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Where this spirit prevails the home life must be raised to a higher level. Indeed
we have some ground for thinking that the nursery school educates the mothers
almost as much as it educates the children.
In Bradford an interesting experiment in the training of elementary school
girls has been initiated by co-operation between the Lilycroft Nursery School and
the Lilycroft Mixed School. As part of their Domestic Science Course, the girls of
the leaving class attend the nursery school in rotation for one half-day a week during
their last school year, in the morning one week, in the afternoon the next. Thus
they see the greater part of the day's activities from 8.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and take
part in all but the actual teaching and medical treatment; and these they observe.
They have the added dignity of a uniform, a note-book, a special corner as nursery
"Big Sister" to the babies. Who can doubt that this practical experience will
help them, not merely in their everyday duty of "minding the baby," but in later
years when they themselves become mothers ?
To sum up, in looking back over our series of visits, we feel that the nursery
school is an institution of peculiar value in our industrialised society and that the
multiplication of such schools would not merely set the children on the right way to
healthy development of all sides of their nature, but would raise the general level
of family life. We feel too that the influence of the nursery school flows directly
from the superintendent, whose personality and outlook are all important and who,
to meet all the claims made upon her, needs many qualities of mind and heart.
The scholastic aspect.—We assume that it is now fully recognised that a nursery
school is a school as well as a nursery; that the child's mind needs the ministrations
of a teacher just as much as his body needs the ministrations of a nurse—in a word,
that his mental habits are just as important as his physical habits.
The training influences at work in the schools seem to derive from two sources,
Froebel and Montessori. Where the influence of Froebel is strongly marked, as in
the Notting Hill and Somers Town Nursery Schools, much importance is attached to
play, story-telling, singing, dancing, nature study and handwork. The teacher
takes up a prominent role and class teaching is the normal mode of instruction.
Where the Montessorian influence is dominant, as in the Rommany Road Nursery
School, the emphasis falls on individual work, free discipline, sense training and the
use of didactic apparatus. The teacher is an observer and a guide, and the children
are allowed, within certain limits, to follow their own pursuits. In the best schools,
however, the method is eclectic; it is a selection of the best in both systems.
We are glad to report that in none of the schools did we find any attempt to
teach the three R's.
The pursuits that seemed to us the most profitable were rhythmic movements,
speech-training and handwork. A ready response to rhythm was almost universal.
From the age of two onwards the children showed a manifest delight in all forms
of dancing and singing and even reciting. It was the rhythm rather than the melody
of music that seemed to appeal to them; it was the rhythm rather than the meaning
of nursery rhymes that engaged their attention. A nursery rhyme enabled them
to dance, so to speak, with their vocal organs.
The manual activities were, rightly, of the simplest and most primitive kind.
Digging in sandpits, building with large wooden blocks, putting Montessori apparatus
to non-Montessorian purposes were the main occupations. Drawing with crayons
on brown paper was sometimes attempted, but more for the joy of doing something
than for delight in something done.
The least satisfactory of the three was speech-training. We regard the cultivation
of clear speech, if not of standard speech, as one of the main duties of the
nursery school. And in some schools this duty was carried out with remarkable
success. Little Yorkshire boys would tell us that they had "three coops of cocoa
and one plate of coostard." The vowels were a little queer, but the consonants