for "The study of dramatic art and workmanship was never mentioned. Long prosy discourses did not bore them, because discourses were not delivered until the boys had obtained enough interest in and knowledge of the subject not to find them prosy. And then they delivered the discourses themselves! We simply took a play of Shakespeare and acted it. We soon found that certain things had to be done, and that their doing was directed by the dramatist. The boys were interested in acting the play, and soon became interested in observing many things essentially connected with the acting of the play. They were fascinated when many examples showed how the "" scenery was given as part and parcel of the play, and was meant to be carried in the mind's eye. When it was further shown, not in lectures, but always in a passing reference while play was going on, that Shakespeare also gives most of the necessary stage directions in the lines, the boys were delighted, because as they said, Here were they acting a play, and the play itself told them what to do. Then it does not need any great persuasion to get a boy who is acting a certain part to study the character he represents. And by such natural processes, always mingling the practice with the instruction, and drawing rules out of examples instead of hunting for examples to illustrate rules, the interest was maintained through all the upward stages.*

In the end these boys had a considerable acquaintance with stage-craft and dramatic workmanship. Several thirdform boys gave lectures on the subject in connexion with Henry IV. The lecture of one boy (aged 12) lasted through four school periods because the others raised so many points for discussion and questions with which he had to deal.

* Although these active methods are here instanced as ways of engaging the interest of the boys their attractiveness is not by any means the sole reason for using them. We act the plays we study, not only because it is entertaining to do so, but because plays are made to be acted. The making of broadsides and chap-books also was introduced (and many another handicraft proposed), not only for the fun of the thing. All this was really a tiny part of an ideal scheme for connecting the arts and the crafts, of bringing lore to life and life to lore. But the classroom system made any adequate realization of this dream impossible. We must wait for a Play School Commonwealth.

Does any one imagine that third-form boys could find enough interest in this subject of dramatic craftsmanship unless their interest had been catered for step by step from the start?

In connexion with plays the need for acting is obvious, but in other connexions people have often thought there was an unnecessary amount of play in our classroom. Visitors have indulgently observed, " Of course your aim is to represent the extreme as a demonstration of the Play Way." Toys and a miscellaneous assortment of apparatus, much jumping about, some dressing up, and often quite a din-all this as a method of teaching literature and composition has often moved my friends to jocular comment. There seemed to be more of the gamesome element than was really inherent in the subject under study! Quite so. But the boy is more important than the subject, and I fancy there was rarely more of the Play Way than was suited to the nature of the active self-learning, self-teaching student, Littleman.

Such, then, is my solution of the problem, "How is the teacher to set in motion an activity in learning on the part of the boy?" As has been said already, the method was only devised in and for the practice of what can best be described as "the arts." But it may be that some of those masters of arts engaged in teaching languages, mathematics, history, and science would find their younger pupils more active in learning if the masters and the boys between them could devise methods of study which were at once as interesting as the finest game and as valuable as the deepest study-in short, Play-ways.

CHAPTER IV

LITTLEMAN LECTURES

He first begins to perceive himself, to see or taste, making little
reflections upon his actions of sense, and can discourse of flies
and dogs, shells and play, horses and liberty: but when he is
strong enough to enter in arts and little institutions, he is at
first entertained with trifles and impertinent things, not because
he needs them, but because his understanding is no bigger, and
little images of things are laid before him, like a cock-boat to a
whale, only to play withal.-JEREMY TAYLOR.

THERE is a school-lesson which is able to hold children from other play and old men from the chimney-corner. The game may be played anywhere and by any number of persons, and no apparatus is required. All the work is done by the boys, and the master may if he likes take no active part at all. Yet every moment of the time is filled with something of value to all.

Briefly the scheme is but this: The boys come out one at a time and speak to the class for a few minutes on subjects of their own choosing. The lectures may be either prepared or extempore. One member of the class acts as chairman and announces the speaker, another goes about to discover who is ready to speak next and upon what subject, and a third official at the close of each lecture ascertains the marks. The marks are apportioned by the boys of the class, voting with a show of hands.

