THE UNITY OF EXPERIENCE
"We find in the child's spontaneous choice the nature of the
surroundings and of the activities he craves for; in other
words, he makes his own curriculum, and selects his own
subject matter."
The next problem we have to solve is how to unify the bewildering
variety of ideas and activities that a child seeks contact with during a
day. We found that the curriculum of the Infant School of to-day
presented a rather confusing variety of ideas, not necessarily arranged
as the children would have chosen; they would certainly not have chosen
to break off some intense interest, because an arbitrary timetable
hurried them to something else, and they would have been right. If we
asked the children their reasons for choosing, we would find no clue
except that they chose what they wanted to, neither could they tell us
why they spent so much more time over one thing than another. If a
similar study were to be made of a child from a slum also free to
arrange his day, we should find that while certain general features were
the same others would be different: he would ask for different stories,
probably play different games, or the same games in a different way, his
back-yard would present different aspects, the things he made would be
different.
It is evident that the old correlation method has little or nothing to
do with the matter; a child may or may not draw the rabbit he feeds, he
certainly does not play a rabbit game because of the rabbit he has fed,
nor does he build a rabbit-hutch with his bricks. He might try to make a
real one if the rabbit really needed it, but that arises out of an
obvious necessity. If he could put his unconscious promptings into
words, he would say he did the things because he wanted to, because
somebody else did them, or because of something he saw yesterday, and so
on; but he would always refer back to _himself_. The central link in
each case is in the child, with his special store of experiences derived
from his own particular surroundings; he brings to new experiences his
store of present experiences, his interests not always satisfied, his
powers variously used, he interprets the new by these, and seeks for
more in the line of the old. It is life he has experienced, and he seeks
for more life.
How then can we secure for him that the new experiences presented to him
in school will be in line with the old? We will take three typical cases
of children to illustrate the real nature of this problem.
The first is the case of a child living in a very poor district of
London or of any large town. The school is presumably situated in a
narrow street running off the High Street of the district, the street
where all the shopping is done; at the corner is a hide factory with an
evil smell. Most of the dwelling-houses abut on the pavement, some with
a very small yard behind, some without any. Several families live in one
house, and often one room is all a family can afford; as that has to be
paid for in advance the family address may change frequently. The father
may be a dock labourer with uncertain pay, a coster, a rag and bone
merchant, or he may follow some unskilled occupation of a similarly
precarious nature; in consequence the mother has frequently to do daily
work, the home is locked up till evening, and she often leaves before
the children start for morning school. It is a curious but very common
fact that, free though these children are, they know only a very small
radius around their own homes. They are accustomed to be sent shopping
into High Street, where household stores are bought in pennyworths or
twopennyworths, owing to uncertain finance and no storage accommodation.
Generally there is one tap and one sink in the basement for the needs of
all the families in the house. There is usually a park somewhere within
reach, but it may be a mile away; in it would, at least, be trees, a
pond, grass, flowers. But an excursion there, unless it is undertaken by
the school, can only be hoped for on a fine Bank Holiday; there is
neither time nor money to go on a Saturday, and Sunday cannot be said to
begin till dinner-time, about 3 P.M., when the public-houses close, and
the father comes home to dinner.
It is difficult to imagine the conversation of such a household; family
life exists only on Sunday at dinner-time; the child's background of
family life is a room which is at once a bedroom, living room and
laundry. There is nearly always some part of a meal on the table, and
some washing hanging up. Outside there are the dingy street, the crowded
shops, the pavement to play on, and both outside and in, the bleaker and
more sordid aspects of life, sometimes miserable, sometimes exciting. On
Saturday night the lights are brilliant and life is at least intense.
Bed is a very crowded affair, in which many half-undressed children
sleep covered with the remainder of the day's wardrobe.
What store of experiences does a child from such a neighbourhood bring
to school, to be assimilated with the new experiences provided there?
What do such terms as home, dinner, bed, bath, birth, death, country,
mean to him? They mean _something_.[34]
[Footnote 34: See _Child Life_, October 1916.]
