EXPERIENCES OF THE LIFE OF MAN
This aspect of experience comes in two forms, the life of man in the
past, with the memorials and legacies he has left, and the life of man
in the present under the varying conditions of climate and all that it
involves. In other words these experiences are commonly known as history
and geography, though in the earlier stages of their appearance in
school it is perhaps better to call the work--preparation for history
and geography. They would naturally appear in the transition or the
junior class, preferably in the latter, but they need not be wholly new
subjects to a child; his literature has prepared him for both; to some
extent his experiments in handwork have prepared him for history, while
his nature work, especially his excursions and records, have prepared
him for geography. That he needs this extension of experience can be
seen in his growing demands for true stories, true in the more literal
sense which he is coming fast to appreciate; undoubtedly most children
pass through a stage of extreme literalism between early childhood and
what is generally recognised as boyhood and girlhood. They begin to ask
questions regarding the past, they are interested in things from
"abroad," however vague that term may be to them.
Perhaps it will be best to treat the two subjects separately, though
like all the child's curriculum at this stage they are inextricably
confused and mingled both with each other, and with literature, as
experiences of man's life and conduct.
The beginnings of geography lie in the child's foundations of
experience. Probably the first real contact, unconscious though it may
be, that any child has in this connection is through the production of
food and clothing. A country child sees some of the beginnings of both,
but it is doubtful how much of it is really interpreted by him; the
village shop with its inexhaustible stores probably means much more in
the way of origins, and he may never go behind its contents in his
speculations. It is true he sees milking, harvesting, sheep-shearing,
and many other operations, but he often misses the stage between the
actual beginning and the finished product--between the wool on the
sheep's back and his Sunday clothes, between the wheat in the field and
his loaf of bread. The town child has many links if he can use them: the
goods train, the docks, the grocer's, green-grocer's or draper's shop,
foreigners in the street, the vans that come through the silent streets
in the early morning; in big towns, such markets as Covent Garden or
Leadenhall or Smithfield; such a river as the Thames, Humber or
Mersey--from any one of these beginnings he can reach out from his own
small environment to the world. A town child has very confused notions
of what a farm really means to national life, and a country child of
what a big railway station or dock involves. All children need to know
what other parts of their own land look like, and what is produced; they
ought to trace the products within reach to their origin, and this will
involve descriptions of such things as fisheries at Hull or Aberdeen,
the coal mines of Wales or Lanarkshire, pottery districts of Stafford,
woollen and cotton factories of Yorkshire and Lancashire, mills driven
by steam, wind and water, lighthouses, the sheep-rearing districts of
Cumberland and Midlothian, the flax-growing of northern Ireland, and
much else, and the means of transit and communication between all these.
The children will gradually realise that many of the things they are
familiar with, such as tea, oranges, silk and sugar, have not been
accounted for, and this will take them to the lives of people in other
countries, the means of getting there, the time taken and mode of
travelling. They will also come to see that we do not produce enough of
the things that are possible to grow, such as wheat, apples, wool and
many other common necessaries, and that we can spare much that is
manufactured to countries that do not make them, such as boots, clothes,
china and cutlery. There will come a time when the need for a map is
apparent: that is the time to branch off from the main theme and make
one; it will have to be of the very immediate surroundings first, but it
is not difficult to make the leap soon to countries beyond. Previous to
the need for it, map-making is useless.
This working outwards from actual experiences, from the home country to
the foreign, from actual contact with real things to things of
travellers' tales, is the only way to bring geography to the very door
of the school, to make it part of the actual life.
The beginning of history, as of geography, lies in the child's
foundations of experience. In the country village he sees the church,
possibly some old cottages, or an Elizabethan or Jacobean house near; in
the churchyard or in the church the tombstones have quaint inscriptions
with reference possibly to past wars or to early colonisation. The slum
child on the other hand sees much that is worn out, but little that is
antiquated, unless the slum happen to be in such places as Edinburgh or
Deptford, situated among the remains of really fine houses: but he
realises more of the technicalities and officialism of a social system
than does the country child; the suburban child has probably the
scantiest store of all; his district is presumably made up of rows of
respectable but monotonous houses, and the social life is similarly
respectable and monotonous.
