BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 744, 17 August 1929, Page 13

BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

CHILD’S ACTIVE MENTAL PROCESSES

GUIDANCE URGED (Contributed by the Department of Health.) The brain is made up of nerve cells, which are linked together and connected with one another by means of nerve processes and fibres, and it is these nerve fibres which form the paths of communication between the different parts of the brain (states the Board of Education (England) handbook on health education). The functional activity of the brain depends largely upon the facilities for communication between the nerve cells; and one of the objects of education is to encourage the constant formation of new nerve paths, and to secure effective correlation and coordination of those already existing. As the brain develops the linking-up of the nerve cells becomes correspondingly closer and more complex. No part of the muscular system is unrepresented in the brain, and communication between the muscles and the brain is established by means of afferent and efferent nerves. Normal physiological stimulation of the nerve cells is good and promotes the general as well as the local development of the brain. It is only when the stimulation is excessive or premature that harm may be done. The steady and balanced growth and working of the brain should be the aim, for the brain is the regulating centre of the whole body. IMPORTANCE OF HEALTHY MIND The child is an individual with his own desires, emotions, and propensities. The duty of mental fitness may be urged because this will make the children more useful persons in the world, better able to help V other people, and equipped to undertake work and occupations suited to them. KEY TO MENTAL HYGIENE The key to mental Uyglene lies in the building up of the innate character of the child: a normal body with particular senses and sensations; secondly, there is a mind with impulses (instincts) and emotions. The guidance and cultivation of these elemental powers is necessary to health. Their growth is aided by emotions, by sympathy, by sociableness, by sex. These are the material out of which character and conduct are to be built. The task of the teacher is to take these primitive faculties and train them by inducing habits of inhibition or cultivation. (2) To do this there must be springs of action, the desire to happiness and usefulness in girls; the desire for risk, adventure, fame, and usefulness in boys. (3) There must also be a clear conception of the fundamental ends of Ufe, beauty, goodness, and truth, as expressed in an intelligent, adaptable and reliable child, capable of sustained endeavour. These qualities cannot come by chance. They are effects of causes. They must be constructed out of the senses, the impulses, and the primitive emotions common to mankind. The degree of emotional control is an important index. A child’s nature harbours all the fundamental emotions that are common In adults—love, jealousy, hate, revenge, fear, shame, disgust—and respond to emotional situations in much the same way as does the adult, except that its feelings are more direct and less controlled than in later life. The child whose conduct reacts to excessive fear or morbid terror is being wrongly brought up. A child’s feelings are the driving forces of his personality, and are a proper object of *ll educative efforts, which should aim at moulding them in the eourise of years to forms that are acceptable when judged by cultured standards. HEALTHY OUTLOOK To ensure that a healthy outlook is fostered in children the prime necessity is that the body and the mind should themselves be healthy. The child should be encouraged to interest himself in the world him; to concentrate on the task in hand; to exert himself to overcome difficulties; to appreciate the value not only of his own health but the effect of his presence and personality on those around him. Hence the importance of cheerfulness and courage. He should gradually assume his right share in responsibility. He may begin by having certain duties in connection with order and cleanliness of the school; then with “things going right” in the school he should learn to be, as occasion demands, either a follower or a leader. This attention of the mental health of children is by no means easy. However, of three facts we may be sure. First, that mental disorders are as common and natural as physical disorders, and are due not to “fate” but to definite causes, many of which are preventable. Secondly, if we neglect the mental health of childhood we cannot escape its results in many, kinds of mental ailment —dull, backward, neurotic, "difficult,” or delinquent children. Thirdly, the child is so constructed of body, mind and spirit that he cannot live at the full height of his human capacity unless harmony between all three he attained. Insofar as it is reached he has health, wholeness, oneness, the best of which his particular body is capable.