GAINING EXPERIENCE BY PLAY
"The Second Principle is that the method of gaining
experience lies through Play and that by this road we can
best reach work."
Play is marked off from work chiefly by the absence of any outside
pressure, and pleasure in the activity is the characteristic of play
pure and simple: if a child has forced upon him a hint of any ulterior
motive that may be in the mind of his teacher, the pleasure is spoilt
for him and the intrinsic value of the play is lost. In bringing
children into school during their play period, probably the most
important formative period of their lives, and in utilising their play
consciously, we are interfering with one of their most precious
possessions when they are still too helpless to resent it directly. Too
many of us make play a means of concealing the wholesome but unwelcome
morsel of information in jam, and we try to force it on the children
prematurely and surreptitiously, but Nature generally defeats us. The
only sound thing to do is to _play the game_ for all it is worth, and
recognise that in doing so education will look after itself. To
understand the nature of play, and to have the courage to follow it, is
the business of every teacher of young children. The Nursery School,
especially if it consists chiefly of children under five, presents at
first very hard problems to the teacher; however strong her belief in
play may be, it receives severe tests. So much of the play at first
seems to be aimless running and shouting, or throwing about of toys and
breaking them if possible, so much quarrelling and fighting and weeping
seem involved with any attempts at social life on the part of the
children; there seems very little desire to co-operate, and very little
desire to construct; as a rule, a child roams from one thing to another
with apparently only a fleeting attempt to play with it; yet on the
other hand, to make the problem more baffling, a child will spend a
whole morning at one thing: quite lately one child announced that he
meant to play with water all day, and he did; another never left the
sand-heap, and apparently repeated the same kind of activity during a
complete morning; visitors said in a rather disappointed tone, "they
just play all the time by themselves." One teacher brought out an
attractive picture and when a group of children gathered round it she
proceeded to tell the story; they listened politely for a few minutes,
and then the group gradually melted away; they were not ready for
concentrated effort. If those children had been in the ordinary Baby
Room of a school they would have been quite docile, sitting in their
places apparently listening to the story, amiably "using" their bricks
or other materials according to the teacher's directions, but they would
not, in the real sense, have been playing. This is an example of the
need for both principle and courage.
It is into this chaotic method of gaining experience that the teacher
comes with her interpretive power--she sees in it the beginnings of all
the big things of life--and like a bigger child she joins, and like a
bigger child she improves. She sees in the apparent chaos an attempt to
get experience of the different aspects of life, in the apparently
aimless activity an attempt to realise and develop the bodily powers, in
the fighting and quarrelling an attempt to establish a place in social
life. It is all unconscious on the part of a child, but a necessary
phase of real development.
Gradually the little primitive man begins to yield to civilisation. He
is interested in things for longer and asks for stories, music and
rhymes, and what does this mean?
As he develops a child learns much about life in his care of the garden,
about language in his games, about human conduct from stories; but he
does these things because he wants to do them, and because there is a
play need behind it all, which for him is a life need; in order to build
a straight wall he must classify his bricks, in order to be a real
shopman he must know his weights, in order to be a good workman he must
measure his paper; all the ideas gained from these things come to him
_along with sense activity_; they are associated with the needs and
interests of daily life; and because of this he puts into the activity
all the effort of which he is capable, or as Dewey has expressed it,
"the maximum of consciousness" into the experience which is his play.
This is real sense training, differing in this respect from the training
given by the Montessori material, which has no appeal to life interest,
aims at exercising the senses separately, and discourages _play_ with
the apparatus. It is activity without a body, practice without an end,
and nothing develops from it of a constructive or expressive nature.
In the nursery class therefore our curriculum is life, our apparatus all
that a child's world includes, and our method the one of joyful
investigation, by means of which ideas and skill are being acquired. The
teacher is player in chief, ready to suggest, co-operate, supply
information, lead or follow as circumstances demand: responsibility must
still belong to the children, for while most of them know quite
naturally how to play, there are many who will never get beyond a rather
narrow limit, through lack of experience or of initiative.