There are certain cravings, interests and needs, common to all children,
which come regardless of surroundings. All children want to know certain
things about people who lived before them, not so much their great
doings as their smaller ones; they want to know what these people were
like, what they worked at, and learnt, how they travelled, what they
bought and sold: and there is undoubtedly a primitive strain in all
children that comes out in their love of building shelters, playing at
savages, and making things out of natural material. One of the most
intense moments in _Peter Pan_ to many children is the building of the
little house in the wood, and later on, of the other on the top of the
trees: that is the little house of their dreams. They are not interested
in constitutions or the making of laws; wars and invasions have much the
same kind of interest for them as the adventures of Una and the Red
Cross Knight.
How are these cravings usually satisfied in the early stages of history
teaching of to-day? As a rule a series of biographies of notable people
is given, regardless of chronology, or the children's previous
experiences, and equally careless of the history lessons of the future;
Joan of Arc, Alfred and the Cakes, Gordon of Khartoum, Boadicea,
Christopher Columbus, Julius Caesar, form a list which is not at all
uncommon; there is no leading thread, no developing idea, and the old
test, "the children like it," excuses indolent thinking. On the other
hand, the desire to know more of the Robinson Crusoe mode of life has
been apparent to many teachers for some time, but the material at their
disposal has been scanty and uncertain. It is to Prof. Dewey that we owe
the right organisation of this part of history. He has shown that it is
on the side of industry, the early modes of weaving, cooking, lighting
and heating, making implements for war and for hunting, and making of
shelters, that prehistoric man has a real contribution to give: but for
the beginnings of social life, for realisation of such imperishable
virtues as courage, patriotism and self-sacrifice, children must go to
the lives of real people and gradually acquire the idea that certain
things are, so to speak, from "everlasting to everlasting," while others
change with changing and growing circumstances.
The prehistoric history should be largely concerned with doing and
experimenting, with making weapons, or firing clay, or weaving rushes,
or with visits to such museums as Horniman's at Forest Hill. The early
social history may well take the form best suited to the child, and not
appeal merely to surface interest. And the spirit in which the lives of
other people are presented to children must not be the narrow,
prejudiced, insular one, so long associated with the people of Great
Britain, which calls other customs, dress, modes of: living, "funny" or
"absurd" or "extraordinary," but rather the scientific spirit that
interprets life according to its conditions and so builds up one of its
greatest laws, the law of environment.
The geography syllabus, even more than the history one, depends for its
beginnings at least on the surroundings of the school--out of the mass
of possible materials a very rich and comprehensive syllabus can be
made, beginning with any one of the central points already suggested.
Above all there should be plenty of pictures, not as amplification, but
as material, by means of which a child may interpret more fully; a
picture should be of the nature of a problem or of a map--and picture
reading should be in the junior school what map reading is in the upper
school.
In both history and geography the method is partly that of discovery;
especially is this the case in that part of history which deals with
primitive industries, and in almost the whole of the geography of this
period. The teacher is the guide or leader in discovery, not the
story-teller merely, though this may be part of his function.
The following is a small part of a syllabus to show how geography and
history material may grow naturally out of the children's experiences.
It is meant in this case for children in a London suburb, with no
particular characteristics:--
GEOGRAPHY
It grows out of the shops of the neighbourhood and the adjoining railway
system.
_Home-produced Goods_--
A. The green-grocer's shop.
Tracing of fruit to its own home source, or to a foreign country.
Home-grown fruit. The fruit farm, garden, orchard, and wood.
The packing and sending of fruit.--Railway lines.
Covent Garden; the docks; fruit stalls; jam factories.
B. A grocer's or corn-chandler's shop.
Flour and oatmeal traced to their sources.
The farm. A wheat and grain farm at different seasons. A dairy farm
and a sheep farm.
A mill and its processes.
Woollen factories.
A dairy. Making of butter and cheese
Distribution of these goods.
C. A china shop, leading to the pottery district and making of pottery.
_Foreign Goods_--
Furs--Red Indians and Canada.
Dates--The Arabs and the Sahara.
Cotton--The Negroes and equatorial regions.
Cocoa--The West Indies.
The transit of these, their arrival and distribution.
[The need for a map will come early in the first part of the course, and
the need for a globe in the second.]
HISTORY
This grows naturally out of the geography syllabus and might be taken
side by side or afterwards.
The development of industries.
The growth of spinning and weaving from the simplest processes, bringing
in the distaff, spinning-wheel, and loom.
The making of garments from the joining together of furs.
The growth of pottery and the development of cooking.
The growth of roads and means of transit.
[This will involve a good deal of experimental and constructive handwork.]