PRE-SCHOOL CHILD

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 158, 9 July 1935, Page 5

PRE-SCHOOL CHILD

NATION’S MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION BUT NOT THE MOST VALUED. An address of outstanding-interest to parents and all concerned wtih education and child welfare was given on Wednesday afternoon by the headmaster of the Marton District High ' K --hool. Mr. H. Leon Wilson, to the Marton Junction Women’s Institute. It is reproduced as under: 1 make no apology for the subject of my address ‘The Pre-school Child,’ nor do 1 believe that any mother present would ask one. 1 feel sure that we can all agree that they are the nation’s most valuable, if not most valued, possession. Later on in my remarks it may become apparent to you all why this subtle distinction is made. 1 propose to deal very briefly with the earliest years of a child’s life and then to deal more fully with the years which immediately precede the present schuo] entrance age —six years. The child is bo n with certain inborn potentialities, but I do not think that we can in anv way compare the newlyborn human with the newly-born animal. For instance, it is -aid that kittens a few hours old will spit and scratch if they even get a sniff of a dog, but the human baby is, to all intents and purposes, helpless. Nevertheless it is capable uf many reflex actions. If it feels something in its palm, it will grasp it, put something in its mouth and it will suck it, actions which are entirely reflex, and in no way volitional. None the less,there is implanted in the human baby a vast range of potential activities which, with the physical development and suitable environment, will rapidly manifest themselves. Environment is all important. For example, take the. potentiality for speech. At a certain stage of development the urge is there to articulate, but what the child does articulate depends upon its environment. If iU environment is Lng.ish, it will speak English, if Mao’i, then Maori and so on. bo with other phases of the baby’s development. I'i.e urges are there, but the direction they take depends upon the environme it which is placed about the child by the mother. Important as the first three years ot the child’s life are, however, they are usually regarded as being outside of the sphere of the teacher as such. But when the child enters upon the next three years of its life, he is approaching the stage at which it is conceded, more definite training seems to be not only appreciated, be also necessary. The child can now move freely from place to place, he has acquired the ability to express his meaning in words more or less perfectly, he has also acquired a considerable manipulative ability, very often manifesting itself in pulling things to pieces, building up bricks, and knocking them down again, but, above all, the initiative impulse, which btgan to manifest itself at th? end of the first year, now plays a very important part in the making of the future man or woman. How many or vou have no’ laughed at a three-v-ar-old trying to waik like daddy, or to knit like mummy, but I wonder if many of you nav? realised what a tremendous factor was at work and how this

impulse »v is shaping your child 's life. A’ this stage memory becomes more permanent, and it would appear tnai there is i c’use connection speech and memory. Try to recall your earliest memories, and you will find that your memory fails at about y-.u; third yet', that is, at the point wltu speech first became coiieient. As the child begins to move about in a world of objects, he begins his classification of them that is, he is beginning to reduce a chaos ot fleeting impressions to order. His classification is at first on very broad lines. Every man is dadda, every small four-legged, creature is a bow wow, every large one is a moo-cow or a gee-gee, according as he is brought up on a dairy farm or round a stable. But he rapidly begins to notice differences and to make his classification more accurate. Imitation, spontaneous at first, becomes more purposeful, and now curiosity plays a very large part in bis mental life. All you mothers know* what a plaguey nuisance you call four-year-old with his, “Mummy, what is it?” “Mummy why this, and why that?” Questions which simply show the unfolding of the child’s mind. Imagination now begins to run riot. The child has not yet learned in the hard school of experience that not all of its dreams are attainable, and so there is no limit to the flights of fancy. 1 am afraid that many a child has been smacked at this stage for telling stories, when it was merely relating something which, to its budding mind, was real.y true. If one were to seek for the thing which most satisfies the minds of four and five-year-old, L think it would be the response to the of repeated request “Tell me a lory, please.” Listening, the child really lives* the story, hence the perfect satisfaction that a well-told story gives. The child’s life will now be showing the effects of his earlier training. He is fitting into his niche in the family, he does not, or should not, have to be told to do things which he has been ci ; iig every day. In other words, habits are being formed. Contemporaneously with all these “urges” there is another exceedingly, and from the point of view of the human society, the most important ‘urge” and that is, the development of the “herd” instinct —the craving for companionship. Have any of you, I wonder, heard, as 1 have, the cry of more than one “only” child, “.Mummy, why can’t 1 have a little brother (or sister) to play with?’ Of the importance o*f satisfying this urge, 1 shall : have more to say later on. Such then, are briefly the stages of development that the child has gone through from birth to about his six.h year. Let us now see the child through the eyes of the teachers. Not s<» mt>ny years ago, not so long as, in ia;t, many present, perhaps, will recugni.-.e ’le type, the child was regarded is a little man, with all the ideas, the feelings, the aspirations of the adults, but of course, being in a smaller body, on a smaller scare that a child might possibly have a different outlook upon life never entered the heads of the old pedagogues, and that there could ever be found a way of learning other than the hard road of “grind” would have been regarded as rank heresy. “Drive it in” was their slogan. Will the children of to-day, 1 wonder, ever realise what they owe to a , Frenchman, Jean Jacques Rosseau (1712-1778) who pleaded for a morel natural education for children than had I been in vogue up till his time. “Let | the child learn his lessons from nature”!

