The Position of Play in a System of Rational Education. Part III.
by J. Strachan, Esq., M.D.
Volume 8, 1897/8, pgs. 382-387
(Continued from pg. 111.)
Without attempting to adjudicate as between the respective values of school work and of what George Combe refers to as "my education in practical matters," or professing to have made any careful calculation as to the claims of each upon the child's time, I am convinced that half of each day, say from one o'clock onward, might with very great advantage, be left free for the latter. If we eliminate from school work the learning and repetition of lessons from the book, which I believe to be altogether worthless as compared with oral teaching, the four hours, or, let us say, eight half hours, would be found amply sufficient to embrace all school subjects, and to give, probably, better results than we are accustomed to. Then, with Rational teaching such as I have endeavoured to explain, there would be less need, and, on the part of the pupils, little if any desire for whole holidays from mental any more than from physical feeding. These might therefore be considerably curtailed. Saturdays might be as other days, and the Christmas and Midsummer holidays reduced to one week and one month respectively. This would add seventy days to the school session and go far to balance the loss of two hours to the length of the school day.
Some may think that the holidays now given--the whole of every Saturday, with the Christmas, Easter, and Midsummer vacations, amounting to about three months in the year--afford time for a good allowance of play. They are, certainly, a considerable slice out of the time available for school, and, in that sense, may be called even extravagant; but, in regard to play, a very important point has here to be considered. This is that full development requires daily exercise, in sufficient amount, and the loss of even one day can never afterwards be made up. Then any prolonged period of inaction means far more to development than the actual loss of such time, for this reason, that functional power, which prompts to and determines exercise, diminishes with each day of inaction, so that not only is there the loss of so many days' exercise, but there is a corresponding reduction of capacity for exercise on the days immediately following. Thus after, say, one week of inaction, it may require another week to bring functional power up to its former standard, and during the whole of that time, development must suffer more or less. This fact is well known with regard to the muscles. A boy who had been kept still in bed during the rest of the week would not be chosen to play in a football match on the Saturday, and would have, then, little inclination for vigorous exercises. A fortnight of it and he would, on first getting up, be scarcely able to walk. In the same way, if certain parts of the mind are kept in a state of inaction for six days of the week they have little inclination for exercise on the seventh. Thus it is that children often scarcely know what to do with themselves on the Saturday, and it takes some days of their holidays before they begin to play heartily. I have frequently heard teachers complain of the holidays that they unsettle the pupils, and it always takes some days before they settle quietly down to lessons again. The meaning of this is that faculties, not concerned in school work, have, during the holidays, been brought into action, and attained to some degree of functional vigor, inclining them to activity. It then requires some days of suppression to bring them again into the quiescent condition consistent with the brain monopoly of the school. With the wider view of educational procedure which I venture to advocate, instead of suppressing, we should seek, by all means, to promote daily exercise of these faculties, and so to develop and strengthen the mind in all its parts. If we are to suppose that certain faculties are dependent upon school work for exercise, then two months of continuous inaction must be a very serious loss to development and a great waste of precious time. With the arrangement of school time which I have suggested, the non-school faculties and ideas, which are many and important, would have opportunity for daily exercise. The mind would then return day after day to its favourite amusement, while faculties of exceptional strength would have freedom for exercise they demand, and be thus enabled to fulfil their high density. With true educational work--oral teaching and enjoyable exercise--in the forenoon, and the means and opportunity for spontaneous activity during the rest of the day the pupil would, I believe, go as readily and with as much pleasure to the one as to the other, and a full and harmonious physical and mental development might be carried on during the whole period set apart by nature for the purpose.
With regard to the assistance to be afforded to Play, I would have this activity recognized as a very important part of the educational process, and dealt with accordingly. When we look around us and see the effect of Play in many of its aspects in preparing for the actual work of life, we must see to what an extent it may be utilized with that object. As matters are, it is, to a very great extent, allowed to run to waste. In the absence of any dominating faculty, it makes little difference to the enjoyment of the child what form Play may take, and, apart from stereotyped games, this is, as a rule, determined by what most attracts the attention in the surrounding conditions of life. Such may be of value as fitting the mind for future work, but far more frequently, this activity, which under favourable conditions has had, and may have, such grand results, is frittered away and dissipated over aimless amusements, tending, it is true, to mental development, but upon no definite or useful lines. Now, I hold that money and labour may be as profitably bestowed upon this part of the educational process as upon that embraced by the school. Muscular exercise and physical development are, perhaps, sufficiently recognized, at least, in boys' schools, and there is no lack of assistance being given and money spent in promoting athletic games, sports and exercises. I would here urge that girls should be as liberally dealt with as boys in this respect. There is the same advantage and the same need, only perhaps more so, with a view to counteract conventional and "Mother Grundy" notions as to what is lady-like. I would also urge that the invaluable element of spontaneity be, in all cases, retained as the only trustworthy guiding influence. Enforced games and gymnastic exercise are altogether out of place, and much more apt to do harm than good. For healthy development, the more general the exercise the better, and the internal prompting of nature is the only reliable guide in regulating this. Its complete efficacy, and I may add safety, are absolutely proved in all cases where it has free scope.
