Articles pre opening of the school
Miss Christie:
At the Educationists' Conference, Miss Christie gave her experience of the influence of colours upon children; her method being sometimes mental, by visualising the colour required, sometimes actual, by wearing the colour. "The teacher's higher nature," she said, "is continually playing on the child and quickening his inner faculties. A teacher who allows a harsh tone in his speech, affects the astral bodies of the children, and will soon make them irritable. It remains, after all, with the teacher, whether the atmosphere shall be calm. It is all a matter of vibration, and in these inner realms, sound and colour are equally potent." Miss Christie knewof twenty-one teachers using the colour scheme according to Babbitt. Mrs Moss mentioned that a colour scheme was used in Queensland through the medium of coloured blinds.
With regard to the much-debated question of punishments, Miss Christie said that the difficulty was to get the new idea into the minds of the children. The old system was so ingrained in the children themselves that it would take a generation to change it. At present many children lost respect for the "softie" who did not punish them. She had found it a great help to get the religious idea into the school; the idea of God being a caring father and not an avenger. One of her methods was to get the worst children to act as monitors, and another successful idea was to always use the word "we" where possible, that is, to tacitly assume that teacher and pupils were co-operating. Joint action breeds sympathy, and teachers can only reach the hearts and minds of children by sympathy.
From “Theosophy in New Zealand’ Magazine July 1916
With regard to the much-debated question of punishments, Miss Christie said that the difficulty was to get the new idea into the minds of the children. The old system was so ingrained in the children themselves that it would take a generation to change it. At present many children lost respect for the "softie" who did not punish them. She had found it a great help to get the religious idea into the school; the idea of God being a caring father and not an avenger. One of her methods was to get the worst children to act as monitors, and another successful idea was to always use the word "we" where possible, that is, to tacitly assume that teacher and pupils were co-operating. Joint action breeds sympathy, and teachers can only reach the hearts and minds of children by sympathy.
From “Theosophy in New Zealand’ Magazine July 1916
Mr Leadbeater:
THEOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS
The following questions were submitted at various meetings during Mr. C. W. Leadbeater's visit to Auckland. Mr. Leadbeater's replies were carefully reported, but he has had no opportunity of revising the proofs.
Q.—In teaching children, is it possible to carry the idea of love to an extreme of impracticability, as in the case of very bad children? When other methods fail to arouse the sense of morality, it seems that physical pain is the only way by which such a child can be kept up to a moral standard.
A.—By physical pain they are not kept up to a moral standard, they are kept up to a pretence of agreeing with it. Nobody can be kept up to a moral standard except by his own inner feeling. You may make him obey certain laws by force, but you cannot make him a moral man. You will add hatred to his other vices. You will keep outer order as a matter of convenience to yourself, but you cannot force development of any sort whatever. You have to remember that the infliction of pain by way of forcing your will, is in itself a crime.
We may speak of bad children, but there is none which is wholly bad. Some are high-spirited and troublesome. When there is evil, it is only fair to remember that this has been roused by grown up people about them. That may have been done in early babyhood. No doubt the teacher has so many duties to perform that she cannot spend a great deal of time over some recalcitrant infant, but she must try to influence him in the right way. School teachers generally find themselves in the position of having to make the best of a number of children, some of whom are very troublesome. I have had to do with children all my life. I have taught in Sunday-schools for many years. I have been Principal of a large college for five years, and I have been Manager of a number of schools, a position which involved teaching and the supervising of teachers, but I have never found any case which I could not manage. I have never found even a serious difficulty. I have found careless and forgetful children; but if you love these children they soon feel it, and presently they will do just anything for you without needing to be asked, and without a hint of force. They will forget sometimes. It is almost a good thing, because they are so sorry about it that it helps them.
You get some children who have been managed in quite other ways and who have been driven into this attitude of rebellion and obstruction. If you could see the effects on the other side you would realise that you had better put up with anything rather than injure the inner bodies as they are injured by cruelty. You have to lay yourself out to win the intractable child. What is the use of your added years and wisdom if you cannot manage; small child? The problem arises chiefly from the fact that teachers have far too many children to look after. Even classes of sixty and more. That is ridiculous from the point of view of education. A dozen you could look after to some extent, but many more than this, unless they were all models, would be too much.
From “Theosophy in New Zealand’ Magazine July 1916
The following questions were submitted at various meetings during Mr. C. W. Leadbeater's visit to Auckland. Mr. Leadbeater's replies were carefully reported, but he has had no opportunity of revising the proofs.
Q.—In teaching children, is it possible to carry the idea of love to an extreme of impracticability, as in the case of very bad children? When other methods fail to arouse the sense of morality, it seems that physical pain is the only way by which such a child can be kept up to a moral standard.
A.—By physical pain they are not kept up to a moral standard, they are kept up to a pretence of agreeing with it. Nobody can be kept up to a moral standard except by his own inner feeling. You may make him obey certain laws by force, but you cannot make him a moral man. You will add hatred to his other vices. You will keep outer order as a matter of convenience to yourself, but you cannot force development of any sort whatever. You have to remember that the infliction of pain by way of forcing your will, is in itself a crime.
We may speak of bad children, but there is none which is wholly bad. Some are high-spirited and troublesome. When there is evil, it is only fair to remember that this has been roused by grown up people about them. That may have been done in early babyhood. No doubt the teacher has so many duties to perform that she cannot spend a great deal of time over some recalcitrant infant, but she must try to influence him in the right way. School teachers generally find themselves in the position of having to make the best of a number of children, some of whom are very troublesome. I have had to do with children all my life. I have taught in Sunday-schools for many years. I have been Principal of a large college for five years, and I have been Manager of a number of schools, a position which involved teaching and the supervising of teachers, but I have never found any case which I could not manage. I have never found even a serious difficulty. I have found careless and forgetful children; but if you love these children they soon feel it, and presently they will do just anything for you without needing to be asked, and without a hint of force. They will forget sometimes. It is almost a good thing, because they are so sorry about it that it helps them.
You get some children who have been managed in quite other ways and who have been driven into this attitude of rebellion and obstruction. If you could see the effects on the other side you would realise that you had better put up with anything rather than injure the inner bodies as they are injured by cruelty. You have to lay yourself out to win the intractable child. What is the use of your added years and wisdom if you cannot manage; small child? The problem arises chiefly from the fact that teachers have far too many children to look after. Even classes of sixty and more. That is ridiculous from the point of view of education. A dozen you could look after to some extent, but many more than this, unless they were all models, would be too much.
From “Theosophy in New Zealand’ Magazine July 1916
THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN
An address delivered by Mr. C. W. Leadbeater at a public meeting to which parents and teachers had been specially invited. The address is slightly condensed, and it has not been revised by the speaker.
some three or four years ago I wrote an article about the way in which children should be treated, and I hear that the opinion of some who read it was that it was entirely out of date, that it did not apply, at any rate, to New Zealand. I am sure I hope that it may be so, because my own experience with regard to schools under Government dates back a good many years, and it is likely that since then methods have improved a. good deal: but it is, even yet, necessary that some steps should be taken if you want anything like a civilised scheme of education. It was said that the idea of kindness to the children was a thing which did not need mentioning in New Zealand at all, yet this very day I have heard of two or three cases of the grossest brutality happening in this Dominion. I have no doubt at all that there are a great many idealistic teachers, and that is a grand thing, but the rank and file can scarcely be so described, perhaps, in this or in any other country.
