We could never truly learn, but must always be taught. Exploration, discovery, learning, these are the guerdons of freedom, of individual effort, of liberty, to touch and to handle, to measure and to experiment, to movo and to follow up our enthusiasms. Wo were n-t individual workers,,free to loam; we were an imprisoned mob, pent behind wooden barriers that shut us away from opportunity of -development, limited us to the mediocre quality and inferior amount of ■work performed by tho dullest section of the class, and left us at the mercy of the teacher.

Besides, the desk cramped our limbs, often rounded our shoulders, and inevitably forced us into sedentary habits while we should still have been in the most active stage of our physical development. Almost all animals have their early phases of extreme activity. The play of kittens and poppies, the gambols of lambs and kids, the well-nigh ceasoless activities of a free child, are nature's way of developing muscle and sinew and bone, of training the senses, of setting the organism in touch with its environment. Every leap, every scuffle, is a test of growing strength, a trial of now powers.

Shut in our desks, denied the freedom of tho kitten and tho puppy, denied also any system of training founded on nature's methods, we forfeited oar acuteness of sense perception and quickly lost our tine curiosities. Unconsciously to ourselves, but none the less too surely, wo became weary little walkers along a bare uninteresting track, strictly fenced in from any side excursions into those rapturous fields where discoveries might be made.

When wo left school, we felt little dosire to continue our education, and indeed had little knowledge of how to do so. Wo had beon taught, we had been crammed, we had beon goaded. Left to our own devices, we were helpless and objectless. It was only with tho necessity for earning a living that we woke up. to find that our desk-existence and given us little but a capacity to road and write, both poorly, that our hands were of little use to us, and that our mental habit was out of touch with the real things of life. A new education had to begin ; so now, indeed, and so opposed to the old, that it has become a commonplace to say: " We begin to learn only after we have left school."

Ideals of education have changed marvellously of late years. We know now that information applied from without as a kind of bandage round the brain fits no man or woman for the battle of life. We know that tho mentality must bo free and active, a living alert thing, trained to push and wander and find its own food, gather its own knowledge. The teacher must be merely tho director of the vital energy ; books, things, the whole world, aro but the storehouses of its foodsupply. Wo know that auto-education Is the only true education, and that autoeducation may Do started in tho earliest years School days need not be a dreary waste.

And wo have discovered too that mental power can blcwsom into lulluess only through the effective development of tne physical organs which it controls and through which it must perforce manliest itself. If the hand, tho eye. the ear, Uio tonguo havo missed their training, then tho mental power lias but detective 111struments through which to Junction.

And so wo have come at last to the greater discovery that the little chilli, wnuso senses are undergoing their development,, must get his education througu things, not thiougli mere words and mental linages, Ihia discovery is tho basis of Dr. Montcsson's wonderful work, "Give the child 1 lungs," she says, "and give him liberty, and ho win educate himself."

livery real teacher comes to this knowlodge sooner or later, iiut no ono except Montessori has had both tho genius and the means at disposal to carry out tho discovery to its logical conclusion. She ha* given the child the right thingsmaterials and exorcises simpler and moro direct than Froebel's— liberates him from the desk and all other forms of tyranny, and ho educates himself. And tne magnificent results have startled tho world.

But tho teacher in our state schools cannot get these results. In the first place she has not tho material, tho things which must form tho basis of self-educa-tion; but if she had them sho could not give tho child liberty.to uso them, lothe is still imprisoned in the desk. His schoolroom is almost filled with theso grim barricades, just as ours was. Ho cannot stand at his work, oven when it would be better for him; ho cannot move freely to a second occupation when tho first is finished ; he is shut away from the personal touch, the personal influence of tho teacher.

It is this last aspect which is tho despair of the earnest educator. For years sho has wondered why her work should be so exhausting and so little productive of tho host. Suddenly sho awakes to the truth. It is not oidy that she is forced to work against nature, using words where things aro needed, it is also that her personality, her electric current, hex magnetism, call it what you will, is for ever beating up against the indifforence fostered by these wooden barriers. For unless a child is in the front of the class he is kept aloof, unknown, scarcely touched by that precious friendliness which nearness ensures.

Though teaching apparatus is necessary and self-education is imperative, the director of this education never becomes superfluous. Behind and through all apparatus must always shine her influence, leading, helping, encouraging, unobtrusive but powerful, a spiritual • guide to the mastery of self and self's environment. If sho could pass freely in and out among her pupils, if they could freely como to her, she could be constantly iii touch with all. In the school, as elsewhere, physical barriers make mental barriers.

it is tho chair that is needed, not the desk. Chairs, light, but strong, and easily moved away to give- space for games and exercises, with light movable tables; these are tho ideal school furniture, especi ally . for little ones. Tho kindergarter teaches us that. The children groupec about the teacher, or sitting in a circh of which she is a member—what an ease ment of the whole situation is there im nediatoly! *

Certainly no infant room should contali a desk, and the time is coming when th older children will bo rationally tedwhen sitting is necessary. At present, owinp- to the tyranny of the desk, there, for a ciuiet aching- holiday..

is far too much sitting, far too little activity. The desk is the instrument of cram— much information in so much time; the more modern and more reasonable ideal aims at the opening of the child's mind and the unfolding of his nature through many activities and unfailing interest.

As for the hygiene of the desk, here is what Dr. Mc; Lesson ins to say: "Tie schools were at first furnished with the long narrow benches upon which the children were crowded together. Then camo science and perfected the bench. The seat, tho foot-rest, the desks aro arranged in such a way that the child can ne\er stand nt his work. He is allotted only sufficient room for sitting in an upright position. 1 believe that before very long it will seem incomprehensible that tho fundamental error of the desk should not have been revealed earlier through tho attention given to tho study of infant hygiene, anthropology, and sociology, and through the general progress of thought. 'lhe marvel is greater when wo consider that during the past years thero has been stirring in almost every ration a movement toward tho protection of tho child.

"Evidontly the rational method of combating spinal curvature in the pupils is to change the form of their work— that they shall no longer be obliged to remain for so many hours a day in a harmful position. It is a conquest of liberty which tho school needs, not tho mechanism of a bench. Even were the stationary seats helpful to the child's body, it would still bo a dangerous and unhygienic feature of tho en\ironment, through tho difficulty of cleaning the room perfectly when tho furniture cannot bo moved. To-day there is a eeneral transformation in the matter of house furnishings. They are mado lighter and simpler so that they may be easily moved, dusted, and even washed. But the school seems blind to the transformation of tho social environment." The subject of the desk is not one of merclv scholastic interest. Nothing can be of greater moment to any country than the making of self-helpful citizens; and nothing that is so inimical to self-help as the desk should escape our inquiring attention, ' Tyranny of any kind is bad; the tvranny of this particular piece of furniture is especially obnoxious, since it has power to curtail human development.