It is quite safe to let experience take its chance through play, but
there are certain things that must be dealt with quite definitely, when
the teacher is not there as a playmate, but as something more in the
capacity of a mother. It is impossible to train all the habits necessary
at this time, through the spontaneous play, although incidentally many
will be greatly helped and made significant by it. If the children come
from poor homes where speech is imperfect, probably mere imitation of
the teacher, which is the chief factor in ordinary language training,
will be insufficient. It will be necessary to invent ways, chiefly
games, by which the vocal organs may be used; this may be considered
play, but it is more artificial and less spontaneous than the informal
activity already described. It is well to be clear as to the kind of
exercises best suited to make the vocal organs supple, and then to make
these the basis of a game: for example, little children constantly
imitate the cries of ordinary life; town children could dramatise a
railway station where the sounds produced by engines and by porters give
a valuable training; they could imitate street cries, the sound of the
wind, of motor hooters, sirens, or of church bells. Country children
could use the sounds of the farm-yard, the birds, or the wind. In the
recognition of sound, which is as necessary as its production, such a
guessing game could be taught as "I sent my son to be a grocer and the
first thing he sold began with _s_ and ended with _p_," using the
_sounds_, not names of the letters. For the acquisition of a vocabulary,
such a game as the Family Coach might be played and turned into many
other vehicles or objects about which many stories could be told. All
the time the game must be played with the same fidelity to the spirit of
play as previously, but the introduction must be recognised as more
artificial and forced, and this can be justified because so many
children are not normal with regard to speech, and only where this is
the case should language training be forced upon them. Habits of
courtesy, of behaviour at table, of position, of dressing and
undressing, of washing hands and brushing teeth, and many others, must
all be _taught_, but taught at the time when the need comes. Occasions
will certainly occur during play, but the chances of repetition are not
sufficient to count on.
Thus we summarise the chief business of the Nursery School teacher when
we say that it is concerned chiefly with habits and play and right
surroundings.
Play in the Transition Class is less informal. After the age of six
certain ambitions grow and must be satisfied. The aspects of life are
more separated, and concentration on individual ones is commoner; this
means more separation into subjects, and thus a child is more willing to
be organised, and to have his day to _some_ extent arranged for him.
While in the nursery class only what was absolutely necessary was fixed,
in the Transition Class it is convenient to fix rather more, for the
sake of establishing certain regular habits, and because it is necessary
to give the freshest hours to the work that requires most concentration.
We must remember, however, that it _is_ a transition class, and not set
up a completely fashioned time-table for the whole day. Reading and
arithmetic must be acquired both as knowledge and skill, the mother
tongue requires definite practice, there must be a time for physical
activity, and living things must not be attended to spasmodically.
Therefore it seems best that these things be taken in the morning hours,
while the afternoon is still a time for free choice of activity.
The following is a plan for the Transition Class, showing the bridge
between absolute freedom and a fully organised time-table--
MORNING. AFTERNOON.
Monday |Nature |Reading |Stories from |Organised games and
|work. |and Number.|Scripture or other |handwork.
---------|Care |-----------|literature, and |-----------------------
Tuesday |of the |Reading |stories of social |Music and handwork.
|room. |and Number.|life; music and |
---------|Nature |-----------|singing; industrial|-----------------------
Wednesday|chart |Reading |activities such as |Excursion or handwork.
|and |and Number.|solving puzzles, |
---------|General|-----------|playing games of |-----------------------
Thursday |talk. |Reading |skill, looking at |Dramatic representation
| |and Number.|pictures, arranging|including preparations.
---------| |-----------|collections. |-----------------------
Friday | |Reading | |Gardening or handwork.
| |and Number.| |
Granting this arrangement we must be clear how play as a method can
still hold.
It does not hold in the informal incidental sense of the Nursery School:
there are periods in the Transition Class when the children know that
they are working for a definite purpose which is not direct play--as in
reading; and there are times when they are dissatisfied with their
performances of skill and ask to be shown a better way, and voluntarily
practise to secure the end, as in handwork, arithmetic and some kinds of
physical games. The remainder is probably still pursued for its own
sake. How then can this play spirit be maintained side by side with
work?
First of all, the children should not be required to do anything without
having behind it a purpose that appeals to them; it may not be the
ultimate purpose of "their good," but a secondary reason may be given to
which they will respond readily, generally the pretence reason.
Arithmetic to the ordinary person is a thing of real life; we count
chiefly in connection with money, with making things, with distributing
things, or with arranging things, and we count carefully when we keep
scores in games; in adult life we seldom or never count or perform
arithmetical operations for sheer pleasure in the activity, but there
are many children who do so in the same spirit as we play patience or
chess. And all this is our basis. The arithmetical activities in the
Transition Class should therefore be based on such everyday experiences
as have been mentioned, else there will be no associations made between
the experiences of school and those of life outside. The two must merge.
