The next question is that of the best method of gaining this actual experience. The child is unaware that he is laying foundations, he is only vaguely conscious that he finds great pleasure in certain activities, and that something impels him in certain directions. He realises no definite future, he is content with the present; he cannot work for a purpose other than the pleasure of the moment; without this stimulus concentration is impossible. In the activities of this stage he probably assimilates more actual matter than at any other period of his life, and it is the same with his acquirements of skill. In happy unconsciousness he gains knowledge of his own body and of its power, of the external world, of his mother tongue and of his relations to other people: he makes mistakes and commits faults, but these do not necessarily cripple or incriminate him. He is not considered a social outcast because he once kicked or bit, or because he threw his milk over the table; he learns to balance and adjust his muscles on a seesaw, when a fall on soft grass is a matter of little importance, and this is better than waiting till he is compelled hastily to cross a river on a narrow plank. It is all a kind of joyous rehearsal of life which we call Play. We can force a child to passivity, to formal repetitions of second-hand knowledge, to the acquisition of that for which he has no apparent need, but we can never educate him by these things. "Children do not play because they are young, they have their youth that they may play," as surely as they have their legs that they may walk.

The second principle is therefore that the method of gaining experience lies through Play, and that by this road we can best reach work.

The third principle is the nature of the experience that a child seeks to gain—the life he desires to live. How can we he sure that the surroundings we provide and the activities we encourage are in accord with children's needs?

Let us imagine a child of about five to six years of age, one of a family, living in a small house to which a garden is attached; inside he has the run of the house, but keeps his own toys, picture books and collections of treasures. We will suppose that not being at school he is free to arrange his own day, sometimes alone, and sometimes with other children, or with his parents. What does he do?

He is interested in inanimate things, especially in using them, and so he plays with his toys. He builds bricks, runs engines, solves simple puzzle pictures, asks to work with his father's gardening tools, or his mother's cooking utensils. He is interested in the life of the garden, in the growing things, in the snail or spider he finds, in the cat, dog or rabbit of the family; he wants to dig, water and feed these various things, but he declines regular responsibility; his interest is in spurts.

He is interested in sounds, both in those he can produce and in those produced by others: soon he is interested in music, he will listen to it for considerable periods, and may join in it: at first more especially on the rhythmical side. So, too, he likes the rhythm of poetry and the melody sounds of words. He is interested in making things; on a wet day he will ask for scissors and paste, or bring out his paint box or chalks; on a fine day he mixes sand or mud with water, or builds a shelter with poles and shawls; at any time when he has an opportunity he shuts himself into the bathroom and experiments with the taps, sails boats, colours water, blows bubbles, tries to mix things, wet and dry.

He is interested in the doings of other people, in their conduct and in his own; he is more interested in their badness than in their goodness: "Tell me more of the bad things your children do," said a little boy to his teacher aunt, and the request is significant and general; we learn so little by mere uncontrasted goodness. He is interested in the words that clothe narrations and in their style, he is impatient of a change in form of an accepted piece of prose or poetry. He is hungry for the sounds of telling words and phrases.

He is interested in reproducing the doings of other people so that he may experience them more fully, and this involves minute observation, careful and intelligent imitation, and vivid imagination. His own word for it is pretence.

There are other things that he grasps at more vaguely and later; he is dimly aware that people have lived before, and he is less dimly aware that people live in places different from his own surroundings. He realises that some of the stories, such as the fairy stories, are true in one sense, a sense that responds to something within himself; that some are true in another more material, and external sense, one concerned with things that really happen. He hears of "black men," and of "ships that carry people across the sea," and of "things that come back in those ships."

He is interested in the immaterial world suggested by the mysteries of woods and gardens, he has a dim conception that there is some life beyond the visible, he feels a power behind life and he reveals this in his early questions. He is keenly interested in questions of birth and death, and sometimes comes into close contact with them. He feels that other wonders must be accounted for—the snow, thunder and lightning, the colours of summer, the changeful sea. At first the world of fairy lore may satisfy him, later comes the life of the undying spirit, but the two are continuous. He may attend "religious observances," and these may help or they may hinder.

He is keenly interested in games, whether they are games of physical skill, of mental skill, or games of pretence. Here most especially he comes into contact with other people, and here he realises some of the experiences of social life.

Such are the most usual sides of life sought by the ordinary child, and on such must we base the surroundings we provide for our children in school, and the aspects of life to which we introduce them, commonly called subjects of the curriculum.

Our third principle is therefore, evident: we find, in the child's spontaneous choice, the nature of the surroundings and of the activities that he craves for; in other words, he makes his own curriculum and selects his own subject matter.

The next consideration is the atmosphere in which a child can best develop character by means of these experiences. A young child is a stranger in an unknown, untried country: he has many strange promptings that seek for satisfaction; he has strong emotions arising from his instincts, he feels crudely and fiercely and he must act without delay, as a result of these emotions. He is like a tourist in a new strange country, fresh and eager, and with a similar holiday spirit of adventure: the stimulation of the new arouses a desire to interpret, to investigate and to ask questions: it arouses strong emotions to like or dislike, to fear, to be curious; it leads to certain modes of conduct, as a result of these emotions. Picture such a young tourist buttonholed by a blase guide, who had forgotten what first impressions meant, who insisted on accompanying him wherever he went, regulating his procedure by telling him just what should be observed and how to do so, pouring out information so premature as to be obnoxious, correcting his taste, subduing his enthusiasm, and modifying even his behaviour. The tourist would presumably pay off the unwelcome guide, but the children cannot pay off the teacher: they can and do rebel, but docility and adaptability seem to play a large part in self-preservation. For the young child freedom must precede docility, because the only reasonable and profitable docility is one that comes after initiative and experiment have been satisfied, and when the child feels that he needs help.

