PLAY AND FANCY
Love of play is the most obvious distinguishing mark of young animals,
whether human or otherwise. In human children, this is accompanied by
an inexhaustible pleasure in pretence. Play and pretence are a vital
need of childhood, for which opportunity must be provided if the child
is to be happy and healthy, quite independently of any further utility
in these activities. There are two questions which concern education in
this connection: first, what should parents and schools do in the way
of providing opportunity? and secondly, should they do anything more,
with a view to increasing the educational usefulness of games?
Let us begin with a few words about the psychology of games. This has
been exhaustively treated by Groos; a shorter discussion will be found
in William Stern’s book mentioned in the preceding chapter. There are
two separate questions in this matter: the first is as to the impulses
which produce play, the second is as to its biological utility. The
second is the easier question. There seems no reason to doubt the most
widely accepted theory, that in play the young of any species rehearse
and practise the activities which they will have to perform in earnest
later on. The play of puppies is exactly like a dog-fight, except that
they do not actually bite each other. The play of kittens resembles the
behaviour of cats with mice. Children love to imitate any work they
have been watching, such as building or digging; the more important the
work seems to them, the more they like to play at it. And they enjoy
anything that gives them new muscular facilities, such as jumping,
climbing, or walking up a narrow plank--always provided the task is
not too difficult. But although this accounts, in a general way, for
the usefulness of the play-impulse, it does not by any means cover all
its manifestations, and must not for a moment be regarded as giving a
psychological analysis.
Some psycho-analysts have tried to see a sexual symbolism in children’s
play. This, I am convinced, is utter moonshine. The main instinctive
urge of childhood is not sex, but the desire to become adult, or,
perhaps more correctly, the will to power.[11] The child is impressed
by his own weakness in comparison with older people, and he wishes
to become their equal. I remember my boy’s profound delight when he
realized that he would one day be a man and that I had once been a
child; one could see effort being stimulated by the realization that
success was possible. From a very early age, the child wishes to
do what older people do, as is shown by the practice of imitation.
Older brothers and sisters are useful, because their purposes can be
understood and their capacities are not so far out of reach as those of
grown-up people. The feeling of inferiority is very strong in children;
when they are normal and rightly educated, it is a stimulus to effort,
but if they are repressed it may become a source of unhappiness.
In play, we have two forms of the will to power: the form which
consists in learning to do things, and the form which consists in
fantasy. Just as the balked adult may indulge in daydreams that have
a sexual significance, so the normal child indulges in pretences that
have a power-significance. He likes to be a giant, or a lion, or a
train; in his make-believe, he inspires terror. When I told my boy the
story of Jack the Giant Killer, I tried to make him identify himself
with Jack, but he firmly chose the giant. When his mother told him the
story of Bluebeard, he insisted on being Bluebeard, and regarded the
wife as justly punished for insubordination. In his play, there was
a sanguinary outbreak of cutting off ladies’ heads. Sadism, Freudians
would say; but he enjoyed just as much being a giant who ate little
boys, or an engine that could pull a heavy load. Power, not sex, was
the common element in these pretences. One day, when we were returning
from a walk, I told him, as an obvious joke, that perhaps we should
find a certain Mr. Tiddliewinks in possession of our house, and he
might refuse to let us in. After that, for a long time, he would stand
on the porch being Mr. Tiddliewinks, and telling me to go to another
house. His delight in this game was unbounded, and obviously the
pretence of power was what he enjoyed.
It would, however, be an undue simplification to suppose that the
will to power is the sole source of children’s play. They enjoy the
pretence of terror--perhaps because the knowledge that it is a pretence
increases their sense of safety. Sometimes I pretend to be a crocodile
coming to eat my boy up. He squeals so realistically that I stop,
thinking he is really frightened; but the moment I stop he says, “Daddy
be a crocodile again”. A good deal of the pleasure of pretence is sheer
joy in drama--the same thing that makes adults like novels and the
theatre. I think curiosity has a part in all this: by playing bears,
the child feels as if he were getting to know about bears. I think
every strong impulse in the child’s life is reflected in play: power
is only dominant in his play in proportion as it is dominant in his
desires.
As regards the educational value of play, everybody would agree in
praising the sort that consists in acquiring new aptitudes, but many
moderns look with suspicion upon the sort that consists in pretence.
