Poor mites; you stiffen on a benchAnd stoop your curls to dusty laws;Your petal fingers curve and clenchIn slavery to parchment saws;You suit your hearts to sallow facesIn sullen places:But no penNor pedantry can make you men.Yours are the morning and the day:You should be taught of wind and light;Your learning should be born of play.
(Caged:GEORGE WINTHROP YOUNG.)
Had England but honoured her own prophets, we should have had Nursery Schools a hundred years ago. In 1816, the year in which Froebel founded his school for older boys at Keilhau, Robert Owen, the Socialist, "following the plan prescribed by Nature," opened a school where children, from two to six, were to dance and sing, to be out-of-doors as much as possible, to learn "when their curiosity induced them to ask questions," and not to be "annoyed with books." They were to be prevented from acquiring bad habits, to be taught what they could understand, and their dispositions were to be trained "to mutual kindness and a sincere desire to contribute all in their power to benefit each other." They "were trained and educated without punishment or the fear of it…. A child who acted improperly was not considered an object of blame but of pity, and no unnecessary restraint was imposed on the children."
But the world was not ready. Owen's "Rational Infant School" attracted much notice, and an Infant School Society was founded. But even the enlightened were incapable of understanding that any education was possible without books, and the promoters rightly, though quite unconsciously, condemned themselves when they kept the title Infant School but dropped the qualifying "Rational." Still, Infant Schools had been started and interest had been aroused. When the edict abolishing Kindergartens was promulgated in Germany, some of Froebel's disciples passed to other lands, and Madame von Marenholz came to England in 1854. Already one Kindergarten had been opened by a Madame Ronge, to which Rowland Hill sent his children, and to which Dickens paid frequent visits. In the same year there was held in London an "International Educational Exposition and Congress," and to this Madame von Marenholz sent an exhibit, which was explained by Madame Ronge, and by a Mr. Hoffmann. Dickens, who had watched the actual working of a Kindergarten, gave warm support to the new ideas, and wrote an excellent article on "Infant Gardens" forHousehold Words, urging "that since children are by Infinite Wisdom so created as to find happiness in the active exercise and development of all their faculties, we, who have children round about us, shall no longer repress their energies, tie up their bodies, shut their mouths…. The frolic of childhood is not pure exuberance and waste. 'There is often a high meaning in childish play,' said Froebel. Let us study it, and act upon the hints—or more than hints—that Nature gives."
Dr. Henry Barnard represented Connecticut at this Congress, and he took the Kindergarten to America, in whose virgin soil the seed took root, and quickly brought forth abundantly. But the soil was virgin and the fields were ready for planting, for America in these days had nothing corresponding to our Infant Schools. The Kindergarten was welcomed by people of influence. Dr. Barnard found his first ally in Miss Peabody, one of whose sisters was married to Nathaniel Hawthorne, while another was the wife of Horace Mann. Miss Peabody began to teach in 1860, but eight years later, after a visit to Europe, she gave up teaching for propaganda work. Owing to her efforts the first Free Kindergarten was opened in Boston in 1870. Philanthropists soon recognised its importance as a social agency, and by 1883 one lady alone supported thirty-one such institutions in Boston and its surroundings. In New York, Dr. Felix Adler established a Free Kindergarten in 1878, and Teachers' College was influential in helping to form an association which supports several. Another name well known in this country is that of Miss Kate Douglas Wiggin,[12] who was a Kindergarten teacher for many years before she became known as a novelist. It is Miss Wiggin who tells of a quaint translation of Kindergarten heard by a San Francisco teacher making friendly visits to the mothers of her children. While she stood on a door-step sympathising with one poor woman she heard a "loud, but not unfriendly" voice from an upper window. "Clear things from under foot!" it pealed in stentorian accents. "The teacher o' theKids' Guardsis comin' down the street."
[Footnote 12: Writer ofPenelope in England, etc., and of a capital collection of essays entitledChildren's Rights.]
In England things were very different, because of the Infant Schools which had already been established, but which had fallen far below the ideal set up by Robert Owen. As every one knows, the education given in those days to teachers of Elementary Schools was but meagre, and the results were often so bad that, to justify the expenditure of public money, "payment by results" was introduced. In 1870 came the Education Act, and the year 1874 saw a good deal of movement. Miss Caroline Bishop was appointed to lecture to the Infants' teachers under the London School Board; Miss Heerwart took charge of a training college for Kindergarten teachers in connection with the British and Foreign School Society; the Froehel Society was founded, and Madame Michaelis took the Kindergarten into the newly established High Schools for Girls. For the children of the well-to-do Kindergartens spread rapidly, but for the children of the poor there was no such happiness; the Infant School was too firmly established as a place where children learned to read, write and count, and above all to sit still. Infants' teachers received no special training for their work; their course of study, in which professional training played but a small part, was the same as that prescribed for the teachers of older children. Some colleges, notably The Home and Colonial, Stockwell, and Saffron Walden, did try to give their students some special training, but it was not of much avail, and the word Kindergarten came to mean not Nursery School, as was the idea of its founder, but dictated exercises with Kindergarten material, a kind of manual drill supposed to give "hand and eye training," and with this meaning it made its appearance on the time-table.
Visitors from America were shocked to find no Kindergartens in England, but only large classes of poor little automatons sitting erect with "hands behind" or worse still "hands on heads," and moving only to the word of command. One lady who ultimately found her way to our own Kindergarten told me that she had been informed at the L.C.C. offices that there were no Kindergartens in London.
It was partly the scandalised expressions of these American teachers that stimulated Miss Adelaide Wragge to take her courage into her hands, and in the year 1900 to open the first Mission Kindergarten in England. She called it a Mission, not a Free Kindergarten, partly because the parents paid the trifling fee of one penny per week, and partly because it was connected with the parish work of Holy Trinity, Woolwich, of which her brother was vicar. The first report says: "The neighbourhood was suitable for the experiment; little children, needing just the kind of training we proposed to give them, abounded everywhere…. The Woolwich children were typical slum babies, varying in ages from three to six years; very poor, very dirty, totally untrained in good habits. At first we only admitted a few, and when these began to improve, gradually increased the numbers to thirty-five. They needed great patience and care, but they responded wonderfully to the love given them, and before long they were real Kindergarten children, full of vigour, merriment and self-activity."
As is done in connection with all Free Kindergartens, Parents' Evenings were instituted from the first, and the mothers were helped to understand their children by simple talks.
