brings satisfaction? How can the children ever learn to do the
disagreeable but necessary tasks that make up so large a part of
every-day living? Where will they ever learn that some things must
be done, not because we like to do them, but because it is our duty
to do them? And these are indeed serious questions. There are two
sets of answers. One of them consists of the results actually
achieved in dealing with children from the new point of view. The
other is a challenge to make clear just what we mean by discipline
and task and duty.
To take the latter first, is it not true that one part of our object
is in the form of acquired knowledge and acquired skill? Practising
the scales, or studying the multiplication table is not an end in
itself. We require study and practice because we believe that the
knowledge or the skill is worth having. Now it has been shown over
and over again that what is learned with satisfaction sticks; and
what is learned with pain is thrown overboard the first minute the
watchman is off his guard. Are the names of writers with the titles
of their books less well remembered by children who learn them
through the game of "Authors" than they are by children who might be
required to memorize them from a catalog? Are the sums and products
of numbers acquired in keeping scores of games less accurate and
less permanent in the mind of the child than the same sums and
products learned as school exercises? Is the skill acquired in
handling tools--sewing costumes, or making scenery for an amateur
play--any less effective or less lasting than the skill acquired in
sewing yards of stitches or sawing yards of board just for
"exercise" in a class? On the contrary, other things being equal,
arithmetic and authors and sewing and tinkering can be made both
more effective and more lasting when associated with pleasurable
feelings than when performed under strain, compulsion and
resentment. If it is only a question of "learning" this or that,
there is no doubt that the pleasant way is in every respect the
better way.
But, of course, it is not merely a question of learning the specific
skill or knowledge. There is also the need for learning application,
persistence through difficulties, endurance, and the other hardy
virtues that distinguish a disciplined character. And here the
contrast between the old attitude and the new is most marked. We can
certainly force children to do what is disagreeable; we can hold
them to their tasks when they are tempted to abandon the monotonous
and wearisome round of uninteresting drudgery. But is this the only
way to get for the children experience with such necessary, though
unpleasant, work? We are assuming of course that such experience is
necessary, since uninteresting work cannot be separated from most
important undertakings. A typical experience in a school that has
for several years conducted a class along the lines of the newer
psychology can answer our question.
One of the difficulties that had to be overcome was the mastery of
simple addition. Another was the art of writing; and of course
reading is a necessary art of modern life. Instead of the usual
drill and practice and exercises, this class passed through the
drudgery stage without realizing that school was a prison. This was
during the autumn of the Armistice. Food conservation and thrift
were in the air. These children were presented with a quantity of
garden vegetables, but there was more than they could use
themselves, so the suggestion was made that they could have the
surplus for future use. The children, under guidance, did all the
work connected with cold-pack canning of the tomatoes. This work was
not at every point "interesting," in the superficial sense; but the
purpose of the entire project was one that appealed to the children,
so that they were quite satisfied to do the many essential details.
Did they not here learn to clean their dishes and jars as well as
they would have done had the cleaning been a "duty" imposed
arbitrarily from above? Must drudgery be dreaded to be well done?
Let the teacher who had charge of this class describe what happened,
in her own words.
"The success of the first small group in carrying through the
various steps ... led to further work of the same sort, as various
vegetables were given us. The children also dried apples and lima
beans which they gathered themselves at the school farm.
"That the interest in this rather exacting work was sustained for
two months was doubtless due to the fact that the children had a
genuine purpose in canning a large quantity of vegetables. For early
in the work, upon the suggestion of one of the class, it had been
decided to have a sale and use the proceeds to buy milk for a sick
baby. Although I had not thought of this plan myself, I was glad to
lend it my support.
"The final preparation for the sale occupied a large share of the
time for several weeks. The chief consideration from the children's
point of view seemed to be who should take charge of the business of
selling. They had conducted a play store intermittently during the
fall, but, upon testing, it was found that most of the class were
ill prepared to act as salespeople.[A] The children readily
recognized this fact and willingly went to work to drill on addition
and subtraction. The most successful drill was accomplished by means
of a dramatic rehearsal of the forthcoming sale, some children
impersonating the visitors and the others the salesmen. Real money,
correct prices, and the actual jars of vegetables and fruit were
used for this play.
[Footnote A: Remember these were second-grade children--most of them
seven or eight years old.]
"The need of invitations, of price lists, and of bookkeepers the day
of the sale, was also recognized and led to much needed practice in
written English. The prices were determined by a study of the latest
food catalog, a small group with a teacher undertaking this work. It
necessitated the use of an alphabetical index, and in some cases the
calculation of the price of pints, when only quarts were listed, as
we had used both pint and quart jars.