Daydreams, in adult life, are recognized as more or less pathological,
and as a substitute for efforts in the sphere of reality. Some of
the discredit which has fallen upon daydreams has spilled over on to
children’s pretences, quite mistakenly, as I think. Montessori teachers
do not like children to turn their apparatus into trains or steamers
or what not: this is called “disordered imagination”. They are quite
right, because what the children are doing is not really play, even
if to themselves it may seem to be nothing more. The apparatus amuses
the child, but its purpose is instruction; the amusement is merely a
means to instruction. In real play, amusement is the governing purpose.
When the objection to “disordered imagination” is carried over into
genuine play, it seems to me to go too far. The same thing applies to
the objection to telling children about fairies and giants and witches
and magic carpets and so on. I cannot sympathize with the ascetics of
truth, any more than with ascetics of other kinds. It is commonly said
that children do not distinguish between pretence and reality, but I
see very little reason to believe this. We do not believe that Hamlet
ever existed, but we should be annoyed by a man who kept reminding us
of this while we were enjoying the play. So children are annoyed by
a tactless reminder of reality, but are not in the least taken in by
their own make-believe.
Truth is important, and imagination is important; but imagination
develops earlier in the history of the individual, as in that of
the race. So long as the child’s physical needs are attended to, he
finds games far more interesting than reality. In games he is a king:
indeed he rules his territory with a power surpassing that of any
mere earthly monarch. In reality he has to go to bed at a certain
time, and to obey a host of tiresome precepts. He is exasperated when
unimaginative adults interfere thoughtlessly with his _mise-en-scène_.
When he has built a wall that not even the biggest giants can scale,
and you carelessly step over it, he is as angry as Romulus was with
Remus. Seeing that his inferiority to other people is normal, not
pathological, its compensation in fantasy is also normal and not
pathological. His games do not take up time which might be more
profitably spent in other ways: if all his hours were given over to
serious pursuits, he would soon become a nervous wreck. An adult who
indulges in dreams may be told to exert himself in order to realize
them; but a child cannot yet realize dreams which it is right that he
should have. He does not regard his fancies as a permanent substitute
for reality; on the contrary, he ardently hopes to translate them into
fact when the time comes.
It is a dangerous error to confound truth with matter-of-fact. Our life
is governed not only by facts, but by hopes; the kind of truthfulness
which sees nothing but facts is a prison for the human spirit. Dreams
are only to be condemned when they are a lazy substitute for an effort
to change reality; when they are an incentive, they are fulfilling a
vital purpose in the incarnation of human ideals. To kill fancy in
childhood is to make a slave to what exists, a creature tethered to
earth and therefore unable to create heaven.
This is all very well, you may say, but what has it to do with giants
eating children, or Bluebeard cutting off his wives’ heads? Are these
things to exist in your heaven? Must not imagination be purified and
ennobled before it can serve any good purpose? How can you, a pacifist,
allow your innocent boy to revel in the thought of destroying human
life? How can you justify a pleasure derived from instincts of
savagery which the human race must outgrow? All this I imagine the
reader has been feeling. The matter is important, and I will try to
state why I hold to a different point of view.
Education consists in the cultivation of instincts, not in their
suppression. Human instincts are very vague, and can be satisfied in a
great variety of ways. Most of them require, for their gratification,
some kind of skill. Cricket and baseball satisfy the same instinct,
but a boy will play whichever he has learnt. Thus the secret of
instruction, in so far as it bears upon character, is to give a man
such kinds of skill as shall lead to his employing his instincts
usefully. The instinct of power, which in the child is crudely
satisfied by identification with Bluebeard, can find in later life a
refined satisfaction by scientific discovery, or artistic creation,
or the creation and education of splendid children, or any one of a
thousand useful activities. If the only thing a man knows is how to
fight, his will to power will make him delight in battle. But if he has
other kinds of skill, he will find his satisfaction in other ways. If,
however, his will to power has been nipped in the bud when he was a
child, he will be listless and lazy, doing little good and little harm;
he will be “_a Dio spiacente ed a’ nemici sui_.” This kind of milksop
goodness is not what the world needs, or what we should try to produce
in our children. While they are small and cannot do much harm, it is
biologically natural that they should, in imagination, live through
the life of remote savage ancestors. Do not be afraid that they will
remain at that level, if you put in their way the knowledge and skill
required for more refined satisfactions. When I was a child, I loved
to turn head over heels. I never do so now, though I should not think
it wicked to do so. Similarly the child who enjoys being Bluebeard
will outgrow this taste, and learn to seek power in other ways. And
if his imagination has been kept alive in childhood by the stimuli
appropriate to that stage, it is much more likely to remain alive in
later years, when it can exercise itself in the ways suitable to a man.
