AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION AS NATURAL DEVELOPMENT
Rousseau’s teaching that education is a process of natural growth
has influenced most theorizing upon education since his time. It has
influenced the practical details of school work to a less degree.
Occasionally, however, experimenters have based their plans upon his
principles. Among these experiments is one conducted by Mrs. Johnson
at Fairhope, Alabama. To this spot during the past few years students
and experts have made pilgrimages, and the influence of Mrs. Johnson’s
model has led to the starting of similar schools in different parts of
the United States. Mrs. Johnson carries on a summer course for training
teachers by giving a working object lesson in her ideas at Greenwich,
Connecticut, where a school for children has been conducted as a model.
Her main underlying principle is Rousseau’s central idea; namely:
The child is best prepared for life as an adult by experiencing in
childhood what has meaning to him as a child; and, further, the child
has a right to enjoy his childhood. Because he is a growing animal who
must develop so as to live successfully in the grown-up world, nothing
should be done to interfere with growth, and everything should be done
to further the full and free development of his body and his mind.
These two developments go on together; they are inseparable processes
and must both be constantly borne in mind as of equal importance.
Mrs. Johnson criticizes the conventional school of to-day. She says
it is arranged to make things easy for the teacher who wishes quick
and tangible results; that it disregards the full development of
the pupils. It is arranged on the fatal plan of a hothouse, forcing
to a sterile show, rather than fostering all-around growth. It does
not foster an individuality capable of an enduring resistance and of
creative activities. It disregards the _present_ needs of the child;
the fact that he is living a full life each year and hour, not waiting
to live in some period defined by his elders, when school is a thing
of the past. The distaste of children for school is a natural and
necessary result of such mistakes as these. Nature has not adapted the
young animal to the narrow desk, the crowded curriculum, the silent
absorption of complicated facts. His very life and growth depend upon
motion, yet the school forces him into a cramped position for hours at
a time, so that the teacher may be sure he is listening or studying
books. Short periods of exercise are allowed as a bribe to keep him
quiet the rest of the time, but these relaxations do not compensate
for the efforts which he must make. The child is eager to move both
mentally and physically. Just as the physical growth must progress
together with the mental, so it is in the separate acts of a child. His
bodily movements and his mental awakening are mutually dependent upon
each other.
It is not enough to state this principle without carrying its proof
into practice, says Mrs. Johnson. The child with the well-nourished,
active body is the child who is most anxious to do and to know things.
The need of activity must be met in the exercise of the school, hour by
hour; the child must be allowed to move about both in work and in play,
to imitate and to discover for himself. The world of objects around him
is an unexplored hemisphere to the child even at the age of six years,
a world constantly enlarging to his small vision as his activities
carry him further and further in his investigations, a world by no
means so commonplace to him as to the adult. Therefore, let the child,
while his muscles are soft and his mind susceptible, look for himself
at the world of things both natural and artificial, which is for him
the source of knowledge.
Instead of providing this chance for growth and discovery, the ordinary
school impresses the little one into a narrow area, into a melancholy
silence, into a forced attitude of mind and body, till his curiosity is
dulled into surprise at the strange things happening to him. Very soon
his body is tired of his task and he begins to find ways of evading
his teacher, to look about him for an escape from his little prison.
This means that he becomes restless and impatient, in the language of
the school, that he loses interest in the small tasks set for him and
consequently in that new world so alluring a little while ago. The
disease of indifference has attacked his sensitive soul, before he is
fairly started on the road to knowledge.
The reason for having a school where children work together is that
the child must learn to work with others. Granting this, Mrs. Johnson
has tried to find a plan giving the utmost liberty of individual
development. Because the young child is unfitted by reason of his soft
muscles and his immature senses to the hard task of settling down to
fine work on the details of things, he should not begin school life by
learning to read and write, nor by learning to handle small playthings
or tools. He must continue the natural course he began at home of
running from one interesting object to another, of inquiring into the
meaning of these objects, and above all of tracing the relation between
the different objects. All this must be done in a large way so that
he gets the names and bearings of the obvious facts as they appear in
their order. Thus the obscure and difficult facts come to light one
after another without being forced upon the child’s attention by the
teacher. One discovery leads to another, and the interest of pursuit
leads the child of his own accord into investigations that often amount
to severe intellectual discipline.