With regard to the subjects to be taught, the old idea was to charge the children's minds with a certain number of facts. We were expected to know the imports and exports of cities, the height of mountains and length of rivers, what happens in the Principality of Monaco, and so on. That a great many of these facts were utterly useless did not matter. The aim was, first, to satisfy the Inspector, and then, secondly, to give what was considered an education.
No doubt, in these days you have discovered that "educo" means "I lead out," and that the object of education is to draw out the faculties and capabilities of the children's nature. From the point of view of the children what they need is to have such qualities as they possess brought out, and they want to have the best made of them that can be made, and if they have any special genius it should be discovered and cultivated. In the Middle Ages, if you wanted anyone to know anything you had to drill it into him; there was no other way. But now we have a great number of magnificent encyclopedias; you can get all such facts in a few moments by looking them up, and there is no need to burden the memory with them.
Exactly how you can fit ideal methods of education into the requirements of the present day, the demands of the Government and of the parents, and the need for particular knowledge in various trades, that is a matter which you must deal with. You will see what kind of compromise you are bound to make. There is the question how you can get the work into the time. This is where the requirements imposed upon us from outside interfere with the work which we want to do. I should be disposed rather to cut adrift. We have in India the Theosophical Educational Trust, which has taken up the management of a large number of schools. There we have government inspection to the uttermost. The government presses so hardly with its requirements that every schoolboy in India has not only to pay school fees, but he has also to engage a private tutor to help him in the evening. They work up to ten o'clock every night. That seems a scandalous thing for a child. I hold most strongly that the most prominent of all our duties towards the child is to keep him in perfect health, and to keep him happy. I should say that the child may go on learning all his life long, if he is wise enough to do it, but it is only up to eighteen or twenty that he can build the physical body in which he is to live the rest of his life. Everything should give way to the building of a perfectly healthy and strong physical body, and no kind of intellectual attainments ought to be forced upon children which will interfere with that. Therefore, in all our schools we have made it a rule that there shall be absolutely no home work, and what the child cannot learn in five hours of good work in school will have to be left unlearned. Five hours is a reasonable working day for children. Play is essential for them, that they may expand their muscles.
The central and most important idea in the training of children is that, in the long run, it is easier and very much more effective to rule by love than by fear. No doubt, for obtaining instant results, the method of exciting fear is the easiest way in which a strong person can get a number of human beings, very much smaller and weaker than himself, to do exactly what he happens to want, and if you have in the teaching profession any who regard teaching as simply a way of earning a living, it is natural that they should try to make that living in the way easiest to themselves; wishing to do their duty, no doubt, but not knowing in the least what else they are doing at the same time.
I look at this subject from what would be called the occult point of view. Some of you will know what I mean when I speak of the aura of a child, and of the power of reading that aura by clairvoyant vision, so as to study thereby the child's character. All the emotions and passions show themselves in what we call the astral body. All the thoughts show themselves as rates of vibration in what we call the mental body, and these two vehicles, together, make up what St. Paul called "the spiritual body" of man. If you have this power of vision you can see what effects are produced on the real ego behind. You make a fatal mistake if you think of a child as merely a tiny creature. He is a soul. The soul takes many bodies, so that the soul which you see in a youthful body is not an infant soul. As a soul the child may well be as old as its teacher; hence the idea that the child is a kind of animal to be trained, is not precisely the way in which to approach the question.
It would be better if you could bring yourselves to understand that here is a soul taking up a new body. The soul entrusts itself to you in order that its body may be trained, and in order that it may be useful to him as a means of expression. There is something sacred, something holy, about this trust that is put into your hands. A soul takes the opportunity of a certain home, of certain people as parents, and he puts his body into their hands to be made a fitting instrument for his use, so that he may develop. Here is a very remarkable piece of work put into the hands of parents and teachers; a magnificent opportunity, but at the same time a very heavy responsibility. It is in that way that I should like you to look at your work. You should regard the training of children as a special act of service to God. The will of God is the evolution of the children. It is in the power of the teacher to do a great deal to help that evolution, but, of course, the converse follows, that if the teacher mismanages the charge, he or she may hinder that working out of the Divine will. Now, no one wants to do that. Quite certainly, every teacher who understands that point of view at all, would be willing to take some trouble to try to carry out the Divine plan. It is not to every person that it is given to be a fellow-worker with God. It is a very big thing indeed, this business of teaching, and if it can be regarded from the point of view of service, we shall at once see a great many things in a new aspect.
Now, what do you want to do with a child? You don't want to make him an encyclopedia. You want to make him a healthy and honourable citizen, one who, when he grows up, will be emphatically and essentially a gentleman.It is not so much a question of what he knows, as of what he is; and you can modify to a great extent the method in which the child will develop.
I spoke just now of the aura. Let me tell you how it looks to me, or to any other person who has taken the trouble to cultivate the use of these inner bodies. Remember, you are dealing with one who has lived many times before, and therefore has a character already formed. He comes over from a previous life. In that life he has been probably a very ordinary person; not a great saint nor by any means a demon; but, like all the rest of us, with a great deal of good in him, and also many points that are not so good. Now, the germs of all those mixed qualities come over with him, but in the first place he has practically nothing but the germs.
In the astral matter, out of which the astral vehicle is to be built, there is such matter as may exactly reproduce his past life. Whatever he made himself in his past life, so far as thoughts and emotions are concerned, he can now make himself again. He is, potentially, in almost exactly the same condition that he was in when he passed away from this physical plane. Not quite the same as at physical death, for he may have advanced somewhat. There are all the germs ready to be awakened. These germs are wakened by impacts from without, and it makes all the difference in the world which of them is awakened first. There are germs of good and of evil. They are awakened by the radiation upon them of vibrations sent out by the people surrounding them; so the parents or nurses have the first opportunity.
Take a concrete example. Supposing he has been rather an irritable person. If it happens that the parents are in the habit of yielding to fits of irritability; that means that there radiates out from them the particular rate of vibration which expresses anger. That radiation will act upon the dormant germs in the child's astral body, and you will get an irritable child. It may be quite early in life. The real truth is that this action begins before the child is born. The action on the astral matter begins even then.
Now suppose there are other unpleasant qualities in the parents or nurses, such as avarice, jealousy; anything of that kind; infallibly the same qualities will be stirred up in the child, if the germs are there, and, more or less, germs of this sort do exist in nearly everyone. You get that side of the child's character wakened, and in activity. When the child is older you may try to develop other qualities, and you may find that he rebels against your ideas, because you have started him along the opposite path, and he feels that to be his nature. It is all that he knows of his nature, this part of him that you have awakened.