The world that the free child chooses represents every side of life that he is ready to assimilate, and his freedom must be intellectual, emotional and moral freedom. In the school with the rigidly organised time-table, where the remarks of the children provoke the constantly repeated reproach: "We are not talking of that just now," where the apparatus is formal and the method of using it prescribed, where home life and street life are ignored, where there are neither garden nor picture books, where childish questions are passed over or hastily answered, where the room is full of desks and the normal attitude is sitting, where the teacher is teaching more often than the children are doing, there is no intellectual freedom.

Where passion and excitement are instantly arrested, where appreciation for strong colours, fierce punishments, loud noises, is killed, where fear is ridiculed, where primitive likes and dislikes are interpreted as coarseness, there is no emotional freedom. A child must have these experiences if he is to come to his own later: this is not the time to stamp out but only to deflect and guide; otherwise he becomes a weak and pale reflection of his elders, with little resource or enthusiasm.

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 assertion, 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 Classes 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 classified, 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, grass 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, balls and bats or rackets, hoops, reins, spades and other garden tools; pails and patty pans for the sand-heap; pipes for bubbles, shells, fir-cones, buttons, 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 Wilcox 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 Middlesex 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, washing bowls, brushes and dustpans.

In the Transition Classes 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 mass 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 seashore, or of the shop, might be stored in some classified 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 class and not a seated listening class. 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 Class. They will be a little more advanced than in the Nursery School, and will be of the type of the Pied Piper illustrated, 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 classics, 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 classes 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 surreptitiously, 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 classify 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 associated 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 class 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 circumstances 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 washing hands and brushing 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 repetition 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 Class 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 class only what was absolutely necessary was fixed, in the Transition Class it is convenient to fix rather more, for the sake of establishing 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 class, and not set up a completely fashioned 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 Class, 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. and Number.

Granting this arrangement we must be clear how play as a method can still hold.

It does not hold in the informal incidental sense of the Nursery School: there are periods in the Transition Class when the children know that they are working for a definite purpose which is not direct play—as in reading; and there are times when they are dissatisfied with their performances of skill and ask to be shown a better way, and voluntarily practise to secure the end, as in handwork, arithmetic and some kinds of physical games. The remainder is probably still pursued for its own sake. How then can this play spirit be maintained side by side with work?

First of all, the children should not be required to do anything without having behind it a purpose that appeals to them; it may not be the ultimate purpose of "their good," but a secondary reason may be given to which they will respond readily, generally the pretence reason. Arithmetic to the ordinary person is a thing of real life; we count chiefly in connection with money, with making things, with distributing things, or with arranging things, and we count carefully when we keep scores in games; in adult life we seldom or never count or perform arithmetical operations for sheer pleasure in the activity, but there are many children who do so in the same spirit as we play patience or chess. And all this is our basis. The arithmetical activities in the Transition Class should therefore be based on such everyday experiences as have been mentioned, else there will be no associations made between the experiences of school and those of life outside. The two must merge. There is no such thing as arithmetic pure and simple for children unless they seek it; they must play at real life, and the real life that they are now capable of appreciating.

Skill in calculation, accuracy and quickness can be acquired by a kind of practice that children are quite ready for, if it comes when they realise the need; most children feel that their power to score for games is often too slow and inaccurate; as store clerks they are uncertain in their calculations; they will be willing to practise quick additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions, in pure arithmetical form, if the pretence purpose is clearly in view, which to them is a real purpose; the same thing occurs in writing which should be considered a side issue of reading; meaningless words or sentences are written wearily and without pains, but to write the name of a picture you have painted, at the bottom of it, or to write something that Cinderella's Godmother said, or bit by bit to write a letter, will be having a purpose that gives life to an apparently meaningless act, and thoroughness to the effort.

In handwork, too, at this stage, practice takes an important place: a child is willing to hem, to try certain brush strokes, to cut evenly, and later on to use his cardboard knife to effect for the sake of a future result if he has already experimented freely. This is in full harmony with the spirit of play, when we think of the practiced "strokes" and "throws" of the later games, but it is a more advanced quality of play, because there is the beginning of a purpose which is separated from immediate pleasure in the activity, there is the hint of an end in view though it is a child's end, and not the adult or economic one.

The training of the mother tongue can be made very effective by means of games: in the days when children's parties were simple, and family life was united, language games in the long dark evenings gave to many a grip of words and expressions. Children learnt to describe accurately, to be very fastidious in choice of words, to ask direct questions, to give verbal form to thought, all through the stress of such games—Man and his Shadow, Clumps, Subject and Object, Russian Scandal, the Minister's Cat, I see a Light, Charades, and acting of all kinds. No number of picture talks, oral compositions, or observations can compete in real value with these games, because behind them was a purpose or need for language that compelled the greatest efforts.

Physical development and its adjustment to mental control owes its greatest stimulus to games. When physical strength, speed, or nimble adjustability is the pivot upon which the game depends, special muscles are made subservient to will: behind the game there is the stimulus of strong emotion, and here is the greatest factor in establishing permanent associations between body and mind; psychologists see in many of these games of physical activity the evolution of the race: drill pure and simple has its place partly in the same sense as "practice" in number or handwork, and partly as a corrective to our fallacious system of education by listening, instead of by activity: and we cannot in a lifetime acquire the powers of the race except by concentrated practice. But no amount of drill can give the all-round experience necessary for physical readiness for an emergency, physical and mental power to endure, active co-operation, where self-control holds in check ambitious personal impulses: and no drill seems to give grace and beauty of motion that the natural activity of dancing can give. It is through the games that British children inherit, and by means of which they have unconsciously rehearsed many of the situations of life, that they have been able to take their place readily in the life of the nation and even to help to save it. Again, as in other directions, children must be made to play the game in its thoroughness, for a well-played game gives the right balance to the activities: drill is more specialised, and has specialisation for its end: a game calls on the whole of an individual: he must be alert mentally and physically; and at the same time the sense of fairness cannot be too strongly insisted on; no game can be tolerated as part of education where there is looseness in this direction, from the skittles of the nursery class to the cricket and hockey of the seventh standard, and nothing will so entirely outrage the children's feelings as a teacher's careless arbitration. In physical games, too, the social side is strongly developed: leadership, self-effacement and co-operation are more valuable lessons of experience than fluent reading or neat writing or accurate additions: but they have not counted as such in our economic system of education; they have taken their chance: few inspectors ask to see whether children know how to "play the game," and yet they are so soon to play the independent game of life. But the individual output of reading and sums of a sneaking and cowardly, or assertive and selfish child, is as good probably as that of a child that has the makings of a hero in him. And then we wonder at the propensities of the "lower classes." It is because we have never made sure that they can play the game.

