Part 12 (2/2)
=Free ienic principle universally accepted that children require enerally imply that they are free to ree with the children's doctor that her child should go into parks and meadows, and move about freely in the open air
When we talk of liberty for children in school, some such conception of physical liberty as this rises at once in theperilous leaps over the desks, or dashi+ng ainst the walls; his ”liberty of movement” seems necessarily to ily we suppose that, if confined to the narrow limits of a room, it would inevitably become a conflict between violence and obstacles, a disorder incompatible with discipline and work
But in the laws of ”psychical hygiene,” ”liberty of movement” is not limited to a conception so priht, indeed, say of a puppy or a kitten e say of children: that they should be free to run and jump, and that they should be able to do so, as in fact they often do, in a park or a field, with and like the children If, however, ish to apply the same conception of motor liberty to our treatements for it; we should place within its reach the branch of a tree, or crossed sticks which would afford foothold for its claws, since these are not designed to be spread out on the ground like the feet of creeping things, but are adapted to gripping a stick We know that a bird ”left free to move” over a vast, illimitable plain would be miserable
How then is it that we never think thus: if it be necessary to prepare different environments for a bird and a reptile in order to ensure their liberty of movement, must it not be a mistake to provide the same fors?
Children, indeed, when left to themselves to take exercise, show impatience, and are prone to quarrel and cry; older children feel it necessary to invent so whereby they may conceal from the for walking's sake, and running for running's sake They try to find soer children play pranks The activity of children thus left to theood result; it does not aid developeneral nutrition, that is, of the vegetative life Their raceful; they invent unseeait, fall easily, and break things They are evidently quite unlike the free kitten, so full of grace, so fascinating in itsand running which are natural to it In the race, no natural impulse towards perfection Hence we must conclude that the movement which suffices for the cat does not suffice for the child, and that if the nature of the child is different, his path of liberty ent aiuidance, thus move compelled to ”move without an object” One of the cruel punishments invented for the chastise deep holes in the earth and fill theain repeatedly, in other words, to ue have shown that ith an intelligent object is far less fatiguing than an equal quantity of aimless work So much so, that the psychiatrists of to-day recommend, not ”exercise in the open air,” but ”work in the open air,” to restore the individuality of the neurasthenic
”Reconstructive” work--work, that is to say, which is not the product of a ”mental effort,” but tends to the coordination of the psycho-anism Such are the activities which are not directed to the _production_ of objects, but to their _preservation_, as, for instance, dusting or washi+ng a little table, sweeping the floor, laying or clearing the table, cleaning shoes, spreading out a carpet These are the tasks perfor to his master, work of a very different order to that of the artificer, who, on the other hand, _produced_ those objects by an intelligent effort The two classes of work are profoundly different The one is siree than the activity required for walking or juives purpose to those simple movements, whereas _productive_ work entails a preliminary intellectual work of preparation, and coether with an application of sensory exercises
The first is the work suitable for little children, who must ”exercise themselves in order to learn to coordinate their movements”
It consists of the so-called exercises of practical life which correspond to the psychical principle of ”liberty of movement” For this it will be sufficient to prepare ”a suitable environment,” just as we should place the branch of a tree in an aviary, and then to leave the children to follow their instincts of activity and i objects should be proportioned to the size and strength of the child: light furniture that he can carry about; low dressers within reach of his arms; locks that he can easily ht doors that he can open and shut readily; clothes-pegs fixed on the walls at a height convenient for hirasp; pieces of soap that can lie in the hollow of such a hand; basins so sh to eht handles; clothes he can easily put on and take off hi which the child will gradually perfect his race and dexterity, just as the little kitten acquires its graceful uidance of instinct
The field thus opened to the free activity of the child will enable him to exercise himself and to form himself as a man It is not movement for its own sake that he will derive from these exercises, but a powerful co-efficient in the complex formation of his personality His social sentiments in the relations he forms with other free and active children, his collaborators in a kind of household designed to protect and aid their developnity acquired by the child who learns to satisfy his he himself preserves and dominates--these are the co-efficients of humanity which accompany ”liberty of movement” From his consciousness of this development of his personality the child derives the impulse to persist in these tasks, the industry to perforent joy he shows in their completion In such an environment he undoubtedly _works hi, just as when his body is bathed in fresh air and his lirowth of his physical organisthens it
VI
ATTENTION
The phenomenon to be expected from the little child, when he is placed in an environrowth, is this: that suddenly the child will fix his attention upon an object, will use it for the purpose for which it was constructed, and will _continue_ to repeat the same exercise indefinitely One will repeat an exercise twenty times, another forty times, and yet another two hundred times; but this is the first phenomenon to be expected, as initiatory to those acts hich spiritual growth is bound up
That which moves the child to this manifestation of activity is evidently a priue sense of spiritual hunger; and it is the ier which then actually directs the consciousness of the child to the deterradually to a prience in co an error When the child, occupied with the solid insets, places and displaces the ten little cylinders in their respective places thirty or forty ti made a mistake, sets himself a problem and solves it, he becoain and again; he prolongs a complex exercise of his psychical activities which makes way for an internal development
It is probably the internal perception of this developed application to the same task To quench thirst, it is not sufficient to see or to sip water; the thirsty man must drink his fill: that is to say, aniser and thirst, it is not sufficient to see things cursorily, much less ”to hear them described”; it is necessary to possess them and to use them to the full for the satisfaction of the needs of the inner life
This fact stands revealed as the basis of all psychical construction, and the sole secret of education The external object is the gymnasium on which the spirit exercises itself, and such ”internal” exercises are primarily ”in themselves” the end and aiive the child a knowledge of diive him a conception of forms; the purpose of these, as of all the other objects, is to make the child exercise his activities The fact that the child really acquires by these e, the recollection of which is vivid in proportion to the fixity and intensity of his attention, is a necessary result; and, indeed, it is precisely the sensory knowledge of dimensions, forms and colors, etc, thus acquired, which makes the continuation of such internal exercises in fields progressively vaster and higher, a possible achievereed that instability of attention is the characteristic of little children of three or four years old; attracted by everything they see, they pass froenerally the difficulty of fixing the attention of children is the stu-block of their education, William James speaks of ”that extreme mobility of the attention hich we are all familiar in children, and which h affairs The reflex and passive character of the attentionwhichless to himself than to every object which happens to catch his notice, is the first thing which the teacherback a wandering attention, over and over again is the very root of judgment, character and will An education which should improve this faculty would be _the_ education _par excellence_”
Thusby himself alone, never successfully arrests and fixes that _inquiring_ attention which wanders from object to object
In fact, in our experiment the attention of the little child was not artificially maintained by a teacher; it was an object which fixed that attention, as if it corresponded to some internal impulse; an is ”necessary”
for its development In the same manner, those complex coordinated , are limited to the first and unconscious need of nutrition; they are not a conscious acquisition directed to a purpose
Indeed, the conscious acquisition directed to a definite purpose would be impossible in the movements of a new-born infant's mouth, as also in the first movements of the child's spirit
Therefore it is essential that the external stimulus which first presents itself should be verily the breast and the milk of the spirit, and then only shall we behold that surprising phenomenon of a little face concentrated in an intensity of attention
Behold a child of three years old capable of repeating the sa about beside hi in chorus; but nothing distracts the little child fro keep hold of the mother's breast, uninterrupted by external incidents, and desists only when he is satisfied