There is no such thing as arithmetic pure and simple for children unless
they seek it; they must play at real life, and the real life that they
are now capable of appreciating.
Skill in calculation, accuracy and quickness can be acquired by a kind
of practice that children are quite ready for, if it comes when they
realise the need; most children feel that their power to score for games
is often too slow and inaccurate; as store clerks they are uncertain in
their calculations; they will be willing to practise quick additions,
subtractions, multiplications and divisions, in pure arithmetical form,
if the pretence purpose is clearly in view, which to them is a real
purpose; the same thing occurs in writing which should be considered a
side issue of reading; meaningless words or sentences are written
wearily and without pains, but to write the name of a picture you have
painted, at the bottom of it, or to write something that Cinderella's
Godmother said, or bit by bit to write a letter, will be having a
purpose that gives life to an apparently meaningless act, and
thoroughness to the effort.
In handwork, too, at this stage, practice takes an important place: a
child is willing to hem, to try certain brush strokes, to cut evenly,
and later on to use his cardboard knife to effect for the sake of a
future result if he has already experimented freely. This is in full
harmony with the spirit of play, when we think of the practiced
"strokes" and "throws" of the later games, but it is a more advanced
quality of play, because there is the beginning of a purpose which is
separated from immediate pleasure in the activity, there is the hint of
an end in view though it is a child's end, and not the adult or economic
one.
The training of the mother tongue can be made very effective by means
of games: in the days when children's parties were simple, and family
life was united, language games in the long dark evenings gave to many a
grip of words and expressions. Children learnt to describe accurately,
to be very fastidious in choice of words, to ask direct questions, to
give verbal form to thought, all through the stress of such games--Man
and his Shadow, Clumps, Subject and Object, Russian Scandal, the
Minister's Cat, I see a Light, Charades, and acting of all kinds. No
number of picture talks, oral compositions, or observations can compete
in real value with these games, because behind them was a purpose or
need for language that compelled the greatest efforts.
Physical development and its adjustment to mental control owes its
greatest stimulus to games. When physical strength, speed, or nimble
adjustability is the pivot upon which the game depends, special muscles
are made subservient to will: behind the game there is the stimulus of
strong emotion, and here is the greatest factor in establishing
permanent associations between body and mind; psychologists see in many
of these games of physical activity the evolution of the race: drill
pure and simple has its place partly in the same sense as "practice" in
number or handwork, and partly as a corrective to our fallacious system
of education by listening, instead of by activity: and we cannot in a
lifetime acquire the powers of the race except by concentrated practice.
But no amount of drill can give the all-round experience necessary for
physical readiness for an emergency, physical and mental power to
endure, active co-operation, where self-control holds in check ambitious
personal impulses: and no drill seems to give grace and beauty of motion
that the natural activity of dancing can give. It is through the games
that British children inherit, and by means of which they have
unconsciously rehearsed many of the situations of life, that they have
been able to take their place readily in the life of the nation and even
to help to save it. Again, as in other directions, children must be made
to play the game in its thoroughness, for a well-played game gives the
right balance to the activities: drill is more specialised, and has
specialisation for its end: a game calls on the whole of an individual:
he must be alert mentally and physically; and at the same time the sense
of fairness cannot be too strongly insisted on; no game can be tolerated
as part of education where there is looseness in this direction, from
the skittles of the nursery class to the cricket and hockey of the
seventh standard, and nothing will so entirely outrage the children's
feelings as a teacher's careless arbitration. In physical games, too,
the social side is strongly developed: leadership, self-effacement and
co-operation are more valuable lessons of experience than fluent reading
or neat writing or accurate additions: but they have not counted as such
in our economic system of education; they have taken their chance: few
inspectors ask to see whether children know how to "play the game," and
yet they are so soon to play the independent game of life. But the
individual output of reading and sums of a sneaking and cowardly, or
assertive and selfish child, is as good probably as that of a child that
has the makings of a hero in him. And then we wonder at the propensities
of the "lower classes." It is because we have never made sure that they
can play the game.
To summarise: play in the Nursery School stage is unorganised, informal,
and pursued with no motive but pleasure in the activity itself; it is
mainly individual. Play in the Transition Class is more definitely in
the form of games, _i.e._ organised play, efforts of skill, mental or
physical; it becomes social. Play in the Junior School is almost an
occasional method, because the work motive is by this time getting
stronger.