THE CHILD-WORLD AND ITS ACTIVITIES

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 63, 7 December 1917, Page 3

THE CHILD-WORLD AND ITS ACTIVITIES

SOME IDEIS OF MISS HOWES'S. In tho course of hor address given at tho Pioneer Club upon the development of children, Miss Edith Howos told a keenly-interested audience that if we wished to adequately aid the child in his development wo should work with Nature. We must not thwart her, or she will be revenged. If we take the children in at the ago of five from all the places where they have room for their selMevolopmg activity, if ■Wβ say to them "Sit still,and listen and think all day,"_ when every muscle in their little bodies is aching for movement and auy lengthened sitting still- is miserV) then we arc courting failure. Under these, unnatural conditions the child will not develop ns he should, and wheti he is released the pent energies are apt to make him the unmanageable.little nuisance that he too often has'become. "If we wish for sticcess," continued Miss Howes, "we should say to him, 'Come and learn iby doing. Here are occupations in which you move freely and learn self-control. It ie true that" your later life requires a knowledge and skill and a training of the brain far above anything else, but we offer you that knowledge and skill and training of the brain through the freedom and control of the bodyr not through a system antagonistic to ■ Nature. It , is -true that we cannot leave you to play all your days like, sny, a kitten, a pupP.Vi w a calf, hut we offer you a training in line with your play, using your natural activity at its due stage,' not stultifying it before its work is done.' "This is the offer of thoughtful modern systems such as kindergarten and Montessori, and this is the basis of their success. Under these systems the child is doing, he is learning, not merely being taught. He is active, free, not a passive sufferer under an enforced unnatural stillness. Montessori especially has recognised the need of the child for freedom and has invented occupations that fulfil that need while training him for later life. She worked with Nature, not against her. Any mother who recognised that fundamental law of early development through activity can train her children' along Nature's lines and lead them to a really surprising self-control, whereas unduly suppressed activities are constantly in a seething rebellion. That undue' suppression of activity has always been, and is to-day, the great mistake in our general education. The whole system has been formulated from the man's outlook whose physical prrowth has ended and who has reached the more sedentary stage of life. It is based upon what is required for the man, not what is suitable for the child."

Continuing her subject Miss Howes said: "There is another mistake that has been made in the education of children. We have rigorously refused to satisfy their early natural curiosity about the beginnings of 'ife. • 'Where do wr come from ?' and 'How do we get here? , are questions which occur to any child that is not an idiot These questions have been evaded. Then the child finds out somehow; evasion only whets his curiosity, and his mind refuses to leave the query. The -least harm that can arise is that the subject is for many years associated in his mind with furtiveness and a sense of shame. There will probably be worse results. How much of tho crime and suffering in the world is directly traceable to the tainted knowledge or the colossal ignorance of the young in these matters it would be hard to say."

Miss Howes was of the opinion that no subject led more directly to the bis: and beautiful view of life than this if properly handled. It led through the observation of Nature to the great unfolding procession of parenthood with its astounding <elf-sacrifica and love; it led to those high moralities that demanded cleanness of body and mind that the next generation might not be hurt.

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