Sesame House for Home Life Training had been opened six months before this Mission Kindergarten. It was founded by the Sesame Club, and at its head was Miss Schepel, who for twenty years had been at the head of the Pestalozzi Froebel House. The idea of Home Life Training attracted students who were not obliged by stern necessity to earn their daily bread. Though the methods were not quite in line with progressive thought, the atmosphere created by Miss Schepel, warmly seconded by Miss Buckton,[13] was one of enthusiasm in the service of children. The second Nursery School in London had its origin in this enthusiasm. Miss Maufe left Sesame House early in 1903, and started a free Child Garden in West London. Four years later she moved to Westminster to a block of workmen's dwellings erected on the site of the old Millbank Prison. This "child garden" has a special interest from the fact that it was carried on actually in a block of workmen's dwellings like The Children's Houses of a later date. The effort was voluntary and the rooms were small, but, if the experiment had been supported by the authorities, it would have been easy to take down dividing walls to get sufficient space. Miss Maufe gave herself and her income for about twelve years, but difficulties created by the war, the impossibility of finding efficient help and consequent drain upon her own strength have forced her to close her little school, to the grief of the mothers in 48 Ruskin Buildings. Another Sesame House student, Miss L. Hardy, in her charmingDiary of a Free Kindergarten, takes us from London to Edinburgh, but the first Free Kindergarten in Edinburgh began in 1903 and had a different origin. Miss Howden was an Infants' Mistress in one of the slums, and knew well the needs of little children in that wide street, once decked with lordly mansions, which leads from the Castle to Holyrood Palace. Some of the fine houses are left, but the inhabitants are of the poorest, and Miss Howden left her savings to start a Free Kindergarten in the Canongate. The sum was not large, but it was seed sown in faith, and its harvest has been abundant, for Edinburgh with its population of under 400,000 has five Free Kindergartens, in all of which the children are washed and fed and given restful sleep, as well as taught and trained with intelligence and love. London with its population of 6,000,000 had but eight up to the time of the outbreak of the war.
[Footnote 13: Author of the beautiful mystery play ofEager Heart.]
In 1904 the Froebel Society took part in a Joint Conference at Bradford, where one sitting was devoted to "The Need for Nursery Schools for Children from three to five years at present attending the Public Elementary Schools." The speakers were Mrs. Miall of Leeds, and Miss K. Phillips, who had wide opportunities for knowledge of the unsuitable conditions generally provided for these little children. Among those who joined in this discussion was Miss Margaret M'Millan, so well known for her pioneer work in connection with School Clinics, and more recently for her now famous Camp School. Miss M'Millan had already done yeoman service on the Bradford Education Committee, but was now resident in London, and she had been warmly welcomed on the Council of the Froebel Society. It was from the date of this Conference that the name Nursery School became general, though it had been used by Madame Michaelis as early as 1891. In the following year, 1905, the Board of Education published its "Reports on Children under Five Years of Age," with its prefatory memorandum stating that "a new form of school is necessary for poor children," and that parents who must send their little ones to school "should send them to nursery schools rather than to schools of instruction," to schools where there should be "more play, more sleep, more free conversation, story-telling and observation." It would seem that the recommendations of 1905 may begin to be carried out in 1919, a consummation devoutly to be wished.
In the meantime voluntary effort has done what it could. Birmingham had good reason to be in the forefront, since many of its public-spirited citizens had in their own childhood the benefit of the excellent works of Miss Caroline Bishop, a disciple of Frau Schrader. The Birmingham People's Kindergarten Association opened its first People's Kindergarten at Greet, in 1904, and a second, the Settlement Kindergarten, in 1907. Sir Oliver Lodge spoke strongly in favour of these institutions, calling them a protest against the idea of the comparative unimportance of childhood.
Miss Hardy opened her Child Garden in 1906, and that work has grown so that the children are now kept till they are eight years old. The Edinburgh Provincial Council for the Training of Teachers opened another Free Kindergarten as a demonstration school for Froebelian methods, a practising school for students, and also as an experimental school, where attempts might be made to solve problems as to the education of neglected children under school age. It was the Headmistress of this school, Miss Hodsman, who invented the net beds now in general use. She wanted something hygienic and light enough to be carried easily into the garden, that in fine weather the children might sleep out of doors.
Another Sesame House student, Miss Priestman, opened a Free Kindergarten in the pretty village of Thornton-le-Dale, where the children have a sand-heap in a little enclosure allowed them by the blacksmith, and sail their boats at a quiet place by the side of the beck that runs through the village.
It was in 1908 that Miss Esther Lawrence of the Froebel Institute inspired her old students to help her to open The Michaelis Free Kindergarten. Since the war, the name has been altered to The Michaelis Nursery School, which is in Netting Dale, on the edge of a very poor neighbourhood, where large families often occupy a single room. As in the Edinburgh Free Kindergartens, dinner is provided, for which the parents pay one penny. The first report tells how necessary are Nursery Schools in such surroundings. "The little child who was formerly tied to the leg of the bed, and left all day while his mother was out at work, is now enjoying the happy freedom of the Kindergarten. The child whose clothes were formerly sewn on to him, to save his mother the periodical labour of sewing on buttons, is now undressed and bathed regularly. The attacks on children by drunken parents are less frequent. When the Kindergarten was first opened, many of the children were quite listless, they did not know how to play, did not care to play. Now they play with pleasure and with vigour, and one can hardly believe they are the listless, spiritless children of a year ago."
In 1910 Miss Lawrence succeeded in opening what was called from the first the "Somers Town Nursery School," where the same kind of work is done. One of the reports says: "It is interesting to see the children sweeping or dusting a room, washing their dusters and dolls' clothes, polishing the furniture, their shoes, and anything which needs polishing. On Friday morning the 'silver' is cleaned, and the brilliant results give great pleasure and satisfaction to the little polishers. 'Have you done your work?' was the question addressed to a visitor by a three-year-old child, and the visitor beat a hasty retreat, ashamed perhaps of being the only drone in the busy hive. At dinner time four children wait on the rest, and very well and quickly the food is handed round and the plates removed."
There are other Free Kindergartens at work. One is in charge of Miss Rowland, and is in connection with the Bermondsey Settlement. It is Miss Rowland who tells of the "candid mother" she met one Saturday who remarked, "I told the children to wash their faces in case they met you."
The Phoenix Park Kindergarten in Glasgow is interesting because the site was granted by an enlightened Corporation and the Parks Committee laid out the garden, while the real start came from the pupils of a school for girls of well-to-do families. By this time other social agencies have been grouped round the Kindergarten as a centre.
The Caldecott Nursery School was opened in 1911 and has grown into the Caldecott Community, which has now taken its children to live altogether in the country. This Nursery School was never intended to be a Kindergarten; it was started as an interesting experiment, "chiefly perhaps in the hope that the children might enjoy that instruction which is usually absorbed by the children of the wealthy in their own nurseries by virtue of their happier surroundings."
And in the very year in which we were plunged into war Miss Margaret M'Millan put into actual shape what she had long thought of, and opened her "Baby Camp" and Nursery School, with a place for "toddlers" in between, the full story of which is told inThe, Camp School. In the Camp itself the things which impress the visitor most are first the space and the fresh air, the sky above and the brown earth below, and next the family feeling which is so plain in spite of the numbers. The Camp existed long before it was a Baby Camp and Nursery School, for Miss M'Millan began with a School Clinic and went on to Open-Air Camps for girls and for boys, before going to the "preventive and constructive" work of the Baby Camp. Clean and healthy bodies come first, but to Miss M'Millan's enthusiasm everything in life is educative.
