The Child under Eight Part 17

CHAPTER XXIV

EXPERIENCES BY MEANS OF DOING

In the Nursery School activity is the chief characteristic: one of its most usual forms is experimenting with tools and materials, such as chalk, paints, scissors, paper, sand, clay and other things. The desire to experiment, to change the material in some way, to gratify the senses, especially the muscular one, may be stronger than the desire to construct. The handwork play of the Nursery School is therefore chiefly by means of imitation and experiment, and direct help is usually quite unwelcome to the child under six. There is little more to be said in the way of direction than, "Provide suitable material, give freedom, and help, if the child wants it." But the case is rather different in the transitional stage. As the race learnt to think by doing, so children seem to approach thought in that way; they have a natural inclination to do in the first case; they try, do wrongly, consider, examine, observe, and do again: for example, a girl wants to make a doll's bonnet like the baby's; she begins impulsively to cut out the stuff, finds it too small, tries to visualise the right size, examines the real bonnet, and makes another attempt. At some apparently odd moment she stumbles on a truth, perhaps the relation of one form to another in the mazes of bonnet-making; it is at these odd moments that we learn. Or a boy may be painting a Christmas card, and in another odd moment he may _feel_ something of the beauty of colour, if, for example, he is copying holly-berries. No purposeless looking at them would have stirred appreciation. Whether the end is doing, or whether it is thinking, the two are inextricably connected; in the earlier stages the way to know and feel is very often by action, and here is the basis of the maxim that handwork is a method.

This idea has often been only half digested, and consequently it has led to a very trivial kind of application; a nature lesson of the "look and say" description has been followed by a painting lesson; a geography lesson, by the making of a model. If the method of learning by doing was the accepted aim of the teacher then it was not carried out, for this is learning and then doing, not learning for the purpose of doing, but doing for the purpose of testing the learning, which is quite another matter, and not a very natural procedure with young children. Many people have tried to make things from printed directions, a woman may try to make a blouse and a man to make a knife-box; their procedure is not to separate the doing and the learning process; probably they have first tried to do, found need for help, and gone to the printed directions, which they followed side by side with the doing; and in the light of former failures or in the course of looking or of experimenting, they stumbled upon knowledge: this is learning by doing.

Therefore the making of a box may be arithmetic, the painting of a b.u.t.tercup may be nature study, the construction of a model, or of dramatic properties may be geography or history, not by any means the only way of learning, but one of the earlier ways and a very sound way; there is a purpose to serve behind it all, that will lead to very careful discrimination in selection of knowledge, and to pains taken to retain it. If this is fully understood by a teacher and she is content to take nature's way, and abide for nature's time to see results, then her methods will be appropriately applied: she will see that she is not training a race of box-makers, but that she is guiding children to discover things that they need to know in a natural way, and ensuring that as these facts are discovered they shall be used. Consequently neither haste nor perfection of finish must cloud the aim; it is not the output that matters but the method by which the children arrive at the finished object, not forty good boxes, but forty good thinkers. Dewey has put it most clearly when he says that the right test of an occupation consists "in putting the maximum of consciousness into whatever is done." Froebel says, "What man tries to represent or do he begins to understand."

This is what we should mean by saying that handwork is a method of learning.

But handwork has its own absolute place as well. A child wants to acquire skill in this direction even more consciously than he wants to learn: if he has been free, in the nursery cla.s.s, to experiment with materials, and if he knows some of his limitations, he is now, in the transition cla.s.s, ready for help, and he should get it as he needs it.

This may run side by side with the more didactic side of handwork which has been described, but it is more likely that in practice the two are inextricably mixed up; and this does not matter if the two ends are clear in the teacher's mind; both sides have to be reckoned with.

