Part 4 (1/2)

No two children are alike, and no two children have exactly similar needs There are, however, certain kinds of needs which all children have in common It is obviously impossible to discuss in the abstract the needs of any individual child It is just as obviously possible to analyze child needs, and to classify theroups It is true that all children are different; so are all roses different, yet all have petals and thorns in common Similarly, there are certain needs which are co their fellows, and who expect to do so in life The matter may be stated more concretely thus,--

I The school exists to assist and prepare children to live

II Living involves three kinds of needs, which it is the duty of the school to understand and interpret

1 Needs which the child has because he is a physical being

2 Needs which result fros

3 Needs which arise in connection with the things which the child hopes to do in life

A further analysis of these groups of needs constitutes the subject matter of the next chapter

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: Sacrificing Children, W E Chancellor, Journal of Education, Vol 77, pp 564-565 (May 22, 1913)]

CHAPTER III

FITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDREN

I Child Growth--A Primary Factor in Child Life

In the first place children have certain needs because in coh spontaneous, self-expressive activity The growth of children is a growth in body, inthe first six years of life the bodies of children grow rapidly, and during these years isely make no attempt to train their rowth is slower, thethese years the children start to school

Then, at twelve or thirteen or fourteen, differing with different races and different individuals, all normal children enter the fairyland of adolescence Life takes on new reat currents of feeling run deep and strong through the child's being, because there is co into his life one of theof sex consciousness

This period of sex awakening produces a profound change in the lives of boys, but it works an even greater transforirls

For both sexes it is a tirowth and of severe ies of the body are so entirely devoted to the developreat s be avoided, yet it is at this very tih school, and force the hours in severe intellectual efforts

II Children Need Health First

Had we set out with the deliberate intention of torturing our children we could have devised no better y, found out the tirowth and the most relief from mental strain, and had then set out to plan a course of study which would wreck his health, we should have built a school systeave hirades until he was fourteen, and then, at the most critical period of his life, sent him into a new system of schools to study new, abstract subjects

What is it that our childrenelse? Health! We cry the word aloud, e without health! Yet, despite our protest, at a period of rapid physical growth, at the tiri de the child's physical welfare, the high school is placed at exactly the point (fourteen to eighteen years) where it is best calculated to destroy the delicate balance of sanity, rendering its victims unable to stand the burden and heat of life's later day

We cannot escape the fact that children have bodies The first duty of the schools, therefore, is to recognize the existence of these bodies by giving them due attention, particularly at the crucial periods of physical growth Therefore every schoolas is necessary to insure nore

Then there are certain rules of health--”hygiene,” they are called--which should be taught to every child Since bodies do not stay norht ideas of body care

Most important of all, the schools rowth of sex consciousness is one of the es which occur in the life of a child