THE SCHOOL CHILD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE SCHOOL CHILD.

CRUELTY OF OLDEN TIMES. (By JESSIE CHASE PENTON.) Schooling in olden days was likely to be a grim affair. Dr. Cubberley, in his "History of Education" tells of an eighteenth-century schoolmaster who, on the ere of his retirement, proudly summed up the record of his life's achievement:—

"... In the course of his 51 years and seven months as a teacher, he had, by a moderate computation, given 911,527 blows with a cane, 124,010 blows with a rod, 20,959 blows and raps with a ruler, 136,715 blows with the hand, 10,235 blows over the mouth, 7905 boxes on the ear, 1,115,800 raps on the head and 22,763 nota benes with the Bible, Catechism, singing books and grammar. He had 777 times made boys kneel on peas, 613 times on a triangular piece of wood, had made 3001 wear the jackass and 1707 hold the rod up, not to mention various more< unusual punishments he had contrived on the spur of the occasion. ... He also had about 3000 expressions to scold with. ..."

But modern psychology has taught us that those things are learned well which are learned happily, and that it is pleasure which best establishes and fixes associations in the human mind. School should bring happiness to a child, not only because happiness is good in itself, but because it actually makes a child a quicker and better learner. Makers of text-books have learned this. Consider, for example, the prim and stilted readers of a generation ago, with their exercises and their dull and sober sentences, and contrast these with the delightful modern histories and geographies, and even arithmetics are fascinating to a degree which would, I suppose, have seemed positively immoral to that worthy pedagogue who so complacently summed up the floggings with which he had instilled learning into his young charges. Happier School Days. Beautiful and appropriate buildings, well-equipped playgrounds, careful health supervision, interesting texts, freer

methods of classroom management—all these things are making the schools of to-day constantly happier places for children to live in. But unhappy children, "school misfits," are still too common in every school system, and children are still playing truant from schoolrooms that are to them intolerable. Let us consider what parents can do to help their children find .happiness in school life and how they.may know if the children are failing to find it. First impressions, as Peter Pan sagely remarked, are very important, and parents should see to it that the child's first impressions of school are happy ones. To insure this involves preparation in several ways. Pre-school learning is one of the ways; the child who has a rich fund of experiences in early learning will adjust more readily to the learning of the schoolroom. Colours, numbers, forms, concepts of time, and wide and accurate vocabulary—these are types of rather abstract' pre-school training that parents can give. More concretely, they can be sure that the child has a good understanding of the everyday affairs of his daily life, that eating, sleeping, dressing and the like are now out of the way as learning problems and relegated to the effortless level of habit. More important than any specific items the child has learned are his attitudes towards learning itself. Learning something new is an experience intrinsically pleasant; curiosity, the impulse towards mental and physical exploration and manipulation, is part of our instinctive equipment. When children look upon learning as something boresome, alarming, or distasteful, it is because they have been allowed to acquire this attitude; it is not a natural one. By helping a child to keep his natural enthusiasms, by encouraging curiosity and applauding learning as something triumphant and delightful, parents can help prepare for happy school life. And then there is the" direct emotional adjustment to school itself. Every child has the right to joyful anticipation of school; every child has the right to look forward to his teachers as kind, wise and delightful friends. And yet how many children

get through the first stage without encountering the disturbing suggestion that school is going to he a stern and repressive place, where one's chief task will be to "keep still" and "be good," and where "teacher" will function as a sort of cross between a gaoler and the bogyman? "Now, Johnny, let me tell you, when you get to school you won't be allowed to act like that! Your teacher will make you behave!!" Under Discipline. What a change for a child is the ordered formal and impersonal schedule of the average school classroom in contrast to his home life up to school entrance! At home he has chattered, laughed, run about, played at this or that as hie interest dictated; he has been assured of instant and concerned attention to his hurts or his needs; -he has been secure and comfortable in his place at or near the centre of his own small universe. And then the schoolroom! Here he is one of many; he must wait

