The Child under Eight Part 13

Where it is almost impossible to be openly naughty, where there is no opportunity for choice or for making mistakes, where control is all from the teacher and self-control has no place, there is no moral freedom.

The school is not for the righteous but for the so-called sinner, who is only a child learning self-control by experience.

Self-control is a habit gained through habits; a child must acquire the habit of arresting desire, of holding the physical side in check, the habit of reflection, of choice, and most of all the habit of either acting or holding back, as a result of all this. If in the earliest years his will is in the hands of others, and he has the habit of obedience to the exclusion of all other habits, then his development as a self-reliant individual is arrested, and may be permanently weakened.

There is no other way to learn life, and build up an ideal from the raw material he has gained in other ways. In the rehearsal of life at school he can do this without serious harm; but every time a mode of conduct is imposed upon him when he might have chosen, every time he is externally controlled when he might have controlled himself, every time he is balked in making a mistake that would have been experience to him, he will be proportionally less fit to choose, to exercise self-control, to learn by experience, and these are the chief lessons at this impressionable period.

_The fourth principle therefore is that the atmosphere of freedom is the only atmosphere in which a child can gain experiences that will help to develop character and control conduct._

These four vital principles will be applied to practical work in the following chapters.

II. PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF VITAL PRINCIPLES

Before applying these principles it is necessary for practical considerations to set out clearly the various stages of this period.

During the first eight years of life, development is very rapid and not always relatively continuous. Sometimes it takes leaps, and sometimes appears for a time to be quiescent. But roughly the first stage, of a child's developing life ends when he can walk, eat more or less ordinary food, and is independent of his mother. At this point the Nursery School stage begins: the child is learning for himself his world by experience, and through play he chooses his raw material in an atmosphere of freedom. When the period of play pure and simple begins to grow into a desire to do things better, to learn and practise for a more remote end--in other words, when the child begins to be willing to be taught, the transitional period from play to work begins. It can never be said to end, but the relative amount of play to work gradually defines the life of the school: and so the transitional period merges into the school period. Thus we are concerned first with the Nursery School period which corresponds to what Froebel meant by his Kindergarten and Owen by his Infant School; secondly, with the transitional period which has been far too long neglected or rushed over, and which roughly corresponds to the Standard I. of the Elementary School; and thirdly, we have the beginnings of the Junior School where work is the predominant factor. In spite of Shakespeare's a.s.sertion, there is much in a name, and if these names were definitely adopted, teachers would realise better the nature of their business.

The following chapters seek to apply practically the four vital principles to these periods of a child's life, but in many cases the Transition Cla.s.ses and the Junior School are considered together.

CHAPTER XVII

THE NEED FOR EXPERIENCE

"The first vital principle is that the teacher of young children must provide for them life in miniature, i.e. she must provide abundant raw material and opportunities for acquiring experience."

The practical translation of this in the words of the teacher of to-day is, "I must choose furniture, and requisition apparatus." The teacher of to-morrow will say to her children, "I will bring the world into the school for you to learn." The Local Education Authority of to-day says, "We must build a school for instruction." The Local Education Authority of to-morrow will say, "We must make a miniature world for our children."

The world of the Nursery School child probably requires the most careful thought in this respect: a large room with sunlight and air, low clear windows, a door leading to a garden and playground, low cupboards full of toys, low-hung pictures, light chairs and tables that can be pushed into a corner, stretcher beds equally disposable, a dresser with pretty utensils for food; these are the chief requirements for satisfying physical needs, apparent in the actual room. Physical habits will be considered later, under another heading.

Outside, in the playground, there should be opportunities for physical development, for its own sake: swings, giant strides, ladders laid flat, slightly sloping planks, and a seesaw should all be available for constant use; if the children are not warned or given constant advice about their own safety, there is little fear of accidents.

Thus the purely physical side of the children is provided for, the side that they are, if healthy, quite unconscious of; what else does experience demand at this stage?

Roughly cla.s.sified, the raw experience of this stage may be divided into the experience of the natural world of living things, the world of inanimate things, and the social world. For the natural world there should be the garden outside, with its trees, gra.s.s and flower beds; with its dovecot and rabbit hutch, and possibly a cat sunning herself on its paths; inside there will be plants and flowers to care for; the elements, especially water, earth and air, are very dear to a young child, and it is quite possible to satisfy his cravings with a large sand-heap of _dry_ and _wet_ sand; a large flat bath for sailing boats and testing the theory of sinking and floating; a bin of clay; a pair of bellows and several fans to set the air in motion. There is always the fire to gaze at on the right side of the fire-guard, and appreciation of the beauty of this element should be encouraged.

