Senates, the ornaments of Courts"-Bishop Fisher and Thomas Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, Margaret of Salisbury, Wentworth, Earl Strafford, and Laud; James, Duke of Monmouth, "handsome profligate and ungrateful son of Charles II," Simon Lord Lovat, a memory of the '45; and witty Sir Thomas More, for denying the King's supremacy; in atmosphere breathed by Latimer and Monk, Ferrers and Essex. Gloomy and patriarchal ravens* are encouraged to haunt the courts where queens and noble lords laid down their lives, black embodied ghosts, one might imagine, of the ruthlessly captured prisoners in Beauchamp Tower, near by, who have left for posterity the graven records of their hopelessness and misery. From which courts others, the seven Bishops for instance, who boldly withstood James Stuart, have emerged to the joy of the whole realm, after vindicating the English right of liberty by willing confinement and a welcome of possible martyrdom. So closely interwoven in our history are the strands of power and freedom.

Beside these two churches within the ballium, All Hallows, Barking by the Tower, was just without the Liberties and has much interest from its connection with royalty. Cœur de Lion, for instance, certainly founded a Chapel somewhere in the neighbourhood. Expert opinion inclines to believe that its site was where now stands the Port of London Authority, not within the Church of All Hallows. But when Archbishop Laud was executed, his body was taken first to this Church before being translated to St. John's, Oxford. The pardonable pride of Mr. Poyser in an edifice, with which he was so long and so honourably connected, allows him to speak of this Church as "the oldest parish Church," presumably in London. This, of course, was not so, and for centuries it was only a cell served from the Convent of Barking. But it has the distinction of enjoying the only church restoration known to have been done by Oliver Cromwell-the rather squat brick tower from which Samuel Pepys watched the Fire-and its brasses are as famous as its Grinling Gibbons font cover. And, as the shrine nearest to the public execution place on the Hill, its altars must often have heard the beseeching orison go up to a God of Mercy and

*They are "on the strength" of the battalions quartered in the Tower, and a ration of dead meat for four ravens is daily drawn.

Justice for the foul murders and heartless cruelties being perpetrated within bowshot and earshot. There is a prophetic depth of meaning in the last words of that greatest of the Tower's victims-Sir Walter Raleigh :

"I thank God heartily that he hath brought me into the light to die, and hath not suffered me to die in the dark prison of the Tower, where I have suffered a great deal of misery and cruel sickness." "I take my leave of you all (he said to the executioner, having requested to see the axe), Prithee let me see it, dost thou think I am afraid of it?" Then to the Sheriff, having felt its edge," This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases"; to the executioner again, who had begged forgiveness and asked which way he would lay upon the block: the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lays."

66

So

"The most fearless of death that ever was known; the most resolute and confident, yet with reverence and conscience," said the Dean of Westminster who attended him to his death, "he was very cheerful that morning he died, ate his breakfast heartily, and took tobacco, making no more of his death than if he had been to take a journey."

Pereunt et imputantur. In their procession down the ages, empires and churches, monarchs and rulers, feudal regime and levelling upheaval, are all in turn tried by the touchstone of the fourfold turreted Tower. Can they stand, as stands the Keep, four-square to all the winds that blow? Compact of Truth, Justice, Reverence, Charity, they abide, they live and are strong. They are founded on London rock. Are they false, self-seeking, oppressive or prideful? They pass into the limbo of the futilities, the wasteful excrescences of the body politic, polluted parasitic growths, not living branches of the Tree of Life.

In this sense the Tower would seem to be something more than a parable of Power.

ARTHUR G. B. WEST

CINEMATOGRAPHY IN SCHOOLS

The Cinema in Education. The report of the special sub-committee appointed by the cinema commission of enquiry established by the National Council of Public Morals. George Allen and Unwin.

RIGHT

1925.

IGHTLY understood and intelligently used, the "Provisional Code" of the Board of Education is the greatest hold on reality which the elementary schools of the country possess; for without being dictatorial or rigid it expresses the intention of the Education Acts and it gives a succinct and unchallengeable account of the objective of primary education. Parliament, by these Education Acts, has empowered education authorities to number and marshal the children; it has laid down the objectives to be attained by means of State expenditure, and the Code, as its name implies, "codifies" the requirements of parliament, and tells the authorities and their staffs what account they must render to the nation.

