THE NEED FOR EXPERIENCE
"The first vital principle is that the teacher of young
children must provide for them life in miniature, i.e. she
must provide abundant raw material and opportunities for
acquiring experience."
The practical translation of this in the words of the teacher of to-day
is, "I must choose furniture, and requisition apparatus." The teacher of
to-morrow will say to her children, "I will bring the world into the
school for you to learn." The Local Education Authority of to-day says,
"We must build a school for instruction." The Local Education Authority
of to-morrow will say, "We must make a miniature world for our
children."
The world of the Nursery School child probably requires the most careful
thought in this respect: a large room with sunlight and air, low clear
windows, a door leading to a garden and playground, low cupboards full
of toys, low-hung pictures, light chairs and tables that can be pushed
into a corner, stretcher beds equally disposable, a dresser with pretty
utensils for food; these are the chief requirements for satisfying
physical needs, apparent in the actual room. Physical habits will be
considered later, under another heading.
Outside, in the playground, there should be opportunities for physical
development, for its own sake: swings, giant strides, ladders laid
flat, slightly sloping planks, and a seesaw should all be available for
constant use; if the children are not warned or given constant advice
about their own safety, there is little fear of accidents.
Thus the purely physical side of the children is provided for, the side
that they are, if healthy, quite unconscious of; what else does
experience demand at this stage?
Roughly classified, the raw experience of this stage may be divided into
the experience of the natural world of living things, the world of
inanimate things, and the social world. For the natural world there
should be the garden outside, with its trees, grass and flower beds;
with its dovecot and rabbit hutch, and possibly a cat sunning herself on
its paths; inside there will be plants and flowers to care for; the
elements, especially water, earth and air, are very dear to a young
child, and it is quite possible to satisfy his cravings with a large
sand-heap of _dry_ and _wet_ sand; a large flat bath for sailing boats
and testing the theory of sinking and floating; a bin of clay; a pair of
bellows and several fans to set the air in motion. There is always the
fire to gaze at on the right side of the fire-guard, and appreciation of
the beauty of this element should be encouraged.
The world of inanimate things includes most of the toys that stimulate
activity and give ideas. The chief that should be found in the
cupboards, round the walls, or scattered about the room, are bricks of
all sizes and shapes, skittles, balls and bats or rackets, hoops, reins,
spades and other garden tools; pails and patty pans for the sand-heap;
pipes for bubbles, shells, fir-cones, buttons, acorns, and any
collection of small articles for handling; all kinds of vehicles that
can be pushed, such as carts, barrows, prams, engines; drums and other
musical instruments; materials for construction and expression, such as
chalks, boards, paints and paper.
For experiences of the social world, which is not very real at this
individualistic period, come the dolls and doll's house, horses and
stables, tea-things, cooking utensils, Noah's ark, scales for a shop,
boats, soldiers and forts: a very important item in this connection is
the collection of picture-books: they must be chosen with the greatest
care, and only pictures of such merit as those of Caldecott, Leslie
Brooke and Jessie Wilcox Smith should be selected. Pictures form one of
the richest sources of experience at this stage, as indeed at any stage
of life, and truth, beauty and suggestiveness must be their chief
factors.
The toys should be above all things durable, and if possible washable.
Broken and dirty toys make immoral children.
Besides the material surroundings there are opportunities, the seizing
of which gives valuable experiences. These belong to the social world,
and lie chiefly in the training in life's social observances and the
development of good habits. This side of life is one of the most
important in the Nursery School, and needs material help. The lavatories
and cloakrooms should be constructed so that there is every chance for a
child to become self-reliant and fastidious. The cloakrooms should be
provided with low pegs, boot holes, clothes brushes and shoe brushes:
there should be low basins with hot and cold water, enamel mugs and
tooth brushes _for each child,_ nail brushes, plenty of towels, and
where the district needs it, baths. The type provided by the Middlesex
Education Authority at Greenford Avenue School, Hanwell, gives a shower
bath to a whole group of children at once, thus making a more frequent
bath possible. Perhaps for very small children of the Nursery School age
separate baths are more suitable. This is a question for future
experience on the part of teachers. There should be plenty of time for
the children to learn to wash and dress themselves.
In the school-room there should either be tablecloths, or the tables
should be capable of being scrubbed by the children after each meal.
Their almost inevitable lack of manners at table gives an invaluable
opportunity for training, and again in such a case there should be no
question of haste. The meals should be laid, waited on and cleared away,
and the dishes washed by the children themselves, and they should be
responsible for the general tidiness of the room. This involves
tea-cloths, mops, dusters, washing bowls, brushes and dustpans.
In the Transition Classes and Junior School the furniture and apparatus
can be to a great extent very much the same, their difference lying
chiefly in degree. It is a pity to bring the age of toys to an abrupt
conclusion; in real life the older children still borrow the toys of the
younger ones while there are some definitely their own: such are, jigsaw
and other puzzles, dominoes, articles for dramatic representation,
playing cards, toys for games of physical skill, such as tops, kites,
skipping ropes, etc. Such prepared constructive materials as
meccano--and a great mass of raw material for construction, generally
termed "waste." There should be a series of boxes or shelves where such
waste products of the home, or of the woods, or of the seashore, or of
the shop, might be stored in some classified order: the collective
instinct is stronger than the more civilised habit of orderliness: here
is an opportunity for developing a habit from an instinct. There should
also be materials for expression, such as clay, paper, chalk, pencil,
paints, weaving materials, cardboard, and scenery materials; and such
tools as scissors, cardboard knives, needlework tools, paste brushes,
and others that may be necessary and suitable. The rooms should be large
and suitable for much moving about: the most usual conditions should be
a scattered class and not a seated listening class. This means light
chairs and tables or benches where handwork can be done; low cupboards
and lockers so that each child can get at his own things; broad
window-sills for plants and flowers and a bookcase for reading and
picture books. Here again good picture-books are as essential as, even
more essential than, readers in the Transition Class. They will be a
little more advanced than in the Nursery School, and will be of the type
of the Pied Piper illustrated, or pictures of children of other lands
and times. Some of Rackham's, of Harold Copping's, of the publications
by Black in _Peeps at Many Lands_, are suitable for this stage. Readers
should be chosen for their literary value from the recognised children's
classics, such as the Peter Rabbit type, _Alice in Wonderland,
Water-Babies,_ and not made up for the sake of reading practice.
The pictures on the walls should be hung at the right eye-level, and the
windows low enough for looking at the outside world--whatever it may be.
The teacher's desk should be in a corner, not in the central part of the
room, for she must remember that the children are still in the main
seeking experience, not listening to the experience of another. They
should have access to the garden and playground, and all the incitements
to activity should be there--similar to those of the Nursery School, or
those provided by the London County Council in parks. The bare
wilderness of playground now so familiar, where there is neither time
nor opportunity for children to be other than primitive savages, does
not represent the outside world of beauty and of adventure.
The lower classes of Junior School should differ very little in their
miniature world. Life is still activity to the child of eight, and
consequently should contain no immovable furniture. There will be more
books, and the children may be in their seats for longer periods; the
atmosphere of guided but still spontaneous work is more definite, but
the aim in choice of both furniture and apparatus is still the gaining
of experience of life, by direct contact in the main. Such is the
Requisition Sheet to be presented to the Stores Superintendent of the
Local Education Authority in the future, with an explanatory note
stating that in a general way what is actually required is the world in
miniature!