live to music, get so clearheaded about music that they can move their
several limbs each in a different metre until they become complicated
living magazines of cross rhythms, and, what is more, make music
for others to do all these things to. Stranger still, though Jacques
Dalcroze, like all these great teachers, is the completest of tyrants,
knowing what is right and that he must and will have the lesson just so
or else break his heart (not somebody else's, observe), yet his school
is so fascinating that every woman who sees it exclaims "Oh, why was I
not taught like this!" and elderly gentlemen excitedly enrol themselves
as students and distract classes of infants by their desperate endeavors
to beat two in a bar with one hand and three with the other, and start
off on earnest walks round the room, taking two steps backward whenever
Monsieur Daleroze calls out "Hop!" Oh yes: I know all about these
wonderful schools that you cannot keep children or even adults out of,
and these teachers whom their pupils not only obey without coercion, but
adore. And if you will tell me roughly how many Masons and Montessoris
and Dalcrozes you think you can pick up in Europe for salaries of from
thirty shillings to five pounds a week, I will estimate your chances
of converting your millions of little scholastic hells into little
scholastic heavens. If you are a distressed gentlewoman starting to make
a living, you can still open a little school; and you can easily buy a
secondhand brass plate inscribed PESTALOZZIAN INSTITUTE and nail it to
your door, though you have no more idea of who Pestalozzi was and what
he advocated or how he did it than the manager of a hotel which began
as a Hydropathic has of the water cure. Or you can buy a cheaper plate
inscribed KINDERGARTEN, and imagine, or leave others to imagine, that
Froebel is the governing genius of your little _creche_. No doubt the
new brass plates are being inscribed Montessori Institute, and will be
used when the Dotteressa is no longer with us by all the Mrs Pipchins
and Mrs Wilfers throughout this unhappy land.