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The walls, the things in it, they will all speak to this new mind of ours, a little more, a little less
eloquently, and teach it, or fail to teach it a thousand things.
Obviously, said Cossar, reaching hastily for his hat.
They worked together harmoniously, but Redwood supplied most of the educational theory
required ...
They had the walls and woodwork painted with a cheerful vigour; for the most part a slightly
warmed white prevailed, but there were bands of bright clean colour to enforce the simple lines
of construction. Clean colours we must have, said Redwood, and in one place had a neat
horizontal band of squares, in which crimson and purple, orange and lemon, blues and greens,
in many hues and many shades, did themselves honour. These squares the giant children
should arrange and rearrange to their pleasure. Decorations must follow, said Redwood; let
them first get the range of all the tints, and then this may go away. There is no reason why one
should bias them in favour of any particular colour or design.
Then, The place must be full of interest, said Redwood. Interest is food for a child, and
blankness torture and starvation. He must have pictures galore. There were no pictures hung
about the room for any permanent service, however, but blank frames were provided into
which new pictures would come and pass thence into a portfolio so soon as their fresh interest
had passed. There was one window that looked down the length of a street, and in addition, for
an added interest, Redwood had contrived above the roof of the nursery a camera obscura
that watched the Kensington High Street and not a little of the Gardens.
In one corner that most worthy implement, an Abacus, four feet square, a specially
strengthened piece of ironmongery with rounded corners, awaited the young giants incipient
computations. There were few woolly lambs and such-like idols, but instead Cossar, without
explanation, had brought one day in three four-wheelers a great number of toys (all just too big
for the coming children to swallow) that could be piled up, arranged in rows, rolled about, bitten,
made to flap and rattle, smacked together, felt over, pulled out, opened, closed, and mauled
and experimented with to an interminable extent. There were many bricks of wood in diverse
colours, oblong and cuboid, bricks of polished china, bricks of transparent glass and bricks of
india-rubber; there were slabs and slates; there were cones, truncated cones, and cylinders;
there were oblate and prolate spheroids, balls of varied substances, solid and hollow, many
boxes of diverse size and shape, with hinged lids and screw lids and fitting lids, and one or two
to catch and lock; there were bands of elastic and leather, and a number of rough and sturdy
little objects of a size together that could stand up steadily and suggest the shape of a man.
Give em these, said Cossar. One at a time.
These things Redwood arranged in a locker in one corner. Along one side of the room, at a
convenient height for a six-or eight-foot child, there was a blackboard, on which the youngsters
might flourish in white and coloured chalk, and near by a sort of drawing block, from which
sheet after sheet might be torn, and on which they could draw in charcoal, and a little desk
there was, furnished with great carpenter s pencils of varying hardness and a copious supply
of paper, on which the boys might first scribble and then draw more neatly. And moreover
Redwood gave orders, so far ahead did his imagination go, for specially large tubes of liquid
paint and boxes of pastels against the time when they should be needed. He laid in a cask or
so of plasticine and modelling clay. At first he and his tutor shall model together, he said,
and when he is more skilful he shall copy casts and perhaps animals. And that reminds me, I
must also have made for him a box of tools!
Then books. I shall have to look out a lot of books to put in his way, and they ll have to be big
type. Now what sort of books will he need? There is his imagination to be fed. That, after all, is
the crown of every education. The crown as sound habits of mind and conduct are the
throne. No imagination at all is brutality; a base imagination is lust and cowardice; but a noble
imagination is God walking the earth again. He must dream too of a dainty fairy-land and of all
the quaint little things of life, in due time. But he must feed chiefly on the splendid real; he shall
have stories of travel through all the world, travels and adventures and how the world was won;
he shall have stories of beasts, great books splendidly and clearly done of animals and birds
and plants and creeping things, great books about the deeps of the sky and the mystery of the
sea; he shall have histories and maps of all the empires the world has seen, pictures and
stories of all the tribes and habits and customs of men. And he must have books and pictures
to quicken his sense of beauty, subtle Japanese pictures to make him love the subtler beauties
of bird and tendril and falling flower, and western pictures too, pictures of gracious men and
women, sweet groupings, and broad views of land and sea. He shall have books on the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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The walls, the things in it, they will all speak to this new mind of ours, a little more, a little less
eloquently, and teach it, or fail to teach it a thousand things.