To summarise: play in the Nursery School stage is unorganised, informal, and pursued with no motive but pleasure in the activity itself; it is mainly individual. Play in the Transition Class is more definitely in the form of games, i.e. organised play, efforts of skill, mental or physical; it becomes social. Play in the Junior School is almost an occasional method, because the work motive is by this time getting stronger.



CHAPTER XIX

THE UNITY OF EXPERIENCE

"We find in the child's spontaneous choice the nature of the surroundings and of the activities he craves for; in other words, he makes his own curriculum, and selects his own subject matter."

The next problem we have to solve is how to unify the bewildering variety of ideas and activities that a child seeks contact with during a day. We found that the curriculum of the Infant School of to-day presented a rather confusing variety of ideas, not necessarily arranged as the children would have chosen; they would certainly not have chosen to break off some intense interest, because an arbitrary timetable hurried them to something else, and they would have been right. If we asked the children their reasons for choosing, we would find no clue except that they chose what they wanted to, neither could they tell us why they spent so much more time over one thing than another. If a similar study were to be made of a child from a slum also free to arrange his day, we should find that while certain general features were the same others would be different: he would ask for different stories, probably play different games, or the same games in a different way, his back-yard would present different aspects, the things he made would be different.

It is evident that the old correlation method has little or nothing to do with the matter; a child may or may not draw the rabbit he feeds, he certainly does not play a rabbit game because of the rabbit he has fed, nor does he build a rabbit-hutch with his bricks. He might try to make a real one if the rabbit really needed it, but that arises out of an obvious necessity. If he could put his unconscious promptings into words, he would say he did the things because he wanted to, because somebody else did them, or because of something he saw yesterday, and so on; but he would always refer back to himself. The central link in each case is in the child, with his special store of experiences derived from his own particular surroundings; he brings to new experiences his store of present experiences, his interests not always satisfied, his powers variously used, he interprets the new by these, and seeks for more in the line of the old. It is life he has experienced, and he seeks for more life.

How then can we secure for him that the new experiences presented to him in school will be in line with the old? We will take three typical cases of children to illustrate the real nature of this problem.

The first is the case of a child living in a very poor district of London or of any large town. The school is presumably situated in a narrow street running off the High Street of the district, the street where all the shopping is done; at the corner is a hide factory with an evil smell. Most of the dwelling-houses abut on the pavement, some with a very small yard behind, some without any. Several families live in one house, and often one room is all a family can afford; as that has to be paid for in advance the family address may change frequently. The father may be a dock labourer with uncertain pay, a coster, a rag and bone merchant, or he may follow some unskilled occupation of a similarly precarious nature; in consequence the mother has frequently to do daily work, the home is locked up till evening, and she often leaves before the children start for morning school. It is a curious but very common fact that, free though these children are, they know only a very small radius around their own homes. They are accustomed to be sent shopping into High Street, where household stores are bought in pennyworths or twopennyworths, owing to uncertain finance and no storage accommodation. Generally there is one tap and one sink in the basement for the needs of all the families in the house. There is usually a park somewhere within reach, but it may be a mile away; in it would, at least, be trees, a pond, grass, flowers. But an excursion there, unless it is undertaken by the school, can only be hoped for on a fine Bank Holiday; there is neither time nor money to go on a Saturday, and Sunday cannot be said to begin till dinner-time, about 3 P.M., when the public-houses close, and the father comes home to dinner.

It is difficult to imagine the conversation of such a household; family life exists only on Sunday at dinner-time; the child's background of family life is a room which is at once a bedroom, living room and laundry. There is nearly always some part of a meal on the table, and some washing hanging up. Outside there are the dingy street, the crowded shops, the pavement to play on, and both outside and in, the bleaker and more sordid aspects of life, sometimes miserable, sometimes exciting. On Saturday night the lights are brilliant and life is at least intense. Bed is a very crowded affair, in which many half-undressed children sleep covered with the remainder of the day's wardrobe.

What store of experiences does a child from such a neighbourhood bring to school, to be assimilated with the new experiences provided there? What do such terms as home, dinner, bed, bath, birth, death, country, mean to him? They mean something.[34]

[Footnote 34: See Child Life, October 1916.]

Not a mile away we may come to a very respectable suburb of the average type; and what is said of it may apply in some degree to a provincial or country town or, at least, the application can easily be made. The school probably stands at the top corner of a road of houses rented, at L25 to L35 per annum, with gardens in front and behind. The road generally runs into a main road with shops and traffic. Here and there in the residential road are little oases of shops, patronised by the neighbourhood, and some of the children may live over these. The home life is more ordinary and needs less descriptive detail, but there are some features that must be considered. The decencies, not to say refinements of eating, sleeping and washing are taken for granted: there is often a bath-room and always a kitchen. The father's occupation may be local, but a good many fathers will go to town; there is generally a family holiday to the sea, or less often to the country. In the house the degree of refinement varies; there are nearly always pictures of a sort, books of a sort, and the children are supplied with toys of a sort. They visit each other's houses, and the observances of social life are kept variously. Often the horizon is very narrow; the mother's interest is very local and timid; the father's business life may be absolutely apart from his home life and never mentioned there. The family conversation while quite amiable and agreeable may be round very few topics, and the vocabulary, while quite respectable, may be most limited. Children's questions may be put aside as either trivial or unsuitable. In one sense the slum child may be said to have a broader background, the realities of life are bare to him on their most sordid side, there is neither mystery nor beauty around life, or death, or the natural affections. The suburban child may on the contrary be balked and restricted so that unnecessary mystery gives an unwholesome interest to these things and conventionality a dishonest reserve.