The war has increased the supply of Nursery Schools, because the need for them has become glaringly apparent. Many experiments are going on now, and it seems as if experimental work would be encouraged, not hampered by unyielding regulations. The Nursery School should cover the ages for which the Kindergarten was instituted, roughly from three to six years old. Already there are excellent baby rooms in some parts of London, and no doubt in other towns, and the only reason for disturbing these is to provide the children with more space and more fresh air, or with something resembling a garden rather than a bare yard.
One school in London has a creche or day nursery, not exactly a part of it, but in closest touch, established owing to the efforts of an enthusiastic Headmistress working along with the Norland Place nurses. Its space is at present insufficient, but the neighbouring buildings are condemned, and will come down after the war. They need not go up again. Then the space could be used in the same way as in the Camp School. That would be to the benefit of the whole neighbourhood, and there could be at least one experiment where from creche to Standard VII. might be in close connection.
Miss M'Millan's ideal is to have a large space in the centre of a district with covered passages radiating from it so that mothers from a large area could bring their little ones and leave them in safety. It would be safety, it would be salvation. But, as the Scots proverb has it, "It is a far cry to Loch Awe."
Another question much debated is, who is to be in charge of these children. The day nursery or crèche must undoubtedly be staffed with nurses, but with nurses trained to care for children, not merely sick nurses. There are, however, certain people who believe that the "trained nurse" is the right person to be in charge of children up to five, while others think that young girls or uneducated women will suffice. We are thankful that the Board of Education takes up the position that a well-educated and specially trained teacher is to be the person responsible.
We certainly want the help both of the trained nurse and of the motherly woman. The trained nurse will be far more use in detecting and attending to the ailments of children than the teacher can be, and the motherly woman can give far more efficient help in training children to decent habits than any young probationer, useful though these may be. But there is always the fear that the nurses may think that good food and cleanliness are all a child requires, and, as Miss M'Millan says, "The sight of the toddlers' empty hands and mute lips does not trouble them at all."
But every man to his trade, and though the teacher in charge must know something about ailing children, it is very doubtful if a few months in a hospital will advantage her much. Here she trenches on the province of the real nurse, whose training is thorough, and the little knowledge, as every one knows, is sometimes dangerous. One Nursery School teacher, with years of experience, says that what she learned in hospital has been of no use to her, and it is probable that attendance at a clinic for children would be really more useful. Certainly the main concern of the Nursery School teacher is sympathetic understanding of children. There must be no more ofPunch's"Go and see what Tommy is doing in the next room and tell him not to," but "Go and see what Tommy is trying to accomplish, and make it possible for him to carry on his self-education through that 'fostering of the human instincts of activity, investigation and construction' which constitutes a Kindergarten."
A box of counters and a red-veined stone,A piece of glass abraded by the beach,And six or seven shells.
If early education, consist in fostering natural activities, there can be no doubt that Froebel hit upon the activity most prominent of all in the case of young children, viz. the impulse to investigate. For his crest, the little child should share in the "motto given to the mongoose family, in Kipling'sRikki-Tikki, 'Run and find out.'"
Most writers on the education of young children have emphasised the importance of what is most inadequately called sense training, and it is here that Dr. Montessori takes her stand with her "didactic apparatus." Froebel's ideas seem wider; he realises that the sword with which the child opens his oyster is a two-edged sword, that he uses not only his sense organs as tools for investigation, but his whole body. His pathway to knowledge, and to power over himself and his surroundings, is action, and action of all kinds is as necessary to him as the use of his senses.
"The child's first utterance is force," says Froebel, and his first discovery is the resistance of matter, when he "pushes with his feet against what resists them." His first experiments are with his body, "his first toys are his own limbs," and his first play is the use of "body, senses and limbs" for the sake of use, not for result. One use of his body is the imitation of any moving object, and Froebel tells the mother:
If your child's to understandAction in the world without,You must let his tiny handImitative move about.This is the reason whyBaby will, never still,Imitate whatever's by.
At this stage the child is "to move freely, and be active, to grasp and hold with his own hands." He is to stand "when he can sit erect and draw himself up," not to walk till he "can creep, rise freely, maintain his balance and proceed by his own effort." He isnotto be hindered by swaddling bands—such as are in use in Continental countries—nor, later on, to be "spoiled by too much assistance," words which every mother and teacher should write upon her phylacteries. But as soon as he can move himself the surroundings speak to the child, "outer objectsinvitehim to seize and grasp them, and if they are distant, they invite him who would bring them nearer to move towards them."
This use of the word "invite" is worthy of notice, and calls to mind a sentence used by a writer on Freud,[14] that "the activity of a human being is a constant function of his environment." We adults, who are so ready with our "Don't touch," must endeavour to remember how everything is shouting to a child: "Look at me, listen to me, come and fetch me, and find out all you can about me by every means in your power."
[Footnote 14:The Freudian Wish, Edwin Holt.]
If we have anything to do with little children, we must face the fact that the child is, if not quite a Robinson Crusoe on his island, at least an explorer in a strange country, and a scientist in his laboratory. But there is nothing narrow in his outlook: the name of this chapter is deliberately chosen, the whole world is the child's oyster, his interests are all-embracing.
From his first walk he is the geographer. "Each little walk is a tour of discovery; each object—the chair, the wall—is an America, a new world, which he either goes around to see if it be an island, or whose coast he follows to discover if it be a continent. Each new phenomenon is a discovery in the child's small and yet rich world,e.g.one may go round the chair; one may stand before it, behind it, but one cannot go behind the bench or the wall."
Then comes an inquiry into the physical properties of surrounding objects. "The effort to reach a particular object may have its source in the child's desire to hold himself firm and upright by it, but we also observe that it gives him pleasure to touch, to feel, to grasp, and perhaps also—which is a new phase of activity—to be able to move it…. The chair is hard or soft; the seat is smooth; the corner is pointed; the edge is sharp." The business of the adult, Froebel goes on to say, is to supply these names, "not primarily to develop the child's power of speech," but "to define his sense impressions."
Next, the scientist must stock his laboratory with material for experiment.
"The child is attracted by the bright round smooth pebble, by the gaily fluttering bit of paper, by the smooth bit of board, by the rectangular block, by the brilliant quaint leaf. Look at the child that can scarcely keep himself erect, that can walk only with the greatest care—he sees a twig, a bit of straw; painfully he secures it, and like the bird carries it to his nest. See him again, laboriously stooping and slowly going forward on the ground, under the eaves of the roof (the deep eaves of the Thuringian peasant house). The force of the rain has washed out of the sand smooth bright pebbles, and the ever-observing child gathers them as building stones as it were, as material for future building. And is he wrong? Is he not in truth collecting material for his future life building?"
The "box of counters, and the red-veined stone," the brilliant quaint leaf, the twig, the bit of straw, all the child's treasures—these are the stimuli which, according to the biologist educator, must be supplied if the activities appropriate to each stage are to be called forth. Every one knows for how long a period a child can occupy himself examining, comparing and experimenting.
