Pennorth of Chips
- Author:
Charles S. Segal,
with an Introductory Note by Dr Cyril Burt. Gollancz, 3/6.
The present conditions of classroom instruction to numbers of children still too large to be adequately handled, makes it nearly inevitable that the problem of educafor teachers of backward children should become largely a question of measuring abilities, testing attainments and organising children into more homogeneous grades; and within those grades, diagnosing and treating by individual methods, the special academic disabilities of each. Of a number who cannot read, some must approach the problem in one way, some in another?by learning to write or by word building, or by the added emotional stimulus and more exciting content of a manual or story activity. The conscientious teacher proceeds to devise, make and use a quantity of apparatus which will induce children to eke out their share of a fiftieth of a teacher by a little self-help, and then to consider further, methods of school organisation and time-table management which may help in the solution of this seemingly endless situation. At the end of it all, much has been done, and it may be only the teacher herself can assess the disproportion of achievement to effort.
It is at this stage that there is urgent need of someone to point out that no teacher can take on himself the whole burden of the social and economic problem of the modern State. With no desire to consider a slackening of classroom effort, there is every reason to feel certain that the treatment of backwardness in schools will always lag far behind what is desirable till the politician and the economist take a hand; till such time as adequate finance is available for smaller classes, and better medical services, and till the conscience of the State is more acutely alive to the part played by malnutrition, inadequate housing and the general poverty of cultural interests with which the lives of the poorer children are encumbered.
It is for this reason that teachers and social workers will welcome the detailed study of these conditions in the life of a class of 26 backward children in a Kensington elementary school. Mr. Segal reveals that the majority of his children were inadequately nourished on diets overweighted with starch and under-supplied with proteins, and that the economic status of the parents was such as to make better feeding impossible; that there were prolonged absences due to contagious diseases and their aftermath, and that many parents considered these conditions as a necessary part of existence; that even in the newer Council houses, many of the children were inadequately housed because kitchens and livingrooms may still count in the assessment of accommodation for sleeping purposes and because the expenditure on gas and heating often needs to be disproportionately large. Whilst writing appreciatively of the work of some educational authorities, Mr. Segal’s suggestions for an extension of their activities form, I would suggest, the most valuable part of his book. He points out that in the assessment of a nutritional index below which supplementary feeding is considered necessary, some medical officers are so influenced by the prevailing low nutrition of their areas as to set far too low a standard, and he suggests that there is a necessity for bringing all such medical officers into closer contact with contrasting conditions in more fortunate areas. The extension of school feeding to week-ends and holidays, and the feeding of children whose parents are unemployed without consequent deductions from unemployment relief, would also seem to be an obvious recommendation. In an interesting account of his own pupils’ desire to lounge rather than play in leisure time, Mr. Segal points out that psysical education by games and exercise may be a harmful waste where the child’s bodily condition is so seriously below par.
While the greater part of the book is devoted to a study of physical and nutritional conditions, there are some interesting recommendations for filling in the extraordinary gaps in the general and cultural experience of the town bred child, and for satisfying the widespread desire for adventure which may originate in the boredom of the streets and culminate in delinquency. Mr. Segal presses again the claim for permanent camps on American lines which might be usefully ro-ordinated with schemes for war-time evacuation of children. Evenings devoted to home-work classes and school cinemas, cricket and football matches and clubs for children and parents are part of a programme he has himself carried out.
The psychologist and administrator will certainly not be satisfied that Mr. Segal has proved his underlying assumption that backwardness and poor physical and economic conditions are causally allied, though he quotes widely from American and English experimental studies of the problem. It is obviously not within the scope of a book with so popular a title to estimate the statistical validity of much of the data quoted at second hand, and the author might have escaped some criticism by supplying a bibliography of reference to draw off his more sceptical and scientific readers. What is important is that a practical teacher has published an all round study of the physical and emotional lives of his children of a kind which most teachers are making in a more desultory fashion; that in a spirit of practical protest, he voices conclusions which, whether correct or not from the standpoint of scientific psychology, are obvious to all who deal with backward children in the flesh; and finally, that he puts together in one brief study, a number of eminently practical recommendations which it would be worth while for informed educators to consider and for whose adoption they might usefully work. R. T.
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