Not a mile away we may come to a very respectable suburb of the average
type; and what is said of it may apply in some degree to a provincial
or country town or, at least, the application can easily be made. The
school probably stands at the top corner of a road of houses rented, at
£25 to £35 per annum, with gardens in front and behind. The road
generally runs into a main road with shops and traffic. Here and there
in the residential road are little oases of shops, patronised by the
neighbourhood, and some of the children may live over these. The home
life is more ordinary and needs less descriptive detail, but there are
some features that must be considered. The decencies, not to say
refinements of eating, sleeping and washing are taken for granted: there
is often a bath-room and always a kitchen. The father's occupation may
be local, but a good many fathers will go to town; there is generally a
family holiday to the sea, or less often to the country. In the house
the degree of refinement varies; there are nearly always pictures of a
sort, books of a sort, and the children are supplied with toys of a
sort. They visit each other's houses, and the observances of social life
are kept variously. Often the horizon is very narrow; the mother's
interest is very local and timid; the father's business life may be
absolutely apart from his home life and never mentioned there. The
family conversation while quite amiable and agreeable may be round very
few topics, and the vocabulary, while quite respectable, may be most
limited. Children's questions may be put aside as either trivial or
unsuitable. In one sense the slum child may be said to have a broader
background, the realities of life are bare to him on their most sordid
side, there is neither mystery nor beauty around life, or death, or the
natural affections. The suburban child may on the contrary be balked and
restricted so that unnecessary mystery gives an unwholesome interest to
these things and conventionality a dishonest reserve.
A suburb of this type is described by Beresford in _Housemates_:--"In
such districts (as Gospel Oak) I am depressed by the flatness of an
awful monotony. The slums vex me far less. There I find adventure and
jest whatever the squalor; the marks of the primitive struggle through
dirt and darkness towards release. Those horrible lines of moody,
complacent streets represent not struggle, but the achievement of a
worthless aspiration. The houses, with their deadly similarity, their
smug, false exteriors, their conformity to an ideal which is typified by
their poor imitative decoration, could only be inhabited by people who
have no thought or desire for expression.... The dwellers in such
districts are cramped into the vice of their environment. Their homes
represent the dull concession to a state rule; and their lives take tone
from the grey, smoke-grimed repetition of one endlessly repeated design.
The same foolish ornamentation on every house reiterates the same
suggestion. Their places of worship, the blank chapels and pseudo-Gothic
churches rear themselves head and shoulders above the dull level, only
to repeat the same threat of obedience to a gloomy law.... The thought
of Gospel Oak and its like is the thought of imitation, of imitation
falling back and becoming stereotyped, until the meaning of the thing so
persistently copied has been lost and forgotten."
A third case is that of the country child, the child who attends the
village school. Many villages lie several miles from a railway station,
so that the younger children may not see a railway train more than once
or twice a year. The fathers may be engaged in village trades, such as a
shoemaker, carpenter, gardener, general shop merchant, farm labourer, or
farmer. The village houses are often cramped and small, but there is
wholesome space outside, and generally a good garden which supplies some
of the family food; milk and eggs are easily obtainable, and conditions
of living are seldom as crowded as in a town. The country children see
more of life in complete miniature than the slum or the suburban child
can do, for the whole life of the village lies before him. The school
is generally in the centre, with a good playground, and of late years a
good school garden is frequent. The village church, generally old, is
another centre of life, and there is at least the vicarage to give a
type of life under different social conditions.
The home intellectual background may vary, but on the whole cannot be
reckoned on very much; though in some ways it is more narrow than the
suburban one, it is often less superficial. In a different way from the
slum child, but none the less definitely, the country child comes face
to face with the realities of life, in a more natural and desirable way
than either of the others. It is difficult to estimate some of the
effects of living in the midst of real nature on children;
unconsciously, they acquire much deep knowledge impossible to learn
through nature study, however good, a kind of knowledge that is part of
their being; but how far it affects them emotionally or enters into
their scheme of life, is hard to say. As they grow up much of it is
merely economic acquirement: if they are to work on the land, or rear
cattle, or drive a van through the country, it is all to the good; but
one thing is noticeable, that they take very quickly to such allurements
of town life as a cinema, or a picture paper or gramophone, and this
points to unsatisfied cravings of some sort, not necessarily so unworthy
or superficial as the means sought to satisfy them.
From these rather extreme cases we get near the solution of the problem;
it is quite evident that each of these children brings to school very
different contributions of experience on which to build, though their
general needs and interests are similar. Therefore the curriculum of the
school will depend on the general surroundings and circumstances of the
children, and all programmes of work and many questions of organisation
will be built on this. The model programme so dear to some teachers must
be banished, as a doctor would banish a general prescription; no honest
teacher can allow this part of her work to be done for her by any one
else.
Therefore the central point is the child's previous experience, and on
this the experience provided by school, _i.e._ curriculum and subject
matter, depends. One or two examples of the working out of this might
make the application clearer. Probably the realities of life in relation
to money differ greatly. The kind of problem presented to the poor town
child will deal with shopping in pennyworths or ounces, with getting
coals in pound bagfuls. Clothes are generally second-hand, and so
ordinary standard prices are out of the question. Bread is bought stale
and therefore cheaper, early in the morning. Preserved milk only is
bought, and that in halfpenny quantities. Only problems based on these
will be real to this child at first.
