YOUR CHILD AT SCHOOL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 869, 29 March 1956, Page 5

YOUR CHILD AT SCHOOL

Sir.-In his letter (Listener, March 9) S.J.M. ventures several opinions and makes a few inferences that are far from the facts concerning creative education. It is a fact that some children who have shown artistic ability in the Infant Room lose interest when they enter the Standard classes. However, rather than being a natural consequence, as S.J.M. infers, it is more likely to be due to factors, either at home or at school, which interfere- with their natural emotional development. S.J.M. has not considered, apparently, the emotional aspect of child development or otherwise he would not cite the loss of ability as a point in favour of his case. The real concern of creative education is with the fullest development of the potential worth in individual children and in this the emotional and imaginative aspects play an important part. Sensibility and self-discipline are developed during these creative periods through the nature of the media or materials used and the necessity that children feel to adapt them to their purpose, It is the "doing" that matters in relation to the natural and harmonious growth and development of young children. These are real experiences and not fantasy as S.J.M. has inferred; although a certain amount of fantasy may enter into them, which is only natural considering the age of the children. What they "do" comes naturally and is an expression of those qualities which we admire so much in children. As for the matter of doing harm, it is more likely that the insistence on "realism" and the acquirement of "skills’’ in handling the tools of learning could, without due regard for all the factors concerned in a child’s "readiness" to comprehend and handle them, harm the

childten emotionally, and lead to a stifling of the very qualities so essential for his growth and full development. Further, children working during these periods, and in creative petiods in the Standards, are completely absorbed in an unselfconscious manner, which can be observed usually up until the age of 11 years, when intellect and reality begin to make them more aware emotionally of their "real" selves and their "real" environment. Would any "real" person play "trains" or "cowboys and Indians" in a manner that nine-year-olds would in a public place? S.J.M. has used the terms "active" and "passive" in a physical sense which tends to confuse the issue as these terms do not fit the facts when children are regarded as "whole" beings with certain basic needs to be satisfied if they are to become fully integrated. In my teaching experience in many schools I have seen no better means of satisfying those needs for adventure, security, recognition, response and self-realisation than in those creative periods of "activity" where children can, of their own free choice, seek them in a sympathetic environ-

ment.

FRANK

DEAN

(Dunedin).