The important thing to know is the kind of help that should be given, and when and how it is needed. It is well to remember that in this connection a child's limitations are not final, but only mark stages: for example, in his early attempts to use thick cardboard he cannot discover the neat hinge that is made by the process known as a "half-cut"; he tries in vain to bend the cardboard, so as to secure the same result. There are two ways of helping him: either he can be quite definitely shown and made to imitate, or he can be set to think about it; he is given a cardboard knife and allowed to experiment: if he fails, it may be suggested that a clean edge can only be got by some form of cutting; probably he will find out the rest of the process. The second method is the better one, because it promotes thinking, while the first only promotes pure imitation and the habit of reckoning on this easy solution of difficulties. A dull child may have to be shown, but there are few such children, unless they have been trained to dulness.

Imitation is not, however, always a medicine for dulness, nor does it always produce dulness. There is a time for imitation and there is a kind of imitation that is very intelligent. For example, a child may come across a toy aeroplane and wish to make one; he will examine it carefully, think over the uses of parts and proceed to make one as like it as possible: here again is the maximum of consciousness, the essence of thinking. Or the imitation may consist in following verbal directions: this is far from easy if the teacher is at all vague, and promotes valuable effort if she is clear but not diffuse: the putting of words into action necessitates a considerable amount of imagining, and the establishment of very important a.s.sociations in brain centres. Such cases might occur in connection with weaving, cardboard and paper work, or the more technical processes of drawing and painting, where race experience is actually _given_ to a child, by means of which he leaps over the experiences of centuries. This is progress.

If a teacher is to take handwork seriously, and not as a pretty recreation with pleasing results, she should be fully conscious of all that it means, and apply this definitely in her work: it is so easy to be trivial while appearing to be thorough by having well-finished work produced, which has necessitated little hard thinking on the child's part. Construction gives a sense of power, a strengthening of the will, ability to concentrate on a purpose in learning, a social sense of serviceableness, a deepened individuality: but this can only be looked for if a child is allowed to approach it in the right way, first as an experimenter and investigator, or as an artist, and afterwards as a learner, who is also an individual, and learns in his own way and at his own rate: but if the teacher's ambition is external and economic then the child is a tool in her hands, and will remain a tool. We cannot expect the fruits of the spirit if our goal is a material one.

One of the lessons of the war is economy. In handwork this has come to us through the quest for materials, but it has been a blessing, if now and then in disguise. In the more formal period of handwork only prepared, almost patented material was used; everything was "requisitioned" and eager manufacturers supplied very highly finished stuff. Not very many years ago, the keeper of a "Kindergarten" stall at an exhibition said, while pointing to cards cut and printed with outlines for sewing and p.r.i.c.king, "We have so many orders for these that we can afford to lay down considerable plant for their production." An example in another direction is that of a little girl who attended one of the best so-called Kindergartens of the time: she was afflicted, while at home, with the "don't know what to do" malady; her mother suggested that she might make some of the things she made at school, but she negatived that at once with the remark, "I couldn't do that, you see, because we have none of the right kind of stuff to make them of here."

It is quite unnecessary to give more direct details as to the kind of work suitable and the method of doing it; more than enough books of help have been published on every kind of material, and it might perhaps be well if we made less use of such terms as "clay-modelling,"

"cardboard-work," "raffia," and took handwork more in the sense of constructive or expressive work, letting the children select one or several media for their purpose; they ought to have access to a variety of material; and except when they waste, they should use it freely. It is limiting and unenlightened to put down a special time for the use of special material, if the end might be better answered by something else: if modelling is at 11.30 on Monday and children are anxious to make Christmas presents, what law in heaven or earth are we obeying if we stick to modelling except the law of Red Tape.