A suburb of this type is described by Beresford in Housemates:—"In such districts (as Gospel Oak) I am depressed by the flatness of an awful monotony. The slums vex me far less. There I find adventure and jest whatever the squalor; the marks of the primitive struggle through dirt and darkness towards release. Those horrible lines of moody, complacent streets represent not struggle, but the achievement of a worthless aspiration. The houses, with their deadly similarity, their smug, false exteriors, their conformity to an ideal which is typified by their poor imitative decoration, could only be inhabited by people who have no thought or desire for expression.... The dwellers in such districts are cramped into the vice of their environment. Their homes represent the dull concession to a state rule; and their lives take tone from the grey, smoke-grimed repetition of one endlessly repeated design. The same foolish ornamentation on every house reiterates the same suggestion. Their places of worship, the blank chapels and pseudo-Gothic churches rear themselves head and shoulders above the dull level, only to repeat the same threat of obedience to a gloomy law.... The thought of Gospel Oak and its like is the thought of imitation, of imitation falling back and becoming stereotyped, until the meaning of the thing so persistently copied has been lost and forgotten."

A third case is that of the country child, the child who attends the village school. Many villages lie several miles from a railway station, so that the younger children may not see a railway train more than once or twice a year. The fathers may be engaged in village trades, such as a shoemaker, carpenter, gardener, general shop merchant, farm labourer, or farmer. The village houses are often cramped and small, but there is wholesome space outside, and generally a good garden which supplies some of the family food; milk and eggs are easily obtainable, and conditions of living are seldom as crowded as in a town. The country children see more of life in complete miniature than the slum or the suburban child can do, for the whole life of the village lies before him. The school is generally in the centre, with a good playground, and of late years a good school garden is frequent. The village church, generally old, is another centre of life, and there is at least the vicarage to give a type of life under different social conditions.

The home intellectual background may vary, but on the whole cannot be reckoned on very much; though in some ways it is more narrow than the suburban one, it is often less superficial. In a different way from the slum child, but none the less definitely, the country child comes face to face with the realities of life, in a more natural and desirable way than either of the others. It is difficult to estimate some of the effects of living in the midst of real nature on children; unconsciously, they acquire much deep knowledge impossible to learn through nature study, however good, a kind of knowledge that is part of their being; but how far it affects them emotionally or enters into their scheme of life, is hard to say. As they grow up much of it is merely economic acquirement: if they are to work on the land, or rear cattle, or drive a van through the country, it is all to the good; but one thing is noticeable, that they take very quickly to such allurements of town life as a cinema, or a picture paper or gramophone, and this points to unsatisfied cravings of some sort, not necessarily so unworthy or superficial as the means sought to satisfy them.

From these rather extreme cases we get near the solution of the problem; it is quite evident that each of these children brings to school very different contributions of experience on which to build, though their general needs and interests are similar. Therefore the curriculum of the school will depend on the general surroundings and circumstances of the children, and all programmes of work and many questions of organisation will be built on this. The model programme so dear to some teachers must be banished, as a doctor would banish a general prescription; no honest teacher can allow this part of her work to be done for her by any one else.

Therefore the central point is the child's previous experience, and on this the experience provided by school, i.e. curriculum and subject matter, depends. One or two examples of the working out of this might make the application clearer. Probably the realities of life in relation to money differ greatly. The kind of problem presented to the poor town child will deal with shopping in pennyworths or ounces, with getting coals in pound bagfuls. Clothes are generally second-hand, and so ordinary standard prices are out of the question. Bread is bought stale and therefore cheaper, early in the morning. Preserved milk only is bought, and that in halfpenny quantities. Only problems based on these will be real to this child at first.

The suburban child's economic experience may be based on his pocket-money, money in the bank, and the normal shopping of ordinary life.

The country child is frequently very ignorant of money values; probably it will be necessary to take the country general shop as the basis. He could also begin to estimate the produce of the school garden.



THE NURSERY SCHOOL PROGRAMME

It is quite obvious from the nature of play at this stage that a time-table is out of the question and in fact an outrage against nature. Only for social convenience and for the establishment of certain physical habits can there be fixed hours. There must be approximate limits as to the times of arrival and departure, but nothing of the nature of marking registers to record exact minutes. Little children sometimes sleep late, or, on the other hand, the mothers may have to leave home very early; all this must be allowed for. There should be fixed times for meals and for sleep, and these should be rigidly observed, and there should be regular times for the children to go to the lavatories; all these establish regularity and self-control, as well as improving general health. But anything in the nature of story periods, games periods, handwork periods, only impedes the variously developing children in their hunger for experiences.

Their curriculum is life as the teacher has spread it out before them; there are no subjects at this stage; the various aspects ought to be of the nature of a glorious feast to these young children. Traherne says in the seventeenth century:—

"Will you see the infancy of this sublime and celestial greatness? Those pure and virgin apprehensions I had in my infancy, and that divine light wherewith I was born, are the best unto this day wherein I can see the Universe.... Verily they form the greatest gift His wisdom can bestow, for without them all other gifts had been dead and vain. They are unattainable by books and therefore will I teach them by experience.... Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world than I when I was a child.

"All appeared new and strange at first, inexpressibly rare and delightful and beautiful. I was a little stranger which at my entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys.... I knew by intuition those things which since my apostasy I collected again by the highest reason.... All things were spotless and pure and glorious; yea, and infinitely mine, and joyful and precious.... I saw in all the peace of Eden.... Is it not that an infant should be heir of the whole world, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold?