On the other hand, if he were bathed always in an ocean of love and brought up only among good thoughts, then you would develop the good qualities of that child first, and you would get your momentum on the side of good. That means that when he gets out into the world and the evil germs come to be awakened, his nature will rebel against them, and if you are trying to train him in the right way you will have the momentum on your side.
Teachers may say that by the time the child comes to them all that stirring of the germs has been done, and a good deal of it not on the best side. That is true, and we have to take that into account and do the best we can. Here we are with children to teach who have a very fair sprinkling of good qualities; average people like ourselves. What are we to do with them? Still the same line must be taken: the line of love and of gentleness, but because of the rather mixed character which has been aroused, we must add to that an unyielding patience: patience which nothing can exhaust. It is one of the most necessary qualifications, because we shall certainly meet with all sorts of cross currents. We shall find children perverse. It is not our fault, it is the fault of the grown-up people around them. Our work is to stir the good and to check the evil, gently but firmly, and, if possible, without exciting hatred.
They are the most delicate and wonderful things in the world, these souls in child bodies, and it is very difficult to overcome their reserve. I have heard a boy say: "I want to be what they call good, when I remember it, but I never know how they are going to take anything. I do what seems to me the most ordinary thing, and sometimes it does not matter, and sometimes it is a great crime, and I never know beforehand." A child finds grown-up people very mysterious and unaccountable. He does not know why they do this or that, and he has to adapt himself to what seems an arbitrary code. But if you can get a child to co-operate with you, you have at once won most of the battle.
In business, if you want a man to agree with some sort of a deal, you do not begin by bullying and frightening him, and it is only common sense to apply the same idea in the relation of teacher and children. If you can interest him and persuade him that what you want he wants too, you will get much more done. You can frighten a child by fear of punishment, and make him obey, but the moment you are away his disposition will be to break the rules. He does not understand them, and he keeps them because he must. Take the additional trouble to make that child love you to begin with. That is a thing that can be done. Little children are, to begin with, always affectionate. When you find they are not so, it is because they have had reason not to be so. If you can get them to love you, which I myself consider is the only way in which you can do anything with any child, then they will keep any rule that you make, because you made it. They will want to please you, and they will keep it whether you are present or absent. Of course they forget sometimes, but you cannot expect them to be angels. On the whole you can get very much more done with much less trouble if you are unvaryingly kind and gentle with them. That has come to be broadly recognised in the Montessori system. I hope we may be able to get it carried further in time.
Sometimes, in consequence of wrong training, you will get a difficult case to deal with; you will find children who have developed cruelty, who ill-treat other children, and are unkind to animals. Half the time it is thoughtlessness, and if you will take time to explain, you will get them to take a different view. I have had to do with some of the lowest districts in London, where, in some streets, there were very few inhabitants who did not live solely by crime of one kind or another; yet I do not remember a case where there was not some good trait. If it is so with those who are hardened in crime, it certainly is so in the child. There is always some good point which you can work upon. Sometimes you seem to have a thankless task, but if you look upon it as service you do not mind. A grown-up person, with all his additional knowledge and tact, ought to be able to attract a child, and a person who cannot do that is not marked out for the profession of teaching. Children boast about their teachers, and are quite prepared to admire them to any extent. They must have some sort of hero to worship. The child is very imitative, and a teacher must be careful that he has no habit which he does not want them to develop.
There is a really awful difference between the child who has been brought up in the ordinary way, with a great deal of fear, and one who has come along the line of love, and of love only. You, who are Theosophists, will understand when I say that a very large number of the children born at the present day are capable of rapid advancement within the same incarnation; they could grow up quite enormously better in every way than they were at the beginning; but the practical result is that they do not. For life after life, for as many as twenty lives, there is hardly any change. Why? Because at the beginning of each life the evil is encouraged to expand. From the evolutionary point of view, the rest of the life is spent in overtaking that initial mistake. The race could be immensely altered in a generation or two if only it were possible to avoid this fatal idea of control by force and by fear. There is no possible circumstance in which the application of fear can be beneficial. A child is struck or frightened, and it is said that it is done for his good. In reality, the effect upon his character is infinitely worse than is the effect of the error which he had committed, whatever it was. Whatever it was. Fear upsets and changes the whole balance of the aura.
These children born here now have the refinement gained by passage through previous races. But in their earliest years that refinement is ground off them, because only the more savage virtues of strength and courage are useful to them. You who know anything about evolution will understand that the very points in which we differ from previous races are all the delicate "nuances," a little more will, a little more responsibility, a little greater delicacy of feeling, the very-things that can be so easily rubbed off by roughness.
I wish "God speed" to anything that will bring about a better understanding between grown-up people and children, anything that will help the great evolutionary plan, even if it were only to the extent of not hindering it, and not spoiling the beautiful work which evolution has already done for these souls. But assuredly, the moment you introduce fear you ruin the aura of the child, that moment you have already spoiled his chance of really rapid evolution for that life. Even though later he may come out of that condition, though he may come to be ruled by love, the mark is never quite removed. It is sad, but it is so. Love, not fear, must be our guiding star.
— :o: —--
keep moving.—I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of Heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
An address delivered by Mr. C. W. Leadbeater at a public meeting to which parents and teachers had been specially invited. The address is slightly condensed, and it has not been revised by the speaker.
some three or four years ago I wrote an article about the way in which children should be treated, and I hear that the opinion of some who read it was that it was entirely out of date, that it did not apply, at any rate, to New Zealand. I am sure I hope that it may be so, because my own experience with regard to schools under Government dates back a good many years, and it is likely that since then methods have improved a. good deal: but it is, even yet, necessary that some steps should be taken if you want anything like a civilised scheme of education. It was said that the idea of kindness to the children was a thing which did not need mentioning in New Zealand at all, yet this very day I have heard of two or three cases of the grossest brutality happening in this Dominion. I have no doubt at all that there are a great many idealistic teachers, and that is a grand thing, but the rank and file can scarcely be so described, perhaps, in this or in any other country.
With regard to the subjects to be taught, the old idea was to charge the children's minds with a certain number of facts. We were expected to know the imports and exports of cities, the height of mountains and length of rivers, what happens in the Principality of Monaco, and so on. That a great many of these facts were utterly useless did not matter. The aim was, first, to satisfy the Inspector, and then, secondly, to give what was considered an education.
No doubt, in these days you have discovered that "educo" means "I lead out," and that the object of education is to draw out the faculties and capabilities of the children's nature. From the point of view of the children what they need is to have such qualities as they possess brought out, and they want to have the best made of them that can be made, and if they have any special genius it should be discovered and cultivated. In the Middle Ages, if you wanted anyone to know anything you had to drill it into him; there was no other way. But now we have a great number of magnificent encyclopedias; you can get all such facts in a few moments by looking them up, and there is no need to burden the memory with them.