"Like things," says Froebel, "must be ranged together, unlike things separated…. The child loves all things that enter his small horizon and extend his little world. To him the least thing is a new discovery, but it must not come dead into the little world, nor lie dead therein, lest it obscure the small horizon and crush the little world. Therefore the child would know why he loves this thing, he would know all its properties. For this reason he examines the object on all sides; for this reason he tears and breaks it; for this reason he puts it in his mouth and bites it. We reprove the child for naughtiness and foolishness; and yet he is wiser than we who reprove him."
This experimenting is one side of a child's play, and the things with which he thus experiments are his toys, or, as Froebel puts it, "play material." Much of this is and ought to be self found, and where the child can find his own toys he asks for little more. The seaside supplies him with sand and water, stones, shells, rock pools, seaweed, and he asks us for nothing but a spade, which digs deeper than his naked hands, and a pail to carry water, which hands alone cannot convey.
The vista of the sand is the child's free land; where the grown-ups seem half afraid; even nurse forgets to sniff and to call "come here" as she sits very near to the far up cliff and you venture alone with your spade….
Even indoors, a child could probably find for himself all the material for investigation, all the stimuli he requires, if it were not that his investigations interfere with adult purposes. Even in very primitive times the child probably experimented upon the revolving qualities of his mother's spindle till she found it more convenient to let him have one for himself, and it became a toy or top.
Froebel, who made so much of play, to whom it was spontaneous education and self realisation, was bound to see that toys were important. "The man advanced in insight," he said, "even when he gives his child a plaything, must make clear to himself its purpose and the purpose of playthings and occupation material in general. This purpose is to aid the child freely to express what lies within him, and to bring the outer world nearer to him, and thus to serve as mediator between the mind and the world." Froebel's "Gifts" were an attempt to supply right play material. True to his faith in natural impulse, Froebel watched children to see what playthings they found for themselves, or which, among those presented by adults, were most appreciated. Soft little coloured balls seemed right material for a baby's tender hand, and it was clear that when the child could crawl about he was ready for something which he could roll on the floor and pursue on all fours. As early as two years old he loves to take things out of boxes and to move objects about, so boxes of bricks were supplied, graded in number and in variety of form. Not for a moment did Froebel suggest that the child was to be limited to these selected playthings, he expressly stated the contrary, and he frequently said that spontaneity was not to be checked. But from what has followed, from the way in which these little toys have been misused, we are tempted to speculate on whether these "Gifts" supplied that definite foundation without which, in these days, no notice would have been taken of the new ideas, or whether they have proved the sunken rock on which much that was valuable has perished. The world was not ready to believe in the educational value of play, just pure play. Nor is it yet. For the new system in its "didactic" apparatus out-Froebels Froebel in his mistake of trying to systematise the material for spontaneous education. Carefully planned, as were Froebel's own "gifts," the new apparatus presents a series of exercises in sense discrimination, satisfying no doubt while unfamiliar, but suffering from the defect of the "too finished and complex plaything," in which Froebel saw a danger "which slumbers like a viper under the roses." The danger is that "the child can begin no new thing with it, cannot produce enough variety by its means; his power of creative imagination, his power of giving outward form to his own ideas are thus actually deadened."
"To realise his aims, man, and more particularly the child, requires material, though it be only a bit of wood or a pebble, with which he makes something or which he makes into something. In order to lead the child to the handling of material we give him the ball, the cube and other bodies, the Kindergarten gifts. Each of these gifts incites the child to free spontaneous activity, to independent movement."
Froebel would have sympathised deeply with the views of Peter as expressed by Mr. Wells in regard to Ideals, which he, however, called toys:
"The theory of Ideals played almost as important a part in the early philosophy of Peter as it did in the philosophy of Plato. But Peter did not call them Ideals, he called them 'toys.' Toys were the simplified essences of things, pure, perfect and manageable. Real things were troublesome, uncontrollable, over-complicated and largely irrelevant. A Real Train, for example, was a poor, big, clumsy, limited thing that was obliged to go to Redhill, or Croydon, or London, that was full of unnecessary strangers, usually sitting firmly in the window seats, that you could do nothing with at all. A Toy Train was your very own; it took you wherever you wanted, to Fairyland, or Russia, or anywhere, at whatever pace you chose."[15]
[Footnote 15:Joan and Peter, p. 77.]
Froebel asks what presents are most prized by the child and by mankind in general, and answers, "Those which afford him a means of developing his mind, of giving it freest activity, of expressing it clearly." For her ideas as to educative material Dr. Montessori went, not to normal life, not even to children, but to what may he called curative appliances, to the material invented by Séguin to develop the dormant powers of defective children. She herself came to the study of education from the medical side, the curative. Froebel, with his belief in human instinct, naturally went to what he called the mother's room, which we should call the nursery, and to the garden where the child finds his "bright round smooth pebble" and his "brilliant quaint leaf." No one would seek to under-value the importance of sense discrimination, but it can be exercised without formalism, and it need not be mere discrimination. It is in connection with the Taste and Smell games that Froebel tells the mother that "the higher is rooted in the lower, morality in instinct, the spiritual in the material." The baby enjoys the scent, thanks the kind spirit that put it there, and must let mother smell it too, so from the beginning there is a touch of aesthetic pleasure and a recognition of "what the dear God is saying outside." As to how sense discrimination may be exercised without formality, there is a charming picture inThe Camp School:
"And then that sense ofSmell, which got so little exercise and attention that it went to sleep altogether, so that millions get no warning and no joy through it. We met the need for its education in the Baby Camp by having a Herb Garden. Back from the shelters and open ground, in a shady place, we have planted fennel, mint, lavender, sage, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, herb gerrard and rue. And over and above these pungently smelling things there are little fields of mignonette. We have balm, indeed, everywhere in our garden. The toddlers go round the beds of herbs, pinching the leaves with their tiny fingers and then putting their fingers to their noses. There are two little couples going the rounds just now. One is a pair of new comers, very much astonished, the other couple old inhabitants, delighted to show the wonders of the place! Coming back with odorous hands, they perhaps want to tell us about the journey. Their eyes are bright, their mouths open."
In Chapter II. we quoted the biologist educator's ideal conception of the surroundings best suited to bring about right development. Let us now visit one or two actual Kindergartens and see if these conditions are in any way realised by the followers of Froebel.
The first one we enter is certainly a large bright room, for one side is open to light, with two large windows, and between them glass doors opening into the playground. There is no heap of sand in a corner, nor is there a tub of water; for the practical teacher knows how little hands, if not little feet, with their vigorous but as yet uncontrolled movements would splash the water and scatter the sand with dire effects as to the floor, which the theorist fondly imagines would always be clean enough to sit upon. But there is a sand-tray big enough and deep enough for six to eight children to use individually or together. As spontaneous activity, with its ceaseless efforts at experimenting, ceaselessly spills the sand, within easy reach are little brushes and dustpans to remedy such mishaps. The sand-tray is lined with zinc so that the sand can be replaced by water for boats and ducks, etc., when desired.
