LONDON HAS ITS OWN WAYS
Follette, Fola La
London Has Its Own Ways : : By Fola La Follette IN London one does not telephone—except to other, visiting Americans, or to intimate friends. If you have a letter of introduction you write a note...
...In her book on The Nursery School, which t recommend to all La Follette's readers who are interested in the subject, Miss McMillan says: "I have taken my environment where I stoodi...
...They had dreamed and worked, and shown a way to recreate horrors of our industrial slums . over into garden spots where happy, healthy children might grow up with the possibility of ultimately making another city and another and nobler civilization...
...In bondage to no abstract theory or method, a genius for recognizing and meeting the infinite individual variations of children, this was the spirit that emanated from Miss McMillan and was reflected in her teachers and the entire atmosphere of the school...
...The atmosphere was healthy, vigorous and loving—a rare combination...
...No one, I think, could step through that door-way and spend a day with the two hundred or more children who are cared for and taught in these little open air shelters which surround the garden without sharing the feeling which this experience aroused in me...
...The streets are barren, lined with grey dingy brick houses and walls...
...For this school is not a precious and quixotic experiment in education applicable only to the children of a favored minority...
...In every , shelter I saw healthy rosy cheeked children absorbed in various kinds of activity...
...The children were spontaneous and unafraid—"these little children need a great deal of loving when they first come, for they have often been filled with fear," Miss McMillan said as she comforted one toddler who had been pushed off his balance and was crying...
...But a world which accepted and carried out Rachel and Margaret McMillan's brave and revolutionary work as it is exemplified in this School would recreate itself and its people...
...For this remarkable pioneer Nursery School was one of the things in London that I had most set my heart on seeing...
...Educate every child as if he were your own" was Rachel McMillan's faith which she put into "works...
...Perhaps "democracy" was not such a far off fantasy of man after all...
...But there was never an inflection of sentimentality or a note of patronage in any teacher's tone...
...I opened the door and stepped into a garden...
...I wished that I mlight spend a week or a month following in detail all the ways in which the health and happiness of this garden of children was created...
...This necessitates more correspondence, for the process begins all over again...
...If in this hour of rapid change and transformation we can give any guidance to our generation my sister's work and my own will not have been in vain...
...No—it was a reality, a reality that had been created out of the brave daring vision of two idealistic and imaginative women...
...A visit to the Rachel McMillan Training Centre renews one's faith that it may not be a dream but a potentiality which may some day shape itself into reality...
...Painted on one of these walls were the words ''Rachel McMillan Training Centre...
...This open air nursery school is in the heart of one of London's poorest and most crowded quarters...
...One such school can't, of course, make over a world, a city, or even one corner of a sordid alum...
...Thus the children, though protected from rain, are always in the open air and carry on their work and play with sky, grass, flowering plants and shrubs constantly in the foreground of their vision...
...You may spend several weeks here and finally leave for the continent with the knowledge that if you kept up a heavy correspondence you might return in a month with your schedule of engagements well in order...
...in the heart of a London slum two women with an imagination and untiring courage have shown that this opportunity can be given to all children, A nursery school of one hundred children can be run today at an annual cost-of about sixty dollars per head, Miss McMillan tells us...
...Was this a creation of my fancy—would it vanish in an instant...
...Some playing with blocks, others seated about the "mother nurse" in their comfortable low chairs eagerly telling stories of their experiences...
...a wide open space with grass plots and gay colored masses of flowers...
...Gentle melodious voices, gay happy sounds replaced the harsh cries of the street...
...a district so poor that it took me fifteen minutes going from shop to shop to get a bill changed in order to pay my taxi fare...
...Does all this sound sentimental and visionary...
...I am therefore congratulating myself that at the end of three weeks in London, and on the eve of crossing the channel to France, I have been fortu- nate enough to have been permitted to spend a. day at the Rachel McMillan Training Centre...
...If you have a letter of introduction you write a note and wait for an answer—by the post...
...Though born of what must once have seemed a fantastic vision to those of little faith it is nov...
...The open air shelter and proper food eliminates rickets and all the diseases that are the product of improper housing and improper nourishment...
...And though in 1&17 her sister Margaret had to face carrying on the work alone, one feels that this school, which is new a memorial to her who is gone, will be an enduring inspiration and guide to generations to come, when neither of its creators are here to see the full fruits of their labors...
...a practical demonstration that all normal children, if given an opportunity can be healthy creative little beings...
...When home3 are built around the garden schools, and every child is educated "as if he were your own" the dream of democracy will approach realization...
...Framing the garden are the little houses or shelters, as they are called, built with one wall missing...
...It is a constructive challenge to our educational system and to the prevailing values of life and human relationships...
...Our life's raft is on a stream that never pauses, that never stagnates, whose banks 3how ever the i new landscape, and lead ever forward towards the horizon that is yet to be unveiled...
...And here...
...If you have neveral letters of introduction you may send them all out and have the distracting experience of being invited to four or five places at the same hour and on the same day...
...Out of a sordid slum street an opening door had let me into a 'world of beauty...
Vol. 19 • July 1927 • No. 7