Exactly how you can fit ideal methods of education into the requirements of the present day, the demands of the Government and of the parents, and the need for particular knowledge in various trades, that is a matter which you must deal with. You will see what kind of compromise you are bound to make. There is the question how you can get the work into the time. This is where the requirements imposed upon us from outside interfere with the work which we want to do. I should be disposed rather to cut adrift. We have in India the Theosophical Educational Trust, which has taken up the management of a large number of schools. There we have government inspection to the uttermost. The government presses so hardly with its requirements that every schoolboy in India has not only to pay school fees, but he has also to engage a private tutor to help him in the evening. They work up to ten o'clock every night. That seems a scandalous thing for a child. I hold most strongly that the most prominent of all our duties towards the child is to keep him in perfect health, and to keep him happy. I should say that the child may go on learning all his life long, if he is wise enough to do it, but it is only up to eighteen or twenty that he can build the physical body in which he is to live the rest of his life. Everything should give way to the building of a perfectly healthy and strong physical body, and no kind of intellectual attainments ought to be forced upon children which will interfere with that. Therefore, in all our schools we have made it a rule that there shall be absolutely no home work, and what the child cannot learn in five hours of good work in school will have to be left unlearned. Five hours is a reasonable working day for children. Play is essential for them, that they may expand their muscles.
The central and most important idea in the training of children is that, in the long run, it is easier and very much more effective to rule by love than by fear. No doubt, for obtaining instant results, the method of exciting fear is the easiest way in which a strong person can get a number of human beings, very much smaller and weaker than himself, to do exactly what he happens to want, and if you have in the teaching profession any who regard teaching as simply a way of earning a living, it is natural that they should try to make that living in the way easiest to themselves; wishing to do their duty, no doubt, but not knowing in the least what else they are doing at the same time.
I look at this subject from what would be called the occult point of view. Some of you will know what I mean when I speak of the aura of a child, and of the power of reading that aura by clairvoyant vision, so as to study thereby the child's character. All the emotions and passions show themselves in what we call the astral body. All the thoughts show themselves as rates of vibration in what we call the mental body, and these two vehicles, together, make up what St. Paul called "the spiritual body" of man. If you have this power of vision you can see what effects are produced on the real ego behind. You make a fatal mistake if you think of a child as merely a tiny creature. He is a soul. The soul takes many bodies, so that the soul which you see in a youthful body is not an infant soul. As a soul the child may well be as old as its teacher; hence the idea that the child is a kind of animal to be trained, is not precisely the way in which to approach the question.
It would be better if you could bring yourselves to understand that here is a soul taking up a new body. The soul entrusts itself to you in order that its body may be trained, and in order that it may be useful to him as a means of expression. There is something sacred, something holy, about this trust that is put into your hands. A soul takes the opportunity of a certain home, of certain people as parents, and he puts his body into their hands to be made a fitting instrument for his use, so that he may develop. Here is a very remarkable piece of work put into the hands of parents and teachers; a magnificent opportunity, but at the same time a very heavy responsibility. It is in that way that I should like you to look at your work. You should regard the training of children as a special act of service to God. The will of God is the evolution of the children. It is in the power of the teacher to do a great deal to help that evolution, but, of course, the converse follows, that if the teacher mismanages the charge, he or she may hinder that working out of the Divine will. Now, no one wants to do that. Quite certainly, every teacher who understands that point of view at all, would be willing to take some trouble to try to carry out the Divine plan. It is not to every person that it is given to be a fellow-worker with God. It is a very big thing indeed, this business of teaching, and if it can be regarded from the point of view of service, we shall at once see a great many things in a new aspect.
Now, what do you want to do with a child? You don't want to make him an encyclopedia. You want to make him a healthy and honourable citizen, one who, when he grows up, will be emphatically and essentially a gentleman.It is not so much a question of what he knows, as of what he is; and you can modify to a great extent the method in which the child will develop.
I spoke just now of the aura. Let me tell you how it looks to me, or to any other person who has taken the trouble to cultivate the use of these inner bodies. Remember, you are dealing with one who has lived many times before, and therefore has a character already formed. He comes over from a previous life. In that life he has been probably a very ordinary person; not a great saint nor by any means a demon; but, like all the rest of us, with a great deal of good in him, and also many points that are not so good. Now, the germs of all those mixed qualities come over with him, but in the first place he has practically nothing but the germs.
In the astral matter, out of which the astral vehicle is to be built, there is such matter as may exactly reproduce his past life. Whatever he made himself in his past life, so far as thoughts and emotions are concerned, he can now make himself again. He is, potentially, in almost exactly the same condition that he was in when he passed away from this physical plane. Not quite the same as at physical death, for he may have advanced somewhat. There are all the germs ready to be awakened. These germs are wakened by impacts from without, and it makes all the difference in the world which of them is awakened first. There are germs of good and of evil. They are awakened by the radiation upon them of vibrations sent out by the people surrounding them; so the parents or nurses have the first opportunity.
Take a concrete example. Supposing he has been rather an irritable person. If it happens that the parents are in the habit of yielding to fits of irritability; that means that there radiates out from them the particular rate of vibration which expresses anger. That radiation will act upon the dormant germs in the child's astral body, and you will get an irritable child. It may be quite early in life. The real truth is that this action begins before the child is born. The action on the astral matter begins even then.
Now suppose there are other unpleasant qualities in the parents or nurses, such as avarice, jealousy; anything of that kind; infallibly the same qualities will be stirred up in the child, if the germs are there, and, more or less, germs of this sort do exist in nearly everyone. You get that side of the child's character wakened, and in activity. When the child is older you may try to develop other qualities, and you may find that he rebels against your ideas, because you have started him along the opposite path, and he feels that to be his nature. It is all that he knows of his nature, this part of him that you have awakened.
On the other hand, if he were bathed always in an ocean of love and brought up only among good thoughts, then you would develop the good qualities of that child first, and you would get your momentum on the side of good. That means that when he gets out into the world and the evil germs come to be awakened, his nature will rebel against them, and if you are trying to train him in the right way you will have the momentum on your side.
Teachers may say that by the time the child comes to them all that stirring of the germs has been done, and a good deal of it not on the best side. That is true, and we have to take that into account and do the best we can. Here we are with children to teach who have a very fair sprinkling of good qualities; average people like ourselves. What are we to do with them? Still the same line must be taken: the line of love and of gentleness, but because of the rather mixed character which has been aroused, we must add to that an unyielding patience: patience which nothing can exhaust. It is one of the most necessary qualifications, because we shall certainly meet with all sorts of cross currents. We shall find children perverse. It is not our fault, it is the fault of the grown-up people around them. Our work is to stir the good and to check the evil, gently but firmly, and, if possible, without exciting hatred.
They are the most delicate and wonderful things in the world, these souls in child bodies, and it is very difficult to overcome their reserve. I have heard a boy say: "I want to be what they call good, when I remember it, but I never know how they are going to take anything. I do what seems to me the most ordinary thing, and sometimes it does not matter, and sometimes it is a great crime, and I never know beforehand." A child finds grown-up people very mysterious and unaccountable. He does not know why they do this or that, and he has to adapt himself to what seems an arbitrary code. But if you can get a child to co-operate with you, you have at once won most of the battle.