The world of inanimate things includes most of the toys that stimulate activity and give ideas. The chief that should be found in the cupboards, round the walls, or scattered about the room, are bricks of all sizes and shapes, skittles, b.a.l.l.s and bats or rackets, hoops, reins, spades and other garden tools; pails and patty pans for the sand-heap; pipes for bubbles, sh.e.l.ls, fir-cones, b.u.t.tons, acorns, and any collection of small articles for handling; all kinds of vehicles that can be pushed, such as carts, barrows, prams, engines; drums and other musical instruments; materials for construction and expression, such as chalks, boards, paints and paper.

For experiences of the social world, which is not very real at this individualistic period, come the dolls and doll's house, horses and stables, tea-things, cooking utensils, Noah's ark, scales for a shop, boats, soldiers and forts: a very important item in this connection is the collection of picture-books: they must be chosen with the greatest care, and only pictures of such merit as those of Caldecott, Leslie Brooke and Jessie Wilc.o.x Smith should be selected. Pictures form one of the richest sources of experience at this stage, as indeed at any stage of life, and truth, beauty and suggestiveness must be their chief factors.

The toys should be above all things durable, and if possible washable.

Broken and dirty toys make immoral children.

Besides the material surroundings there are opportunities, the seizing of which gives valuable experiences. These belong to the social world, and lie chiefly in the training in life's social observances and the development of good habits. This side of life is one of the most important in the Nursery School, and needs material help. The lavatories and cloakrooms should be constructed so that there is every chance for a child to become self-reliant and fastidious. The cloakrooms should be provided with low pegs, boot holes, clothes brushes and shoe brushes: there should be low basins with hot and cold water, enamel mugs and tooth brushes _for each child,_ nail brushes, plenty of towels, and where the district needs it, baths. The type provided by the Middles.e.x Education Authority at Greenford Avenue School, Hanwell, gives a shower bath to a whole group of children at once, thus making a more frequent bath possible. Perhaps for very small children of the Nursery School age separate baths are more suitable. This is a question for future experience on the part of teachers. There should be plenty of time for the children to learn to wash and dress themselves.

In the school-room there should either be tablecloths, or the tables should be capable of being scrubbed by the children after each meal.

Their almost inevitable lack of manners at table gives an invaluable opportunity for training, and again in such a case there should be no question of haste. The meals should be laid, waited on and cleared away, and the dishes washed by the children themselves, and they should be responsible for the general tidiness of the room. This involves tea-cloths, mops, dusters, was.h.i.+ng bowls, brushes and dustpans.

In the Transition Cla.s.ses and Junior School the furniture and apparatus can be to a great extent very much the same, their difference lying chiefly in degree. It is a pity to bring the age of toys to an abrupt conclusion; in real life the older children still borrow the toys of the younger ones while there are some definitely their own: such are, jigsaw and other puzzles, dominoes, articles for dramatic representation, playing cards, toys for games of physical skill, such as tops, kites, skipping ropes, etc. Such prepared constructive materials as meccano--and a great ma.s.s of raw material for construction, generally termed "waste." There should be a series of boxes or shelves where such waste products of the home, or of the woods, or of the seash.o.r.e, or of the shop, might be stored in some cla.s.sified order: the collective instinct is stronger than the more civilised habit of orderliness: here is an opportunity for developing a habit from an instinct. There should also be materials for expression, such as clay, paper, chalk, pencil, paints, weaving materials, cardboard, and scenery materials; and such tools as scissors, cardboard knives, needlework tools, paste brushes, and others that may be necessary and suitable. The rooms should be large and suitable for much moving about: the most usual conditions should be a scattered cla.s.s and not a seated listening cla.s.s. This means light chairs and tables or benches where handwork can be done; low cupboards and lockers so that each child can get at his own things; broad window-sills for plants and flowers and a bookcase for reading and picture books. Here again good picture-books are as essential as, even more essential than, readers in the Transition Cla.s.s. They will be a little more advanced than in the Nursery School, and will be of the type of the Pied Piper ill.u.s.trated, or pictures of children of other lands and times. Some of Rackham's, of Harold Copping's, of the publications by Black in _Peeps at Many Lands_, are suitable for this stage. Readers should be chosen for their literary value from the recognised children's cla.s.sics, such as the Peter Rabbit type, _Alice in Wonderland, Water-Babies,_ and not made up for the sake of reading practice.

