SOME THOUGHTS ON SCHOOL HOLIDAYS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1611, 14 January 1903, Page 4

SOME THOUGHTS ON SCHOOL HOLIDAYS

Canon Barnett—the founder and warden of Toynbee Hall—raises in tire “Times” the question why should elementary schools have holidays ? According to present custom, the schools close up in August and proclaim general

holiday. This system involves two big assumptions—(l) that all lives are so arranged that August is the only month in which work can be dropped; (2) thus school life in. all classes of society is necessarily a bondage from which release is relief. But these assumptions, argues the Canon, only hold good of the middle, and not the working class. The workers are not always less busy in August than during the rest of the Summer ; and their children, who attend school for only twenty-five hours a week, should often find their school life “Brighter, more interesting, more airy, and more healthy than* home life.” What the Canon would like to see is schools in “continujajl session.” That does not mean that the children would never get a holiday. They could go away for a fortnight with their parents, or somebody else; only th© holiday would be shorter and more convenient. It wonld involve no “over-crowding during the one month of August,” -and no necessity of spending long -weary days in the streets, v r hile noise, dirt, and common sights dried up the child-like capacity for dreaming and enjoyment.”

In an article on the close of the school holidays, the “Times” says:— “No one, of course, has this year grudged the boys and masters the addition of a week to their already long rest.

Nevertheless, it must during these last eight weeks have occurred to many a parent, himself perhaps enjoying his one annual holiday of five or six weeks, how fortunate in -this respect is the race of shoolmasters, to whom is secured, as a rule, three months’ complete holiday in every year. .The lawyer, it is true, has his long vacation; but legal business, especially for the solicitors’ branch of the profession, is not completely suspended, as that of school is. The clergyman is entitled to take three months’ leave of absence in each year without interference from his Bishop; but his work goes on, and he must find, and probably pay, a substitute to do it. So also must a medical man; for the ills that flesh is heir to will not suspend or intermit their course while he takes a holiday. Even the University Don, whose holidays are to outward seeming the long-

est of all, is less free to make complete holiday than the schoolmaster. A holiday of half the year becomes an absurdity, and must be regarded as partly an

alternative period of work. Its brightness is, so to speak, blasted with excess of light.. The schoolmaster, as a holiday-making and holiday-enjoying being, is the most fortunate of professional men. We do not imply that a i long break in the life and work of j school is undesirable or unnecessary for j boys or masters. For the latter it | may be fairly urged that their profesi siou is a harassing and exacting one,

and that, in boarding-schools, at any rate, there is no such daily break as is afforded in other walks of life by the limitation of business hours. . . .

But what of the boys? Have their minds simply rusted while their bodies have been full-fed with the luxuries of home? Has the small Latin and less Greek that they have been learning at school evaporated, like some volatile spirit, from their unretentire brains; or has some faint attempt been made by holiday tasks, or a holiday tutor, or by other such device, to prevent their holidays from being a time of unalloyed idleness? Such means of utilising the holidays are generally ineffective. Perhaps, however, the mere fact of spending some weeks at home, in the society of their .mothers and sisters, is in itself a useful'part of their education, supplementing certain defficiences of school life. It supplies, or should supply, the teaching in manners and courtesy which only a refined home con give. It may redress the balance of a system which, great as are its merits, has one demerit, in that it removes young boya for lengthened periods of time from the natural' influences of family life, and places them in an artificially constituted society of boys alone. A well-regu-lated home should help to inculcate those habits of order which Plato regarded as the basis of education *‘. . . An English public school, for a boy who will work and whose parents will encourage him to work, affords as good a training as can be found. Bnt it cannot in the nature of things teach the amenities of life as they can be taught at home.