The suburban child's economic experience may be based on his
pocket-money, money in the bank, and the normal shopping of ordinary
life.
The country child is frequently very ignorant of money values; probably
it will be necessary to take the country general shop as the basis. He
could also begin to estimate the produce of the school garden.
THE NURSERY SCHOOL PROGRAMME
It is quite obvious from the nature of play at this stage that a
time-table is out of the question and in fact an outrage against nature.
Only for social convenience and for the establishment of certain
physical habits can there be fixed hours. There must be approximate
limits as to the times of arrival and departure, but nothing of the
nature of marking registers to record exact minutes. Little children
sometimes sleep late, or, on the other hand, the mothers may have to
leave home very early; all this must be allowed for. There should be
fixed times for meals and for sleep, and these should be rigidly
observed, and there should be regular times for the children to go to
the lavatories; all these establish regularity and self-control, as well
as improving general health. But anything in the nature of story
periods, games periods, handwork periods, only impedes the variously
developing children in their hunger for experiences.
Their curriculum is life as the teacher has spread it out before them;
there are no subjects at this stage; the various aspects ought to be of
the nature of a glorious feast to these young children. Traherne says in
the seventeenth century:--
"Will you see the infancy of this sublime and celestial greatness? Those
pure and virgin apprehensions I had in my infancy, and that divine light
wherewith I was born, are the best unto this day wherein I can see the
Universe.... Verily they form the greatest gift His wisdom can bestow,
for without them all other gifts had been dead and vain. They are
unattainable by books and therefore will I teach them by experience....
Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions
of the world than I when I was a child.
"All appeared new and strange at first, inexpressibly rare and
delightful and beautiful. I was a little stranger which at my entrance
into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys.... I
knew by intuition those things which since my apostasy I collected again
by the highest reason.... All things were spotless and pure and
glorious; yea, and infinitely mine, and joyful and precious.... I saw in
all the peace of Eden.... Is it not that an infant should be heir of the
whole world, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned
never unfold?
"The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped,
nor was ever sown. I thought it stood from everlasting to everlasting.
The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates
were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them
first through one of the gates transported and ravished me: ... the
skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the
world was mine: and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.... So that
with much ado I was corrupted and made to learn the dirty devices of
this world, which I now unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child
again that I may enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
If this is what life means to the young child, and Traherne only records
what many of us have forgotten there is little need for interference: we
can only spread the feast and stand aside to watch for opportunities.
The following extract is given from a teacher's note-book: it shows how
many possibilities open out to a teacher, and how impossible it is to
keep to a time-table, or even to try to name the activities. The
children concerned were about five years old, newly admitted to a poor
school in S.E. London. The records are selected from a continuous
period, and do not apply to one day:--
PLANS FOR THE DAY WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED
_Number Occupations._--This will The children played, freely
be entirely free and the children chalking most of the time; those
will choose their own toys and threading beads were most
put them away. interested. Again I noticed the
lack of idea of colour; I found
one new boy placing his sticks
according to colour, without
knowing the names of the colours.
The boys thought the soldiers
belonged to them, and laughed at
a little girl for choosing them.
_Language Training._--I have I realised this was a failure,
discovered that they love to for I asked the children to use
imitate sounds, so we will play their boards and chalks for a
at this. They could draw a cat definite drawing, and they should
and say "miauw," and a duck and have had the time to use them
say "quack." They could also freely and discover their use. I
imitate the wind. got very little information about
their vocabulary.
_Language Training_ (_another I found that many children
day_).--I shall try to induce the pronounced words so strangely
children to speak to me about their that I could only with difficulty
homes, in order to discover any recognise them. One said she
difficulties of pronunciation and had a "bresser" with "clates"
to make them more fluent. on it and "knies" Others spoke
of "manckle," "firebrace," "forts."
One child speaking of curly hair
called it "killeyer." We had no
time for the story.
_Playing with Toys._--The Noah's arks, dolls, and bricks
children will choose their own toys, were used, and I found that the
and as far as possible I will put girls who had no dolls at home
a child who knows how to use them were delighted to be able to dress
next to one who desires to sit and undress them and put them
still. to bed. One little girl walked
backwards and forwards before
the class getting her doll to
sleep; the boys were making a
noise with their arks and she
remarked on this, so we induced
them to be silent while the dolls
were put to sleep. The boys
arranged their animals in long
lines. The bricks were much more
carefully put away to-day.