The pictures on the walls should be hung at the right eye-level, and the windows low enough for looking at the outside world--whatever it may be.

The teacher's desk should be in a corner, not in the central part of the room, for she must remember that the children are still in the main seeking experience, not listening to the experience of another. They should have access to the garden and playground, and all the incitements to activity should be there--similar to those of the Nursery School, or those provided by the London County Council in parks. The bare wilderness of playground now so familiar, where there is neither time nor opportunity for children to be other than primitive savages, does not represent the outside world of beauty and of adventure.

The lower cla.s.ses of Junior School should differ very little in their miniature world. Life is still activity to the child of eight, and consequently should contain no immovable furniture. There will be more books, and the children may be in their seats for longer periods; the atmosphere of guided but still spontaneous work is more definite, but the aim in choice of both furniture and apparatus is still the gaining of experience of life, by direct contact in the main. Such is the Requisition Sheet to be presented to the Stores Superintendent of the Local Education Authority in the future, with an explanatory note stating that in a general way what is actually required is the world in miniature!

CHAPTER XVIII

GAINING EXPERIENCE BY PLAY

"The Second Principle is that the method of gaining experience lies through Play and that by this road we can best reach work."

Play is marked off from work chiefly by the absence of any outside pressure, and pleasure in the activity is the characteristic of play pure and simple: if a child has forced upon him a hint of any ulterior motive that may be in the mind of his teacher, the pleasure is spoilt for him and the intrinsic value of the play is lost. In bringing children into school during their play period, probably the most important formative period of their lives, and in utilising their play consciously, we are interfering with one of their most precious possessions when they are still too helpless to resent it directly. Too many of us make play a means of concealing the wholesome but unwelcome morsel of information in jam, and we try to force it on the children prematurely and surrept.i.tiously, but Nature generally defeats us. The only sound thing to do is to _play the game_ for all it is worth, and recognise that in doing so education will look after itself. To understand the nature of play, and to have the courage to follow it, is the business of every teacher of young children. The Nursery School, especially if it consists chiefly of children under five, presents at first very hard problems to the teacher; however strong her belief in play may be, it receives severe tests. So much of the play at first seems to be aimless running and shouting, or throwing about of toys and breaking them if possible, so much quarrelling and fighting and weeping seem involved with any attempts at social life on the part of the children; there seems very little desire to co-operate, and very little desire to construct; as a rule, a child roams from one thing to another with apparently only a fleeting attempt to play with it; yet on the other hand, to make the problem more baffling, a child will spend a whole morning at one thing: quite lately one child announced that he meant to play with water all day, and he did; another never left the sand-heap, and apparently repeated the same kind of activity during a complete morning; visitors said in a rather disappointed tone, "they just play all the time by themselves." One teacher brought out an attractive picture and when a group of children gathered round it she proceeded to tell the story; they listened politely for a few minutes, and then the group gradually melted away; they were not ready for concentrated effort. If those children had been in the ordinary Baby Room of a school they would have been quite docile, sitting in their places apparently listening to the story, amiably "using" their bricks or other materials according to the teacher's directions, but they would not, in the real sense, have been playing. This is an example of the need for both principle and courage.

It is into this chaotic method of gaining experience that the teacher comes with her interpretive power--she sees in it the beginnings of all the big things of life--and like a bigger child she joins, and like a bigger child she improves. She sees in the apparent chaos an attempt to get experience of the different aspects of life, in the apparently aimless activity an attempt to realise and develop the bodily powers, in the fighting and quarrelling an attempt to establish a place in social life. It is all unconscious on the part of a child, but a necessary phase of real development.

Gradually the little primitive man begins to yield to civilisation. He is interested in things for longer and asks for stories, music and rhymes, and what does this mean?

As he develops a child learns much about life in his care of the garden, about language in his games, about human conduct from stories; but he does these things because he wants to do them, and because there is a play need behind it all, which for him is a life need; in order to build a straight wall he must cla.s.sify his bricks, in order to be a real shopman he must know his weights, in order to be a good workman he must measure his paper; all the ideas gained from these things come to him _along with sense activity_; they are a.s.sociated with the needs and interests of daily life; and because of this he puts into the activity all the effort of which he is capable, or as Dewey has expressed it, "the maximum of consciousness" into the experience which is his play.

