GAMES OF CHILDHOOD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20088, 27 October 1928, Page 8 (Supplement)

GAMES OF CHILDHOOD.

BY KATHERINE C.\HR.

ORGANISED AND OTHERWISE.

This is tlio age of organisation. Everything must bo organised, even tho games of tho school children. It is all very admirable, very creditable to the organisers, but when one sees a teacher with a whistlo in the midst of a crowd of school-children directing them in somo new variation of •"touch-you-last" or "drop-thc-hankey," one recalls tho wild unorganised games of one's own childhood and wonders if theso youngsters enjoy a game that is played to the promptings of a whistlo as uproariously as wo enjoyed the crude games that wo played—as far as possible from sight and sound of teachers—twenty or thirty years ago. There is certainly a great deal to bo said in favour of the newer idea. Tho enjoyment of a race, a romp and n laugh .with tho children breaks down the barriers between teacher and pupils and promotes understanding, toleranco and good-fellow-ship. In my earliest days at school—a rather horrid little country school whero tho big children tvranised with impunity over tho smaller children—there was no such camaraderie existing between tho teacher And her pupils. The teacher whom I remember best wore a white blouse and a sweeping, seven-gored skirt. She had an amazingly small, petersham-belted waist, a monstrous chignon secured in a hair-net, a row of brooches down the front of her blouse and a most magnificent gold watch and chain! She couldn't possibly have played with us without falling over herself, so we played our boisterous games unwatched and unembarrassed. A teacher may participate quite successfully in a game of basket-ball or rounders and blow the whistlo in a football or hockey match, but what possible use could a teacher be in a game of ghost-in-the-garden ? "Mother, mother, there's a ghost in'-the garden!" "Xo, it's only your father's white shirt hung out to dry!" And who among you staid, grownup mothers can forget the shrieks of laughter and the well-feigned terror with which you fled from tho pursuing "ghost" ? Do the children of to-day still play the game in which "Blackie." a mysterious kidnapping monster, refuses the bereft mother admission to his den in search of her lost children—becauso her boots aro too dirty—because her stockings are too dirty—bccauso her feet are too dirty—and because if she cuts off her feet, as sho obligingly offers to do, the blood will run all ov«r the "blackie's" clean carpets ? Has the organised game of today thrust tho old imaginative game to tho back-ground, to the limbo of forgotten yesterdays ?

Sometimes I hear the school-children at play. They yell vociferously and the chief amusements of the boys seem to be cricket in summer and football in winter. In both games tho object seems to be to kick tho hall into the gardens of tho neighbouring houses and then go swarming over tho fences in packs to retrieve it.. The littlo girls occasionally join hands and sing, "Here we go round the jingle ring . . and the shrill treble of their voices recalls memories of tho days when one vroro long curls and a white starched pinaforo and squabbled and scuffled to bo next to tho girl who, for tho moment, was regarded as tho social queen of the school! Can wo deny that even among schoolchildren there is a lot of snobbery and that children of both sexes are often detestably unkind ? To anvono who has never seen evidence of this, though it may bo observed any day in any school playground, I would recommend Katherino Mansfield's incomparable short story, "The Doll's House," in tho collection entitled "The Dove's Nest." It is one of the most perfect pieces of realism pvor penned, and no one but a Katherino Mansfield could have written it. Pcrhap3 it is in the eradicating of juvenile snobbishness and tyranny that fho influence of tho teacher and tho organised gamo can servo their best purpose, for if the teacher, who sets tho standard of conduct for the scholars, will he sympathetic and gracious enough to hold the hand of tho shabby, self-conscious child and applaud his or her prowess in Ihe same as generously as the skill of tho child who is obviously favoured by fortune, will not tho infant dignity of the despised mite bo increased in tho eyes of the other children and a shrinking little sonl perhaps be gladdened beyond measure ?