This scheme, like most of our methods, originated in a chance discovery, which was afterwards adapted in various small ways to suit current requirement.

In the summer term of 1914 I was much interested in oral composition. We had just published a book of prose studies, and the boys were reading these in class, and trying to equal them. The published work of their fellows in

* Perse Playbooks, No. 4.

the class above had an immediate interest for the Littlemen. And, for my part, I was so full of enthusiasm for the pages we were reading as to overlook for the moment the method which had produced them. We were, in fact, working on entirely wrong lines, for those prose studies had not come of reading prose and admiring it, and trying to equal it in imitation. They had come of new practice. So the books were put away, and the boys were called upon to deliver extempore prose studies orally. But the boys, come hot from the study of literary models, naturally kept their attention fixed upon the style of what they were saying.

The result was horrible. Boys would go up to the platform one after another and either spout forth turgid orations, insincere and meaningless, or they would build up with much pausing and going back for self-correction the most laboured of narratives and the most highly-coloured descriptions. We heard too much of evening and of sunset; the "gentle breeze" became terribly familiar. People ceased to go naturally from place to place, they either "wound their way slowly down the hill," or "wended." One came to anticipate with a nervous fidget such phrases as "The silence was only broken by. or "Now all is bustle and confusion," or, as a peroration, “Until at last the something somethinged and all was still."

I soon saw what was amiss. Our interest in the finished work of others had led us to believe that we could take up the work as it stood, and carry on. The boys were working on the assumption that the use of this effect or that turn of phrase would make good prose. As a result they were simply cultivating cliché and empty journalese. Although I had just written an emphatic exposition of the play-methods which had brought about these very models, I had actually been encouraging the boys to start from the wrong end of the stick.

This mistake has been described here as a warning to other teachers, who may on such an occasion be equally thoughtless. It is perilously easy to fall away in practice from our own good theories. A teacher of English literature and composition must often be tempted to say to his class, "Let us use this writer as a model," or "Let us take a hint from this essay, or that." But we must never forget that the first essential of good writing is

the having something to say. Many teachers with a fine piece of literature before them in class are content to point out the merit of the work rather than to insist that it was only brought about by this measure of toil, by that kind of discipline, and above all by that eagerness which presses forward to make rather than halts at each step to remark progress.

So we recollected ourselves, and returned to the Play Way. There had been no lack of interest in the work, but it was obvious that we had to get back to the position of having something to say. So, one summer morning, when the classroom was very stuffy, the boys were let out into the playground to talk. I suggested stump-speeches, street-corner tubthumping, believing that a period or two of sheer "rag" would clear away the cobwebs of the artificial effort at "style," and persuade the boys to find their own means of expression. You will see what came of it.

We trooped out into the yard. A chair was brought, and one boy at once stood on it and began to shout against Woman Suffrage. I encouraged the crowd to cry disagreement, or to murmur approval, and to heckle the speaker with searching questions. A defender of the cause followed, and soon the crowd began to show some interest. There were now not only cries, but counter-cries. Next came a crude attack upon Home Rule (the reader will recollect that such matters occupied men's minds in 1914). By this time the class was so loud in the expression of its opinion that I had to reassure several earnest prefects: for prefects no less than masters are apt to confuse noise with disorder.

But mark what happened. While there was actually an opportunity for making a real big noise during school-time, while the master was actually urging the crowd of listeners to shout for or against the speaker's views, and expecting to see a surging crowd of Littlemen making belief of difference for the sake of turmoil—the third speaker mounted the chair and observed that, although he was unable to speak forcibly upon subjects which would cause commotion, yet he was anxious, if they would allow him, to describe certain methods of fishing.

Fishing! Could anything be imagined more in contrast to the tumult I had been trying to stir up? But of this offer the