Part 8 (2/2)
”Then the little girl kissed him, and my uncle yielding to the influence which had filled his heart, put his arms around her neck, and, still silent and sobbing, kissed her in return. At last, sighing deeply, he wiped from his face and eyes the damp traces of his emotion, and smiled again.
”A strident voice called out from the other end of the courtyard:
”'Here, here, you two down there--be quick with you; inside, both of you!'
”It was the teacher, the guardian. She crushed that first gentle stirring in the soul of a rebel with the same blind brutality that she would have used toward two children engaged in a fight.
”It was the time for all to go back into the school--and everybody had to obey the rule.”
Thus I saw my teachers act in the first days of my practice school in the ”Children's Houses.” They almost involuntarily recalled the children to immobility without _observing_ and _distinguis.h.i.+ng_ the nature of the movements they repressed. There was, for example, a little girl who gathered her companions about her and then, in the midst of them, began to talk and gesticulate. The teacher at once ran to her, took hold of her arms, and told her to be still; but I, observing the child, saw that she was playing at being teacher or mother to the others, and teaching them the morning prayer, the invocation to the saints, and the sign of the cross: she already showed herself as a _director_. Another child, who continually made disorganised and misdirected movements, and who was considered abnormal, one day, with an expression of intense attention, set about moving the tables. Instantly they were upon him to make him stand still because he made too much noise. Yet this was one of the _first manifestations_, in this child, of _movements_ that were _co-ordinated_ and _directed toward a useful end_, and it was therefore an action that should have been respected. In fact, after this the child began to be quiet and happy like the others whenever he had any small objects to move about and to arrange upon his desk.
It often happened that while the directress replaced in the boxes various materials that had been used, a child would draw near, picking up the objects, with the evident desire of imitating the teacher. The first impulse was to send the child back to her place with the remark, ”Let it alone; go to your seat.” Yet the child expressed by this act a desire to be useful; the time, with her, was ripe for a lesson in order.
One day, the children had gathered themselves, laughing and talking, into a circle about a basin of water containing some floating toys. We had in the school a little boy barely two and a half years old. He had been left outside the circle, alone, and it was easy to see that he was filled with intense curiosity. I watched him from a distance with great interest; he first drew near to the other children and tried to force his way among them, but he was not strong enough to do this, and he then stood looking about him. The expression of thought on his little face was intensely interesting. I wish that I had had a camera so that I might have photographed him. His eye lighted upon a little chair, and evidently he made up his mind to place it behind the group of children and then to climb up on it. He began to move toward the chair, his face illuminated with hope, but at that moment the teacher seized him brutally (or, perhaps, she would have said, gently) in her arms, and lifting him up above the heads of the other children showed him the basin of water, saying, ”Come, poor little one, you shall see too!”
Undoubtedly the child, seeing the floating toys, did not experience the joy that he was about to feel through conquering the obstacle with his own force. The sight of those objects could be of no advantage to him, while his intelligent efforts would have developed his inner powers.
The teacher _hindered_ the child, in this case, from educating himself, without giving him any compensating good in return. The little fellow had been about to feel himself a conqueror, and he found himself held within two imprisoning arms, impotent. The expression of joy, anxiety, and hope, which had interested me so much faded from his face and left on it the stupid expression of the child who knows that others will act for him.
When the teachers were weary of my observations, they began to allow the children to do whatever they pleased. I saw children with their feet on the tables, or with their fingers in their noses, and no intervention was made to correct them. I saw others push their companions, and I saw dawn in the faces of these an expression of violence; and not the slightest attention on the part of the teacher. Then I had to intervene to show with what absolute rigour it is necessary to hinder, and little by little suppress, all those things which we must not do, so that the child may come to discern clearly between good and evil.
If discipline is to be lasting, its foundations must be laid in this way and these first days are the most difficult for the directress. The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between _good_ and _evil_; and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound _good_ with _immobility_, and _evil_ with _activity_, as often happens in the case of the old-time discipline. And all this because our aim is to discipline _for activity_, _for work_, _for good_; not for _immobility_, not for _pa.s.sivity_, not for _obedience_.
A room in which all the children move about usefully, intelligently, and voluntarily, without committing any rough or rude act, would seem to me a cla.s.sroom very well disciplined indeed.
To seat the children in rows, as in the common schools, to a.s.sign to each little one a place, and to propose that they shall sit thus quietly observant of the order of the whole cla.s.s as an a.s.semblage--this can be attained later, as _the starting place_ of _collective education_. For also, in life, it sometimes happens that we must all remain seated and quiet; when, for example, we attend a concert or a lecture. And we know that even to us, as grown people, this costs no little sacrifice.
If we can, when we have established individual discipline, arrange the children, sending each one to _his own place_, _in order_, trying to make them understand the idea that thus placed they look well, and that it is a _good thing_ to be thus placed in order, that it is a _good and pleasing arrangement in the room_, this ordered and tranquil adjustment of theirs--then their remaining in their places, _quiet_ and _silent_, is the result of a species of _lesson_, not an _imposition_. To make them understand the idea, without calling their attention too forcibly to the practice, to have them _a.s.similate a principle of collective order_--that is the important thing.
If, after they have understood this idea, they rise, speak, change to another place, they no longer do this without knowing and without thinking, but they do it because they _wish_ to rise, to speak, etc.; that is, from that _state of repose and order_, well understood, they depart in order to undertake _some voluntary action_; and knowing that there are actions which are prohibited, this will give them a new impulse to remember to discriminate between good and evil.
The movements of the children from the state of order become always more co-ordinated and perfect with the pa.s.sing of the days; in fact, they learn to reflect upon their own acts. Now (with the idea of order understood by the children) the observation of the way in which the children pa.s.s from the first disordered movements to those which are spontaneous and ordered--this is the book of the teacher; this is the book which must inspire her actions; it is the only one in which she must read and study if she is to become a real educator.
For the child with such exercises makes, to a certain extent, a selection of his own _tendencies_, which were at first confused in the unconscious disorder of his movements. It is remarkable how clearly _individual differences_ show themselves, if we proceed in this way; the child, conscious and free, _reveals himself_.
There are those who remain quietly in their seats, apathetic, or drowsy; others who leave their places to quarrel, to fight, or to overturn the various blocks and toys, and then there are those others who set out to fulfil a definite and determined act--moving a chair to some particular spot and sitting down in it, moving one of the unused tables and arranging upon it the game they wish to play.
Our idea of liberty for the child cannot be the simple concept of liberty we use in the observation of plants, insects, etc.
The child, because of the peculiar characteristics of helplessness with which he is born, and because of his qualities as a social individual is circ.u.mscribed by _bonds_ which _limit_ his activity.
An educational method that shall have _liberty_ as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of these various obstacles. In other words, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish, in a rational manner, the _social bonds_, which limit his activity.
Little by little, as the child grows in such an atmosphere, his spontaneous manifestations will become more _clear, with the clearness of truth_, revealing his nature. For all these reasons, the first form of educational intervention must tend to lead the child toward independence.
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