Pickering College - Voyageur Yearbook (Newmarket, Ontario Canada)

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16 THE VOYAGE UR it to suit this day and generation. We have given up using the phrase new ideals largely because I have become convinced that the best ideals in education are not newg techniques and processes may alter from age to age, but the realities of a vital educational process are certainly as old as are the messages of the prophets of Israel and the Carpenter of Nazareth. A Some of those factors I shall attempt to describe. The question, however, still remains with me as a challenge: can we carry, have we carried on the tradition of our predecessors in a manner calculated to serve our day and generation? That is at once and the same time the criterion of the success or failure of our work during the past ten years, and a challenge for all that is to come. TH E CANADIAN SCHooL. It was desired by the sponsors of the school that Pickering College should be a Canadian School in its whole atmosphere and feeling. To say this is not to be negatively critical of other institutions, but rather to express a posQtive attitude towards the form in which our own work should be cast. The Canadian culture is not a transplant of any transfoceanic form. Our roots, indeed, go deep into the tradition and history of the British peoples, and certainly our institutions of government and politics are a direct outgrowth of the centuries old struggle for democratic and political forms and a judiciary that would be above reproach. Even these, however, had had to be modified because of the peculiar conditions and circumstances of Canadian life. Cur cultural pattern in this country has been conditioned by many factors. One of the most obvious of these is the mingling of the Gaelic traditions of the French Canadians with the traditions of those of Anglofsaxon stock. These two main streams have been added to by immigrant groups from other parts of Europe. This whole flux combining in one common stream, has been tremendously affected by the fact that we have been, at least up till very recently, a pioneer people. Few Canadians today are more than three genera' tions removed from a pioneer farm or an immigrant ship. To endeavour to serve a population such as this by educational institutions typical of any other race or nationality is to court failure. Our cultural patterns are a blend of many strains modified to meet the new conditions of a new country. An educational programme or system to serve such a population in a vital manner must be indigenous. A Canadian school, therefore, should attempt to bring together as many of those strains as possible into a new form which shall not be merely a combination of the old but a definitely new pattern, reflecting the almost infinite variety of those component parts. For this reason we have not utilized in this school many of the forms and methods which are prevalent in educational institutions of the Old Land. Unless a form can justify itself because it is natural and spontaneous to our own Canadian life, it has had no place in this school. I suppose it is largely for this reason that the custom of fagging, the prefectorial system and the academic cap and gown are noteworthy omissions. To us it seems that those and other similar customs are survivals of a tradition which is not our tradition. Undoubtedly they have meaning in their own places, but forms without meaning have no reality and are better omitted. In their place we have tried to develop other customs and forms which we believe to be closer to the genius of our own culture.

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THE VOYAGE UR I 7 IQEFLECTIIDNS Cf A HEADMASTEIQ IN BARR1E's CHARMING PLAY Quality Street the author makes one of his female characters say Why is it that thirty seems so much older than twentyfnine? The query is uttered plaintively by a young lady who apparently is having to resign herself to long years of single blessedness. At this time I am moved to a somewhat similar commentf- why is it that the tenth year seems so much more important than the ninth? I must confess I do not know the answer but I am very certain that this year has seemed more than usually import' ant. It marks a decade since the refopening of the doors of the school in 1927. Now that we are nearing the actual completion -jptlj 'mi of the final year's work of that decade, it ffl! ,pg g seems a good time to reflect on our experf .,v,g5.j4Q5i-13 iences. May I be pardoned, therefore, if this article is even more personal in tone than it is my custom to contribute to these pages CLD TaAD1T1oNs, New Imifxts The above phrase was used in much of our advertising literature during the first few years of the school. We were very conscious of the fine reputaf tion and the noble traditions that had been established for us by the old Quaker school at Newmarket and before that at Pickering. Everywhere I went among people who were familiar with the work of the school prior to 1917, I heard it described in the highest terms. Furthermore, it was evident that at all times there had been infused into the life of the school those spiritual qualities which for centuries have marked the history of the Society of Friends. But there had been a gap of ten years. Old contacts and associations had been lost or broken. A young headmaster, unacquainted personally with the old school, was undertaking to revivify those fine traditions. But it was a new and different day. The cataclysm of the war years had altered not only the face of the earth but the mould of men's thoughts and we were and are still in the midst of changes, social, economic, political and religious more striking and more signihcant than any that have occurred within the recent memory of man. We have forsaken horse and buggy, the stagefcoach, the paddlefwheel steamer. We have forsaken the primitive and largely agricula tural life of our foreffathers. The world has become infinitely smaller. Its economic mechanism has become tremendously complicated. New scientific light has changed the climate of opinion which governs to such a large extent our customs, our conventions and our modes of living. Education, to serve the new day must be different. It was not only our privilege but our duty to endeavour to combine in the new school all that was of value in the tradition of the past and to refadapt

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THE VOYAGE UR 17 LAW AND FREEDOM IN EDUCATION Education can be defined as growth The human child comes into the world as a bundle of instincts, reflexes and inherent capacities capable of def velopment in an almost infinite variety of ways. Whether this process takes place within a formal institution such as a school, or whether it takes place as it does in a simpler society by the contact of the child with adults carrying on their daily activity, it is still education. There can, however, be no growth except in an atmosphere of freedom. It has been, therefore, a cardinal prin- ciple of our activity that the child in the school should have ample opporf tunity to develop to the utmost all of his finest potentialities. The school is obligated to provide in its environment and programme a stimulus for each and every individual. Such a doctrine of freedom, however, in education, does not imply that there is unlimited scope for any individual to do exactly what he wants. I would like to make this point clear, because by many the sofcalled new education is thought to mean that very thing. It is merely common sense, however, to point out that the freedom of any individual is limited inevitably by the fact that he has to live in a social relationship with other people. Equal freedom must be available to all the members of the group and in order to avoid infringing on the liberties of others it is essential that each should recognize from the beginning that one's freedom ends where the freedom of his neighbour begins. Furthermore a child must recognize somewhere in the educational process that there is an accumulated body of knowledge stored up by past generations. A child might conceivably develop his own intellect exploring his environment in a perfectly rational way, but there is no reason why each successive generation should repeat all the ex' plorations of the past. If, however, any given individual is to profit by the learnings of those who have gone before him, he must be ready to subject himself to the discipline that is inherent in any given body of knowledge. The freedom, therefore, of any given individual to think or act exactly as he pleases is inevitably and invariably conditioned by the fact that he is a social being living and working with others and helping to build a superstructure of thought and knowledge the main lines of which have been outlined by those who have gone before him. It is necessary, therefore, that the child, during the course of his formal education should recognize the inevitability of law in every form of activity in which he may engage. For centuries man dreamed of being free to fly like the birds in the air. It was not, however, until such time as he learned the laws governing such activity that the dream became a reality. It is the same in every other realm. Perfect freedom is only available when we are fully aware of the law operative in that particular realm. DISCIPLINE This whole theory of the relationship of law and freedom has a direct bearing on the matter of discipline. It is possible, of course, to establish an arbitrary code and to enforce external compliance for a longer or shorter period of time. Such a code rigidly enforced has been justified on the grounds that it did obtain results. I cannot believe, however, that a rigid discipline enforced f1'I4'il.s-4' turn In ptlylf' H31