"The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me: ... the skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the world was mine: and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.... So that with much ado I was corrupted and made to learn the dirty devices of this world, which I now unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."

If this is what life means to the young child, and Traherne only records what many of us have forgotten there is little need for interference: we can only spread the feast and stand aside to watch for opportunities.

The following extract is given from a teacher's note-book: it shows how many possibilities open out to a teacher, and how impossible it is to keep to a time-table, or even to try to name the activities. The children concerned were about five years old, newly admitted to a poor school in S.E. London. The records are selected from a continuous period, and do not apply to one day:—

PLANS FOR THE DAY WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED

Number Occupations.—This will The children played, freely be entirely free and the children chalking most of the time; those will choose their own toys and threading beads were most put them away. interested. Again I noticed the lack of idea of colour; I found one new boy placing his sticks according to colour, without knowing the names of the colours. The boys thought the soldiers belonged to them, and laughed at a little girl for choosing them.

Language Training.—I have I realised this was a failure, discovered that they love to for I asked the children to use imitate sounds, so we will play their boards and chalks for a at this. They could draw a cat definite drawing, and they should and say "miauw," and a duck and have had the time to use them say "quack." They could also freely and discover their use. I imitate the wind. got very little information about their vocabulary.

Language Training (another I found that many children day).—I shall try to induce the pronounced words so strangely children to speak to me about their that I could only with difficulty homes, in order to discover any recognise them. One said she difficulties of pronunciation and had a "bresser" with "clates" to make them more fluent. on it and "knies" Others spoke of "manckle," "firebrace," "forts." One child speaking of curly hair called it "killeyer." We had no time for the story.

Playing with Toys.—The Noah's arks, dolls, and bricks children will choose their own toys, were used, and I found that the and as far as possible I will put girls who had no dolls at home a child who knows how to use them were delighted to be able to dress next to one who desires to sit and undress them and put them still. to bed. One little girl walked backwards and forwards before the class getting her doll to sleep; the boys were making a noise with their arks and she remarked on this, so we induced them to be silent while the dolls were put to sleep. The boys arranged their animals in long lines. The bricks were much more carefully put away to-day.

THE TRANSITION AND THE JUNIOR SCHOOL PROGRAMME

Even after the Nursery School period much of the curriculum and subject matter is in the hands of the children themselves, though the relative proportions will vary according to the children's experiences. It is pretty evident to the honest-minded teacher that the subjects are, in school terms, nature work and elementary science, mathematics, constructive and expressive work, literature, music, language, physical exercise and religion. The business of the younger child is with real things and activity, not with symbols and passivity, therefore he is not really in need of reading, writing, or arithmetic. We hear arguments from ambitious teachers that children are fond of reading lessons because they enjoy the fantasies in which these lessons are wrapped, or the efforts made by the teacher to create interest; we hear that children ask to be taught to read; they also ask to be taught to drive a tram or to cook a dinner; but it is all part of the pretence game of playing at being grown up. They do not need to read while stories and poetry can be told or read to them; they are not ready to make the effort of working for a remote economic end, where there is no real pleasure in the activity, and no opportunity of putting their powers to use. No child under six wants to sit down and read, and it would be very harmful if he did; his business is with real things and with his vocabulary, which is not nearly ready to put into symbols yet. If reading is delayed, hours of weary drudgery will be saved and energy stored for more precious attainments.

Therefore in the transition class (i.e. children over six at lowest) the only addition to the curriculum already set out for the nursery class, would be arithmetic and reading, including writing. The other differences would be in degree only. In the junior class (with children over seven at lowest) a desire to know something of the doings of people in other countries, to hear about other parts of our own land, will lead to the beginnings of geography; while with this less imaginative and more literal period comes the request for stories that are more verbally true, and questions about origins, leading to the beginnings of history.

It is very much easier to give the general curriculum than to deal with the choice of actual material, because that is involved largely with the principle of the unity of experience, and, as we know, experiences vary. The normal town and country child, and the abnormal child of poverty have all certain human cravings in common, and these are provided for in the aspects of life or subjects that have been named—but this is far too general an application to be the end of the matter; each subject has many sides to offer. There may be for example the pottery town, the weaving town, the country town, the fishing town, the colliery town: in the country there is the district of the dairy farmer, of the sheep farmer, of the grain grower and miller, of the fruit farmer, of the hop grower, and many districts may partake of more than one characteristic. Perhaps the most curious anomaly of experience is that of the child of the London slums who goes "hopping" into some of the loveliest parts of Kent, in early autumn. And so in a general way at least the concentrated experience of school must fill gaps and supply experiences that life has not provided for.

One of the pottery towns in Staffordshire is built on very unfertile clay; there are several potteries in the town belching out smoke, and, in addition, rows of monotonous smoke-blackened houses; almost always a yellow pall of smoke hangs over the whole district, and even where the edge of the country might begin, the grass and trees are poor and blackened, and distant views are seen through a haze. There are almost no gardens in the town, and very little attempt has been made to beautify it, because the results are so disappointing. Beauty, therefore, in various forms must be a large part of the curriculum: already design is a common interest in the pottery museums of the district, and this could be made a motive for the older children; but in the Junior and Nursery School pictures of natural beauty, wild flowers if it is possible to get them, music, painting and drawing, and literature should bulk largely enough to make a permanent impression on the children. In a very remote country village where life seems to go slowly, and days are long, children should be encouraged, by means of the school influence, to make things that absorb thought and interest, to tell and hear stories. Storytelling in the evening round the fire is a habit of the past, and might well supply some of the cravings that have to be satisfied by the "pictures." Most of us have to keep ourselves well in hand when we listen to a recitation in much the same way as when a slate pencil used to creak; it would be very much better if the art of storytelling were cultivated at school, encouraged at home, and applied to entertainments. Indeed the entertainments of a village school, instead of being the unnatural and feverish production of hours of overtime, might well be the ordinary outcome of work both at school and at home—and thus a motive for leisure is naturally supplied and probably a hobby initiated.

