Part 10 (2/2)
In this matter of discipline we have again something of the egg of Christopher Columbus. A concert-master must prepare his scholars one by one in order to draw from their collective work great and beautiful harmony; and each artist must perfect himself as an individual before he can be ready to follow the voiceless commands of the master's baton.
How different is the method which we follow in the public schools! It is as if a concert-master taught the same monotonous and sometimes discordant rhythm contemporaneously to the most diverse instruments and voices.
Thus we find that the most disciplined members of society are the men who are best trained, who have most thoroughly perfected themselves, but this is the training or the perfection acquired through contact with other people. The perfection of the collectivity cannot be that material and brutal solidarity which comes from mechanical organisation alone.
In regard to infant psychology, we are more richly endowed with prejudices than with actual knowledge bearing upon the subject. We have, until the present day, wished to dominate the child through force, by the imposition of external laws, instead of making an interior conquest of the child, in order to direct him as a human soul. In this way, the children have lived beside us without being able to make us know them.
But if we cut away the artificiality with which we have enwrapped them, and the violence through which we have foolishly thought to discipline them, they will reveal themselves to us in all the truth of child nature.
Their gentleness is so absolute, so sweet, that we recognise in it the infancy of that humility which can remain oppressed by every form of yoke, by every injustice; and child love and _knowledge_ is such that it surpa.s.ses every other love and makes us think that in very truth humanity must carry within it that pa.s.sion which pushes the minds of men to the successive conquest of thought, making easier from century to century the yokes of every form of slavery.
CHAPTER VII
EXERCISES OF PRACTICAL LIFE
PROPOSED WINTER SCHEDULE OF HOURS IN THE ”CHILDREN'S HOUSES”
Opening at Nine O'clock--Closing at Four O'clock
9-10. Entrance. Greeting. Inspection as to personal cleanliness. Exercises of practical life; helping one another to take off and put on the ap.r.o.ns. Going over the room to see that everything is dusted and in order. Language: Conversation period: Children give an account of the events of the day before. Religious exercises.
10-11. Intellectual exercises. Objective lessons interrupted by short rest periods. Nomenclature, Sense exercises.
11-11:30. Simple gymnastics: Ordinary movements done gracefully, normal position of the body, walking, marching in line, salutations, movements for attention, placing of objects gracefully.
11:30-12. Luncheon: Short prayer.
12-1. Free games.
1-2. Directed games, if possible, in the open air. During this period the older children in turn go through with the exercises of practical life, cleaning the room, dusting, putting the material in order. General inspection for cleanliness: Conversation.
2-3. Manual work. Clay modelling, design, etc.
3-4. Collective gymnastics and songs, if possible in the open air. Exercises to develop forethought: Visiting, and caring for, the plants and animals.
As soon as a school is established, the question of schedule arises.
This must be considered from two points of view; the length of the school-day and the distribution of study and of the activities of life.
I shall begin by affirming that in the ”Children's Houses,” as in the school for deficients, the hours may be very long, occupying the entire day. For poor children, and especially for the ”Children's Houses”
annexed to workingmen's tenements, I should advise that the school-day should be from nine in the morning to five in the evening in winter, and from eight to six in summer. These long hours are necessary, if we are to follow a directed line of action which shall be helpful to the growth of the child. It goes without saying, that in the case of little children such a long school-day should be interrupted by at least an hour's rest in bed. And here lies the great practical difficulty. At present we must allow our little ones to sleep in their seats in a wretched position, but I foresee a time, not distant, when we shall be able to have a quiet, darkened room where the children may sleep in low-swung hammocks. I should like still better to have this nap taken in the open air.
In the ”Children's Houses” in Rome we send the little ones to their own apartments for the nap, as this can be done without their having to go out into the streets.
It must be observed that these long hours include not only the nap, but the luncheon. This must be considered in such schools as the ”Children's Houses,” whose aim is to help and to direct the growth of children in such an important period of development as that from three to six years of age.
The ”Children's House” is a garden of child culture, and we most certainly do not keep the children for so many hours in school with the idea of making students of them!
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