The Position of Play in a System of Rational Education. Part II.
by J. Strachan, Esq., M.D.
Volume 8, 1897/8, pgs. 105-111
(Continued from pg. 9.)
Viewing the mind now from the point at which we have arrived, of ideas or physical units fully organised in the brain, we must shift our analogy from the action of the stomach to that of the muscles. As the stomach and the receptive mental faculties are each directly dependent for their action upon pabulum received from without, and are thus instinctively endowed upon similar lines, so the muscles and the mind are the parts of the organism which require, so-called, voluntary exercise for development. In this case, as in the other, we find analogous provision in the instinctive promptings of the child. With the muscles and the mind, activity in the young is not, as with the other organs, essential to the maintenance and carrying on of life. So far as the mere working of the animal machine is concerned, food and other requirements being provided by the parents, the muscles and the mind might remain entirely quiescent, in which case there could be no development. I need not point out to you how very far this is from being the case; that, on the contrary, both muscles and mind, and especially the latter, are in continual action during the whole waking time of the child, urged thereto by instinctive promptings specially designed to meet the requirements of development. Under the influence of these promptings, the muscles of the child, as in the young of all the higher animals, pull and twist the body into all manner of contortions, quite irrespective of any outward object to be gained, but with the result, in every instance where health and freedom are maintained, of securing the most complete muscular exercise and the most perfect bodily development. In like manner, the young mind, urged by an entirely analogous instinctive impulse, is in a continual ferment of activity, not only every faculty, but every single idea seeking eagerly for the means of exercise; and here also we have abundant evidence, as already pointed out, to prove that this spontaneous activity is amply sufficient for the highest development.
This developmental activity, or Exercise in the sense in which I would have you understand the word, has, in every instance, a certain limit according to organic condition, at the time, of the part concerned. Within this limit, which is much short of actual power, action is readily undertaken, and is attended with a feeling of enjoyment; beyond it, action ceases to be productive of healthy development, becomes irksome or painful, and enters upon the region of strain. To put the position otherwise, there is, at the command of the various mental powers and voluntary muscles, individually and collectively, a certain amount of vital energy available for exercise, the expenditure of which is attended with pleasure. At the back of this, so to speak, there is a further supply required to carry on the process of growth. In case of urgent need, to prevent injury, this latter may be applied to action--which is no longer exercise--but under protest from the instinctive or ruling powers of nature, as being an interference with the work which has been arranged for. The former may be compared to the legitimate expenditure of income upon the requirements of the time; the latter to drain upon capital to meet an immediate necessity, with the effect of future impoverishment. The only possible indication as to this all-important limit is to be found in instinctive prompting with its attendant enjoyment so characteristic of healthy action in the young. Here, therefore, no less than with feeding and instruction, coercive measures are entirely out of place and attended with much danger. With salutary exercise there is no more need of coercion than with savoury food; while, under compulsion, there is no guarantee for action being salutary either in kind or in quantity. Under fear of punishment or hope of prizes or rewards, a child may be led to go counter to natural inclination, which indeed is the only object and effect of such stimulus. What is then to regulate action or draw the line between exercise and strain? And what object has the educator in going beyond what nature has provided for? The position of the coercionist may be stated in the language of Canon Scott Holland. In an article in the May number of the Parents' Review, explaining the use of "Goads in Education," the Canon, after stating that "Education should be pure joy, for freedom is joy, and souls that find their powers arrive should laugh and sing for growth is natural, and to be natural is to be oneself, and to be oneself is to be glad," puts the questions, "Why then should there be any need of goads to bully or to frighten, or to thrust or to drive? Why are our poor chicks to find themselves cooped up, pinned down to weary tasks, grinding at hated jobs? Why are there pains and penalties, black looks, forced efforts, compulsion or menace or tears?" and he gives for answer, "The child has to bring up his capacities to the line where the race now stands. Enormous efforts are required to do