In business, if you want a man to agree with some sort of a deal, you do not begin by bullying and frightening him, and it is only common sense to apply the same idea in the relation of teacher and children. If you can interest him and persuade him that what you want he wants too, you will get much more done. You can frighten a child by fear of punishment, and make him obey, but the moment you are away his disposition will be to break the rules. He does not understand them, and he keeps them because he must. Take the additional trouble to make that child love you to begin with. That is a thing that can be done. Little children are, to begin with, always affectionate. When you find they are not so, it is because they have had reason not to be so. If you can get them to love you, which I myself consider is the only way in which you can do anything with any child, then they will keep any rule that you make, because you made it. They will want to please you, and they will keep it whether you are present or absent. Of course they forget sometimes, but you cannot expect them to be angels. On the whole you can get very much more done with much less trouble if you are unvaryingly kind and gentle with them. That has come to be broadly recognised in the Montessori system. I hope we may be able to get it carried further in time.
Sometimes, in consequence of wrong training, you will get a difficult case to deal with; you will find children who have developed cruelty, who ill-treat other children, and are unkind to animals. Half the time it is thoughtlessness, and if you will take time to explain, you will get them to take a different view. I have had to do with some of the lowest districts in London, where, in some streets, there were very few inhabitants who did not live solely by crime of one kind or another; yet I do not remember a case where there was not some good trait. If it is so with those who are hardened in crime, it certainly is so in the child. There is always some good point which you can work upon. Sometimes you seem to have a thankless task, but if you look upon it as service you do not mind. A grown-up person, with all his additional knowledge and tact, ought to be able to attract a child, and a person who cannot do that is not marked out for the profession of teaching. Children boast about their teachers, and are quite prepared to admire them to any extent. They must have some sort of hero to worship. The child is very imitative, and a teacher must be careful that he has no habit which he does not want them to develop.
There is a really awful difference between the child who has been brought up in the ordinary way, with a great deal of fear, and one who has come along the line of love, and of love only. You, who are Theosophists, will understand when I say that a very large number of the children born at the present day are capable of rapid advancement within the same incarnation; they could grow up quite enormously better in every way than they were at the beginning; but the practical result is that they do not. For life after life, for as many as twenty lives, there is hardly any change. Why? Because at the beginning of each life the evil is encouraged to expand. From the evolutionary point of view, the rest of the life is spent in overtaking that initial mistake. The race could be immensely altered in a generation or two if only it were possible to avoid this fatal idea of control by force and by fear. There is no possible circumstance in which the application of fear can be beneficial. A child is struck or frightened, and it is said that it is done for his good. In reality, the effect upon his character is infinitely worse than is the effect of the error which he had committed, whatever it was. Whatever it was. Fear upsets and changes the whole balance of the aura.
These children born here now have the refinement gained by passage through previous races. But in their earliest years that refinement is ground off them, because only the more savage virtues of strength and courage are useful to them. You who know anything about evolution will understand that the very points in which we differ from previous races are all the delicate "nuances," a little more will, a little more responsibility, a little greater delicacy of feeling, the very-things that can be so easily rubbed off by roughness.
I wish "God speed" to anything that will bring about a better understanding between grown-up people and children, anything that will help the great evolutionary plan, even if it were only to the extent of not hindering it, and not spoiling the beautiful work which evolution has already done for these souls. But assuredly, the moment you introduce fear you ruin the aura of the child, that moment you have already spoiled his chance of really rapid evolution for that life. Even though later he may come out of that condition, though he may come to be ruled by love, the mark is never quite removed. It is sad, but it is so. Love, not fear, must be our guiding star.
— :o: —--
keep moving.—I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of Heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
After the Opening of the School
Mr Jinarajadasa:
THEOSOPHICAL FRATERNITY IN EDUCATION
The Annual Meeting of the Fraternity was held on 31st December. Mr. C. Jinarajadasa, M.A., being present, was asked to address the meeting. He said:--
"This movement was started in England to bring together Theosophists who happened to be in the teaching profession, so that they might know and bring into their work the new ideals in education. There probably never was a time when educational ideals were so much discussed or with such enthusiasm, especially by teachers. The old method, in its most ideal form, was a conception that the child was to be made a good citizen. We formed a picture of the average good citizen, and tried to mould the child to that pattern. The beginning of the new method appeared with Froebel and Pestalozzi, and the new idea of self-expression for the child was expected to be fostered by the kindergarten system. This system has, however, developed some rigidity, so that the child is almost forced to play, even when he does not want to play. The next stage in' the direction of realising that the child is an ego, with his own characteristics, was made by Madame Montessori. In her system you see the child working at his own things, with only a very little guidance. But Madame Montessori had to postulate that there was an individuality in the child. She did not know where it came from. The first to go a step further was Mr. Edmond Holmes, a man greatly respected in England. In his books he has definitely postulated the theory of reincarnation. Our educationalists, therefore, are rapidly approaching the edge of the great sea of Theosophical knowledge.We know that in dealing with a child you are not writing on a clean elate, you are dealing with a character that has lived in many past lives and who has a seed of divinity in him, with all kinds of wonderful but latent attributes. You are dealing fundamentally with a fully grown ego.
"What we want to do in public life is to change the status of the teacher. There was a time in the ancient history of India when the highest person was the teacher. Before the guru, even the king stood. There was no distinction between sacred and secular knowledge. I remember that when studying law at Cambridge I was also reading some of the Sanscrit law-books, and these Sanscrit jurists looked upon the law as the revelation of the divine mind in all systems of jurisprudence. Education was thought of as for the spiritual unfolding of man and for man's greater co-operation with God.
"You must raise the status of the teacher. He should not be regarded as merely a member of one among the many professions, but as one who contributes a most important service in moulding the great citizens. In the old days the poverty of the teacher was compensated by the great honour which was paid to him. I should like to introduce, wherever possible, a little more sanctity into our ideas of education. There was a time when to begin one's education was a really sacred event. I remember my first going to school. First, the astrologer has to find the most auspicious day; then you go to the teacher on that day with a little present: I took a few betel leaves. He had a board on which he had written one of the sacred texts, then repeating some words, in praise of learning, and a divine invocation, he took the first finger of my right hand and wrote the first letter of the alphabet. That was all the first day. You were introduced to the Goddess of Learning. Such a method makes a deep impression. We ought to feel that learning is a sacred thing; one way of approaching nearer to the divine wisdom. I remember when I was taken to be taught the old language by one of the yellow-robed monks. Once again I had to give the preceptor a little present, but the Buddhist monks are not allowed to possess worldly goods, so I took him a little towel, which, being of trifling value, it was possible for him to accept. Then you took the religious vows of the ordinary citizen, and he gives you his learning, which in the old days consisted in memorising all sorts of things which you did not understand. But there was little religious teaching. The teacher is still thought of in India as having a spiritual vocation. We must bring that about. I believe that Theosophical teachers understand the sacredness of their calling, but they are handicapped because the public is not yet willing to recognise, that for the welfare ofthe State the teacher, is greater than the business man."