The low wall blackboard is there ready for use. Bright pictures are on the walls, well drawn and well coloured, some from nursery rhymes, some of Caldecott's, a frieze of hen and chickens, etc. Boxes for houses and shops are not in evidence, but their place is taken by bricks of such size and quantity that houses, shops, motors, engines and anything else may be built large enough for the children themselves to be shopkeepers or drivers, and there are also pieces of wood to use for various purposes of construction. There is no cooking stove, but simple cooking can be carried out on an open fire, and when a baking oven is required, an eager procession makes its way to the kitchen, where a kindly housekeeper permits the use of her oven. There is a doll's cot with a few dolls of various sizes. There are flowers and growing bulbs. There are light low tables and chairs, a family of guinea pigs in a large cage, and there is a cupboard which the children can reach.
Water is to be found in a passage room, between the Kindergarten and the rooms for children above that stage, and here, so placed that the children themselves can find and reach everything, are the sawdust, bran and oats for the guinea pigs, with a few carrots and a knife to cut them, some tiny scrubbing-brushes and a wiping-up cloth. Here also are stored the empty boxes, corrugated paper and odds and ends in constant demand for constructions.
In the cupboard there are certain shelves from which anything may be taken, and some from which nothing may be taken without leave. For the teacher here is of opinion that children of even three and four are not too young to begin to learn the lesson ofmeumandtuum, and she also thinks it is good to have some treasures which do not come out every day, and which may require more delicate handling than the ordinary toy ought to need. For this ought to be strong enough to bear unskilled handling and vigorous movements, for a broken toy ought to be a tragedy. At the same time it is part of a child's training to learn to use dainty objects with delicate handling, and such things form the children's art gems, showing beauty of construction and of colour. Children as well as grown-ups have their bad days, when something out of the usual is very welcome. "Do you know there's nothing in this world that I'm not tired of?" was said one day by a boy of six usually quite contented. "Give me something out of the cupboard that I've never seen before," said another whose digestion was troublesome. The open shelves contain pencils and paper, crayons, paint-boxes, boxes of building blocks, interlocking blocks, wooden animals, jigsaw and other puzzles, coloured tablets for pattern laying, toy scales, beads to thread, dominoes, etc., the only rule being that what is taken out must be tidily replaced. This Kindergarten is part of a large institution, and the playground, to which it has direct access, is of considerable extent. There is a big stretch of grass and another of asphalt, so that in suitable weather the tables and chairs, the sand-tray, the bricks and anything else that is wanted can be carried outside so that the children can live in the open, which of course is better than any room. In the playground there is a bank where the children can run up and down, and there are a few planks and a builder's trestle,[16] on which they can be poised for seesaws or slides, and these are a constant source of pleasure.
[Footnote 16: See p. 55.]
In another Kindergarten we find the walls enlivened with Cecil Aldin's fascinating friezes: here is Noah with all the animals walking in cheerful procession, and in the next room is an attractive procession of children with push-carts, hoops and toy motor cars. When we make our visit the day is fine and the room is empty, the children are all outside. The garden is not large, but there is some space, and under the shade of two big trees we find rugs spread, on which the children are sitting, standing, kneeling and lying, according to their occupation. One is building with large blocks, and must stand up to complete her erection; another is lying flat putting together a jigsaw; another, a boy, is threading beads; while another has built railway arches, and with much whistling and the greatest carefulness is guiding his train through the tunnels. The play is almost entirely individual, but very often you hear, "O Miss X,docome and see what I've done!" After about an hour, during which a few of the children have changed their occupations, those who wish to do so join some older children who are playing games involving movement. This may be a traditional game like Looby Loo, or Round and round the Village, or it may be one of the best of the old Kindergarten games. After lunch the washing up is to be done in a beautiful new white sink which is displayed with pride.
Our next visit is to a Free Kindergarten. The rooms are quite as attractive, as rich in charming friezes as in the others, and the furnishing in some ways is much the same. But here we see what we have not seen before, for here is a large room filled with tiny hammock beds. The windows are wide open, but the blinds are down, for the children are having their afternoon sleep.
Here, as in all Free Kindergartens, the children are provided with simple but pretty overalls which the parents are pleased to wash. House shoes are also provided, partly to minimise the noise from active little feet, but principally because the poor little boots are often a painfully inadequate protection from wet pavements. The children are trained to tidy ways and to independence. They cannot read, but by picture cards they recognise their own beds, pegs and other properties. They take out and put away their own things, and give all reasonable help in laying tables and serving food, in washing, dusting and sweeping up crumbs, as is done in any true Kindergarten.
In the garden of this Free Kindergarten there is a large sand-pit, surrounded by a low wooden framework, and having a pole across the middle so that it resembles a cucumber frame and a cover can be thrown over the sand to keep it clean when not in use.
Froebel's own list of playthings contains, besides balls and building blocks, coloured beads, coloured tablets for laying patterns, coloured papers for cutting, folding and plaiting; pencils, paints and brushes; modelling clay and sand; coloured wool for sewing patterns and pictures; and such little sticks and laths as children living in a forest region find for themselves. Considered in themselves, apart from the traditions of formality, these are quite good play material or stimuli, and Froebel meant the time to come "when we shall speak of the doll and the hobby horse as the first plays of the awakening life of the girl and the boy," but he died before he had done so. In theMother Songs, too, we find quite a good list of toys which are now to be found in most Kindergartens.
Toys for the playground should be provided—a sand-heap, a seesaw, a substantial wheel-barrow, hoops, balls, reins and perhaps skipping-ropes. Something on which the child can balance, logs or planks which they can move about, and a trestle on which these can be supported, are invaluable. It was while an addition was being made to our place that we realised the importance of such things, and, as in Froebel's case, "our teachers were the children themselves." They were so supremely happy running up and down the plank roads laid by the builders for their wheel-barrows, seesawing or balancing and sliding on others, that we could not face the desolation of emptiness which would come when the workmen removed their things. So, for a few pounds, all that the children needed was secured, ordinary planks for seesawing, narrower for balancing and a couple of trestles. One exercise the children had specially enjoyed was jumping up and down on yielding planks, and this the workmen had forbidden because the planks might crack. But a sympathetic foreman told us what was needed: two planks of special springy wood were fastened together by cross pieces at each end, and besides making excellent slides, these made most exciting springboards.
For representations of real life the children require dolls and the simplest of furniture—a bed, which need only be a box, some means of carrying out the doll's washing, her personal requirements as well as her clothes; some little tea-things and pots and pans. A doll's house is not necessary, and can only be used by two or three children, but will be welcomed if provided, and its appointments give practice in dainty handling. Trains and signals of some kind, home-made or otherwise; animals for farm or Zoo; a pair of scales for a shop, and some sort of delivery van, which, of course, may be home-made.
