The Vitalized School | Page 8

These
expressions may not be what the teacher would wish, but the
expression necessarily precedes intelligent teaching.
=Imagination.=--These expressions may reveal a vivid imagination, but
they are no less valuable as indices of the child's nature on that account.
It is the very refinement of cruelty to try to interdict or stifle the child's
imagination. But for the imagination of people in the past we should
not have the rich treasures of mythology that so delight us all. Every
child with imagination is constructing a mythology of his own, and
from the gossamer threads of fancy is weaving a pattern of life that no
parent or teacher should ever wish to forbid or destroy. Day by day, he
sees visions and dreams dreams, and so builds for himself a world in
which he finds delight and profit. In this world he is king, and only
profane hands would dare attempt to dethrone him.
=The child's experiences.=--His experiences, whether in the real world,
or in this world of fancy, are his capital in the bank of life; and he has
every right to invest this capital so as to achieve further increments of
life. In this enterprise, the teacher is his counselor and guide, and, in
order that she may exercise this function sympathetically and rationally,
she must know the nature and extent of his capital. If he knows a bird,
he may invest this knowledge so as to gain a knowledge of many birds,
and so, in time, compass the entire realm of ornithology. If he knows a
flower, from this known he may be so directed that he may become a
master in the unknown field of botany. If he knows coal, this
experience may be made the open sesame to the realms of geology. In
short, all his experiences may be capitalized under the direction of a
skillful teacher, and made to produce large dividends as an investment
in life.

=Relation to school work.=--Thus the school becomes, for the child, a
place of and for real life, and not a place detached from life. There he
lives effectively, and joyously, because the teacher knows how to
utilize his experiences and native dispositions for the enlargement of
his life. He has no inclination to become a deserter or a tenant, for life
is agreeable there, and the school is made his chief interest. His work is
not doled out to him in the form of tasks, but is graciously presented as
a privilege, and as such he esteems it. There he learns to live among
people of differing tastes and interests without abdicating his own
individuality. There he learns that life is work and that work is the very
quintessence of life.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. How should dividends on school investments be estimated?
2. What are the inherent rights of childhood?
3. What use may be made of play in the education of children?
4. Explain why adults are often unwilling to coöperate through lack of
opportunity to play in childhood.
5. Illustrate from your own knowledge and experience how the exercise
of native tendencies may be the means of education.
6. What modes of self-expression should be used by pupils of
elementary schools? of high schools?
7. What may the vitalized teacher do to assist in the development of
self-expression? What should she refrain from doing?
8. Suggest methods whereby the teacher may discover the content of
the child's world.
9. How may the child's experience, imagination, and expression be
interrelated?
10. Why is the twentieth century called the "age of the child"?

CHAPTER IV
THE CHILD OF THE FUTURE
=Rights of the coming generations.=--Any school procedure that limits
its interests and activities to the present generation takes a too restricted
view of the real scope of education. The children of the next generation,
and the next, are entitled to consideration if education is to do its
perfect work and have complete and convincing justification. The child
of the future has a right to grandfathers and grandmothers of sound
body and sound mind, and the schools and homes of the present are
charged with the responsibility of seeing to it that this right is
vouchsafed to him. In actual practice our plans seem not to previse
grandfathers and grandmothers, and stop short even of fathers and
mothers. The child of the next generation has a right to a father and a
mother of untainted blood, and neither the home nor the school can
ignore this right.
=Transmitted weaknesses.=--If these rights are not scrupulously
respected by the present generation, the child of the future may come
into the world under a handicap that all the educational agencies
combined can neither remove nor materially mitigate. If he is crippled
in mind or in body because of excesses on the part of