Following this path of natural growth, the child is led into reading,
writing, arithmetic, geography, etc., by his own desire to know. We
must wait for the desire of the child, for the consciousness of need,
says Mrs. Johnson; then we must promptly supply the means to satisfy
the child’s desire. Therefore, the age of learning to read is put off
until the child is well grounded in his experience and knowledge of
the larger relations of things. Mrs. Johnson goes so far as to prevent
children from learning to read at too early an age. At eight or nine
years, she thinks they are keen to explore books just as they have
previously explored things. By this time they recognize the need and
use of the information contained in books; they have found out they can
get this information in no other way. Hence, the actual learning to
read is hardly a problem; children teach themselves. Under the stimulus
of interest in arriving at the knowledge of some particular subject,
they overcome the mechanical difficulty of reading with ease and
rapidity. Reading is not to them an isolated exercise; it is a means of
acquiring a much-desired object. Like climbing the pantry shelves, its
difficulties and dangers are lost sight of in the absorbing desire to
satisfy the mental appetite.
Each of the subjects of the curriculum should be given to the child to
meet a demand on his part for a greater knowledge of relations than
he can get from studying objects. Arithmetic and abstract notions
represented by figures are meaningless to the child of six, but numbers
as a part of the things he is playing with or using every day are so
full of meaning that he soon finds he cannot get along without a
knowledge of them.
Mrs. Johnson is trying an experiment under conditions which hold in
public schools, and she believes that her methods are feasible for any
public school system. She charges practically no tuition, and any child
is welcome. She calls her methods of education “organic” because they
follow the natural growth of the pupil. The school aims to provide for
the child the occupations and activities necessary at each stage of
development for his unfolding at that stage. Therefore, she insists
that general development instead of the amount of information acquired,
shall control the classification of the pupils. Division into groups is
made where it is found that the children naturally divide themselves.
These groups are called “Life Classes” instead of grades. The first
life class ends between the eighth and ninth years; the second between
the eleventh and twelfth, and since an even more marked change of
interests and tastes occurs at the period of adolescence, there are
distinct high-school classes. The work within the group is then
arranged to give the pupils the experiences which are needed at that
age for the development of their bodies, minds, and spirits.
Doing forced tasks, assignment of lessons to study, and ordinary
examinations have no share in the Fairhope curriculum. Hence, the
children do not acquire that dislike of learning and mistrust of what
a teacher or text-book says, which are unfortunately so common among
scholars in the ordinary school. They exercise their instincts to learn
naturally, without that self-consciousness which comes from having been
forced to keep their minds on examinations and promotions.
Bright and intelligent children often acquire a distaste for the
schoolroom and what comes out of it, which they not only never wholly
outgrow but which is a real handicap to them as they grow up, often
preventing them from taking their college work seriously, and making
them suspicious of all ideas not actually deduced from their own
experience outside the classroom. Perhaps they grow so docile they
acquiesce in all authoritative statements whatsoever, and lose their
sense of reality. We tell our children that books are the storehouses
of the world, and that they contain the heritage of the past without
which we would be savages; then we teach them so that they hate books
of information and discount what a teacher tells them. Incompetency
is general not because people are not instructed enough as children,
but because they cannot and do not make any use of what they learn.
The extent to which this is due to an early mistrust of school and the
learning associated with it cannot be overstated.
The students at Fairhope will never have this handicap to contend with.
They are uniformly happy in school, and enthusiastically proclaim
their “love” for it. Not only is the work interesting to the group
as a whole, but no individual child is forced to a task that does
not appeal; each pupil may do as he pleases as long as he does not
interfere with any one else. The children are not freed, however,
from all discipline. They must keep at work while they are in school,
and learn not to bother their neighbors, as well as to help them when
necessary. Caprice or laziness does not excuse a child from following a
healthy or useful régime.
Mrs. Johnson feels that children in their early years are neither moral
nor immoral, but simply unmoral; their sense of right and wrong has
not yet begun to develop. Therefore, they should be allowed as much
freedom as possible; prohibitions and commands, the result of which
either upon themselves or their companions they cannot understand, are
bound to be meaningless; their tendency is to make the child secretive
and deceitful. Give a child plenty of healthy activity. When he must
be disciplined, do not appeal to a sense which he has not got, but
show him by a little pain if necessary what his naughty act meant to
his playmate. If he is to share in fun and good things with his family
and friends, he must behave so that they will want his company. This
is a motive which a young child can understand, for he knows when his
friends are agreeable or disagreeable to him. There is less in such a
scheme of discipline that impels the child to shirk or conceal, to lie
or to become too conscious of his acts, than in a discipline based on
moral grounds, which seems to the child to be a mere excuse for forcing
him to do something simply because some grown person wants it done.
Lack of self-consciousness is a positive gain on the side of happiness.