There must also be provision for increase of skill and possibility of creation. If the Kindergarten can afford it, some of the Montessori material may be provided; there is no reason, except expense, why it should not be used if the children like it, and if it does not take up too much room. But it has no creative possibilities, and even at three years old this is required. Scissors are an important tool, and an old book of sample wall-papers is most useful; old match-boxes and used matches, paste and brushes and some old magazines to cut. Blackboard chalks and crayons, paint-boxes with four to six important colours, some Kindergarten folding papers, all these supply colour. Certain toys seem specially suited to give hand control,e.g.a Noah's Ark, where the small animals are to be set out carefully, tops or teetotums and tiddlywinks, at which some little children become proficient. The puzzle interest must not be forgotten, and simple jigsaw pictures give great pleasure. It is interesting to note here that the youngest children fit these puzzles not by the picture but by form, though they know they are making a picture and are pleased when it is finished. The puzzle with six pictures on the sides of cubes is much more difficult than a simple jigsaw.
All sorts of odds and ends come in useful, and especially for the poorer children these should be provided. Any one who remembers the pleasure derived from coloured envelope bands, from transparent paper from crackers, and from certain advertisements, will save these for children to whose homes such treasures never come. A box containing scraps of soft cloth, possibly a bit of velvet, some bits of smooth and shining coloured silk give the pleasure of sense discrimination without the formality of the Montessori graded boxes, and are easier to replace. Some substitute for "mother's button box," a box of shells or coloured seeds, a box of feathers, all these things will be played with, which means observation and discrimination, comparison and contrast, and in addition, where colour is involved, there is aesthetic pleasure, and this also enters into the touching of smooth or soft surfaces. Softness is a joy to children, as is shown in the woolly lambs, etc., provided for babies. A little one of my acquaintance had a bit of blanket which comforted many woes, and when once I offered her a feather boa as a substitute she sobbed out: "It isn't so soft as the blanket!"
In one of Miss McMillan's early books she wrote: "Very early the child begins more or less consciously to exercise the basal sense—the sense of touch. On waking from sleep he puts his tiny hands to grasp something, or turns his head on the firm soft pillow. Hetouchesrather than looks, at first (for his hands and fingers perform a great many movements long before he learns to turn his eyeballs in various directions or follow the passage even of a light), and through touching many things he begins his education. If he is the nursling of wealthy parents, it is possible that his first exercises are rather restricted. He touches silk, ivory, muslin and fine linen. That is all, and that is not much. But the child of the cottager is often better off, for his mother gives him a great variety of objects to keep him quiet. The ridiculous command, 'Do not touch,' cannot be imposed on him while he is screaming in his cradle or protesting in his dinner chair; and so all manner of things—reels, rings, boxes, tins, that is to say a variety of surfaces—is offered to him, to his great delight and advantage. And lest he should not get the full benefit of such privilege he carries everything to his mouth, where the sense of touch is very keen."[17]
[Footnote 17:Early Childhood: Swan Sonnenschein, published 1900.]
Among the treasures kept for special occasions there may be pipes for soap-bubbles, a prism of some kind with which to make rainbows, a tiny mirror to make "light-birds" on the wall and ceiling, and a magnet with the time-honoured ducks and fish, if these are still to be bought, along with other articles, delicately made or coloured, which require care.
Pictures and picture-books should also be considered; some being in constant use, some only brought out occasionally. For the very smallest children some may be rag books, but always children should be taught to treat books carefully. The pictures on the walls ought to be changed, sometimes with the children's help, sometimes as a surprise and discovery. For that purpose it is convenient to have series of pictures in frames with movable backs, but brown-paper frames will do quite well. The pictures belonging to the stories which have been told to the children ought to have a prominent place, and if the little ones desire to have one retold they will ask for it.
It is of course not at all either necessary or even desirable for any one school to have everything, and children should not have too much within the range of their attention at one time. Individual teachers will make their own selections, but in all cases there must be sufficient variety of material for each child to carry out his natural desire for observation, experiment and construction.
A wedding or a festival, a mourning or a funeral…As if his whole vocation were endless imitation.
In every country and in every age those who have eyes to see have watched the same little dramas. What Wordsworth saw was seen nineteen hundred years ago in the Syrian market-place, where the children complained of their unresponsive companions: "We have piped the glad chaunt of the marriage, but ye have not danced, we have wailed our lamentation, but ye have not joined our mourning procession."
Since the very name Kindergarten is to imply a teaching which fulfils the child's own wants and desires, it must supply abundant provision for the dramatic representation of life. Adults have always been ready to use for their own purposes the strong tendency to imitate, which is a characteristic of all normal children, but few even now realise to what extent a child profits by his imitative play. The explanation that Froebel found for this will now be generally accepted, viz. that only by acting it out can a child fully grasp an idea, "For what he tries to represent or do, he begins to understand." He thinks in action, or as one writer put it, he "apperceives with his muscles." This explanation seems to cover imitative play, from the little child's imitative wave of the hand up to such elaborate imitations as are described in Stanley Hall'sStory of a Sand Pile,[18] or in Dewey'sSchools of To-morrow.But when we think of the joy of such imaginative play as that of Red Indians, shipwrecks and desert islands, we feel that these show a craving for experience, for life, such a craving as causes the adult to lose himself in a book of travels or in a dramatic performance, and which explains the phenomenal success of the cinema, poor stuff as it is.
[Footnote 18: Or that delightful "Play Town" inThe Play Way.]
We thirst for experiences, even for those which are unpleasant; we wonder "how it feels" to be up in an aeroplane or down in a submarine. We are far indeed from desiring air-raids, but if such things must be, there is a curious satisfaction in being "in it." And though the experiences they desire may be matters of everyday occurrence to us, children probably feel the craving even more keenly. "You may write what you like," said a teacher, and a somewhat inarticulate child wrote, "I was out last night, it was late." "Why, Jack," said another, "you've painted your cow green; did you ever see a green cow?" "No," said Jack, "but I'd like to."
In early Kindergarten days this imitative and dramatic tendency was chiefly met in games, and the children were by turns butterflies and bees, bakers and carpenters, clocks and windmills. The programme was suggested by Froebel'sMother Songs, in which he deals with the child's nearest environment. Too often, indeed, the realities to which Froebel referred were not realities to English children, but that was recognised as a defect, and the ideas themselves were suitable. Chickens, pigeons and farmyard animals; the homely pussy cat or canary bird; the workers to whom the child is indebted, farmer, baker, miner, builder or carpenter; the sun, the rain, the rainbow and the "light-bird"—such ideas were chosen as suitable centres, and stories and songs, games and handwork clustered round.
What was the reason for this binding of things together? Why did Froebel constantly plead for "unity" even for the tiny child, and tell us to link together his baby finger-games or his first weak efforts at building with his blocks chairs, tables, beds, walls and ladders?
Looking back over the years, it seems as if this idea of joining together has been trying to assert itself under various forms, each of which has reigned for its day, has been carried to extremes and been discarded, only to come up again in a somewhat different form. It has always seemed to aim at extending and ordering the mind content of children. For the Froebelian it was expressed in such words as "unity," "connectedness" and "continuity," while the Herbartians called it "correlation." Under these terms much work has been, and is still being, carried out, some very good and some very foolish. Ideas catch on, however, because of the truth that is in them, not because of the error which is likely to be mixed with it, and even the weakest effort after connection embodies an important truth. When we smile over absurd stories of forced "correlation," we seldom stop to think of what went on before the Kindergarten existed, for instance the still more absurd and totally disconnected lists of object lessons. One actual list for children of four years old ran: Soda, Elephant, Tea, Pig, Wax, Cow, Sugar, Spider, Potatoes, Sheep, Salt, Mouse, Bread, Camel.
