The Vitalized School | Page 7

cripple the life of her child by
thwarting nature's decrees.
=Detrimental effects.=--The pity of it all is that the child is at the mercy
of the parent, or of the teacher, as the case may be. We become so
eager to have "old heads on young shoulders" that we begrudge the
child the years that are necessary for the shoulders to attain that
maturity of strength that is needful for supporting the "old heads." Then
ensues a lack of balance, and, were all children thus denied their right
to the full period of youth, we should have a distorted civilization.
Dickens inveighs against this curtailment of youth prodigiously, and
the marvel is that we have failed to learn the lesson from his pages. We
need not have recourse to Victor Hugo to know the life of little Cosette,
for we can see her prototype by merely looking about us.
=The child's right to the best.=--As the child has a right to life in its
fullness, so he has a right to all the agencies that can promote this type
of life. If he meets with an accident he has a right to the best surgical
skill that can be secured, and this right we readily concede; and equally
he has a right to the best teacher that money will secure. If he has a
teacher that is less than the best, the time thus lost can never be restored
to him. A lady who had an unskillful teacher in her first year in the high
school now avers that he maimed her for life in that particular study.
Life is such a delicate affair that it demands expert handling. If we hope
to have the child attain his right to be an intelligent coöperating agent
in promoting life in society, then no price is too great to pay for the
expert teaching which will nurture the sort of life in him that will make

him effective.
=The child's native tendencies.=--Then, again, the child has a right to
the exercise of the native tendencies with which he is endowed. In fact,
these tendencies should be the working capital of the teacher, the
starting points in her teaching. There was a time when the teacher
punished the child who was caught drawing pictures on his slate.
Happily that sort of barbarity disappeared, in the main, along with the
slate. The vitalized teacher rejoices in the pictures that the child draws
and turns this tendency to good account. Through this inclination to
draw she finds the real child and so, as the psychologists direct, she
begins where the child is and sets about attaching to this native
tendency the work in nature study, geography, or history. When she
discovers a constructive tendency in the child, she at once uses this in
shifting from analytic to synthetic exercises in the school order. If he
enjoys making things, he will be glad of an opportunity to make
devices, or problems, or maps.
=The play instinct.=--She makes large use, also, of the play instinct that
is one of his native tendencies. This instinct is constantly reaching out
for objects of play. The teacher is quick to note the child's quest for
objects and deftly substitutes some phase of school work for marbles,
balls, or dolls, and his playing proceeds apace without abatement of
zest. The vitalized teacher knows how to attach the arithmetic to this
play instinct and make it a fascinating game. During the games of
arithmetic, geography, history, or spelling, life is at high tide in her
school and the work is thorough in consequence. Work is relieved of
the onus of drudgery whenever it appears in the guise of a game, and
the teacher who has skill in attaching school studies to the play instinct
of the child will make her school effective as well as a delight to herself
and her pupils. In such a plan there is neither place nor occasion for
coercion.
=Self-expression.=--Another right of the child is the right to express
himself. The desire for self-expression is fundamental in the human
mind, as the study of archæology abundantly proves. Since this is true,
every school should be a school of expression if the nature of the child

is to have full recognition. Without expression there is no impression,
and without impression there is no education that has real value. The
more and better expression in the school, therefore, the more and better
the education in that school. In the vitalized school we shall find
freedom of expression, and the absence of unreasoning repression. The
child expresses himself by means of his hands, his feet, his face, his
entire body, and his organs of speech, and his expression through either
of these means gives the teacher a knowledge of what to do.