Obviously, said Cossar, reaching hastily for his hat.
They worked together harmoniously, but Redwood supplied most of the educational theory
required ...
They had the walls and woodwork painted with a cheerful vigour; for the most part a slightly
warmed white prevailed, but there were bands of bright clean colour to enforce the simple lines
of construction. Clean colours we must have, said Redwood, and in one place had a neat
horizontal band of squares, in which crimson and purple, orange and lemon, blues and greens,
in many hues and many shades, did themselves honour. These squares the giant children
should arrange and rearrange to their pleasure. Decorations must follow, said Redwood; let
them first get the range of all the tints, and then this may go away. There is no reason why one
should bias them in favour of any particular colour or design.
Then, The place must be full of interest, said Redwood. Interest is food for a child, and
blankness torture and starvation. He must have pictures galore. There were no pictures hung
about the room for any permanent service, however, but blank frames were provided into
which new pictures would come and pass thence into a portfolio so soon as their fresh interest
had passed. There was one window that looked down the length of a street, and in addition, for
an added interest, Redwood had contrived above the roof of the nursery a camera obscura
that watched the Kensington High Street and not a little of the Gardens.
In one corner that most worthy implement, an Abacus, four feet square, a specially
strengthened piece of ironmongery with rounded corners, awaited the young giants incipient
computations. There were few woolly lambs and such-like idols, but instead Cossar, without
explanation, had brought one day in three four-wheelers a great number of toys (all just too big
for the coming children to swallow) that could be piled up, arranged in rows, rolled about, bitten,
made to flap and rattle, smacked together, felt over, pulled out, opened, closed, and mauled
and experimented with to an interminable extent. There were many bricks of wood in diverse
colours, oblong and cuboid, bricks of polished china, bricks of transparent glass and bricks of
india-rubber; there were slabs and slates; there were cones, truncated cones, and cylinders;
there were oblate and prolate spheroids, balls of varied substances, solid and hollow, many
boxes of diverse size and shape, with hinged lids and screw lids and fitting lids, and one or two
to catch and lock; there were bands of elastic and leather, and a number of rough and sturdy
little objects of a size together that could stand up steadily and suggest the shape of a man.
Give em these, said Cossar. One at a time.
These things Redwood arranged in a locker in one corner. Along one side of the room, at a
convenient height for a six-or eight-foot child, there was a blackboard, on which the youngsters
might flourish in white and coloured chalk, and near by a sort of drawing block, from which
sheet after sheet might be torn, and on which they could draw in charcoal, and a little desk
there was, furnished with great carpenter s pencils of varying hardness and a copious supply
of paper, on which the boys might first scribble and then draw more neatly. And moreover
Redwood gave orders, so far ahead did his imagination go, for specially large tubes of liquid
paint and boxes of pastels against the time when they should be needed. He laid in a cask or
so of plasticine and modelling clay. At first he and his tutor shall model together, he said,
and when he is more skilful he shall copy casts and perhaps animals. And that reminds me, I
must also have made for him a box of tools!
Then books. I shall have to look out a lot of books to put in his way, and they ll have to be big
type. Now what sort of books will he need? There is his imagination to be fed. That, after all, is
the crown of every education. The crown as sound habits of mind and conduct are the
throne. No imagination at all is brutality; a base imagination is lust and cowardice; but a noble
imagination is God walking the earth again. He must dream too of a dainty fairy-land and of all
the quaint little things of life, in due time. But he must feed chiefly on the splendid real; he shall
have stories of travel through all the world, travels and adventures and how the world was won;
he shall have stories of beasts, great books splendidly and clearly done of animals and birds
and plants and creeping things, great books about the deeps of the sky and the mystery of the
sea; he shall have histories and maps of all the empires the world has seen, pictures and
stories of all the tribes and habits and customs of men. And he must have books and pictures
to quicken his sense of beauty, subtle Japanese pictures to make him love the subtler beauties
of bird and tendril and falling flower, and western pictures too, pictures of gracious men and
women, sweet groupings, and broad views of land and sea. He shall have books on the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]