Kindergarten practice was far ahead of this, for here the teacher was expected to choose her material according to (1) Time of Year; (2) Local Conditions, such as the pursuits of the people; (3) Social Customs. When it was possible the children went to see the real blacksmith or the real cow, and to let game or handwork be an expression, and a re-ordering of ideas gained was natural and right. Connectedness, however, meant more than this, it meant that the material itself was to be treated so that the children would be helped to that real understanding which comes from seeing things in their relations to each other. As Lloyd Morgan puts it, "We are mainly at work upon the mental background. It is our object to make this background as rich and full and orderly as possible, so that whatever is brought to the focus of consciousness shall be set in a relational background, which shall give it meaning; and so that our pupils may be able to feel the truth which Browning puts into the mouth of Fra Lippo Lippi:
This world's no blot for usNor blank; it means intensely and means good:To find its meaning is my meat and drink."
According to Professor Dewey, some such linking or joining is necessary "to foster that sense which is at the basis of attention and of all intellectual growth, the sense of continuity." The Herbartian correlation was designed to further that well-connected circle of thought out of which would come the firm will, guided by right insight, inspired by true feeling, which is their aim in education.
Froebelian unity and connectedness have, like the others, an intellectual and a moral aspect. Intellectually "the essential characteristic of instruction is the treatment of individual things in their relationships"; morally, the idea of unity is that we are all members one of another. The child who, through unhindered activity, has reached the stage of self-consciousness is to go on to feel himself a part, a member of an ever-increasing whole—family, school, township, country, humanity—the All; to be "one with Nature, man and God."
Every one has heard something of the new teaching—which, by the way, sheds clearer light over Froebel's warning against arbitrary interference—viz. that a great part of the nervous instability which affects our generation is due to the thwarting and checking of the natural impulses of early years. But this new school also gives us something positive, and reinforces older doctrines by telling us to integrate behaviour. "This matter of the unthwarted lifelong progress of behaviour integration is of profound importance, for it is the transition from behaviour to conduct. The more integrated behaviour is harmonious and consistent behaviour toward a larger and more comprehensive situation, toward a bigger section of the universe; it is lucidity and breadth of purpose. The child playing with fire is only wrong conduct because it is behaviour that does not take into account consequences; it is not adjusted to enough of the environment; it will be made right by an enlargement of its scope and reach."[19]
All selfish conduct, all rudeness and roughness come from ignorance; we are all more or less self-centred, and the child's consciousness of self has to be widened, his scope has to be enlarged to sympathy with the thoughts, feelings and desires of other selves. "The sane man is the man who (however limited the scope of his behaviour) has no such suppression incorporated in him. The wise man must be sane and must have scope as well."[20]
[Footnote 19:The Freudian Wish, Edwin Holt.]
[Footnote 20:The Freudian Wish, Edwin Holt.]
Professor Earl Barnes always used to describe the child mind as "scrappy." How can we best aid development into the wholeness or healthiness and the scope of sanity and wisdom? For it may well be that this widening and ordering of experience, of consciousness, of behaviour into moral behaviour is our most important task as teachers. Froebel emphasised the "crying need" for connection of school and life, pointing out how the little child desires to imitate and the older to share in all that, as Professor Dewey puts it, is "surcharged with a sense of the mysterious values that attach to whatever their elders are concerned with." This is one of the points to which Professor Dewey called attention in his summing up of Froebel's educational principles, this letting the child reproduce on his own plane the typical doings and occupations of the larger, maturer society into which he is finally to go forth.
It is in this connection that he says the Kindergarten teacher has the opportunity to foster that most important "sense of continuity." In simple reproduction of the home life while there is abundant variety, since daily life may bring us into contact with all the life of the city or of the country, yet, because the work is within a whole, "there is opportunity to foster that sense which is at the basis of attention and of all intellectual growth, a sense of continuity."
Since Professor Dewey gave to the world the results of his experimental school, all the Kindergartens and most of the Infant Schools in England have tried to carry out their accustomed reproduction of home surroundings, more or less on the lines of the Primary Department of his experimental school. They have extended their scope, and in addition to the material already taken from workman and shop, from garden and farm, have also with much profit to older children used his suggestions about primitive industries.
Reproduction of home surroundings can be done in many ways, one of which is to help the children to furnish and to play with a doll's house. But the play must be play. It is not enough to use the drama as merely offering suggestions for handwork, and one small doll's house does not allow of real play for more than one or two children.
Our own children used to settle this by taking out the furniture, etc., and arranging different homes around the room. I can remember the never-ending pleasure given by similar play in my own nursery days, when the actors were the men and boys supplied by tailors' advertisements. Many and varied were the experiences of these paper families, families, it may be noted, none of whom demeaned themselves so far as to possess any womankind. For that nursery party of five had lost its mother sadly early and was ruled by two boys, who evidently thought little of the other sex.
Professor Dewey tells us that "nothing is more absurd than to suppose that there is no middle term between leaving a child to his unguided fancies, or controlling his activities by a formal succession of dictated directions." It is the teacher's business to know what is striving for utterance and to supply the needed stimulus and materials.
To show how under the inspiration of a thoroughly capable teacher this continuity may be secured and prolonged for quite a long period, an example may be taken from the work of Miss Janet Payne, who is remarkably successful in meeting and stimulating, without in any way forcing the "striving for utterance" mentioned by Dewey. On this occasion Miss Payne produced a doll about ten inches high, dressed to resemble the children's fathers, and suggested that a home should be made for him. The children adopted him with zeal, named him Mr. Bird, and his career lasted for two years.
Mr. Bird required a family, so Mrs. Bird had to be produced with her little girl Winnie, and later a baby was added to the family. Beds, tables and chairs, including a high chair for Winnie, were made of scraps from the wood box, and for a long time Mr. Bird was most domesticated. Miss Payne had used ordinary dolls' heads, but had constructed the bodies herself in such a way that the dolls could sit and stand, and use their arms to wield a broom or hold the baby. After some time, one child said, "Mr. Bird ought to go to business," and after much deliberation he became a grocer. His shop was made and stocked, and he attended it every day, going home to dinner regularly. One day he appeared to be having a meal on the shop counter, and it was explained that he had been "rather in a hurry" in the morning, so Mrs. Bird had given him his breakfast to take with him. The Bird family had various adventures, they had spring cleanings, removals, visited the Zoo and went to the seaside. One morning a little fellow sat in a trolley with the Bird family beside him for three-quarters of an hour evidently "imagining." I did inquire in passing if it was a drive or a picnic, but the answer was so brief, that I knew I was an interruption and retired. But a younger and bolder inquirer, who wanted to conduct an experiment in modelling, ventured to ask if Mr. Bird wanted anything that could be made "at clay modelling." "Yes, he wants some ink-pots for his post-office shop," was the answer, with the slightly irate addition, "but Iwishyou'd call it the china factory."