"Further preparation consisted of the making of labels for the jars
and of posters for the room. The art teacher, when called in to
advise, taught the children how to make accurate square letters,
which they used in various sizes for the labels and posters. The
making of fifty or more small labels with half-inch letters proved
irksome to the little people, but they showed much persistence in
completing the task, because of their interest in the sale. The
eight children who made the final large posters did a great deal of
intelligent, painstaking work. From the artistic point of view, the
posters were not noteworthy, but they represented the children's own
suggestions.
"The sale was conducted by the children, who made their own change,
kept records of sales and wrapped up purchases. The various duties
were agreed upon by the class, in accordance with each one's proved
ability to carry them out, and everyone had some share."
In this simple account of an experimental class conducted at the
Ethical Culture School, in New York, under the direction of Miss
Mabel R. Goodlander, are many references to drill and practice. But
throughout all of the work it was possible to maintain the interest
of the children because, apparently, the attention was not on the
drill as an end in itself, but upon the special skill or knowledge
as a means to a more remote end. And this remote end was not the
formal one of "passing," or being promoted, or getting a good mark,
but the vital, urgent purpose of raising money through the sale for
a sick baby's milk. Undoubtedly the "motives" of the several
children in this class were varied and mixed--like the motives of
good citizens who are united in support of a particular candidate,
or a particular platform. But there was enough common purpose to
insure cooperation and persistence and effort from every single
child in proportion to his ability. The learning of stupid sums and
the practice in penmanship are no more attractive to these children
than they are to ordinary children in ordinary schools in all parts
of the country. But they overcame all internal obstacles, went
through with all of the monotony and drudgery, and to that extent
triumphed over any disposition to shirk or to loaf or to dawdle or
to flit from work to sensation.
And how is it with the learning of responsibility, with acquiring a
sense of duty? Many of us have no doubt learned what we have learned
of duty and responsibility, through the constant repetition of "Thou
shalt" and "Thou shalt not" by our elders during our own growing
years. But results at least as valuable have been obtained in the
cases of others through the constant rubbing up against their equals
in a free give-and-take atmosphere. Children learn to live with
others by living with others. They learn to work with others--to
"cooperate"--by working with others. They learn to play the game, to
do teamwork, to play fair, to play in good form, to hit hard only by
playing according to rule, with others, with worthy opponents, under
good supervision. In short, the "discipline" that makes for power
and freedom may be quite as easily obtained through the exercise of
freedom as through external coercion--nay, more easily, and more
effectively.
It is fair to ask whether training for a game is not quite analogous
to our idea of training for life; and whether the methods which are
found to be effective in the former kind of training are not equally
valuable for the latter. Assuming the analogy, would you have a child
learn the rules of such games as baseball or tennis from a book before
allowing him to handle a ball, or before letting him see a game? Would
you expect him to cooperate in teamwork after a long period of
drill upon the _rules_ governing team cooperation? Would you expect
him to hit hard because he has learned the correct answer to the
question, How should a player hit?
This may not seem a fair comparison to some of the "training" that
has actually been tried. Perhaps a more familiar analogy would be in
teaching a child correct movements for the game to be mastered,
separated from any experience with real games. Boys are "practicing"
for a game, and each one is drilling on some special detail,
hitting, catching, running bases, long throws, or what not; each one
of them has in mind as part of his moving purpose not only his
team's success and glory, but his own individual responsibility.
Contrast this with the same boys required to drill at precisely the
same movements on the theory that the "exercise" will do them good,
or that some time in the future they might have to meet a situation
in which a long throw or a swift run would be significant. Do you
expect the same enthusiasm and energy to be developed in both cases?
And if not the same enthusiasm and energy, can we expect the same
results--whether we view the results as so much skill or technic,
whether we view the results as so much "training in drudgery," or
whether we consider the results from the viewpoint of moral values
as so much devotion, self-sacrifice, restraint? The "moral" values
that have been for years attributed to athletics appear after all to
be the effects of intense, enthusiastic, and interested
participation in teamwork--that is, in purposeful and energetic
concern with joint undertakings.
The responsibilities we wish to develop, the sense of duty, no less
than the application and persistence, no less than knowledge and
skill, are types of habits which are best formed under the glow of
satisfying experience. Far from assuming a soft life for the child,
the idea of interest assumes the most strenuous kind of life. And
the experiences of all who have tried it justifies the assumption.
The experimental class already mentioned, similar experiments by
Mrs. Marietta Johnson at Fairhope, Alabama and elsewhere,
experimental classes at the Lincoln School and at the Horace Mann
School, at various "play" schools in this country and in England,
all show more continuous application of the children to whatever
they happen to have in hand, longer periods of intense activity, and
no sign whatever of loafing or shirking. The activities selected by
the children themselves involve just as much "discipline" as
anything that can be selected for them.