Mrs. Johnson’s scheme of discipline contributes toward that love
of school and work which all teaching aims to establish. When work
is interesting, it is not necessary to hamper children in their
performance of it by meaningless restrictions and petty prohibitions.
When children work willingly they come to associate learning with the
doing of what is congenial. This is undoubtedly of positive moral
value. It helps develop a confident, cheerful attitude toward work; an
ability to face a task without dislike or repulsion, which is of more
real value in character building than doing hard, distasteful tasks, or
forcing attention and obedience.
The division into age groups or “life classes” takes away that emphasis
upon the pupils’ failures and shortcomings which is bound to be more
or less evident where pupils are graded according to their proficiency
in books. The child who is slow mentally is not made to feel that he
is disgraced. Attention is not called to him and he is not prodded,
scolded, or “flunked.” Unaware of his own weaknesses, he retains the
moral support of confidence in himself; and his hand work and physical
accomplishments frequently give him prestige among his fellows. Mrs.
Johnson believes that the recitations and examination of the ordinary
schoolroom are merely devices to make the work easier for the teacher;
while the consciousness of what he does or does not “know,” resulting
from marks and grades, is harmful to the child just as an emphasis of
his failures is harmful.
Especially marked is the contrast of the classroom exercises at
Fairhope with recitations where, sitting still with their books closed,
the children are subject to a fire of questions from the teacher
to find out how much they remember of a lesson they are supposed to
have “studied” alone. To quote again from Rousseau: “He (the teacher)
makes a point of showing that no time has been wasted; he provides his
pupils with goods that can be readily displayed in the shop windows,
accomplishments which can be shown off at will.... If the child is
to be examined, he is set to display his wares; he spreads them out;
satisfies those who behold them, packs up his bundle, and goes his
way. Too many questions are tedious and revolting to most of us and
especially to children. After a few minutes their attention flags;
they cease to listen to your everlasting questions and they answer
at random.” At Fairhope the children do the work, and the teacher
is there to help them to know, not to have them give back what they
have memorized. Tests are often conducted with books open, since they
are not to show the teacher what the child can remember, but rather
to discover his progress in ability to use books. Lessons are not
assigned, but the books are open in the hands of the pupils and with
the teacher they discuss the text, getting out of it all the joy
and information possible. This stimulates a real love of books, so
that these children who have never been assigned a lesson to study,
voluntarily study the text after the class work. They are not tempted
to cheat, for they are not put in the position of having to show off.
The result of this system of discipline and study over and
above satisfactory progress in the “three R’s,” is freedom from
self-consciousness on the mental and moral side; the ability of a
child to put all his native initiative and enthusiasm into his work;
the power to indulge his natural desire to learn; thus preserving joy
in life and a confidence in himself which liberates all his energies
for his work. He likes school and forgets that he is “learning”; for
learning comes unconsciously as a by-product of experiences which he
recognizes as worth while on their own account.
The following activities have been worked out at Fairhope as a
substitute for the usual curriculum: physical exercise, nature study,
music, hand work, field geography, story telling, sense culture,
fundamental conceptions of number, dramatizations, and games. In the
second class map drawing and descriptive geography are added, for
reading is acquired, and the number work is modified by the knowledge
of figures. Each lesson is planned as a concrete experience with a
definite end in view, appealing to the child as desirable. As would be
expected from the emphasis put upon following the development of the
child, physical exercise plays an important part in the day’s work. It
comes every day, during the regular school hours and usually in the
first part of the morning while the children are fresh and energetic.
For an hour the school is outdoors in a field the children call “the
gym.” Bars, horses, etc., are scattered about, and there is some
one there to help them try new things and see that the work is well
balanced, but formal gymnastics in the accepted meaning of the term
do not exist. Mrs. Johnson believes that the distaste of children is
sufficient reason for doing away with them, and that, since the growing
child is constantly seeking of his own accord opportunities to stretch
and exercise his muscles, all the school needs to do is to supply the
opportunity, seeing to it that this is not indulged to the point of
harming the child. The children fall naturally into groups; those who
want to swing on the bars and rings, those who want to climb, to jump,
or run, or throw, etc. Running usually takes the form of races; a
tree is used as a target in the stone throwing contests. The children
themselves have invented games to use on the apparatus, and the hour
in the “gym” is one of the busiest in the day. It leaves the
children eager and stimulated for their mental work, since it has meant
no overworking of one set of muscles, no dull repetition of meaningless
movements at some one else’s command. Besides this regular time for
exercise, the children may study outdoors, and many of the classes
are conducted in the open air. Indoors there are games, handwork, and
dramatizations, all of which contribute to the physical well-being of
the children. There are no cramping desks, the pupil may sit where or
how he pleases, or even move from place to place if he does not disturb
his fellows. The classes go on in a room in which two groups, each of
fifteen or more children, are working, and the necessary quiet and
order exist.