The Secretary, Miss A. White, read her report, in which she mentioned that the scattering of the officials about the Dominion militates against the efficiency of the work. Membership reached 89. Not much public work has been done, but some individual members have worked with devotion; one in particular has drawn the favourable attention of school inspectors, and has organised two distinct lines of altruistic work in her school. State teachers regard school inspectors now as a kind of elder brother, a vast improvement on the old relations. There is a marked improvement in their attitude towards Theosophical ideals, though not by that name, yet there are some inspectors now who can hear even that word without blinking. A candidate at last election, speaking of our State school system, said: "Some speak of it as a great success, others consider it a complete failure. I do not regard it as a failure, except in this way—we have shut God out of our schools. We want no priests or sectarian leaders meddling with our system, but we do want religion. The two chief commandments of Jesus were ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart . . . and thy neighbour as thyself.' Now, if all our boys and girls assembled together at the opening of school and repeated these words with their teachers, earnestly and seriously, it must have a profound effect on the character in later life. It cannot help doing so, for it is not the word but the thought that will sink into the children's hearts."
The Treasurer's report, showing a minute balance in hand, and the Secretary's report were adopted. A motion to raise the subscription was lost. The following officers were elected for the ensuing year:—President, Mr. 0. R. Younghusband; Vice-presidents, Messrs. D. W. Miller and W. A. Scott; Treasurer, Miss M. Hamilton; Secretary, Miss A. White. A resolution that the Fraternity affiliate with the Educational Trust was carried unanimously.
From the ‘Theosophy in New Zealand’ magazine Jan 1920
The Annual Meeting of the Fraternity was held on 31st December. Mr. C. Jinarajadasa, M.A., being present, was asked to address the meeting. He said:--
"This movement was started in England to bring together Theosophists who happened to be in the teaching profession, so that they might know and bring into their work the new ideals in education. There probably never was a time when educational ideals were so much discussed or with such enthusiasm, especially by teachers. The old method, in its most ideal form, was a conception that the child was to be made a good citizen. We formed a picture of the average good citizen, and tried to mould the child to that pattern. The beginning of the new method appeared with Froebel and Pestalozzi, and the new idea of self-expression for the child was expected to be fostered by the kindergarten system. This system has, however, developed some rigidity, so that the child is almost forced to play, even when he does not want to play. The next stage in' the direction of realising that the child is an ego, with his own characteristics, was made by Madame Montessori. In her system you see the child working at his own things, with only a very little guidance. But Madame Montessori had to postulate that there was an individuality in the child. She did not know where it came from. The first to go a step further was Mr. Edmond Holmes, a man greatly respected in England. In his books he has definitely postulated the theory of reincarnation. Our educationalists, therefore, are rapidly approaching the edge of the great sea of Theosophical knowledge.We know that in dealing with a child you are not writing on a clean elate, you are dealing with a character that has lived in many past lives and who has a seed of divinity in him, with all kinds of wonderful but latent attributes. You are dealing fundamentally with a fully grown ego.
"What we want to do in public life is to change the status of the teacher. There was a time in the ancient history of India when the highest person was the teacher. Before the guru, even the king stood. There was no distinction between sacred and secular knowledge. I remember that when studying law at Cambridge I was also reading some of the Sanscrit law-books, and these Sanscrit jurists looked upon the law as the revelation of the divine mind in all systems of jurisprudence. Education was thought of as for the spiritual unfolding of man and for man's greater co-operation with God.
"You must raise the status of the teacher. He should not be regarded as merely a member of one among the many professions, but as one who contributes a most important service in moulding the great citizens. In the old days the poverty of the teacher was compensated by the great honour which was paid to him. I should like to introduce, wherever possible, a little more sanctity into our ideas of education. There was a time when to begin one's education was a really sacred event. I remember my first going to school. First, the astrologer has to find the most auspicious day; then you go to the teacher on that day with a little present: I took a few betel leaves. He had a board on which he had written one of the sacred texts, then repeating some words, in praise of learning, and a divine invocation, he took the first finger of my right hand and wrote the first letter of the alphabet. That was all the first day. You were introduced to the Goddess of Learning. Such a method makes a deep impression. We ought to feel that learning is a sacred thing; one way of approaching nearer to the divine wisdom. I remember when I was taken to be taught the old language by one of the yellow-robed monks. Once again I had to give the preceptor a little present, but the Buddhist monks are not allowed to possess worldly goods, so I took him a little towel, which, being of trifling value, it was possible for him to accept. Then you took the religious vows of the ordinary citizen, and he gives you his learning, which in the old days consisted in memorising all sorts of things which you did not understand. But there was little religious teaching. The teacher is still thought of in India as having a spiritual vocation. We must bring that about. I believe that Theosophical teachers understand the sacredness of their calling, but they are handicapped because the public is not yet willing to recognise, that for the welfare ofthe State the teacher, is greater than the business man."
The Secretary, Miss A. White, read her report, in which she mentioned that the scattering of the officials about the Dominion militates against the efficiency of the work. Membership reached 89. Not much public work has been done, but some individual members have worked with devotion; one in particular has drawn the favourable attention of school inspectors, and has organised two distinct lines of altruistic work in her school. State teachers regard school inspectors now as a kind of elder brother, a vast improvement on the old relations. There is a marked improvement in their attitude towards Theosophical ideals, though not by that name, yet there are some inspectors now who can hear even that word without blinking. A candidate at last election, speaking of our State school system, said: "Some speak of it as a great success, others consider it a complete failure. I do not regard it as a failure, except in this way—we have shut God out of our schools. We want no priests or sectarian leaders meddling with our system, but we do want religion. The two chief commandments of Jesus were ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart . . . and thy neighbour as thyself.' Now, if all our boys and girls assembled together at the opening of school and repeated these words with their teachers, earnestly and seriously, it must have a profound effect on the character in later life. It cannot help doing so, for it is not the word but the thought that will sink into the children's hearts."
The Treasurer's report, showing a minute balance in hand, and the Secretary's report were adopted. A motion to raise the subscription was lost. The following officers were elected for the ensuing year:—President, Mr. 0. R. Younghusband; Vice-presidents, Messrs. D. W. Miller and W. A. Scott; Treasurer, Miss M. Hamilton; Secretary, Miss A. White. A resolution that the Fraternity affiliate with the Educational Trust was carried unanimously.
From the ‘Theosophy in New Zealand’ magazine Jan 1920
Prof Shelley:
PASSIVE EDUCATION
A few notes made at a lecture delivered by Prof. Shelley in Auckland on 9th June, 1921.
There are two words which describe education as it is to-day, viz., that it is "passive" and "negative." The conditions under which schools have been developed have demanded that the child's nature shall be ruled out.