In these schools the children never hear the teacher call for
"attention," for although everybody knows that attention is an
essential of effective work, the attention takes care of itself
where the children already feel a genuine concern in the outcome.
And this concern insures satisfactory application, since the
children look forward to satisfying results. This does not mean, of
course, that either the work itself or the result is necessarily
"pleasant," in the ordinary sense. Often, indeed, it is quite the
reverse, as when the racer is exerting every last reserve of his
energy in the final spurt, or when the contestants are in suspense
awaiting the decision of the judges as to which is the best cake.
And the endless grind of practice and preparation is no more
"pleasant" to the child who knows the purpose and approves the
purpose of his efforts (having taken part in selecting the
undertaking) than similar exertion is to the child whose work is all
planned and directed by outsiders; but the satisfactions connected
with the exertions are different in the two cases, and the
corresponding results are correspondingly different.
The principle of interest as a guide to the training of children can
be applied in the home as well as in the school. It means, first of
all, taking into account the interests, tastes, preferences of the
children. As has already been suggested in earlier chapters, there
are many occasions when the child may be consulted or given a choice
of action, of amusements, of purchases, and so on--situations in
which it is a matter of indifference to older people, but in which
the making of a decision or a choice is both satisfying and valuable
to the child. Even where the decision is not an indifferent one, our
own should not be imposed in an arbitrary manner; when it differs
from that of the child, we can get his assent and cooperation, where
an arbitrary choice leaves him cold or even resentful.
The games children play, whether by themselves or with other
children, are only in part manifestations of tastes: they represent
to a degree stages of development. For the reason, therefore, that
interests develop, we shall find that what is a favorable time for
one child is not necessarily a favorable time for another child to
learn a particular thing. This is very well shown by the great
differences found among children, as to learning school subjects
like reading or writing. In some the interest is aroused very early,
and for them this is the best time; with others the interest does
not appear until the third or fourth grade, or even later, and for
such children this is the best time. There is no one period that is
best for all children; by attempting to treat all alike, therefore,
we not only waste a great deal of energy and good feeling, but we
often defeat our purpose by antagonizing the children and thus
making them resist the very things we want them to hug to
themselves. And this is just as true of what we try to do in the
home as it is of school teaching.
To discover the interests of the children requires that they be
given an opportunity to express themselves. This means in most cases
much more freedom than children have heretofore enjoyed. But it
means also constant vigilance on the part of the elders, not so much
to guard against the freedom being abused, as to guard against the
opportunity being wasted. The taste in games or in reading, the
choice of companions or of leisure time occupations must not only
show themselves to be indulged; they must be seized upon by those
who guide the children, as means for giving drive and direction to
further development. A child who devotes too much time to athletics
and too little to literature, may be drawn to reading through books
about athletic contests of the classics, or through modern stories
of college life. On the other hand, the boy who is prone to get his
satisfactions vicariously and to neglect active participation in
games and other activities, must be led through his reading,
properly selected and unostentatiously placed under his nose, to
more direct concern with producing practical effects in his
environment. The interest, once discovered, must be the means for
stimulating to greater exertion and to closer unification of the
child's activities.
One of the things that presents a difficulty in every generation is
the fact that the social and moral ideals change from age to age. We
are thus constantly tempted to put into the characters of our
children those traits that were valued highly by our parents,
without always considering the importance of each item for the days
in which our children will play their parts. Thus it comes about
that many of the virtues that have a traditional value may be
questioned when offered as staples for citizens of to-morrow.
Obedience, for example, is a permanent necessity in a society that
rests upon the assumption that one or a few chosen men represent the
will of the gods on earth, but has only a transitory value in a
democracy. As someone has said, obedience in childhood must be
considered as a scaffold that is useful while the lasting parts of
the structure are being put in place; when the desired structure is
completed, obedience is naturally removed as of no further service.
Now the kind of discipline required in a democracy calls for an
attitude or disposition that makes cooperation with others come as a
matter of course; it calls for the making of decisions, or the
forming of opinions, on the basis of facts; and it calls for the
habit of taking due account of the rights of others. The training
for this class of habits is best obtained through methods that take
full account of children's interests.
Just as the older outlook turned to "discipline" as a means for
obtaining freedom, the new psychology utilizes freedom as a means
for obtaining discipline. In both cases the end is of course the
same--that is, the liberation of the human spirit and the organizing
of the individual's powers to the greatest good. But as our ideas of
human relations and of values have changed, science has given us new
methods for attaining the final goals that we set ourselves.