[Illustration: (1) An hour a day spent in the “Gym.”]
[Illustration: (2) The Gully is a favorite textbook. (Fairhope, Ala.)]
Nature study and field geography are conducted almost entirely out of
doors. The children go into the fields and woods and look at the trees
and flowers, ask questions about them, examine the differences in bark,
leaves, and flowers, tell each other what they think, and use their
books to answer questions that the trees and plants have suggested
to them. They learn the meaning of the words pistils, stamens, and
petals with flowers they have gathered, or watch a bee carrying
pollen from plant to plant. Individual pupils are encouraged to tell
the class what they may have learned at home, to bring flowers from
their gardens, or to tell of things they have seen. The class visit a
neighboring truck farm, recognize as many vegetables as they can, and
learn the names and characteristics of the new ones. When they are
back in the schoolroom those that can write make a list of all the
vegetables they can remember, thus combining with their nature lesson
a lesson in writing. There is a garden in the school grounds where the
pupils learn to plow, rake, and plant, watch their seeds come up and
grow and flower. In a little plot of ground that is their own, they
observe all the phases in the cycle of plant life, and besides get
the benefits of the moral training that comes from carrying through a
piece of work that lasts several months and demands constant thought
and care. This sort of work plays a large part in the curriculum of the
younger children, for it seems to belong particularly to their world;
to the world of definite concrete objects which they see about them
every day, which they can handle and play with, and which consequently
arouse their curiosity.
The field geography is conducted in much the same way. Even the very
young children acquire a good idea of the different sorts of rock
formations, of the action of the wind and rain, of river currents,
by direct observation; if text-books are used they come afterwards,
to explain or amplify something the pupils have seen. The soil about
the school is clay and after a rain the smallest stream furnishes
excellent examples of the ways of rivers, erosions, watersheds, floods,
or changing currents, while an explanation of tides or the Gulf Stream
is made vital by a little trip to the Bay. A gully near the school
building not only furnishes a splendid place for play but serves as a
text-book in mountain ranges, valleys, and soil and rock formation.
All this serves as an excellent foundation and illustration for the
descriptive geography which comes later. The more advanced geography is
principally commercial geography; and with the scientific background
that the pupils have already obtained, the real significance of the
relations between climates and crops, industries, exports and imports,
and social conditions is much more likely to be understood.
The value of handwork is strongly emphasized at Fairhope, consistently
with the emphasis put on physical growth. The little child must go on
learning to coördinate with more and more skill his muscular movements
if his body is to be developed to the highest standards of health and
efficiency, and nothing contributes to this better than the controlled
and rather delicate motions necessary for making things with the hands.
The fact that he is making things gives just the stimulus the child
needs to enable him to keep on at the task, to repeat over and over
the same efforts of mind, hand, and eye, to give him real control of
himself in the process. The benefits of handwork on the utilitarian
side are just as great. The child learns how to use the ordinary tools
of life, the scissors, knife, needle, plane, and saw, and gets an
appreciation of the artists’ tools, paint and clays, which lasts the
rest of his life. If he is a child with initiative and inventiveness
he finds a natural and pleasant outlet for his energies. If he is
dreamy or unpractical, he learns a respect for manual work, and gains
something toward becoming a well-rounded human being. Boys and girls
alike do cooking and carpentry work, for the object of the work is not
to train them for any trade or profession, but to train them to be
capable, happy members of society. Painting or clay modeling play quite
as large a rôle, even with the little ones, as carpentry or sewing,
providing they serve a purpose or are sufficiently connected with
other work to hold the pupil’s interest. A sense of the beautiful is
not consciously present in small children and must be developed through
their handling of every-day objects if it is to become a real force in
their lives. Therefore “art” is taught as part of the handwork, the
story telling, the dramatization, or the nature study. The youngest
children in clay modeling, painting, weaving paper mats, making paper
or wooden toys, etc., are asked as much as possible to suggest things
they want to make. With the acquisition of skill, they go on making
more and more difficult objects; pupils of nine or ten make raffia
baskets, boats, and dolls’ furniture.
The story telling and dramatization are very closely connected and
(up to the age of about ten) take the place of the usual bookwork.
