Back to school, back to work, back to the fields. In the old medieval calendar, Plough Monday, which was the first Monday after Epiphany or Twelfth Night, marked the end of the Christmas holidays. Those lucky medievals had enjoyed a two-week holiday over Christmas, but now it was time to open the shops and harness the plough, in order to prepare the ground for spring sowing. Another custom was St Distaff’s Day, the first Tuesday after Epiphany, which marked the day when the women would resume their duties at the spinning wheel. As Herrick put it:
“Partly work and partly play
Ye must on St Distaff’s Day”
So in 2010, the men would have returned to their toils on January 11 and the women on the 12th. Most of us actually resumed toil on the 4th, meaning that before the Reformation people had a much better deal.
Our children, too, have been at school since the 4th, and the problem with education is not that there is not enough of it, but that there is too much. Modern government puts children in schools from 9am until 3.30pm so their parents can toil in the mills. During that time the small ones are mostly mucking about and being told to “express themselves” rather than actually learning anything. And the Government is talking about longer school days.
A far more efficient approach would be to have a shorter school day but harder lessons. DH Lawrence’s said as much in his 1919 essay, “Education of the People”. Contrary to what most of us think about Lawrence, he was not actually in favour of letting children run wild all day long. It appears that 90 years ago there was, like today, a vogue for encouraging “self-expression” in schools:
Each child was to express himself: why, nobody thought it necessary to explain. A child was to be given a lump of soft clay and told to express himself. Now, it is obvious that every boy’s first act of self-expression would be to throw that lump of soft clay at something: preferably the teacher … Continue Reading
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