: The Children: Some Educational Problems by Darroch Alexander - Education; Education and state

@FreeBooksTue 06 Jun, 2023

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down

d social environments may roughly be said to extend to the end of his third year.

From that time onwards the worlds of nature and of society for their own sake become objects of curiosity to the child. Every new object presents him with a variety of fresh sensations. He feels, tastes, and bites everything that comes within his reach, and so acquires a world of new experiences. Hence for "the first six years of his life a child has quite enough to do in learning its place in the universe and the nature of its surroundings, and to compel it during any part of that period to give its attention to mere words and symbols is to stint it of the best part of its education for that which is only of secondary importance, and to weaken the foundations of its whole mental fabric."

If, then, during this period the child is left wholly to gather his experiences as he may, he no doubt acquires by his own self-activity a world of new ideas, but the result of this unregulated process will be that the knowledge gained will be largely unsystematised, and much of the experience acquired may be of a nature which may give a false direction to his whole after-development. Hence arise three needs. In the first place, we must endeavour to see that new experiences are presented to the child in some systematic manner, in order that the knowledge may be so organised that it may serve as means to the attainment of ends, and so render future activity more accurate and more efficient. In the second place, we must endeavour to prevent the acquisition of experiences which if allowed to be organised would give an immoral direction to conduct; and in the third place, we must endeavour to establish early in the mind of the child organised systems of means which may hereafter result in the prevalence of activities socially useful to the community.

Now, these three aims are or should be the aims of the Kindergarten School, and we shall now inquire into the ends which the Kindergarten School sets before it, and for this purpose we shall state the fundamental principles which Froebel himself laid down as the guiding principles of this stage of education.

For if we attempt prematurely to exercise the higher centres before the lower have reached a certain measure of development, if we attempt to form conceptual systems of knowledge, such as all language and number systems are, without first laying a sound perceptual basis, then we may do much to hinder future mental growth, if we do not even inflict a positive injury to the child. For the education of the senses neglected, "all after-education partakes of a drowsiness, a haziness, and an insufficiency which it is impossible to cure."

On its moral and social side the aims of the Kindergarten School are no less important. If left to follow the naive instinctive needs of his nature and to gather experiences where and how he may, the child is likely to make acquisitions which later may issue in wrong conduct. Hence one aim of the Kindergarten is to present experiences which may eventually issue in right conduct, and to prevent the acquisition of experiences of an immoral kind. Hence also its insistence upon the need of carefully selecting the environment of the young child, so that as far as possible its early experiences--its first acquisitions--shall be of a healthy nature. Moreover, by means of the organised activities of the school, and by utilising the play-instinct of the child, it seeks to form and establish certain habits of future social worth to the community and to the individual. For, by means of the games and occupations of the Kindergarten School, the child may first of all learn what it means to co-operate with his fellows for a common end or purpose; may learn to submit to authority which he dimly and imperfectly, it may be, perceives to be reasonable; may be trained to habits of accuracy, of order, and of obedience. Above all, the Kindergarten system may rouse and foster in the mind of the child that sense of a corporate life and of a common social spirit the prevalence of which in after-life is the only secure foundation of society.

In England the extreme importance of the education of the infant mind has been, in recent years, clearly acknowledged. The new regulations of the Board of Education no longer allow children under five years of age to be included as "an integral part of a three-R grant-earning Elementary School." A special curriculum has been set forth for their education. They are to have opportunities provided "for the free development of their bodies and minds and for the formation of habits of obedience and attention." What are known as "Kindergarten Occupations are not merely pleasant pastimes for children: if so regarded, they are not intelligently used by the teacher. Their purpose is to stimulate intelligent individual effort, to furnish training of the senses of sight and touch, to promote accurate co-ordination of hand movements with sense impressions, and, not least important, to implant a habit of obedience."

"Formal teaching, even by means of Kindergarten Occupations, is undesirable for children under five. At this stage it is sufficient to give the child opportunity to use his senses freely. To attempt formal teaching will almost inevitably mean, with some of the children, either restraint or over-stimulation, with constant danger to mental growth and health."

But while much has been done in England to recognise the importance of the early education of the child for the after moral and social good both of the individual and of the community, and to place the instruction of the infant classes in the Public Elementary Schools upon a rational basis, little attention has been paid in Scotland to this subject. As a rule, children in that country do not enter school before the age of five, and there is no separate provision made for the teaching of children under that age; in fact, all scholars under seven years of age are classified together and form the Junior Division of the school.

Such a state of matters reflects but little credit on the educational leaders of Scotland, and indicates an imperfect conception of the real nature of the educative process. For if education is the process of acquiring and organising experiences in order to render future action more efficient, it is surely the height of folly to allow the young child to gather his early experiences as he may. Moreover, in the case of the children of the slums, to allow them during their early years to gather into their brain without any correcting agency "all the sights and scenes of a slum is sheer social madness." "The child must be removed, or partially removed, from such an atmosphere, since it has reached the imitative stage, and is nearing the selective stage of life. For the moment he imitates anything; presently he will imitate what pleases him, what gives him momentary pleasure. Before the unmoral selective stage is reached, the stage which inevitably precedes the moral and immoral selective stage, it is essential that children should receive definite and deliberate guidance, that the imitative faculty should be controlled." In the case of the children of the poorer districts this can be done only through the agency of the Infant School. Much may be done by making the instruction of the school attractive, to counteract the evil influences of the home and social environment, and to lead the child to acquire and organise experiences which will issue in moral and not in immoral conduct.

Hence what we need in the poorer districts of our large towns is Free Kindergarten Schools from which all formal teaching of the three R's is abolished, where for several hours in each day the child may be trained to use his senses in the accurate discrimination and accurate systematisation of sense knowledge; where he may have his constructive activities evoked by the expression in concrete form of what he has been led to perceive through the medium of the senses; where he may be trained to habits of order, of cleanliness, of submission to authority; and where for a time, at least, he may be accustomed to live in a purer and healthier atmosphere than he can find at home or in the street, and where for a brief space he may have that feeling of home which he cannot find at home.

The establishment in the poorer districts of our great towns of schools whose education follows the method of the Kindergarten if accompanied by some system of feeding the child would do much to secure the after social efficiency of the rising generation, and would by its reaction on the home-life tend gradually to raise the ideals of the very poor.

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

Login to post a comment!