It is useless to obtrude moral ideas at an age at which they can evoke
no response, and at which they are not yet required for the control
of behaviour. The only effect is boredom, and imperviousness to those
same ideas at the later age when they might have become potent. That is
one reason, among others, why the study of child psychology is of such
vital importance to education.
The games of later years differ from those of early childhood by the
fact that they become increasingly competitive. At first, a child’s
play is solitary; it is difficult for an infant to join in the games of
older brothers and sisters. But collective play, as soon as it becomes
possible, is so much more delightful that pleasure in playing alone
quickly ceases. English upper-class education has always attributed an
enormous moral importance to school games. To my mind, there is some
exaggeration in the conventional British view, although I admit that
games have certain important merits. They are good for health, provided
they are not too expert; if exceptional skill is too much prized the
best players overdo it, while the others tend to lapse into spectators.
They teach boys and girls to endure hurts without making a fuss, and
to incur great fatigue cheerfully. But the other advantages which are
claimed for them seem to me largely illusory. They are said to teach
co-operation, but in fact they only teach it in its competitive form.
This is the form required in war, not in industry or in the right
kind of social relations. Science has made it technically possible
to substitute co-operation for competition, both in economics and in
international politics; at the same time it has made competition (in
the form of war) much more dangerous than it used to be. For these
reasons, it is more important than in former times to cultivate the
idea of co-operative enterprises in which the “enemy” is physical
nature, rather than competitive enterprises in which there are human
victors and vanquished. I do not want to lay too much stress upon
this consideration, because competitiveness is natural to man and must
find some outlet, which can hardly be more innocent than games and
athletic contests. This is a valid reason for not preventing games, but
it is not a valid reason for exalting them into a leading position in
the school curriculum. Let boys play because they like to do so, not
because the authorities think games an antidote to what the Japanese
call “dangerous thoughts”.
I have said a great deal in an earlier chapter about the importance
of overcoming fear and producing courage; but courage must not be
confounded with brutality. Brutality is pleasure in forcing one’s will
upon other people; courage is indifference to personal misfortunes. I
would teach boys and girls, if opportunity offered, to sail small ships
in stormy seas, to dive from heights, to drive a motor-car or even an
aeroplane. I would teach them, as Sanderson of Oundle did, to build
machines and incur risks in scientific experiment. As far as possible,
I would represent inanimate nature as the antagonist in the game; the
will to power can find satisfaction in this contest just as well as
in competing with other human beings. The skill acquired in this way
is more useful than skill in cricket or football, and the character
developed is more in accordance with social morality. And apart from
moral qualities, the cult of athletics involves an under-estimation
of intelligence. Great Britain is losing her industrial position, and
will perhaps lose her empire, through stupidity, and through the fact
that the authorities do not value or promote intelligence. All this
is connected with the fanatical belief in the paramount importance of
games. Of course it goes deeper: the belief that a young man’s athletic
record is a test of his worth is a symptom of our general failure
to grasp the need of knowledge and thought in mastering the complex
modern world. But on this topic I will say no more now, as it will be
considered again at a later stage.
There is another aspect of school games, which is usually considered
good but which I think on the whole bad; I mean, their efficacy in
promoting _esprit de corps_. _Esprit de corps_ is liked by authorities,
because it enables them to utilize bad motives for what are considered
to be good actions. If efforts are to be made they are easily
stimulated by promoting the desire to surpass some other group. The
difficulty is that no motive is provided for efforts which are not
competitive. It is amazing how deeply the competitive motive has eaten
into all our activities. If you wish to persuade a borough to improve
the public provision for the care of children, you have to point out
that some neighbouring borough has a lower infant mortality. If you
wish to persuade a manufacturer to adopt a new process which is clearly
an improvement, you have to emphasize the danger of competition. If you
wish to persuade the War Office that a modicum of military knowledge is
desirable in the higher commands--but no, not even fear of defeat will
prevail in this case, so strong is the “gentlemanly” tradition.[12]
Nothing is done to promote constructiveness for its own sake, or to
make people take an interest in doing their job efficiently even if no
one is to be injured thereby. Our economic system has more to do with
this than school games. But school games, as they now exist, embody the
spirit of competition. If the spirit of co-operation is to take its
place, a change in school games will be necessary. But to develop this
subject would take us too far from our theme. I am not considering the
building of the good State, but the building of the good individual, in
so far as this is possible in the existing State. Improvement in the
individual and improvement in the community must go hand in hand, but
it is the individual that specially concerns the writer on education.