THE TRANSITION AND THE JUNIOR SCHOOL PROGRAMME
Even after the Nursery School period much of the curriculum and subject
matter is in the hands of the children themselves, though the relative
proportions will vary according to the children's experiences. It is
pretty evident to the honest-minded teacher that the subjects are, in
school terms, nature work and elementary science, mathematics,
constructive and expressive work, literature, music, language, physical
exercise and religion. The business of the younger child is with real
things and activity, not with symbols and passivity, therefore he is not
really in need of reading, writing, or arithmetic. We hear arguments
from ambitious teachers that children are fond of reading lessons
because they enjoy the fantasies in which these lessons are wrapped, or
the efforts made by the teacher to create interest; we hear that
children ask to be taught to read; they also ask to be taught to drive a
tram or to cook a dinner; but it is all part of the pretence game of
playing at being grown up. They do not need to read while stories and
poetry can be told or read to them; they are not ready to make the
effort of working for a remote economic end, where there is no real
pleasure in the activity, and no opportunity of putting their powers to
use. No child under six wants to sit down and read, and it would be very
harmful if he did; his business is with real things and with his
vocabulary, which is not nearly ready to put into symbols yet. If
reading is delayed, hours of weary drudgery will be saved and energy
stored for more precious attainments.
Therefore in the transition class (_i.e._ children over six at lowest)
the only addition to the curriculum already set out for the nursery
class, would be arithmetic and reading, including writing. The other
differences would be in degree only. In the junior class (with children
over seven at lowest) a desire to know something of the doings of people
in other countries, to hear about other parts of our own land, will lead
to the beginnings of geography; while with this less imaginative and
more literal period comes the request for stories that are more verbally
true, and questions about origins, leading to the beginnings of history.
It is very much easier to give the general curriculum than to deal with
the choice of actual material, because that is involved largely with the
principle of the unity of experience, and, as we know, experiences vary.
The normal town and country child, and the abnormal child of poverty
have all certain human cravings in common, and these are provided for in
the aspects of life or subjects that have been named--but this is far
too general an application to be the end of the matter; each subject has
many sides to offer. There may be for example the pottery town, the
weaving town, the country town, the fishing town, the colliery town: in
the country there is the district of the dairy farmer, of the sheep
farmer, of the grain grower and miller, of the fruit farmer, of the hop
grower, and many districts may partake of more than one characteristic.
Perhaps the most curious anomaly of experience is that of the child of
the London slums who goes "hopping" into some of the loveliest parts of
Kent, in early autumn. And so in a general way at least the concentrated
experience of school must fill gaps and supply experiences that life has
not provided for.
One of the pottery towns in Staffordshire is built on very unfertile
clay; there are several potteries in the town belching out smoke, and,
in addition, rows of monotonous smoke-blackened houses; almost always a
yellow pall of smoke hangs over the whole district, and even where the
edge of the country might begin, the grass and trees are poor and
blackened, and distant views are seen through a haze. There are almost
no gardens in the town, and very little attempt has been made to
beautify it, because the results are so disappointing. Beauty,
therefore, in various forms must be a large part of the curriculum:
already design is a common interest in the pottery museums of the
district, and this could be made a motive for the older children; but in
the Junior and Nursery School pictures of natural beauty, wild flowers
if it is possible to get them, music, painting and drawing, and
literature should bulk largely enough to make a permanent impression on
the children. In a very remote country village where life seems to go
slowly, and days are long, children should be encouraged, by means of
the school influence, to make things that absorb thought and interest,
to tell and hear stories. Storytelling in the evening round the fire is
a habit of the past, and might well supply some of the cravings that
have to be satisfied by the "pictures." Most of us have to keep
ourselves well in hand when we listen to a recitation in much the same
way as when a slate pencil used to creak; it would be very much better
if the art of storytelling were cultivated at school, encouraged at
home, and applied to entertainments. Indeed the entertainments of a
village school, instead of being the unnatural and feverish production
of hours of overtime, might well be the ordinary outcome of work both at
school and at home--and thus a motive for leisure is naturally supplied
and probably a hobby initiated.
It is profitable sometimes to group the subjects of experience in order
to preserve balance. All getting of experience is active, but some kinds
more obviously than others. Undoubtedly in hearing stories and poetry,
in watching a snail or a bee, in listening to music, the activity is
mental rather than physical and assimilation of ideas is more direct; in
discovering experiences by means of construction, expression, experiment
or imitation, assimilation is less direct but often more permanent and
secure. Froebel discriminates between impression and expression, or
taking in and giving out, and although he constantly emphasised that the
child takes in by giving, it is convenient to recognise this
distinction. Another helpful grouping is the more objective one. Some
subjects refer more particularly to human conduct, the enlargement of
experiences of human beings, and the building up of the ideal: these are
literature, music, history and geography; others refer to life other
than that of human beings, commonly known as nature study and science;
others to the properties of inanimate things, and to questions
throughout all life of measurement, size and force--this is known as
mathematics; others of the life behind the material and the spiritual
world--this is known as religion.