This is real sense training, differing in this respect from the training given by the Montessori material, which has no appeal to life interest, aims at exercising the senses separately, and discourages _play_ with the apparatus. It is activity without a body, practice without an end, and nothing develops from it of a constructive or expressive nature.

In the nursery cla.s.s therefore our curriculum is life, our apparatus all that a child's world includes, and our method the one of joyful investigation, by means of which ideas and skill are being acquired. The teacher is player in chief, ready to suggest, co-operate, supply information, lead or follow as circ.u.mstances demand: responsibility must still belong to the children, for while most of them know quite naturally how to play, there are many who will never get beyond a rather narrow limit, through lack of experience or of initiative.

It is quite safe to let experience take its chance through play, but there are certain things that must be dealt with quite definitely, when the teacher is not there as a playmate, but as something more in the capacity of a mother. It is impossible to train all the habits necessary at this time, through the spontaneous play, although incidentally many will be greatly helped and made significant by it. If the children come from poor homes where speech is imperfect, probably mere imitation of the teacher, which is the chief factor in ordinary language training, will be insufficient. It will be necessary to invent ways, chiefly games, by which the vocal organs may be used; this may be considered play, but it is more artificial and less spontaneous than the informal activity already described. It is well to be clear as to the kind of exercises best suited to make the vocal organs supple, and then to make these the basis of a game: for example, little children constantly imitate the cries of ordinary life; town children could dramatise a railway station where the sounds produced by engines and by porters give a valuable training; they could imitate street cries, the sound of the wind, of motor hooters, sirens, or of church bells. Country children could use the sounds of the farm-yard, the birds, or the wind. In the recognition of sound, which is as necessary as its production, such a guessing game could be taught as "I sent my son to be a grocer and the first thing he sold began with _s_ and ended with _p_," using the _sounds_, not names of the letters. For the acquisition of a vocabulary, such a game as the Family Coach might be played and turned into many other vehicles or objects about which many stories could be told. All the time the game must be played with the same fidelity to the spirit of play as previously, but the introduction must be recognised as more artificial and forced, and this can be justified because so many children are not normal with regard to speech, and only where this is the case should language training be forced upon them. Habits of courtesy, of behaviour at table, of position, of dressing and undressing, of was.h.i.+ng hands and brus.h.i.+ng teeth, and many others, must all be _taught_, but taught at the time when the need comes. Occasions will certainly occur during play, but the chances of repet.i.tion are not sufficient to count on.

Thus we summarise the chief business of the Nursery School teacher when we say that it is concerned chiefly with habits and play and right surroundings.

Play in the Transition Cla.s.s is less informal. After the age of six certain ambitions grow and must be satisfied. The aspects of life are more separated, and concentration on individual ones is commoner; this means more separation into subjects, and thus a child is more willing to be organised, and to have his day to _some_ extent arranged for him.

While in the nursery cla.s.s only what was absolutely necessary was fixed, in the Transition Cla.s.s it is convenient to fix rather more, for the sake of establis.h.i.+ng certain regular habits, and because it is necessary to give the freshest hours to the work that requires most concentration.

We must remember, however, that it _is_ a transition cla.s.s, and not set up a completely fas.h.i.+oned time-table for the whole day. Reading and arithmetic must be acquired both as knowledge and skill, the mother tongue requires definite practice, there must be a time for physical activity, and living things must not be attended to spasmodically.

Therefore it seems best that these things be taken in the morning hours, while the afternoon is still a time for free choice of activity.

The following is a plan for the Transition Cla.s.s, showing the bridge between absolute freedom and a fully organised time-table--

MORNING. AFTERNOON.

Monday |Nature |Reading |Stories from |Organised games and |work. |and Number.|Scripture or other |handwork.

---------|Care |-----------|literature, and |----------------------- Tuesday |of the |Reading |stories of social |Music and handwork.

|room. |and Number.|life; music and | ---------|Nature |-----------|singing; industrial|----------------------- Wednesday|chart |Reading |activities such as |Excursion or handwork.

|and |and Number.|solving puzzles, | ---------|General|-----------|playing games of |----------------------- Thursday |talk. |Reading |skill, looking at |Dramatic representation | |and Number.|pictures, arranging|including preparations.

---------| |-----------|collections. |----------------------- Friday | |Reading | |Gardening or handwork.