Education Is an Art

Under this title, "Education Is an Art," we published in a past issue an article by the excellent educator Miss Nahla Marwa, in which she treated this delicate subject in the education of growing childhood; you will recall certain aspects of shortcoming in home education.

In her second talk she continues this engaging discussion, in another installment which turns on the cooperation between school and home in the education of the child.

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The mother sends her child to school when he reaches the fourth or fifth year of his age. The moment at which the child leaves home for school for the first time is one of the happiest moments in the life of every mother; but this happiness must not be born of the desire to lift responsibility from ourselves, nor of the wish to be rid of the child and his stirring about the house.

Here is your child entering school. The specialized teacher receives him, and he begins to make the acquaintance of the other children, just as he makes the acquaintance of his classroom and the various implements around him. He takes pleasure in them and grows attached to the school, for he finds it other than what those around him at home had described to him. He looks at the teacher and does not see in her that strange, frightening person he had imagined; on the contrary, she is a gentle angel who is tender toward him, loves him, and looks after him. And he is utterly astonished when he finds in the school no trace of harshness and no cause for fear: it is a comfortable place which he grows used to and comes to love, until he almost forgets home in it.

But this does not mean that once your child has entered school and fallen in love with it, you cease to be responsible for him. Your responsibility remains what it was, for you must cooperate with the school in his education and guidance. Just as the two parents cooperate in bringing up their children, so must a kind of cooperation arise between home and school, if we want the child's education to be a sound and complete education, without flaw or shortcoming.

One mother said to me one day, speaking of her child: "You are his second mother; he spends most of his time with you, and I leave to you the matter of guiding him however you wish." You are in some measure right, madam; but there must be an understanding between me and you as to the methods it is best to follow in dealing with your child, after a careful study of his psychology and his inclinations in which we both take part. How, for instance, do you expect us to replace a bad habit in the child with a good one, if the methods for changing it are used only at school, so that when the child returns to

the home, everything goes back to what it was? In most cases the teacher understands the child better than his mother understands him, because she is a specialist in his education and discovers in him inclinations or habits of which the mother knows nothing; here above all there must be understanding and cooperation in the matter of the child. My own experience has taught me that the educator or teacher cannot understand the child's psychology as it truly is until she has met his mother and gone over his habits and inclinations with her, so that there is between them an exchange of views and a cooperation in carrying out their plans.

Yet there is a great number of mothers who never see the teacher's face except when the child disobeys their orders; then the mother comes to the school to frighten her child by saying she has told the teacher what he did — and so this tender teacher becomes a frightening person whom the child shuns and guards against. In this lies the whole mistake, for the mother must not follow such a method in disciplining her child. This complaint of hers, even if it delivers her from her child's disobedience, leaves a bad trace in his soul, breeding in him a feeling of loathing for school and for study. And how well the mother does, and how pleased her child is, and how he feels her concern for him, when he sees her at the school talking with his teacher, and understands that the two of them are working together for his good! Often the child is present for part of the meeting between me and his mother, so that he may feel for himself the spirit of cooperation between the two parties in his education. Accordingly, dear mother, you should seek, whenever the opportunity offers, to meet the teacher who has charge of your child, to talk with her about him, and to sound out her opinion of his conduct and his diligence.

Our influence cannot be effective unless there is someone in the home to help the school in its task and to work at developing the good habits and high ideals it plants in the children's souls — so that they may be the best stones for the best building.