§ 18

Caligraphy is taught as an Art. It is pleasant to look over the pages of children’s writing, so different to the scrawls which were called writing a while ago. Drawing comes under the section of caligraphy, to which it belongs. Making nicely shaped lettering means drawing letters. A child who has learned to draw letters well will soon learn to copy other forms.

Dancing (not romping) but the good old English dancing, so graceful and dignified, is part of the curriculum of education. It engenders good manners, elegant deportment, and self-control, besides being an extremely beneficial exercise. There is no folk music more lovely than the old English, and it is being revived, that one knows, for familiar old songs are heard in the fields now almost as constantly as Italian folk songs are heard in Italy. The people have lost the stiff, morose manner they had; while they work they sing. Their health is better now that they are more in the open air, and being engaged in open air pursuits their spirits have gained in elasticity and freedom of expression. The invention of new tunes is encouraged; hence there is quite a little school of modern and simple folk song growing which is pleasant, uncomplicated, and melodious.

Before learning foreign tongues our own is better taught now. Dialects are not discouraged; indeed, the reverse, the dialect of a county is encouraged as an indisputable characteristic of the people. There is only one dialect that is hateful (Cockney), and every effort is being made to eradicate that. Our own splendid language is great in poetry, from Chaucer to Wordsworth; to teach it through the works of the poets is to get it at its best. In Italy, where the craftsman class is far more cultivated than it has been in England, her great poets are common property; one hears Dante quoted constantly, as well as Tasso and minor poets. Under the new order in England there is reason to hope that ignorance of our great poets will give place to a general acquaintance with them. An individual who can speak and write his own language decently is not ill educated. If he has acquired facility in the language of his birthplace, diligence will soon give him some in foreign tongues. Those young people who show an aptitude for languages have the opportunity of qualifying in them, but the general run of labour and craftsmanship has no need of them. To fill the mind and memory with too many subjects at once is to dilute all. A sound knowledge of craftsmanship is what is wanted, and that is evidently being supplied by practice, a thousand times better system than by theory. Constant occupation, not excitements, create content. Excitements produce reaction. Occupation, varied in kind, steadies the character. It is with a view to that that the Communes do not overwork their workers. Energy is left to them after their hours of labour for which they are well paid, and to use it either physically or mentally, out of doors working in gardens or fields, or in their homes upon all such things which tend to make the home a happy and profitable little city in itself. A grumbler is voted a nuisance, an agitator an obstruction. Loiterers and loafers who would live on the earnings of honest citizens are held to be mean unproductive weeds for which the Communes have no use. For agitators there is no room now, the democratic howler at street corners or on common land finds no listeners; he is treated as a windbag since it has become known to the community at large that in the past he was a well-paid mischief-maker, who did far more harm than good to a cause which he pretended to advance.