The New Education Part 4

No two children are alike, and no two children have exactly similar needs. There are, however, certain kinds of needs which all children have in common. It is obviously impossible to discuss in the abstract the needs of any individual child. It is just as obviously possible to a.n.a.lyze child needs, and to cla.s.sify them in workable groups. It is true that all children are different; so are all roses different, yet all have petals and thorns in common. Similarly, there are certain needs which are common to all children who play, who grow, who live among their fellows, and who expect to do something in life. The matter may be stated more concretely thus,--

I. The school exists to a.s.sist and prepare children to live.

II. Living involves three kinds of needs, which it is the duty of the school to understand and interpret.

1. Needs which the child has because he is a physical being.

2. Needs which result from the child's surroundings.

3. Needs which arise in connection with the things which the child hopes to do in life.

A further a.n.a.lysis of these groups of needs const.i.tutes the subject matter of the next chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: Sacrificing Children, W. E. Chancellor, Journal of Education, Vol. 77, pp. 564-565 (May 22, 1913).]

CHAPTER III

FITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDREN

I Child Growth--A Primary Factor in Child Life

In the first place children have certain needs because in common with many other living creatures they develop through spontaneous, self-expressive activity. The growth of children is a growth in body, in mind and in soul.

During the first six years of life the bodies of children grow rapidly, and during these years we wisely make no attempt to train their minds.

From six to twelve or thirteen body growth is slower, the mind is having its turn at development, and during these years the children start to school.

Then, at twelve or thirteen or fourteen, differing with different races and different individuals, all normal children enter the fairyland of adolescence. Life takes on new meanings, human relations.h.i.+ps are closer, great currents of feeling run deep and strong through the child's being, because there is coming into his life one of the most wonderful of human experiences--the dawning of s.e.x consciousness.

This period of s.e.x awakening produces a profound change in the lives of boys, but it works an even greater transformation in the lives of girls.

For both s.e.xes it is a time of rapid physical growth and of severe mental and spiritual strain. It is a time when the energies of the body are so entirely devoted to the development of s.e.x functions that great mental stress should above all things be avoided, yet it is at this very time--think of it!--when we send our boys and girls to high school, and force them to spend a great part of their waking hours in severe intellectual efforts.

II Children Need Health First

Had we set out with the deliberate intention of torturing our children we could have devised no better method. If we had applied ourselves to physiology, found out the time when the child needed the most energy for physical growth and the most relief from mental strain, and had then set out to plan a course of study which would wreck his health, we should have built a school system which gave him the comparatively easy work of the elementary grades until he was fourteen, and then, at the most critical period of his life, sent him into a new system of schools to study new, abstract subjects.

What is it that our children must have before they can acquire anything else? Health! We cry the word aloud, emphasizing and exhorting--nothing without health! Yet, despite our protest, at a period of rapid physical growth, at the time of severe spiritual trial, there yawns the high school--grim for boys, ghastly for girls--with its ever-recurring demand: "Work, study; study, work."

Considering the child's physical welfare, the high school is placed at exactly the point (fourteen to eighteen years) where it is best calculated to destroy the delicate balance of sanity, rendering its victims unable to stand the burden and heat of life's later day.

We cannot escape the fact that children have bodies. The first duty of the schools, therefore, is to recognize the existence of these bodies by giving them due attention, particularly at the crucial periods of physical growth. Therefore every school must provide as much physical training as is necessary to insure normal body growth at each particular age.

Then there are certain rules of health--"hygiene," they are called--which should be taught to every child. Since bodies do not stay normal if they are abused every child should have right ideas of body care.

Most important of all, the schools must instruct children in s.e.x hygiene because the growth of s.e.x consciousness is one of the most significant of the changes which occur in the life of a child.

"But must s.e.x hygiene be taught in the school?" you will ask.

Undoubtedly it must. If it were a choice between s.e.x instruction in the home or in the school, there would be no hesitation about delegating it to the home; but since most homes neglect the discussion of s.e.x matters, leaving the children to gain their knowledge of s.e.x from unreliable sources on the streets, the choice lies between the perversion of s.e.x as it is taught on the streets, and the science of s.e.x as it should be taught in the schools.