A child in medieval conditions may grow up without any knowledge of reading and writing, while he may be quite able to take his place in the community. Many of the builders of empire have not been able to read or to write. Reading and writing extend our experiences. If we want to know of other towns and countries, we must learn to read and write. These are necessary took towards learning, but there is a great difference between the acquirement of knowledge and getting the tools of learning. They are two totally different things. ... In my school days in England (they may be different now, and in many respects they are) I was taught how to make joints, mortices and dove-tails in a carpenter's shop. If you had asked me where does a carpenter use a dove-tail joint I should not have been able to tell you. In other words I did not know what mortices and tenons were for, although I might be able to make them. They were mere passive tools without any purpose in my mind at all. I am trying to emphasise the passive and negative nature of some of the work which was done in my own time of schooling.
In order to teach a child in a modern city to-day we confine him to four walls and a desk; making him surrender his whole efforts to these particular conditions, reading and writing. If he is sent to a shop he pays his coin and receives his flour or potatoes, but he knows nothing about how that flour has been produced, or how the wheelbarrow, which he has bought, has been built up.
The whole of the physical body of the child must be given the right amount of activity. I maintain that a child who is sitting for the best part of every day of every year, in a desk that is made for silence and not for movement, is not developing himself physically as a human being. . . The class-room is not made for movement it is made for silence. . . The greatest enemies to intellectual progress are school walls and school desks. Not only is the child's body reduced to passivity, but his mind also. Then we give him little intellectual peep-holes, the peep-hole of geography, the peep-hole of history, etc.
The child is fully alive to begin with. As soon as he is hungry he is ready to understand something about the evolution of agriculture. We should be alive to using the child's experience thus and in amplifying it. Every child wants to work hard at the purposes it feels to be its own, Surely it is bad to set on one side all that energy and then try to get something out of that child for which he does not feel inclined. You may think you have the child's attention, and perhaps that may be so with half the children in the class. My son was out with us a short while ago and I was singing some very classical music. My wife thought I was doing well, and my little boy was sitting very still, looking into space, wrapped in my singing as his mother thought. Suddenly he said "Mam, if there were 100 boys armed with 100 pistols, all with good caps that would all go off at once, would it not make a row?" You see he had been working up a whole warfare in his mind. So it is with a great amount of school work under such passive conditions as at present. . . . Psychologists say that a considerable part of insanity is due to repression of the emotions during childhood, so do not think this passive education is merely negative. No, it is a thing which does positive harm and serious harm.
From the ‘Theosophy in New Zealand’ magazine June 1921
A few notes made at a lecture delivered by Prof. Shelley in Auckland on 9th June, 1921.
There are two words which describe education as it is to-day, viz., that it is "passive" and "negative." The conditions under which schools have been developed have demanded that the child's nature shall be ruled out.
A child in medieval conditions may grow up without any knowledge of reading and writing, while he may be quite able to take his place in the community. Many of the builders of empire have not been able to read or to write. Reading and writing extend our experiences. If we want to know of other towns and countries, we must learn to read and write. These are necessary took towards learning, but there is a great difference between the acquirement of knowledge and getting the tools of learning. They are two totally different things. ... In my school days in England (they may be different now, and in many respects they are) I was taught how to make joints, mortices and dove-tails in a carpenter's shop. If you had asked me where does a carpenter use a dove-tail joint I should not have been able to tell you. In other words I did not know what mortices and tenons were for, although I might be able to make them. They were mere passive tools without any purpose in my mind at all. I am trying to emphasise the passive and negative nature of some of the work which was done in my own time of schooling.
In order to teach a child in a modern city to-day we confine him to four walls and a desk; making him surrender his whole efforts to these particular conditions, reading and writing. If he is sent to a shop he pays his coin and receives his flour or potatoes, but he knows nothing about how that flour has been produced, or how the wheelbarrow, which he has bought, has been built up.
The whole of the physical body of the child must be given the right amount of activity. I maintain that a child who is sitting for the best part of every day of every year, in a desk that is made for silence and not for movement, is not developing himself physically as a human being. . . The class-room is not made for movement it is made for silence. . . The greatest enemies to intellectual progress are school walls and school desks. Not only is the child's body reduced to passivity, but his mind also. Then we give him little intellectual peep-holes, the peep-hole of geography, the peep-hole of history, etc.
The child is fully alive to begin with. As soon as he is hungry he is ready to understand something about the evolution of agriculture. We should be alive to using the child's experience thus and in amplifying it. Every child wants to work hard at the purposes it feels to be its own, Surely it is bad to set on one side all that energy and then try to get something out of that child for which he does not feel inclined. You may think you have the child's attention, and perhaps that may be so with half the children in the class. My son was out with us a short while ago and I was singing some very classical music. My wife thought I was doing well, and my little boy was sitting very still, looking into space, wrapped in my singing as his mother thought. Suddenly he said "Mam, if there were 100 boys armed with 100 pistols, all with good caps that would all go off at once, would it not make a row?" You see he had been working up a whole warfare in his mind. So it is with a great amount of school work under such passive conditions as at present. . . . Psychologists say that a considerable part of insanity is due to repression of the emotions during childhood, so do not think this passive education is merely negative. No, it is a thing which does positive harm and serious harm.
From the ‘Theosophy in New Zealand’ magazine June 1921
Mr Rogers:
VASANTA GARDEN SCHOOL
BY Mr. L. W. ROGERS
One of the most interesting things seen in New Zealand was the Vasanta School in Auckland. It was established some fifteen years ago by the T.S. in New Zealand and a small community of Theosophists is centred about it. The majority of the pupils, however, are children of non-Theosophists, and that is well. The teachers are members of the Auckland Lodge. Like all other going concerns it is hard hit by the depression, but is courageously carrying on, and since it has a fifteen years' record behind it there is reason to believe that it will be one of the institutions to weather the financial storm that is upon the world. Three neat little buildings contain the class rooms and gymnasium and before them stretches a commodious grassy playground with a fine tennis court. Those who knew the School of the Open Gate at Hollywood will understand the unusual freedom enjoyed by the pupils. There is no apparent discipline at all, yet these children are getting on with the business in hand and at the same time enjoying the work. In the room I first entered at the end of a recess period, a girl about ten years old took up the morning paper and read to the others a news item to the effect that New Zealand had purchased a large invoice of wheat from Australia. Immediately a boy asked why, since New Zealand grew excellent wheat. Others joined in the discussion—the eldest about twelve— and it was brought out that some parts of New Zealand excelled in wheat growing. The girl reader was asked for the reason—what characteristics of soil or climate accounted for it. It quickly became evident that these children possessed much knowledge about the affairs of daily life. Another girl then became the centre of attention, and read an item about winter sports, and the discussion drifted to avalanches in the mountains.