Any examination of the value of cinematography in schools will be stultified, unless at the outset we get a clear picture in our minds where we stand in education and what our schools are intended to do. No hard and fast line can be drawn between the fundamental and cultural subjects, nor does the Code attempt to do so. The fundamentals are the tools which both cultural and vocational subjects alike require for their progress.

Boys and girls in the ordinary elementary schools attend school for 27 hours a week, of which about 22 hours are available for secular instruction. From 1862 to 1896 the whole of this secular instruction was directed to securing grants in accordance with the system then in force of payment by results. The abolition of payment by results had a three-fold effect: it widened the curriculum, reduced the time given to the three R's, and the school grant was no longer decided by an arbitrary standard of attainment in reading, writing and arithmetic. Teachers everywhere began to explore the claims for cultural novelties, and music, physical training, school journeys, nature study, educational visits, were added to school activities. But the best teachers knew that their work must stand or fall by the efficiency of the instruction in the fundamentals; and their desire for a more

cultural system of elementary education led them constantly to evolve methods for a quicker and more effective teaching of the fundamentals, so that the time saved could be utilised for a more humanistic purpose. Thus new didactic material was rapidly introduced-phonetic spelling, script writing, Montessorian apparatus and the infants' school made amazing progress and attained an unrivalled efficiency. This progress has been less satisfactory in the upper standards and less evident when boys and girls leave school and are measured by more searching and more exacting criteria.

To-day's problem in education is a problem common to all spheres of productive effort. Costs have risen beyond recall, and can only be counterbalanced by getting a bigger output. The ratepayer is interested in education, and he wants more facilities for his children; wise administration will seek to devise means of getting a bigger output by improvement in the machinery of imparting knowledge. Elementary education in the country is at the cross roads. The great cry for cultural work is pressing too hard upon the school; time-tables are packed with the effort to keep up the pace. In the domain of secondary education thirty per cent. of the secondary schools of the country say they are suffering from over-pressure.

During the last twenty years, lantern slides, school journeys, educational visits, and (in London) a teachers' reference library issuing nearly 70,000 books annually, have been inaugurated. These new methods have been specially directed towards a more effective teaching of history and geography; it is, however, in these subjects, according to the Chief Inspector of the London County Council,* that the results achieved by the London schools have been most defective when judged by comparison with the knowledge acquired a generation ago. The juxtaposition of these two facts seems, hitherto, to have escaped comment. No responsible person would ask for the removal of these modern ancillaries, but the taxpayer may ask why should history and geography be the weakest links in the chain when so much expenditure and so many new educational methods have been sanctioned in their name ?

That the margin of time available

for cultural work * Standard of Attainment in Public Elementary Schools. P. S. King and Son, Ltd.

is limited and incapable of meeting the demand for liberal education is manifest in the trend of the pressure wnich responsible authorities feel on all sides. A large and growing section of the public demands secondary education for all; another the raising of the school leaving age. The time-table of the 27 hours of the school-week will bear no more, and the teachers' time-load should be lessened rather than augmented. Since the week cannot be increased the demand that the years of school life shall be added to becomes more articulate. Economic forces are such that a national extension of the compulsory school leaving age by a year is almost out of the question (unless the doubtful expedient of maintenance grants is adopted) and the teaching of culture, just as that of the fundamentals, must fall back upon improvement in method if much more is to be achieved within the present time limits.

་་

When school life is analysed, it consists of a syllabus to be got through"; of so much knowledge or training to be imparted, and when imparted to "stick." Teachers pursue new methods for increasing the speed and permanence of learning. Cinematography, radio lectures, the gramophone and such-like aids, offer themselves as educational media. Clearly, the education authority must challenge the newcomers with selective caution and ask (coldly and without enthusiasm), "Can you teach more effectively; and, if so, at a price worth while?"

The subjects of instruction formulated by the Board of Education Code are English, handwriting, arithmetic, drawing, practical instruction (handicraft, gardening, domestic and other subjects), observation lessons and nature study, geography, history, singing, hygiene and physical training. In English and history the use of the cinematograph may be actively harmful. Attempts have been made from time to time to transmute drama and fiction into films, and many striking pictures have resulted but King Lear in cinematograph form is no longer Shakespeare, and the film producer's pageantry is not history. The written word must remain the written word, or lose altogether its power. It is the lives, the thoughts, the aspirations, the upward struggle of peoples (or their downfall through demoralization) that should inspire the teaching of history. Cinematography is clearly of little use for teaching any other subjects prescribed by the Code, except observation lessons, nature study, and geography.