PRE-SCHOOL EDUCATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3823, 21 June 1927, Page 68

PRE-SCHOOL EDUCATION.

LECTURE BY DR LAWSON. In the University buildings on Wednesday evening Dr Lawson gave a very interesting lecture on the education of the preschool child. Mrs T. K. Sidey, president of the Free Kindergarten Union of New Zealand, presided over a large attendance.

Dr Lawson said that he shared in the general ignorance about the child-mind from birth to five years. Dr Kimmins, the London educationist, had recently declared that between the ages of two to five was the most important period in life. A recognised authority. Miss M. Drummond, of Edinburgh, had made the same assertion at last year’s education conference in England. No doubt psycho-analysis had emphasised this period unduly, yet when due allowance was made the first quinquennium of life was still a, not the, most important period. A child’s brain grew rapidly. Physiologists said it grew during the first year at the rate of a cubic centimetre a day. It was difficult to understand how a half-grown brain could receive and store impressions; yet experience proved that it did. Fear was common in child, instinctive often, but not always. It was caught by infection from people, exhibiting fear —nurses and timid mothers. Hence when a child's tendencies moved along lines similar to those of parent or grandparent, all was attributed to heredity. Yet recent biological research was establishing the belief that early environment was the real cause of many characteristics of the modern child and of modern society. The work of Kammerer in particular on “Salamandra Maculora” in Austria was reviving the confidence of those who distrusted the uncompromising theory of non-inheritance of acquired characteristics. This was outside his province, but he was convinced that a different environment from birth to five or six would produce a different man and different society. A competitive environment necessarily stimulated into superior activity the self-assertive, competitive instinct, confirming in each mind the principle laid down by Goethe, “Thou must rule or serve, Amboss odcr Hammer sein.” Love cast out fear, —therefore two requisites in the guide of the little ones were courage and love. Mothers had the latter, not always the former.

Another dominant trait in children was love af play—a joyous activity with no purposed end beyond itself as a means of self-expression. Dr Montessori, it seemed to him, had unwisely discarded play for occupational activity directed to didactic material. The kindergarten of Froebel, administered in the spirit of its founder, with adaptation to the needs of to-day, was nearer the child value, and was based on a wider view of life. Sensetraining was designed to give a greater mastery over material surroundings. This was good, but it could not touch the inner mystery of life, which lurked in childhood at all events in a disorderly realm of magic, disconnection, fantasy, discontinuity, seriousness, and' wonder. In_ short, in the child-soul was all the potency of the Shakespeares and Raphaels yet to be.. The teacher’s main task was not to impart knowledge, but to lead by gentle steps to self-control, self-realisation, and good habits. Obedience should not be

taught in an arbitrary way. in that way servility and stockishness lay. Obedience was to be the outcome of good habits —the habits of doing right things. This, of course, implied guidance, and even physical force, in the child’s interest. But corporal punishment in a kindergarten was like the shock that ran through Eden as depicted by Milton at Adam’s sin. Physical punishment set up a belief in the child that good ends in adult life were attainable by similar means. Here, again, early environment, if completely changed, would change the views of man’s heredity. Again, the child must be disciplined to order in food, sleep, and truth. He must learn that punishment came upon him not at the caprice of an adult, but as a natural consequence; a counsel of perfection, of course, yet well worth ■working for. Adult irritability was the archfoe of childhood. Children would be belter trained when adults were less irritable. Praise and blame were both right, but they must be just. To say, “You dirty, bad boy” to a child of three or four who had dabbled in mud was not right. A child of that age had not our artificial distinctions between clean and dirty. The whole problem was one of leading the unconscious or semi-conscious organism through a process from mere sense-existence to conscious freedom and self-determination, within limits useful to society of course. Truth was absolutely necessary, not in the child, but in his guide. If he asked a question about birth, sex. or God, he should be told simply. He was easily satisfied. Magna est veritas—mighty is truth. The lecturer dealt with psycho-analysis; the problem of freedom, handwork, fairy stories and magic, imagination and phantasy, the break between kindergarten and school, and with many practical teaching problems. He believed that true education was better exemplified in the kindergarten than anywhere else. He hoped the movement would develop, and that the methods would permeate the whole school.