CHAPTER XXV

EXPERIENCES OF THE LIFE OF MAN

This aspect of experience comes in two forms, the life of man in the past, with the memorials and legacies he has left, and the life of man in the present under the varying conditions of climate and all that it involves. In other words these experiences are commonly known as history and geography, though in the earlier stages of their appearance in school it is perhaps better to call the work--preparation for history and geography. They would naturally appear in the transition or the junior cla.s.s, preferably in the latter, but they need not be wholly new subjects to a child; his literature has prepared him for both; to some extent his experiments in handwork have prepared him for history, while his nature work, especially his excursions and records, have prepared him for geography. That he needs this extension of experience can be seen in his growing demands for true stories, true in the more literal sense which he is coming fast to appreciate; undoubtedly most children pa.s.s through a stage of extreme literalism between early childhood and what is generally recognised as boyhood and girlhood. They begin to ask questions regarding the past, they are interested in things from "abroad," however vague that term may be to them.

Perhaps it will be best to treat the two subjects separately, though like all the child's curriculum at this stage they are inextricably confused and mingled both with each other, and with literature, as experiences of man's life and conduct.

The beginnings of geography lie in the child's foundations of experience. Probably the first real contact, unconscious though it may be, that any child has in this connection is through the production of food and clothing. A country child sees some of the beginnings of both, but it is doubtful how much of it is really interpreted by him; the village shop with its inexhaustible stores probably means much more in the way of origins, and he may never go behind its contents in his speculations. It is true he sees milking, harvesting, sheep-shearing, and many other operations, but he often misses the stage between the actual beginning and the finished product--between the wool on the sheep's back and his Sunday clothes, between the wheat in the field and his loaf of bread. The town child has many links if he can use them: the goods train, the docks, the grocer's, green-grocer's or draper's shop, foreigners in the street, the vans that come through the silent streets in the early morning; in big towns, such markets as Covent Garden or Leadenhall or Smithfield; such a river as the Thames, Humber or Mersey--from any one of these beginnings he can reach out from his own small environment to the world. A town child has very confused notions of what a farm really means to national life, and a country child of what a big railway station or dock involves. All children need to know what other parts of their own land look like, and what is produced; they ought to trace the products within reach to their origin, and this will involve descriptions of such things as fisheries at Hull or Aberdeen, the coal mines of Wales or Lanarks.h.i.+re, pottery districts of Stafford, woollen and cotton factories of Yorks.h.i.+re and Lancas.h.i.+re, mills driven by steam, wind and water, lighthouses, the sheep-rearing districts of c.u.mberland and Midlothian, the flax-growing of northern Ireland, and much else, and the means of transit and communication between all these.

The children will gradually realise that many of the things they are familiar with, such as tea, oranges, silk and sugar, have not been accounted for, and this will take them to the lives of people in other countries, the means of getting there, the time taken and mode of travelling. They will also come to see that we do not produce enough of the things that are possible to grow, such as wheat, apples, wool and many other common necessaries, and that we can spare much that is manufactured to countries that do not make them, such as boots, clothes, china and cutlery. There will come a time when the need for a map is apparent: that is the time to branch off from the main theme and make one; it will have to be of the very immediate surroundings first, but it is not difficult to make the leap soon to countries beyond. Previous to the need for it, map-making is useless.

This working outwards from actual experiences, from the home country to the foreign, from actual contact with real things to things of travellers' tales, is the only way to bring geography to the very door of the school, to make it part of the actual life.

The beginning of history, as of geography, lies in the child's foundations of experience. In the country village he sees the church, possibly some old cottages, or an Elizabethan or Jacobean house near; in the churchyard or in the church the tombstones have quaint inscriptions with reference possibly to past wars or to early colonisation. The slum child on the other hand sees much that is worn out, but little that is antiquated, unless the slum happen to be in such places as Edinburgh or Deptford, situated among the remains of really fine houses: but he realises more of the technicalities and officialism of a social system than does the country child; the suburban child has probably the scantiest store of all; his district is presumably made up of rows of respectable but monotonous houses, and the social life is similarly respectable and monotonous.