this, but the child has to go through it . . . . We all have to do in a few years what it has taken the race thousands of years to accomplish." Could we apply such reasoning to any other natural process? Suppose that civilization required an increase, say, of a foot or of an inch or of a hair-breadth upon natural stature, and that we attempted, by any coercive means, to force growth to that extent! Should we not be laughed at? Can we, by such means, force the growth of a single hair or of any cell or fibre of our frame? But, says the coercionist, the mind is very different from the body. No one is more ready to grant this than I am; but is the difference such as to render coercive measures more warrantable? Can we, who cannot force the growth or alter the color of a single hair, force the growth or the development of the brain cells? Or does he propose to produce mind apart from these? In the former case, our impotence is tangible and apparent to every one; in the latter, all is hidden and mysterious, and it is thus open to unconscious quackery to profess a power which there is no visible means of refuting--although it may well be asked whether the capacities of the race have been increased by the coercion of hundreds or thousands of years, which Roger Ascham protested against in the 16th century, and Homer complained of in his day. Are even the greatest men of this generation so much superior to Homer and Socrates and Shakespeare, Bacon and Milton? It may be asked, too, whether the high pressure of the last twenty years is tending to raise the mental capacity of the race, when we see year after year from the lunacy statistics, that mental breakdown is increasing amongst us by leaps and bounds. A true and just appreciation of the difference between body and mind ought to make us more especially careful in the latter to keep closely by natural indications since we are totally without other knowledge or guidance in the matter. We can bring up the child's capacities only by favouring, as in all true culture, the natural process of development, in which goads have no place.
Assuming, then, a limited amount of developmental activity available for the day's exercise, the question is, what shall we do with it? Here M. Gouin's little story helps to a fine principle. The most recently acquired ideas are always, after they have fairly taken root, the most urgent in their demand for exercise, showing a special need, in their case, with a view to their being fully established in the mind, and brought into due relation with existing ideas. "He tormented his mother till she made him half-a-dozen little sacks; he tormented his uncle till he had built him a mill, etc." Such is the manifestation of activity going on amongst the freshly acquired ideas in the brain, and, along with this, we have the educational aid and guidance by the uncle. But mark the expression, "the uncle lent himself with great willingness to all these fantasies." Such must every be the attitude of the true educator who, at the highest, is but the assistant of the Great Master Educator, the God Who made us and is making the child into the fully developed and fully equipped adult.
If this, as we may call it, initial exercise is to be regarded as Play, as the keen zest and hearty enjoyment with which it is undertaken would suggest, its place in a system of Rational Education is very evident. It ought to follow in appropriate form upon every lesson, or diet of mental pabulum, as, in the true sense of the word, an exercise on that lesson. It is for the teacher, however, not to impose and enforce exercises upon the lessons which have been taught, but simply to afford facilities, aid, and guidance, to the flow of activity which comes as a necessary sequel to true teaching, and is the only indication by which we can judge of this. In such activity, although we may have various bodily movements in imitations of, and abundant verbal reference to what has actually been seen and heard, which remains as a vivid picture upon the memory and is there is seen, so to speak, by the mind's eye, we need not look for any exact reproduction of knowledge at this stage. Had the uncle, instead of lending himself as a guide and help to spontaneous activity, set himself to examine the boy as to his knowledge of the mill, he would have received very little satisfaction; and an exercise prescribed in set form upon the bolters, the millstones, the hoppers, etc., would have procured an equally poor result. As well might we expect ripe fruit as a direct result from planting a seed in the ground as look for a fully formulated reproduction from ideas freshly planted in the brain. With the seed we must be content to wait for, and attend upon, the natural course of development--the seed leaf, the tender shoot, the delicate leaves and the fragile flower, before the fruit can be fully formed. So must the idea be allowed to work out its own development, with such aid and guidance as we can afford. The resulting psychical organism actively evolving living thought is of infinitely greater value, educationally, than any number of dead verbal formulae imprinted on the memory.