III Play as a Means to Growth

Children's minds grow as well as their bodies--grow in retention, in grasp, and in power. Memory work (the learning of poems, songs, and formulas) helps to make minds more retentive, while all studies, but particularly number work, increase mental grasp and power.

Besides body growth and mind growth all children have soul growth. They develop human sympathy, and they are interested in esthetic things. To supply these needs the school must give the child literature and art.

Simple these lessons must be, particularly in the elementary grades; but there is scarcely a child who will not respond to the n.o.ble in literature or the beautiful in art if these things are presented to him in an understandable way.

The bodies, minds, and souls of children grow. They are all sacred. Each child needs a normal body, an active mind, a healthy and a beautiful soul. We dare not develop bodies at the expense of minds and souls, but neither may we educate minds at the expense of souls and bodies--a tendency which has been fearfully prevalent in American education.

The most valuable means of securing this all-important growth is "play,"

which Froebel said contained the germinal leaves of all later life.

Growth comes only through expression. One does not develop muscle by watching the strong man in the circus, but by exercising. The child's chief means of expression is through play, hence play is the child's method of securing growth.

In their earliest infancy children play. Their frolics and antics are really "puppy play," the product of overflowing life and animal spirits.

At this "puppy play" stage, when the child plays merely to work off surplus energy, the most essential thing is a place to play, and the school must meet this need by providing playgrounds.

As children grow older they turn to a more advanced type of play.

Instead of romping and frolicking individually they play in groups. It is in these group plays that the child gets his first idea of the duty which he owes to his fellows, his first glimmering of a social sense. In the home and in the school he is in a subordinate position, but in the "gang," or "set," he is as good as the next. Group play teaches democracy. More than that, group play has a moral value. Each one must play fair. Those who do not are ruthlessly ostracized, so children learn to abide by the decision of the crowd. While children's plays should be as untrammeled as possible, it is the duty of the school to stimulate group play by suggesting new games, organizing athletic meets, getting up intercla.s.s sports, and in other ways supervising and directing games and sports.

In the course of the child's life play takes another form, the form of creative work. Boys build wagons and houses; girls cook, and make dolls.

The "puppy play" of their early childhood has evolved into a form of creative activity that sooner or later grips every human creature. We want to plant, to build, to plan, to make. It is the creative power within us yearning for expression, hence the well-planned school will provide simple forms of manual training by means of which both boys and girls will be taught to use their hands so skillfully that they may translate an idea into a concrete product.

Civilization has been described as the art of playing. Big folks are apt to look down on play because most of it is done by children. But listen, big folks: When Anna plays dolls she does it in a frank, serious, whole-souled way that you seldom imitate. There is no activity so vital to the child as play, nor does any man succeed at his work unless he can "play at it" with the fervor and abandon of a child.

IV Some Things Which a Child Must Learn

So much for the needs which a child has because he is a living creature.

Suppose we turn now to some other needs--the needs which arise because the child is in a great universe and surrounded by his fellowmen.

Wherever a child lives and whatever he does he must always face certain surrounding conditions. First among his surroundings are people. No one except Robinson Crusoe can get away from people, and even Crusoe had his man Friday.

Since we are compelled, whether we like it or not, to live with people, the school must teach language (oral and written), in order that the children may learn to tell others what they think, and may likewise understand the thoughts of others. The better the language the more clearly can they understand each other.

In order that children may have a proper respect for the rights of others the school should teach ethics by means of simple stories about people. Teachers should explain how men live in groups, and how, if group life is to be tolerable, men must respect each other's rights.

Perhaps in the upper elementary grades, and certainly in the high school, there should be some simple work in psychology in order that children may know how people's minds work.

Then besides the people of the present there are the people of the past, and, because the things which they did enable us to live as we do, children should be taught history, particularly the history of their own country, state, and town.

The child comes into contact, in addition to people, with the inst.i.tutions which people have constructed--the home, the school, the state, the industrial system. Every child who grows to maturity will partic.i.p.ate in the activity of these inst.i.tutions, hence every child should be taught about them. In the last two years of the elementary grades civics can be successfully taught, since even at twelve years children are interested in the things which are happening around them.

In the high schools this work can be carried much further in the form of social and industrial problem courses.