The Silver Pencil

by Alice Dalgliesh

Puffin Books,

Published by the Penguin Group, 1944.

 

Reviewed by Connie Frisbee Houde

 

This is a story about a young girl, Janet Laidlaw, who lived in Trinidad and traveled all over the world in the books that she read as she was growing up. When her father died her life changed. She had thought she would never leave her home, the West Indies. Suddenly plans are being made for her to attend school in England. Later she moves to America to attend a teachers training program and settle there. Alice Dalgliesh, the author, (born 1893, died 1979) based this book on her own life as a teacher and writer.

 

The title for this story comes from an important gift that her father gave her&emdash;a silver pencil. She loved to write stories and she felt the silver pencil would bring her good luck. With the death of her father the pencil took on an added dimension of becoming a connection with her father and his love for her story telling.

 

What, you might say, is this book doing getting reviewed in Skole? Yes, it's a book for young adults - a good example of what one person's life is like growing up and making decisions that form that life. However, more important for this journal is the commentary about her schooling "learning" to become a teacher.

 

She is taught a teaching method based on Freidrich Froebel, founder of kindergarten. This involves a series of very disciplined and defined games and plans for each day. She has wonderful instincts, a natural ability for telling stories and a love for children and yet she becomes frozen in someone else's methods and "appropriate ways of responding."

 

The morning of her first day of practice teaching she feels great fear and convinces herself that there is nothing to be afraid of. " She was going to teach sweet little children, and behind her stood Froebel with his superior wisdom. Of course there was nothing to be afraid of."

 

But when problems arise she tries to use the method with little success. As a result Miss Beck her instructor tells her she lacks discipline. Janet finally completes her training thinking that she is prepared to be a teacher.

Her first teaching job was in a normal school, demonstration kindergarten which utilized newer methods.

 

"Janet felt as if she had stepped into an entirely unfamiliar country. Virginia had been trained in the newer kindergarten methods - those that had been originated, to a great extent, by a teacher with vision whose name was Patty Smith Hill. Janet remembered that Miss Hill had lectured - once and only once - at her training school, and that Miss Beck had set her lips and made frigid remarks about these strange fly-by-night ideas that wouldn't last.

 

But they were lasting. They were sweeping the kindergartens all over the country. They dominated this particular kindergarten and Janet found herself quite unprepared to meet them. In this room there was no circle painted on the floor; the children gathered in an informal group. There were no colored balls on strings, or tiny blocks in boxes, such as Froebel had devised. Materials were big .... Most important of all, the teachers did not make day-by-day, week-by-week plans for the children. They followed the children's own interests, helped them to work these interests out in the best way. Janet was very much mystified by it all and felt herself inadequate....The only thing that was the same was storytelling - Janet clung to that as the survivor from a sinking ship clings to a raft. But the raft was small and the waves washed over her."

 

Until she meets another individual who can see her potential Janet flounders in her teaching. She knows something is wrong but takes all the blame upon herself for not being a good teacher and feels she should give up and do something else. At one point when Janet is feeling particularly down and is confiding in a friend she is given the exact advice she needs. "The whole trouble is you have no confidence in yourself. You've got to find that, somehow, because you'll never be any good until you do."

 

It is Janet's struggle to learn to accept her own inner wisdom and to set aside the "guru" Froebel who was supposed to have all the answers about how to teach. Once she had done that, which was by no means easy, she became a good teacher enjoying what she knew she was doing well.

 

I found this book to be a mirror for almost any profession or position in life - a possible guide to learning to find your own way. I could identify with Janet's struggle to unlearn what were supposed to be the answers. How many of us have had to unlearn what we have learned in school before we could really begin to take off on our own with satisfaction and success?

 

Back to Educational programs page