It is difficult to differentiate play from work in the child, as, according to nature, play simply is child's work--the work or exercise of body and mind required to prepare for the coming life. There are not two kinds of exercise, a natural kind of play and a different kind for school, any more than there are two kinds of feeding, one for pleasure and another for nutrition. Exercise can only be exercise, and must possess the same characteristics whether entirely spontaneous or utilised for school work. Such is the only guarantee we can have for school work being according to nature, and, therefore, truly promotive of development and future strength. But as I cannot here enter further into the question of school exercises, I shall confine my use of the term Play to such spontaneous activity as is undertaken by the young over and above that dictated by the school, or otherwise.
If the Educator could be supposed to have a complete and accurate knowledge of all the parts to be exercised, we might conceive of a system in which no place would be required for play-in which every muscle of the body and every part and faculty of the mind would, by virtue of inherent tendency and according to a complete method, be duly exercise every day, so as to bring the whole to the highest development. But who is there that can put forward the slightest pretention to such complete knowledge? Who even can have such knowledge of the hundreds of muscles of the body as would enable him to contrive a system which would ensure for each and all the exact amount of daily exercise required? And if this cannot be done with the muscles, where the size and action of each is within the range of anatomical knowledge, who will attempt it with the mind, where all is obscurity and mystery, where it is utterly beyond our power even to identify the organic centre of any single faculty or psychical entity, or to differentiate these in their mental manifestation with any approach to accuracy?
Of correspondingly modest proportions should be the claim of the teacher upon the time and the available energy of his pupils. On school subjects and school lessons it is his province to lead, guide, and assist exercise by all means in his power, in such a way as to train the mind in desirable habits of application; but to limit exercise to these--and we must reckon this from day to day without reference to holidays--is to limit development to what cannot but be regarded as the very narrow bounds of school work. It should be ever present to the teacher's mind that his lessons are only supplemental, and in a comparatively small degree, to those which are being constantly taught in the great school of life; and that exercise required upon many subjects outside his curriculum. As the child at play goes through bodily contortions which would never occur to the gymnast, bringing into action muscles and groups of muscles of which he may know nothing, so, also, mental powers of the greatest value, but which find no place in the school regimen, are exercised and developed in the spontaneous activity of Play. The early life histories of great men show that, in almost every case, the special powers which distinguished them above their fellows were exercised and thus developed, not by compulsory school work, but by the voluntary pursuits and amusements to which they were impelled by a power stronger, even, than the pains and penalties of the school-master. Thus it is told of Sir Isaac Newton that he gave great trouble to his teachers, both by his own inattention to lessons and by distracting the attention of his class-fellows with the many little mechanical contrivances which so greatly occupied his mind. Sir David Brewster says, "It is very probable that Newton's idleness arose from the occupation of his mind with subjects in which he took a deeper interest." The same authority says further, "The toy which amuses the boy will instruct the sage, and many an eminent discoverer and inventor can trace the pursuits which immortalize them to some experiment or instrument which amused them at school." (History of the Stereoscope. [Sir David Brewster])
Sir Walter Scott, while known at school as the Greek dunce, was known also as a marvellous story-teller. According to Lockhart, "He attained greatness by obeying nothing but the strong breath of native inclination." His greatest delight, when very young, was, he himself tell us, to listen to the tales of "an aged hind," of Border fights and Highland raids; and he thus describes the way in which his imagination worked upon the pabulum thus acquired:--
"While stretched at length upon the floor
Again I fought each combat o'er.
Pebbles and shells, in order laid,
The mimic ranks of war displayed.
And onward still the Scottish lion bore,
And still the scattered Southern fled before."
I need not point out the bearing which such Play had upon the great work which came after.
Is the Education worthy of the name of Rational which leaves out of account such a powerful agency and excludes from the field of mental development all which is not embraced in school lessons? Such, if strictly enforced, as is the tendency of the "educational" (?) high pressure of the day, is not to draw out, but to cabin, crib and confine the mind within the narrowest limits, and to prevent the development of genius and of special intellectual powers for the future. A true estimate of the wonderful complexity and multiformity of the mind, and of the full evolutionary power which we know it possesses, should lead to (1st) as large a portion of the child's time as possible being left free for spontaneous activity, and (2nd) all available means being employed to aid and guide such activity in the most desirable channels.
(To be continued.)
Proofread by LNL, Jul. 2020