A STATISTICIAN ON CHILDREN'S GAMES.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1017, 5 January 1911, Page 9

A STATISTICIAN ON CHILDREN'S GAMES.

Miss Alicc Kavenhill, in the December number ol' '"The Child," has an article on 'The l'lay Interests of' English j'Jlcmentary School Children/' which is founded on a mass of statistical information. She sent out 5)000 printed forms uf inquiry which were circulated among hoys and girls of elementary schools "in a. largo number of towns and village?/' Over two-thirds were returned, and these havo been reduced to tables which give us in percentages a classification of.the favourite games of children , from three to thirteen, or—for it is not quito the same thing—what they believe to tio their favourites.

Tho children wore invited to give the reasons 1 for their preferences, and it seems that as they grow older games for games' sake lose ground considerably. Tho delight, in physical activities "gradually gives place to more distinctly emotional -suggestions, which in their turn becomti tinctured with that sense of social obligation for which we look in early ;\Ve should not hnvo looked for much cvidenco of social obligation in the reasons given for liking one game more than another by hoys and girls of twelve or thirteen,' end it is possible that in the replies there is a slight infusion of polite humbug,, or at least that tho records got a little ahead 'of the facts. Miss Ravenhill agrees that'when the form's are filled up in the schools tho replies are influenced o good deal by suggestion and association.

Tho susceptibility of the child to influences, and particularly to the influence of tho corporate spirit, though it may make for good citizenship, does, Miss "Ravenhill suggests, tend to starve the individual. ''The social instincts *of the townbrsd child are .usually precociously active, so that co-operative games are very popular and their excitinir elements are keenly appreciated." Miss Ravcnhill makes nn interesting plea for solitary play initiated by tho child himself "as a : factor iii the desirable rehearsal of racial instincts and in the exercise of imagination and skil 1 ., rus an invaluabU agent in the formation of countlcss neuromuscular co-ordinations." Tho statistics collccted may be taken, seriously perhaps, but not quite literally, and Miss Kavenhill is hardly prepared to make generalisations upon them. . They are sufficient to give some support to.her warning that man is not made by co-opera-tion alone.' -