It is profitable sometimes to group the subjects of experience in order to preserve balance. All getting of experience is active, but some kinds more obviously than others. Undoubtedly in hearing stories and poetry, in watching a snail or a bee, in listening to music, the activity is mental rather than physical and assimilation of ideas is more direct; in discovering experiences by means of construction, expression, experiment or imitation, assimilation is less direct but often more permanent and secure. Froebel discriminates between impression and expression, or taking in and giving out, and although he constantly emphasised that the child takes in by giving, it is convenient to recognise this distinction. Another helpful grouping is the more objective one. Some subjects refer more particularly to human conduct, the enlargement of experiences of human beings, and the building up of the ideal: these are literature, music, history and geography; others refer to life other than that of human beings, commonly known as nature study and science; others to the properties of inanimate things, and to questions throughout all life of measurement, size and force—this is known as mathematics; others of the life behind the material and the spiritual world—this is known as religion.



CHAPTER XX

GAINING EXPERIENCE THROUGH FREEDOM

"The atmosphere of freedom is the only atmosphere in which a child can gain experiences that will help to develop character."

The principle of Freedom underlies all the activities of the school and does not refer to conduct simply; intellectual and emotional aspects of discipline are too often ignored and we have as a product the commonplace, narrow, imitative person, too timid or too indolent to think a new thought, or to feel strongly enough to stand for a cause. Self-control is the goal of discipline, but independent thinking, enthusiasm and initiative are all included in the term.

It will be well to discriminate between the occasions, both in the Nursery School and in the transition and junior classes, when a child should be free to learn by experience and when he should be controlled from without. We shall probably find occasions which partake of the nature of each.

The Nursery School is a collection of individuals presumably from 2-1/2 to 5-1/2 years of age. They know no social life beyond the family life, and family experience is relative to the size of the family. In any case they have not yet measured themselves against their peers, with the exception of the occasional twin. A few months ago about twenty children of this description formed the nucleus of a new Nursery School where, as far as possible, the world in miniature was spread out before them, and they were guided in their entrance to it by an experienced teacher and a young helper. For the first few weeks the chief characteristic was noise; the children rushed up and down the large room, shouting, and pushing any portable toys they could find. One little boy of 2-1/2 employed himself in what can only be called "punching" the other children, snatching their possessions away from them and responding to the teacher by the law of contra-suggestion. He was the most intelligent child in the school. He generally left a line of weeping children behind him, and several began to imitate him. The pugnacious instinct requires little encouragement. Lunch was a period of snatching, spilling, and making plans to get the best. Many of the toys provided were carelessly trampled upon and broken: requests to put away things at the end of the day were almost unavailing.

When the time for sleeping came in the afternoon many of the children refused to lie down: some consented but only to sing and talk as they lay. Only one, a child of 2-1/2, slept, because he cried himself to sleep from sheer strangeness. This apparently unbeautiful picture is only the first battle of the individual on his entrance to the life of the community.

On the other hand, there were intervals of keen joy: water, sand and clay chiefly absorbed the younger children: the older ones wanted to wash up and scrub, and many spent a good deal of time looking at picture-books. This was the raw material for the teacher to begin with: the children came from comfortable suburban homes: none were really poor, and many had known no privation. They were keen for experiences and disposed to be very friendly to her.

After five months there is a marked difference in spirit. The noise is modified because the children found other absorbing interests, though at times nature still demands voice production. During lunch time and sleeping time there is quiet, but the teacher has never asked for silence unless there was some such evident reason. There is no silence game. The difference has come from within the children. All now lie down in the afternoon quietly, and the greater number sleep; but there has been no command or any kind of general plan: again the desire has gradually come to individuals from suggestion and imitation. Lunch is quite orderly, but not yet without an occasional accident or struggle. There is much less fighting, but primitive man is still there. The most marked development is in the growth of the idea of "taking turns"; the children have begun to master this all-important lesson of life. The strong pugnacious habit in the little punching boy reached a point that showed he was unable to conquer it from within: about two months after his arrival the teacher consulted his mother, who confirmed all that the teacher had experienced: her prescription was smacking. After a good deal of thought and many ineffectual talks and experiments with the boy, the teacher came to the conclusion that the mother was right: she took him to the cloakroom after the next outbreak and smacked his hands: he was surprised and a little hurt, but very soon forgot and continued his practices: on the next occasion the teacher repeated the punishment and it was never again necessary. For a few days he was at a loss for an occupation because punching had become a confirmed habit, but soon other interests appealed to him: he has never changed in his trust in his teacher of whom he is noticeably very fond, and he has now realised that he must control a bad habit. This example has been given at length to illustrate the relation of government to freedom.

If these children had been in the ordinary Baby Room, subject to a time-table, to constant plans by the teacher for their activities, few or none of these occasions would have occurred: the incipient so-called naughtiness would have been displayed only outside, in the playground or at home: there would have been little chance of chaos, of fighting, of punching, of trying to get the best thing and foremost place, there would have been little opportunity for choice and less real absorption, because of the time-table. The children would have been happy enough, but they would not have been trained to live as individuals. Outward docility is a fatal trait and very common in young children; probably it is a form of self-preservation. But the real child only lies in wait to make opportunities out of school. The school is therefore not preparing him for life.

* * * * *

Freedom in the transition and the junior school must be differently applied: individual life begins to merge into community life, and the children begin to learn that things right for individuals may be wrong for the community. But the problem of freedom is not as easy as the problem of authority: standards must be greatly altered and outward docility no longer mistaken for training in self-control. Individual training cannot suddenly become class discipline, neither can children be switched from the Nursery School to a full-blown class system.