[Wikipedia says, "Mrs Grundy is a figurative name for an extremely conventional or priggish person,[ a personification of the tyranny of conventional propriety. A tendency to be overly fearful of what others might think is sometimes referred to as grundyism." ]
When we come to consider the purely mental side of Play--the spontaneous exercise and development of the mental powers--we find it, so far as the school is concerned, very shabbily treated or altogether ignored. Like the streams descending our mountain sides, and the ebb and flow of the tide upon our shores, it is a force of vast potentiality which has yet to be turned to account and applied to the practical work of life. The school affords no opportunity for exerting an influence upon it in any way, and for good or ill it runs its course without help or guidance to very important educational results. While holding that four hours is a sufficient allowance of time for school lessons, I by no means consider that this should be the limit of school or teacher's work. It is far from being the limit of the day's educational process, and I think the school may well devote part of its machinery and of its time to assisting and guiding what remains. Now the suggestion which I venture to bring before you is that provision should be made for this in connection with the school--that a room or covered playground, suitably arranged and supplied with toys, tools, models, bricks, clay, sand, and other appliances with which the young mind seeks to give form and expression to its imaginings and to work out its inventive fancies, should be provided, and the children encouraged to play there according to their inclination, the teachers or others being present to assist and guide, but not to coerce them in their amusements. Such a play-place would bring the stream of mental activity, ever flowing steadily and surely on its course of development, within reach of the guiding and helping hand which might turn it into the most useful and desirable channels, and enable it to surmount difficulties which would otherwise be a serious hindrance to its onward progress. There might many a lad find the bent of his mind, or line of greatest potentiality, and be enabled to follow it up to exceptional development, with corresponding distinction to himself and benefit to the nation, while others might have their interest concentrated upon some definite and useful line of work, and so attain to a high level of ability and success. There, too, might the girl follow out nature's training in the ways of housekeeping and the management of a family, the lack of which is so sadly felt in many a household. But why particularise? There might the young mind in all its phases and potentialities proceed on its course to development under the most favourable conditions, with a general result of fitness and intellectual capacity far beyond all past experience.
And is there not another side to proper education, which, although recognized in the "Code of Regulations and Instructions for the Guidance of Managers and Teacher," is practically shut out from the present school system, but might here find a most suitable field of operation? I refer to moral and social training, upon which personal happiness and social fitness will, in the future, so greatly depend. The social life of the young, which foreshadows and determines that of the adult, is not under the restraints and discipline of the class room, where the personal feelings which prompt to social conduct are in abeyance, and can scarcely be influenced one way or the other, but in the free and spontaneous intercourse of play. It is then that children may be led to have a due regard for the rights, the property, the feelings, and the well-being of others, which is the real basis of all social harmony. Now that intellectual education is imparted to all, it is surely time that steps were taken to ensure a desirable moral bias to guide aright increased intelligence, which, without it, may but mean increased injury or danger to society; and now that the ladder of learning, with which to ascend the social scale, is placed within the reach of all, it would surely be well that the clever and successful, of whatever class, be socially as well as intellectually fitted to take their place in the higher grades of society. By affording special facilities and attractive material for play, there would be no difficulty in bringing children together with all their social instincts and moral propensities in full operation, when, by judicious supervision, they might be guided and influenced in their conduct to one another, so as to train them in the ways of "good society."
While urging the foregoing consideration as, in the highest degree, in the interests of the community and of the nation, I would also put it to you parents of the Educational Union whether it is not, at the same time, a worthy object that, by following the lead and guidance of a beneficent Creator, we should preserve and realize that most beautiful feature of all creative designs, the brightness and happiness of youth. None can desire that "our poor chicks" should continue to be "pinned down to weary tasks, grinding at hated jobs," if a brighter and happier method will give equally good results; and few, I think, will maintain that the coercive method has been so generally and completely satisfactory in its results as to shut out the possibility of a change for the better. Long have we struggled in an uphill fight against nature, and the poor child has been torn and rent between the contending forces which have each been striving toward the same end. It will be no discredit to "own beat" in such a fight. Let us try a change of tactics by forming an alliance with nature, and availing ourselves of the educational forces which she, as first in the field, has had the inestimable advantage of implanting in the child, which are there for the very purpose we have in view, and which must ever be effective to pull with us or against us according as we may elect to adopt nature's plan, thus opening up a true science of education and reaping her reward of happiness; or to insist upon enforcing an empirical plan of our own with "pains and penalties, black looks, forced efforts, compulsion and menace and tears."
[More on J. Strachan at the bottom of this Parents' Review article, in a footnote.]
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