Stories of literary value, suited in subject matter to the age of the
pupils, are told or read to them, and they in turn are asked to tell
stories they have heard outside of school. After the ninth or tenth
year, when the children have learned to read, they read stories from
books, either to themselves or aloud, and then the whole class discuss
them. The Greek myths, the Iliad, and the Odyssey are favorites at
this age, and very frequently without directions from the teacher,
a class will act out a whole story, such as the Fall of Troy, or any
tale that has appealed especially to their dramatic imagination. The
school believes that this is the true way for young people to approach
literature, if they are to learn to love and appreciate it, not simply
to study the text for strange words and figures of speech. The pupils
are not allowed to use books until the eighth or ninth year, and by
this time they have realized so keenly their need, they beg for help in
learning. The long, tiresome drill necessary for six-year-old children
is eliminated. Each child is anxious to read some particular book, so
there is little or no need to trap his attention, or to insist on an
endless repetition. Mrs. Johnson believes also that it is better for
the natural physical and mental development of the child, if learning
to write and figure is put off as late as possible. Then pupils
approach it with a consciousness of their real need for it, of the help
it will be to them in their daily life. Their background of knowledge
of things and skill acquired through handwork renders the actual
processes of learning comparatively simple. Mrs. Johnson is convinced
that a child who does not learn to read and write in her school until
he is ten years old, is as well read at fourteen, and writes and
spells as well as a child of fourteen in a school where the usual
curriculum is followed.
The fundamental conception of number is taught orally. The smallest
children begin by counting one another or the things about them.
Then perhaps at the blackboard they will divide a line in half, then
into three parts, then quarters. By means of objects or lines on the
blackboard they next begin to add, to subtract, to take three-fourths,
even to divide. The oral drill in this kind of work is constant, and
the children become thoroughly familiar with the fundamental processes
of arithmetic, before they can write a number or know the meaning of
the addition or multiplication sign. Then when the time comes, at about
the age of nine, to learn to write numbers, the drill is repeated
by using the conventional signs instead of lines or objects. The
school has found that this method does away with the usual struggles,
especially in learning fractions and their handling. Long division
and the other complicated processes are taught after the pupils can
write well and easily, and no emphasis is put on formal analysis
until repeated drill has made the children fairly familiar with, and
proficient in, the process. Games and contests of all sorts invented
by the individual teacher are used to make this drill interesting to
the pupils.
Sense culture means the specific training of the child’s body and
muscles to respond accurately to the desire to perform definite
muscular or other sense acts; or more technically it means
motor-sensory coördination. Besides the general training coming from
handwork and physical exercise, special games are arranged to exercise
the different senses. The youngest class does relatively most of this
sense gymnastic. The whole class sits motionless and in absolute
silence; some child tiptoes from his seat to another part of the room,
and then with his eyes shut every other child tries to tell where he
is; or one child says something and the others try to guess who it was,
by the voice. To train the sense of touch, a blindfolded child is given
some ordinary objects, and by touching them tries to recognize them.
One of the favorite games of the whole school was invented to train
muscular accuracy. Children of different ages, divided into groups,
throw stones at a large tree in the yard. This game has all the zest
of competition, while teaching the eye and hand to work together, and
exercising the whole body. The unusual physical control of the Fairhope
pupils is seen best in the carpenter shop, where even the youngest
children work and handle full-sized tools, hammers, saws, and planes
and do not hurt themselves. There is a foot power jig-saw in the shop
and it is an instructive sight to see a child of seven, too small to
work the pedal, holding his piece of wood, turning and shaping it in
the saw without hurting himself.
The Fairhope pupils compare favorably with pupils in the ordinary
public schools. When for any reason they make a change, they have
always been able to work with other children of their age without
extra effort; they are apt to be stronger physically and are much more
capable with their hands, while they have a real love of books and
study that makes them equally strong on the purely cultural side of
their work. The organic curriculum has been worked out in detail and
in use longest for the younger children, but Mrs. Johnson is convinced
the principle of her work will apply equally well to high school pupils
and is beginning an experiment with high school children. Under her
direction the school has proved a decided success. Time and larger
opportunities will undoubtedly correct the weak spots and discrepancies
that are bound to appear while any school is in the experimental stage.
The school has provided conditions for wholesome, natural growth
in small enough groups for the teacher (as a leader rather than an
instructor) to become acquainted with the weaknesses of each child
individually and then to adapt the work to the individual needs. It has
demonstrated that it is possible for children to lead the same natural
lives in school that they lead in good homes outside of school hours;
to progress bodily, mentally, and morally in school without factitious
pressure, rewards, examinations, grades, or promotions, while they
acquire sufficient control of the conventional tools of learning and of
study of books--reading, writing, and figuring--to be able to use them
independently.