Following this the teacher whispered to me that she did not know what was coming next, because this was a period wholly in charge of the children. But things moved along smoothly. Without the loss of a moment and with perfect composure a girl of twelve arose with two paper bags in her hand and began a talk about Angora rabbits. She opened two of them, and spoke about their care and their habits. The paper bags contained samples of two grades of their wool. These were passed from desk to desk for examination while she talked on about the various ways in which the wool was used and how often it should be clipped for the best results. She said that a fleece was grown every tour months. The necessity for the experience this child was getting in thus addressing the school was clearly evident from her talk. She was far indeed from being even a fair speaker, and her ideas were few and by no means forceful; but she was perfectly at home, and it was apparent that she had developed the ability to express such ideas as she did have without the least embarrassment to herself or to her audience.
In the midst of public schools where the minds of children are overloaded with useless information, where the unreasonably long lessons in the books compel "home work" for hours after the child should be in bed, where bright and dull pupils are crowded into the same classes, where they spend the long tedious hours with no opportunity for natural, spontaneous expression, where the outrage of corporal punishment still lingers—in the desert of this obsolete and utterly stupid system of education the Vasanta School is an oasis of commonsense, love and progress that is worthy a place in the annals of the times. The relationship between teachers and pupils is identical with that between mothers and children. The attitude of the pupils is clearly that of obedient affection and no child should ever know any other. May the Vasanta School become the model for many another and may Wheaton be early on the list!
--The American Messenger.
From the ‘Theosophy in New Zealand’ magazine Dec 1932
BY Mr. L. W. ROGERS
One of the most interesting things seen in New Zealand was the Vasanta School in Auckland. It was established some fifteen years ago by the T.S. in New Zealand and a small community of Theosophists is centred about it. The majority of the pupils, however, are children of non-Theosophists, and that is well. The teachers are members of the Auckland Lodge. Like all other going concerns it is hard hit by the depression, but is courageously carrying on, and since it has a fifteen years' record behind it there is reason to believe that it will be one of the institutions to weather the financial storm that is upon the world. Three neat little buildings contain the class rooms and gymnasium and before them stretches a commodious grassy playground with a fine tennis court. Those who knew the School of the Open Gate at Hollywood will understand the unusual freedom enjoyed by the pupils. There is no apparent discipline at all, yet these children are getting on with the business in hand and at the same time enjoying the work. In the room I first entered at the end of a recess period, a girl about ten years old took up the morning paper and read to the others a news item to the effect that New Zealand had purchased a large invoice of wheat from Australia. Immediately a boy asked why, since New Zealand grew excellent wheat. Others joined in the discussion—the eldest about twelve— and it was brought out that some parts of New Zealand excelled in wheat growing. The girl reader was asked for the reason—what characteristics of soil or climate accounted for it. It quickly became evident that these children possessed much knowledge about the affairs of daily life. Another girl then became the centre of attention, and read an item about winter sports, and the discussion drifted to avalanches in the mountains.
Following this the teacher whispered to me that she did not know what was coming next, because this was a period wholly in charge of the children. But things moved along smoothly. Without the loss of a moment and with perfect composure a girl of twelve arose with two paper bags in her hand and began a talk about Angora rabbits. She opened two of them, and spoke about their care and their habits. The paper bags contained samples of two grades of their wool. These were passed from desk to desk for examination while she talked on about the various ways in which the wool was used and how often it should be clipped for the best results. She said that a fleece was grown every tour months. The necessity for the experience this child was getting in thus addressing the school was clearly evident from her talk. She was far indeed from being even a fair speaker, and her ideas were few and by no means forceful; but she was perfectly at home, and it was apparent that she had developed the ability to express such ideas as she did have without the least embarrassment to herself or to her audience.
In the midst of public schools where the minds of children are overloaded with useless information, where the unreasonably long lessons in the books compel "home work" for hours after the child should be in bed, where bright and dull pupils are crowded into the same classes, where they spend the long tedious hours with no opportunity for natural, spontaneous expression, where the outrage of corporal punishment still lingers—in the desert of this obsolete and utterly stupid system of education the Vasanta School is an oasis of commonsense, love and progress that is worthy a place in the annals of the times. The relationship between teachers and pupils is identical with that between mothers and children. The attitude of the pupils is clearly that of obedient affection and no child should ever know any other. May the Vasanta School become the model for many another and may Wheaton be early on the list!
--The American Messenger.
From the ‘Theosophy in New Zealand’ magazine Dec 1932
From a Parent:
On arriving in New Zealand I was delighted to find that there was a Theosophical School in Auckland. I lost no time in seeking an interview with the Principal. Strolling across the shady lawn one afternoon, I came unexpectedly on a delightful scene, pleased to be able to watch for a few moments unobserved. Desks were out in the sunshine, everybody working hard without apparent supervision. Inside the schoolroom, whose folding doors were thrown wide to the sun, a. semi-circle of children were listening, with that grave concentration peculiar to the juvenile, to some fascinating story being told them by Miss Darroch which seemed both history, geography and Nature study in one. With a courteous "Please sit down; I will be free in a few moments," I was left to ruminate on this, to me, unique and delightful way of receiving a prospective parent. I have since learnt that it would take at least an air raid to divert Miss Darroch's attention from her work! Half listening to the proceeding lesson, memories flashed through my mind of former experiences in England at "a college for the daughters of professional men," or "a preparatory school for the sons of Officers and the Clergy," where one waited in an over-furnished drawing-room for the approaching rustle of the inevitable silk gown. Soon the dismissal bell rang and Miss Darroch was free to attend to me.
Parents are the stumbling block of many children, and they are the first obstacle a teacher has to overcome. I learnt at once that Miss Darroch understands parents. In fact, there must be many of us who date the beginning of their education from the day we met her. She makes us feel that we are an integral part of the School and that our co-operation is both needed and welcomed by the true educator of children. Parents are free to visit the School at any time and listen to a class. The delightful part of this experience is that the children carry on just as though no one were present, without embarrassment or fear.
To decide on a particular school is always difficult, but at Vasanta I was met with the most helpful and practical offer to allow my children to try out the school for the week or two remaining of that term without obligation on either side. This plan made it possible for the children themselves to decide if they were likely to find their level and be happy, with the result that there were no regrets—and after three years there are still no regrets.
From the ‘Theosophy in New Zealand’ magazine October 1940
Parents are the stumbling block of many children, and they are the first obstacle a teacher has to overcome. I learnt at once that Miss Darroch understands parents. In fact, there must be many of us who date the beginning of their education from the day we met her. She makes us feel that we are an integral part of the School and that our co-operation is both needed and welcomed by the true educator of children. Parents are free to visit the School at any time and listen to a class. The delightful part of this experience is that the children carry on just as though no one were present, without embarrassment or fear.
To decide on a particular school is always difficult, but at Vasanta I was met with the most helpful and practical offer to allow my children to try out the school for the week or two remaining of that term without obligation on either side. This plan made it possible for the children themselves to decide if they were likely to find their level and be happy, with the result that there were no regrets—and after three years there are still no regrets.
From the ‘Theosophy in New Zealand’ magazine October 1940