When these children moved to an upper class, Mr. Bird was laid away, but the children requested his presence. So he entered the new room and became a farmer. He had now to write letters, to arrange rents, etc., and the money had to be made and counted. The letters served for writing and reading lessons, and Miss Payne was careful to send the answers through the real post, properly addressed to Mr. Bird with the name of class and school. Mr. Bird hired labourers, the children grew corn, and thrashed it and sent it to the mill. A miller had to be produced, and the children, now his assistants, ground the wheat, and Mr. Bird came in his cart to fetch the sacks of flour, which ultimately became the Birds' Christmas pudding and was eaten by the labourers, now guests at the feast. In spring, after careful provision for their comfort, Mr. Bird went to the cattle market and bought cows. Though the milking had to be pretence, the butter and cheese were really made.
The first question of the summer term was, "What's Mr. Bird going to do this term?" Like other teachers inspired by Professor Dewey, we have found our children most responsive to the suggestion of playing out primitive man. But with some, not of course with the brightest, it is too great a stretch to go at one step from the present to the most primitive times, and we often spend a term over something of the nature of Robinson Crusoe, where the situation presents characters accustomed to modern civilisation and deprived of all its conveniences. Miss Payne is careful to give the children full opportunity for suggestions—one dull little boy puzzled his mother by telling her "I made a very good 'gestion' to-day"—so though she had not contemplated the renewed appearance of Mr. Bird she said, "What do you want him to do?" "Let him go out and shoot bears," cried an embryo sportsman. Somewhat taken aback, Miss Payne temporised with, "He wouldn't find them in this country." "Then let him go to India," cried one child, but another called out, "No, no, let him go to a desert island!" and that was carried with acclamation. Mr. Bird's various homes were on a miniature scale, and were contained in a series of zinc trays, which we have had made to fit the available tables and cupboard tops. We find these trays convenient, as a new one can be added when more scope is required to carry out new ideas.
The following accounts taken from the notes of Miss Hilda Beer, while a student in training, show another kind of play where the children themselves act the drama. The notes only cover a short period, but they show how the play may arise quite incidentally.
Mon., June 18.—As the ground is too damp for out-of-doors work, if the children were not ready with plans, I meant to suggest building a railway station, tunnel, etc., and later, I thought perhaps we might paint advertisements of seaside resorts for our station.
But the children brought several things with them, and Dorothy brought her own doll. Marie had left the baby doll from the other room in the cot, so Dorothy and Sylvia said they must look after the babies. So Cecil, Josie and I swept and dusted.
Then we began to play house. Cecil and Dorothy were Mr. and Mrs. Harry, Sylvia was Mrs. Loo (husband at the war). Josie was Nurse and I was Aunt Lizzie. The dolls were Winnie Harry, and Jack and Doreen Loo. Mr. and Mrs. Harry built themselves a house and so did we. Cecil said, "But what is the name of the road?" Mrs. Harry chose 25 Brookfield Avenue, and Mr. Harry 7 Victoria Street, but he gave in and Mrs. Loo took his name for her house. We had to put numbers on the houses; Sylvia could make 7, but the others could not make 25, so I put it on the board and they copied it. Josie having also made a 7 wanted to use it, but Mrs. Loo objected, and said, "The mother is more important than the nurse," so Josie fixed her 7 on the house opposite.
After lunch we bathed the babies and put them to sleep, and as it was time for the children's own rest, we all went to bed. When rest was over, we washed and dressed, and then Mrs. Harry asked for clay to make a water-tap for her house. That made all the children want to make things in clay, so we made cups and saucers, plates, and a baby's bottle, then scones and sponge-cakes, bread and a bread-board, and one of the children said we must put a B on that.
Then Mrs. Loo said, "But we haven't any shelves." I had to leave my class in Miss Payne's charge, and they spent the rest of the time fitting in shelves, water-taps, and sinks.
June 19.—After sweeping, dusting, and washing and dressing the dolls, I read to the children "How the House was built." Then we all pretended to bake, making rolls and cakes as next day was to be the doll Winnie's birthday. We baked our cakes on a piece of wood on the empty fireplace.
The other children were invited to Winnie's party, so we went out to shop. The children wanted lettuces from their own garden, but the grass was too wet, so we pretended. The shop was on the edge of the grass and we talked to imaginary shopmen, Cecil often exclaiming, "Eightpence! why, it's not worth it!"
As neither of the houses would hold all the guests invited to the party, we had to have a picnic instead.
June20.—I must see that Sylvia and Dorothy do the sweeping to-morrow, and let Josie bath the doll; she is very good-natured, and I see that they give her the less attractive occupation. I think too that the food question has played too large a part, so if the children suggest more cooking I shall look in the larder and say that really we must not buy or bake as food goes bad in hot weather, and we must not waste in war time.
The children have suggested making cushions, painting pictures, and making knives and forks, but we have not had time.
Report.—Dorothy and Sylvia swept, Cecil mended the wall of the house, Josie took the children down to the beach (the sand tray), and I dusted. We looked into the larder and found that yesterday's greens were going bad, so decided not to buy more. Then we took the babies for a walk. We noticed how many nasturtiums were out, how the blackberry bushes were in flower and in bud, and the runner-bean was in flower, and the red flowers looked so pretty in the green leaves. We looked at the hollyhocks, because I have told the children that they will grow taller than I am, and they are always wondering how soon this will be. The children found some cherries which had fallen, and Dorothy said how pretty they were on the tree. I called attention to one branch that was laden with fruit, and looked particularly pretty with the sun shining on it. We also looked at the pear tree and the almond. Everything has come on so fast, and the children were ready to say it was because of the rain.
After rest, we went to the Hall to see the chickens. To-day they were much bigger, and Sylvia said had "bigger wings." We were able to watch them drinking, how they hold up their heads to let the water run down. The rest of the morning we made curtains, and the children loved it. There was much discussion and at first the children suggested making them all different, but they agreed that curtains at windows were usually alike. Mr. and Mrs. Harry nearly quarrelled, as one wanted green and the other pink. I suggested trimming the green with a strip of pink, and they were quite pleased. Mrs. Loo and Nurse chose green which was to be sewn with red silk. Sylvia said, "A pattern," and I said, "You saw something red and green to-day," and she called out, "Oh! cherries." She cut out a round of paper and tried to sew round it, holding it in place with her other hand. I suggested putting in a stitch to hold the paper. Cecil was absorbed in sewing, and it seemed quieting for such an excitable boy and good for his weak hands. One child said, "Fancy a boy sewing," so I told how soldiers and sailors sewed. They sewed just as they liked.
These notes are continued in Chapter IX., where they are used to show children's attitude towards Nature. Though separated here for a special purpose it is clear that there neither is nor ought to be any real separation in the lives of the children. Their lives are wholes and they continually pass from one "subject" to another, because life and its circumstances are making new demands. If it rains and you cannot gather the lettuces you have grown from seed, you take refuge in happy pretence; if it clears and the sun calls you out of doors, you take your doll-babies for their walk.