There are certain cravings, interests and needs, common to all children, which come regardless of surroundings. All children want to know certain things about people who lived before them, not so much their great doings as their smaller ones; they want to know what these people were like, what they worked at, and learnt, how they travelled, what they bought and sold: and there is undoubtedly a primitive strain in all children that comes out in their love of building shelters, playing at savages, and making things out of natural material. One of the most intense moments in _Peter Pan_ to many children is the building of the little house in the wood, and later on, of the other on the top of the trees: that is the little house of their dreams. They are not interested in const.i.tutions or the making of laws; wars and invasions have much the same kind of interest for them as the adventures of Una and the Red Cross Knight.

How are these cravings usually satisfied in the early stages of history teaching of to-day? As a rule a series of biographies of notable people is given, regardless of chronology, or the children's previous experiences, and equally careless of the history lessons of the future; Joan of Arc, Alfred and the Cakes, Gordon of Khartoum, Boadicea, Christopher Columbus, Julius Caesar, form a list which is not at all uncommon; there is no leading thread, no developing idea, and the old test, "the children like it," excuses indolent thinking. On the other hand, the desire to know more of the Robinson Crusoe mode of life has been apparent to many teachers for some time, but the material at their disposal has been scanty and uncertain. It is to Prof. Dewey that we owe the right organisation of this part of history. He has shown that it is on the side of industry, the early modes of weaving, cooking, lighting and heating, making implements for war and for hunting, and making of shelters, that prehistoric man has a real contribution to give: but for the beginnings of social life, for realisation of such imperishable virtues as courage, patriotism and self-sacrifice, children must go to the lives of real people and gradually acquire the idea that certain things are, so to speak, from "everlasting to everlasting," while others change with changing and growing circ.u.mstances.

The prehistoric history should be largely concerned with doing and experimenting, with making weapons, or firing clay, or weaving rushes, or with visits to such museums as Horniman's at Forest Hill. The early social history may well take the form best suited to the child, and not appeal merely to surface interest. And the spirit in which the lives of other people are presented to children must not be the narrow, prejudiced, insular one, so long a.s.sociated with the people of Great Britain, which calls other customs, dress, modes of: living, "funny" or "absurd" or "extraordinary," but rather the scientific spirit that interprets life according to its conditions and so builds up one of its greatest laws, the law of environment.

The geography syllabus, even more than the history one, depends for its beginnings at least on the surroundings of the school--out of the ma.s.s of possible materials a very rich and comprehensive syllabus can be made, beginning with any one of the central points already suggested.

Above all there should be plenty of pictures, not as amplification, but as material, by means of which a child may interpret more fully; a picture should be of the nature of a problem or of a map--and picture reading should be in the junior school what map reading is in the upper school.

In both history and geography the method is partly that of discovery; especially is this the case in that part of history which deals with primitive industries, and in almost the whole of the geography of this period. The teacher is the guide or leader in discovery, not the story-teller merely, though this may be part of his function.

The following is a small part of a syllabus to show how geography and history material may grow naturally out of the children's experiences.

It is meant in this case for children in a London suburb, with no particular characteristics:--

GEOGRAPHY

It grows out of the shops of the neighbourhood and the adjoining railway system.

_Home-produced Goods_--

A. The green-grocer's shop.

Tracing of fruit to its own home source, or to a foreign country.

Home-grown fruit. The fruit farm, garden, orchard, and wood.

The packing and sending of fruit.--Railway lines.

Covent Garden; the docks; fruit stalls; jam factories.

B. A grocer's or corn-chandler's shop.

Flour and oatmeal traced to their sources.

The farm. A wheat and grain farm at different seasons. A dairy farm and a sheep farm.

A mill and its processes.

Woollen factories.

A dairy. Making of b.u.t.ter and cheese Distribution of these goods.

C. A china shop, leading to the pottery district and making of pottery.

_Foreign Goods_--

Furs--Red Indians and Canada.

Dates--The Arabs and the Sahara.

Cotton--The Negroes and equatorial regions.

Cocoa--The West Indies.

The transit of these, their arrival and distribution.

[The need for a map will come early in the first part of the course, and the need for a globe in the second.]

HISTORY

This grows naturally out of the geography syllabus and might be taken side by side or afterwards.