bis turn for help or attention; he must still, in the majority of schools, sit still, keep silent, refrain from laughter or whispering, and give his attention according to command and not in response to his own impulse. Adjustment to this totally new and different scheme of things is a difficult matter, fraught with possibilities of serious emotional strain. Parents should do all they can to prepare for it and make Jie transition as natural and as comfortable as possible. A jrood kindergarten helps immeasureably, and if a nursery school is available, so mucb the better. But nursery schools are few and far between, and even a kindergarten isn't always available. And in that case the little prospective pupil should be taken to visit the classroom he is to enter —if possible, several times—during the tarm preceding his own entrance, so that he may have time to observe and ligcsthis impressions of what school life is like and possess himself of some degree of familiarity with it all. It is a very unfortunate* thing for a child to attempt to learn too soon. If his first experience of school is one of difficulty and failure, his entire school career is likely to be coloured by the resultant feeling of discouragement. It's so terribly unfair to place a child in a position where he is expected and required to perform mental tasks he can't do! Sometimes most of child's dislike for school and a long story of discouragement, boredom, and inferiority could have been eliminated had the youngster been allowed to wit six months or a year before entering, and then er~w!jd to gc slowly.

The more progressive school systems provide psychological service and test the mentality of entering cnildren, but where such service is not available, parents should see 1 :: it for themselves from a child guidance clinic or a private psychologist, if there is any shadow of doubt of the child's being mentally mature enough for learning. Eventually all school systems will take account of mental differences, but until that happy time comes parents must do what they can to help children find and keep their own most comfortable mental niche in the school system.

Histories of delinquent children show over and over again the same picture in regard to school—the losing battle of the child who is trying to keep his head above water in a classroom that is much higher than the one where his individual mental capacities would fit him to succeed and feel mentally comfortable and adequate. And every parent may learn something from those histories, for the delinquent child is not a special sort of creature; he is just your child or mine, with fewer advantages, more emotional strains, a little less of intelligent sympathy and help in his problems.

The child who is ready for school sooner than the average and is able and eager to learn faster presents a problem, too. One can be just about as bored and disgusted with tasks that are too easy as with those that are too hard. And

these cases are often as little understood by teachers (and parents, too) as are the others. Sometimes it is easy to see that a child is restless because he needs new worlds to conquer, but oftentimes only the trained psychologist can get to the root of the problem. The Advanced Child. And if you do find that your child is capable of handling more advanced work than ,the school is giving him, what then? The answers to this query vary widely according to circumstances. Perhaps an extra promotion is the answer, but too much skimming is not advisable, neither is it wise to forget that • the child's social and physical adjustments are as important as his mental adjustment, and skipping too far ahead may throw him out of gear in these relationships. The special class or section is the best answer, but a great deal can be done, when this is lacking, by giving him the chance to pursue extra interests along the side—music, a foreign language, a collection of minerals or butterflies. If parents will go at the matter tactfully they can usually get teachers to co-operate in fitting these interests in with the regular school programme. Plenty of books at home, including a good encyclopaedia, and a few Saturday trips to museums, factories, the zoo, or whatever places of interest the neighbourhood affords—these resources in the hands of parents can do wonders to round out the child's mental diet when the school isn't supplying enough nourishment. Sometimes a good deal of restlessness and vague annoyance ,is built up in a child who is kept working at a rather academic type of learning when his genuine tastes and mental cravings are turned towards mechanical or artistic expressions. The schools of most cities fail to allow for inherent differences in kind —as well as amount — of intelligence. But parents can, if they will, do a great deal to supplement the academic programme for the mechanic-ally-minded child by arranging for mechanical work as .a hobby or extra school activity. A workshop in the garage, some classes at the Y.M.C.A., or some private lessons from a good mechanic, if nothing else offers —these procedures may supply the spice that will give flavour to a school course that doesn't happen to seem appetising to some particular child. Most school systems offer some opportunities for learning mechanical skill by the time the child reaches 13 or 14 years, but that, for some children, isn't soon enough.