II. The School Building

IT is clear that what is most of all the matter with the child is his sense of helplessness.... He told us how he lost inevitably his position of King in the magic realm of infancy—a kingship only to be recovered fragmentarily in dreams and in the fantasies of play—how he discovered himself to be little and weak and clumsy and ignorant of the ways of the strange real world. It is clear too that the chief difference which separates us from childhood is the acquisition of a few powers, physical and intellectual, which make us feel to some extent masters of our world.

Does not education, then, first of all consist in giving to children a progressive sense of power, through a physical and intellectual mastery of their environment? And would not the acquisition of an adequately increasing mastership deprive the child of any need for those outbursts of rage and malice and mischief which are today[Pg 23] the most characteristic trait of childhood, and which are only his attempt to deny his shameful helplessness? Shall we not try at the outset to make the child feel that he is a useful and important part of our world?

The answer to these questions being “Yes,” we now turn to the building in which what now passes for education is conducted, and inquire whether it answers this primary requirement.

But first of all, let us free our minds from any lingering superstitions we may cherish with reference to school buildings. Let us get over the notion that school-buildings are sacrosanct, like churches. I am inclined to think that we have transferred to the school building some of our traditional respect for churches. We feel that it is a desecration to allow dances and political meetings to be held there. We seem to regard with jealous pride the utter emptiness and uselessness of our school buildings after hours; it is a kind of ceremonial wastefulness which appeals to some deep-seated ridiculous barbaric sense of religious taboo in us. Well, we must get over it if we are to give the children a square deal. If it should turn out that the school building is wrong, we must be prepared to abolish it.

And we must get over our notion that a school[Pg 24] building is necessary in order for a school to exist. The most famous school in the world had no building at all—only a stretch of outdoors, with some grass and a few plane trees. Of course, the Greeks were fonder of the open air than we are, and their winters were less severe. And then, too, the Greek idea of education was simpler than ours. It comprised simply athletics and philosophy and one or two other aristocratic subjects which I forget at the moment—art being regarded as manual labour, just as the drama was considered a religious function, and government a kind of communal festivity! And, of course, the Persian theory of education—to be able to ride, shoot, and tell the truth—could be carried out under the open sky better than anywhere else. But our aims are more elaborate, and it may very well be true—in fact, I have been convinced of it all along—that much of our educational process should be carried on indoors.

But let us not be too hasty in conceding the School Building’s right to existence. There is another side to the question.

The trouble is, once you give a School Building permission to exist, it straightway commences to put on semi-sacerdotal airs—as if it were a kind of outcast but repentant church. It arranges itself[Pg 25] into dingy little secular chapels, with a kind of furtive pulpit in front for the teacher, and a lot of individual pews for the mourners. It makes the chemistry laboratory, which it regards as a profane intruder, feel cramped and uncomfortable; it puts inconveniences in the way of the gymnasium; and it is dreadfully afraid some one will think that the assembly hall will look like a theatre; while as for carpentry and printing shops, ateliers for sculpture groups, and a furnace for the pottery class, it feels that it has lost caste utterly if it is forced to admit them; nor will it condescend to acknowledge such a thing as a kitchen-garden in its back yard as having any relation to itself. You can well understand that if it has these familiar adjuncts of everyday life, it will seem just like part of the ordinary world; and so it tries its hardest to keep them out, and generally succeeds pretty well.

But since what we started out to do was to teach children what the world of reality is like, it is necessary that they should be in and of the real world. And since the real world outside is not, unfortunately, fully available for educational purposes, it is necessary to provide them with the real world on a smaller scale—a world in which they can, without danger, familiarize themselves[Pg 26] with their environment in its essential aspects—a world which is theirs to observe, touch, handle, take apart and put back together again, play with, work with, and become master of; a world in which they have no cause to feel helpless or weak or useless or unimportant; a world from which they can go into the great world outside without any abrupt transition—a world, in short, in which they can learn to be efficient and happy human beings.

The School Building, imposing upon our credulity and pretending to be too sacred for these purposes, needs to be taken down from its pedestal. It may be permitted to have a share in the education of our youth if it will but remember that it is no more important in that process than a garden, a swimming tank, a playground, the library around the corner, the woods where the botany class goes, or the sky overhead that exhibits its constellations gladly at the request of the science teacher. Let it humble itself while there is yet time, and not expect its little guests to keep silence within its walls as if they were in a church, for it may even yet be overthrown—and replaced by a combination theatre-gymnasium-studio-office-and-model-factory building. And then it will be sorry!