was his plea. ’•Surround him with all that is beautiful and good to form hl character. Exeto.-e ins body, his senses, his powers, but Jet him not see a book till he is 12 years of age.” Was it an wonder that such a heresy against the accepted canons of education caused husseau to be regarded as a madman by the pedagogues of his day ? But the seed had been sown and it was left to a Swiss, John Henry I’estalozzi (1765 1827) to cultivate the ideas of Rosseau. To him the honour of first insisting that mere “learning” by which in those days was meant a know*edge of the Latin and Greek, was not education. I’estaloz/.:, working from the idea of Rosseau, gathered around him some 2(1 or so poor children, and proceeded to educate them,* not by means of books, but by living with them, working with them, talking with them, entering, as it were, their world and acting as a guide and counsellor to them, explaining away difficulties, reading the book of nature for them, striving to see the world through the child’s eyes, and solving his difficulties for him with the more mature thinking of the adult. I’estalozzi, however, was not able to do much more than theorise and it was left to a disciple, Frederick Froebel (1783-1852) to reduce the chaotic ideas of Pestalozzi. to something like order, and to formulate a practical method of putting the ideas of Rosseau into practice. To Froebel. we owe the word “kindergarten” or “garden of children.” “Activity” may be said to be the keynote of I - roebel’s system, “passivity” that of his predecessors. Instead of the child being, in the eyes of tne teacher, a receptacle into which “the wisdom of all the ages” was to be poured, the child himself, through his activities, was lu be own his own education. The function of the teacher was to be the director these activities. Thus, by handling things a child would learn that they were solid, by following their contours, he would learn their shape. Byusing them he would learn their uses. By pulling them to pieces he would learn what they were made of etc., etc. What a revolution! Well can I re member n*y own days in the infant classes, seated in a gallery from morning till afternoon, a slate on my knee, laboriously making strokes, or when not doing that, sitting up like a wooden doll, nut daring to move. Froebol’s revolutionary ideas had not yet penetrated as far as New Zealand. But once again the seed had been sown, and this time the fields did not want for labourers. From far and near came students to sit at the feet of Froebel and to carry the glad tidings to the children in the four corners of the earth. The day of the child had dawned! The so-called “gifts” on Froebel and ths methods of Froebel have, of late years, been improved upon bv a famous Italian educator, Madame Montessori, wnose apparatus finds a place in every infant room. We see now, perhaps, what is the aim of the modern infant teacher. She knows that within her little charges there are certain powers struggling to make themselves felt. For want ot « better term we call them “urges.*’ She knows full well too, that it is most dangerous to deny these* urges au opportunity for emerging and expressing themselves, as they always tend to do, in action, otherwise, they may, and in all probability will, break out in a manner that we speak of as “perverted.” A “pervert” is a person

whose urges have broken out in Hit. s wrong direction very possible because they were denied emergence in the direction Nature intended them to lake. You will remember 1 spoke earlier of the social urge. What may happen if that urge is not satisfied? The denial of Ihe opportunity for companionship | when the urge is insistently clamour mg lor it may cause a perversion, a withdrawal into self, a disinclination to accept companionship when at length it is. offered —he becomes an Ishmael of society, his hand against every man’s, and every man's against hi>. With such are our jirisons filled. ISu with other urges. The point L wish to make is that these urges that I have outlined are becoming very insistent between the ages of three to six years. How many of you mothers, 1 wonder, feel competent, even if you had the leisure, which 1 am sure few of yuu have, to direct these urges to their natural emergence in appropriate activity/ You have not tne lime, eveu • if you have the knowledge. Two courses are open to you. You may spank him j for pulling up your flowers, and so, per- ’ hups, pervert his love of Nature into ' something much less desirable, or you | may give him the moon he craves for, I ami teach him that he has only to howl I loudly enough and he will get what ’ [ever he wants. Thus you aitf encouraging the anti social trait of selishne.->. in the best interests of the child, therefore. 1 feel confident that •every mother will agree, the child with insistent urges should be placed under ex- : pert care, as soon as his. mental de j velopment reaches the stage at which these appear Is it fair, iz it right, that the child should be denied Ihe opportunity of benefittiug by this expert guidance liil he reaches the age of six years. Let us realise that the child is just as much in need of help as if he were sick. Would you tolerate a law which forbade you Io call in the doctor because your child was not yet six years of age? A child who is not developing mentally as Nature intends him to, is just as sick a child as one who is not developing bodily as Nature intended. Yet, under our present laws, the priviledge of providing expert guidance Io his developing brain is restricted to those who can afford to send the child to a kindergarten at, say, four years old, or a private school at five. The N.Z.E.I. has been conducting a campaign for the readmission of the five-year-olds to our schools. Their exclusion, I feel very strongly, i>> an injustice which is worthy of being made a major isiue in the next election campaign, but what also calls for a united effort on the part of mothers to establish is a kindergarten attache] to our State schools. I. say it without ’iwy fear of contradiction from students < f child education, that no part of the child’s education demands more skilled handling than from four to six years old. but on the score of economy, mark you, and for no other valid reason, our children are being deprived of their birthright as sons and daughters of this fair Dominion—the right to expert guidance of their developing minds. How much longer, L ask the mothers present, will you tolerate this injustice?