VALUE OF DAY DREAMS.

Shannon News, 31 December 1929, Page 4

VALUE OF DAY DREAMS.

An expert at a recent international conference on education declared that tKc teacher could use a child's daydreaming as a guide to its games and its imagination. "We must obtain a complete knowledge of this day-dimming activity,'' 'ho "urged. "We hayc little hope of success in our work unless the child's mosit free form of expression—the daydream—is taken into consideration." Children do not as a rule have a groat deal of t.ime to themselves; thenday is generally,, planned for them, so much'time for meals, so -much for rest, so' much for play, jexcrcise and work; therefore it is not easy for them always to show whore their-real bcrat in life lies. In the desire to d,o tihe p best for them, parents and teachers have in the past often kept them too. strictly within the bound of set times for set Occupations, and then been disappointed at'the result. . • , , X child,' romping in a garden Qr a 'nursery, , suddenly pauses, wanders away, sits'or lies with'dreaming eyes watching the clouds trailing across the sky or the. coals glowing in the fire, and in those moments of day-dreaming when t.he mind lays fallow, the first precious seeds of great achievement may come to life; the creative impulse to reproduce through some form of art all the lovely images -floating into the little brain, or the interpretative powers to express the great concepions of ohcrs. Like all other occupations or habits day-dreaming may become too constant and strong—«ny "quality or virtue in life can develop into a vice if it be unrestrained by wisdom; but it is for those in authority to see that such moods keep within bounds, and yet to allow the child time to bo physically idle, time for the brain to occupy itself as it will, in flights of fancy or dreams of greatness, since in those' periods, their duration controlled but their existence not interfered with, the child's whole future may be inspired and guided to usefulness and honour.