The idea of class teaching must be postponed, for out of it come most of the difficulties of discipline, and it is not the natural arrangement at this transitional period. A teacher is imposing on a number of very different individuals a system that says their difficulties are alike, that they must all work at one rate and in one way: and so we have the weary "reading round" class, when the slow ones struggle and the quick ones find other and unlawful occupation: we have the number lessons broken by the teacher's breathless attempts to see that all the class follows: we have the handwork that imposes an average standard of work that fits nobody exactly. Intellectual freedom can only come by individual or group work, while class teaching is only for such occasions as a literature or a singing lesson, or the presentation of an occasional new idea in number. Individual and group work need much organisation, but while classes consist of over forty children there is no other way to permit intellectual and moral freedom. Of course the furniture of the room will greatly help to make this more possible, and it is hoped that an enlightened authority will not continue to supply heavy iron-framed desks for the junior school, those described as "desks for listening."

The prevailing atmosphere should be a busy noise and not silence—it should be the noise of children working, oftener than of the teacher teaching, i.e. teaching the whole class. The teacher should be more frequently among the children than at her desk, and the children's voices should be heard more often than hers.

Such children will inevitably become intellectually independent and morally self-controlled. Most of the order should be taken in hand by children in office, and they should be distinguished by a badge: most questions of punishment should be referred to them. This means a constant appeal to the law that is behind both teacher and children and which they learn to reach apart from the teacher's control.

"Where 'thou shalt' of the law becomes 'I will' of the doer, then we are free."



III. CONSIDERATION OF THE ASPECTS OF EXPERIENCE

The aim of the following chapters is to show how principles may be applied to what are usually known as subjects of the curriculum, and what place these subjects take in the acquisition of experience. An exhaustive or detailed treatment of method is not intended, but merely the establishment of a point of view and method of application.



CHAPTER XXI

EXPERIENCES OF HUMAN CONDUCT

It is always difficult to see the beginnings of things: we know that stories form the raw material of morality, it is not easy to trace morality in Little Black Sambo, The Three Bears, Alice in Wonderland, or The Sleeping Beauty, but nevertheless morality is there if we recognise morality in everyday things. It is not too much to say that everybody should have an ideal, even a burglar: his ideal is to be a good and thorough burglar, and probably if he is a burglar of the finer sort, it is to play fair to the whole gang. It is better to be a burglar with an ideal than a blameless person with very little soul or personality, who just slides through life accepting things: it is better to have a coster's ideal of a holiday than to be too indifferent or stupid to care or to know what you want.

Now ideals are supposed to be the essence of morality and morality comes to us through experience, and only experience tests its truth. The story with a moral is generally neither literature nor morality, except such unique examples as The Pilgrim's Progress or Everyman. The kind of experience with which morality is concerned is experience of human life in various circumstances, and the way people behave under those circumstances. The beginning of such experience is our own behaviour and the behaviour of other people we know, but this is too limited an experience to produce a satisfactory ideal; so we crave for something wider. It is curious how strong is the craving for this kind of experience in all normal children, in whom one would suppose sense experiences and especially muscular experiences to be enough. The need to know about people other than ourselves, and yet not too unlike, in circumstances other than our own, and yet not too strange, seems to be a necessary part of our education, and we interpret it in the light of our own personal conduct. Out of this, as well as out of our direct experience, we build our ideal. When one realises how an ideal may colour the whole outlook of a person, one begins to realise what literature means to a child. The early ideal is crude; it may be Jack the Giant-Killer, or an engine-driver, Cinderella, or the step-cleaner; this may grow into Hiawatha or Robinson Crusoe, for boys, and a fairy tale Princess or one of the "Little Women" for girls. In every hero a child half-unconsciously sees himself, and the ideal stimulates all that hidden life which is probably the most important part of his growth. As indirect experiences grow, or in other words as he hears or reads more stories, his ideal widens, and his knowledge of the problems of life is enlarged. This is the raw material of morality, for out of his answers to these problems he builds up standards of conduct and of judgement. He projects himself into his own ideal, and he projects himself into the experiences of other people: he lives in both: this is imagination of the highest kind, it is often called sympathy, but the term is too limited, it is rather imaginative understanding.

There is another side of life grasped by means of this new world of experience, and that is, the spiritual side that lies between conduct and ideals; children have always accepted the supernatural quite readily and it is not to be wondered at, for all the world is new and therefore supernatural to them. Magic is done daily in children's eyes, and there is no line between what is understandable and what is not, until adults try to interpret it for them.

They are curious about birth and death and all origins: thunder is terrifying, the sea is enthralling, the wind is mysterious, the sky is immense, and all suggest a power beyond: in this the children are reproducing the race experience as expressed in myths, when power was embodied in a god or goddess. Therefore the fairy world or the giant world, or the wood full of dwarfs and witches' houses, is as real to them, and as acceptable, as any part of life. It is their recognition of a world of spirits which later on mingles itself with the spiritual life of religion. That life is behind all matter, is the main truth they hold, and while it is difficult here to disentangle morality from religion, it is supremely evident that a very great and significant side of a child's education is before us.

It is by means of the divine gift of imagination, probably the most spiritual of a child's gifts, that he can lay hold of all that the world of literature has to offer him. Because of imagination he is independent of poverty, monotony, and the indifference of other people; he has a world of his own in which nothing is impossible. Edwin Pugh says of a child of the slums who was passionately fond of reading cheap literature:—"It was by means of this penny passport to Heaven that she escaped from the Hell of her surroundings. It was in the maudlin fancies of some poor besotted literary hack maybe, that she found surcease from the pains of weariness, the carks and cares of her miserable estate."

