Visual Education (Jan 1923-Dec 1924)

36 Visual Education Making Education Tangible A record of experience that drives home today's crying need for the teaching not only of symbols, but of the things signified Louise Connolly Educational Adviser, Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey WHEN I was a school girl in Washington, D. C, we studied, in our high-school literature class, a poem about a river. The teacher was a wideawake person, prone to introduce "extraneous matter" into the lessons. So she demanded of a student, "What do you think of the simile, Miss Jones? Does it agree with your observation of the real river ?" "I have never seen a real river," replied Miss Jones in placid tones. The teacher seemed surprised. "Where do you live?" she asked. "On 22d St. near I St.," said Miss Jones. "But surely," expostulated the teacher, "that is within a very few squares of the Potomac." "Yes'm," said Miss Jones, "but I have never gone to school that way." Poverty of Experience Maybe you think that such things don't happen in these days. Newark is not a very large city. And trolley cars radiate out of it in all directions. One day I found twenty-two children in the children's room of our museum. They varied from nine to fifteen years in age, and covered a rather wide range in prosperity. I had them discreetly questioned by the attendant in charge, and she found that only three of them had ever seen the country — fields, growing crops, fruit trees. Several years ago I visited a public school in a big metropolis. A fifth-grade class was reading. A boy of twelve a ears rose, "took position," and read, a word al a lime : I he pear i a cousin If) the rose." I fe pronounced each word distinctly, showing com plete impartiality as to stress, and sat down complacently. I felt convinced that his style of delivery would usually have passed muster. But my presence made the teacher unusually critical. "Do read it with some expression, Jacob," said she. "The pear is a cousin to the rose." Jacob tried again. "The PEAR," he announced, with simulated enthusiasm, "is a COUSIN to the ROSE." "Jacob," said 1, "did you ever see a pear?" "Yes, ma'am!" "Where?" "Often de fruit stand." "Did you ever see a rose?" said I. "Yes, ma'am !" "Where?" "Offen de flower stand." "Jacob," said I, "do you believe that the pear is a cousin to the rose?" "No, MA'AM," said Jacob. "Why not ?" said I. "It don't look like it to me," said Jacob. I had occasion lately to look through school readers of the third, fourth and fifth grades. I opened them at random and found: Grade 5 — age 10 — poems containing: curfew knell plowman stillness shepherd merle vanguard cypress herd lea glimmering landscape beetle distant folds mavis rivulets fluttering signals ( jrade 3 — age 8 : reeds tortoise mushroom acorn dormouse hare airy mountains rushy glen rocky shore yellow tide foam cabbage field furrow Shall we give a series of objectlessons, nature-studies, before each stanza and story, or shall we ex clude from our readers literature written by nature-lovers ? What do we do ourselves? Let us see. Even as You and I I heard a young college graduate reading aloud to her mother from Fiona McLeod's short stories She read: "Stillness was in that place. . . . What though the Garromalt water foamed down Ben Nair, where the croft was? . . . What though the stones fell from the ridges of Ben Chaistael and Meolinor, and clattered down the barren declivities till they were slung in the tangled mashes of whin and juniper? What though the eagle screamed, as he fought the wind that graved a thin line upon the aged front of Ben Mulad where his eyrie was: or that the kestrel cried above the rabbit burrows in the strath: or that the hill fox barked or that the curlew wailed, or that the scattered sheep made an endless mournful cr}'ing? What were these but the ministers of silence?" "Sharpe was a master of graphic description, wasn't he?" said the young reader feelingly. "He was, indeed," responded her mother. "Wait a minute, sister," said I. "You mispronounced six words. Do you know what they were?" "Well, of course, I don't know those Scotch proper names," sa:d she; "there were five of them. What's the other?" "Eyrie," said I. "And now I'd like you to tell me — what's a croft ?" "I think it's a house," said she, "or maybe a haystack." "Do you know," said I, "what whin and juniper look like?" "I don't know whin," said she, "but I think I must have seen juniper."