A teacher realising this, should feel an almost unspeakable sense of responsibility in having to select and present matter: but the problem should be solved on the one hand by her own high standard of story material, and on the other by her knowledge of the child's needs. According to his experiences of life the interpretation of the story will differ: for example, it was found that the children of a low slum neighbourhood translated Jack the Giant-killer into terms of a street fight: to children living by a river or the sea, the Water-Babies would mean very much, while Jan of the Windmill would be more familiar ground for country children. Fairy stories of the best kind have a universal appeal.

In choosing a story a teacher should be aware of the imperishable part of it, the truth around which it grew; sometimes the truth may seem a very commonplace one, sometimes a curious one. For example, very young children generally prefer stories of home life because round the family their experience gathers: the subject seems homely, but it is really one of the fundamental things of life and the teacher should realise this in such a way that the telling or reading of the story makes the kernel its central point. To some children the ideal home life comes only through literature: daily experiences rather contradict it. Humour is an important factor in morality; unless a person is capable of seeing the humor of a situation he is likely to be wanting in a sense of balance; the humor of a situation is often caused by the wrong proportion or wrong balance of things: for example the humour of The Mad Tea-Party lies, partly at least, in the absurd gravity with which the animals regarded the whole situation, the extreme literal-mindedness of Alice, and the exaggerated imitation of human beings: a really moral person must have balance as well as sympathy, else he sees things out of proportion. These examples make evident that we are not to seek for anything very patently high-flown in the stories for children; it is life in all its phases that gives the material, but it must be true life: not false or sentimental or trivial life: this will rule out the "pretty" stories for children written by trivial people in teachers' papers, or the pseudo-nature story, or the artificial myth of the "How did" type, or the would-be childish story where the language is rather that of the grown-up imitating children than that of real children. Of late years, with the discovery of children, children's literature has grown, and there is a good deal to choose from past and present writers.

There is no recognised or stereotyped method of telling a story to children: it is something much deeper than merely an acquired art, it is the teacher giving something of her personality to the children, something that is most precious. One of the finest of our English Kindergarten teachers once said, "I feel almost as if I ought to prepare my soul before telling a story to young children," and this is the sense in which the story should be chosen and told. There are, of course, certain external qualifications which must be so fully acquired as to be used unconsciously, such as a good vocabulary, power over one's voice, a recognition of certain literary phases in a story, such as the working up to the dramatic crisis, the working down to the end so that it shall not fall flat, and the dramatic touches that give life; these are certainly most necessary, and should be studied and cultivated; but a teacher should not be hampered in her telling by being too conscious of them. Rather she should feel such respect and even reverence for this side of a child's education that the framework and setting can only be of the best, always remembering at the same time what is framework and setting, and what is essence.

Much that has been said about the method and aim of stories might apply to those taken from the Bible, but they need certain additional considerations. Here religion and morality come very closely together: the recognition of a definite personality behind all circumstances of life, to whom our conduct matters, gives a soul to morality. The Old Testament is a record of the growth of a nation more fully conscious of God than is the record of any other nation, and because of this children can understand God in human life when they read such stories as the childhood of Moses and of Samuel. Children resemble the young Jewish nation in this respect: they accept the direct intervention of God in the life of every day. Their primitive sense of justice, which is an eye for an eye, will make them welcome joyfully the plagues of Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea. It would be premature to force on them the more mature idea of mercy, which would probably lead to confusion of judgement: they must be clear about the balance of things before they readjust it for themselves.

Much of the material in the Old Testament is hardly suitable for very young children, but the most should be made of what there is: the lives of Eastern people are interesting to children and help to make the phraseology of the Psalms and even of the narratives clear to them. Wonder stories such as the Creation, the Flood, the Burning Bush, Elijah's experiences, appeal to them on another side, the side that is eager to wonder: the accounts of the childhood of Ishmael, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David and Samuel, and the little Syrian maid, come very close to them. Such stories should be given to young children so that they form part of the enchanted memory of childhood—which is permanent.

With the New Testament the problem is more difficult: one hesitates to bring the life of Christ before children until they are ready to understand, even in some degree, its significance; the subject is apt to be dealt with either too familiarly, and made too commonplace and everyday a matter, or as something so far removed from human affairs as to be mysterious and remote to a child. To mix Old and New Testament indiscriminately, as, for example, by taking them on alternate days, is unforgivable, and no teacher who has studied the Bible seriously could do so, if she cared about the religious training of her children, and understood the Bible.

If the children can realise something of the sense in which Christ helped human beings, then some of the incidents in His life might be given, such as His birth, His work of healing, feeding and helping the poor, and some of His stories, such as the lost sheep, the lost son, the sower, the good Samaritan. It is difficult to speak strongly enough of the mistreatment of Scripture, under the name of religion: it has been spoilt more than any other subject in the curriculum, chiefly by being taken too often and too slightly, by teachers who may be in themselves deeply religious, but who have not applied intelligence to this matter. The religious life of a young child is very direct: there is only a little in the religious experiences of the Jews that can help him, and much that can puzzle and hinder him; their interpretation of God as revengeful, cruel and one-sided in His dealings with their enemies must greatly puzzle him, when he hears on the other hand that God is the Father of all the nations on the earth. What is suitable should be taken and taken well, but there is no virtue in the Bible misunderstood.

Poetry is a form of literature which appeals to children if they are not made to learn it by rote. Unconsciously they learn it very quickly and easily, if they understand in a general way the meaning, and if they like the sound of the words. Rhythm is an early inheritance and can be encouraged by poetry, music and movement. The sound of words appeals strongly to young children, and rhyming is almost a game. The kind of poetry preferred varies a good deal but on the whole narrative or nonsense verses seem most popular; few children are ready for sentiment or reflection even about themselves, and this is why some of Stevenson's most charming poems about children are not appreciated by them as much as by grown-up people. And for the same reason only a few nature poems are really liked.

Without doubt, the only aim in giving poetry to children is to help them to appreciate it, and the only method to secure this is to read it to them appreciatively and often.