Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

The Stages:

CHAPTER VII.

THE STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT.

Primary Age.

SUGGESTED READINGS.

UP THROUGH CHILDHOOD. Hubbell. pp. 111-131.
TEACHER TRAINING. Roads. pp. 22-24.
SUNDAY SCHOOL SCIENCE. Holmes. pp. 17-21.
PSYCHOLOGIC FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION. Harris.
TALKS TO TEACHERS. James. pp. 146-150.
HINTS ON CHILD TRAINING. Trumbull. Chap. XIV.
EDUCATION IN RELIGION. Coe. pp. 226-300ff.
THE CHURCHMAN'S MANUAL. Butler. pp. 8-30.

The Primary Age:

TEACHER TRAINING. Roads. pp. 25-30.

THE TEACHER, THE CHILD, AND THE BOOK.
CHARACTER BUILDING. Color. p. 188.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. Carlyle.
*THE MIND OF A CHILD. Richmond.

pp. 300-321.

Schauffler. p. 103.

*PEDAGOGICAL BIBLE SCHOOL. Haslett. pp. 102-114, 246-248.
*EDUCATION IN RELIGION. Coe. pp. 133, 229.

A STUDY IN CHILD NATURE. Harrison. All.

*THE POINT OF CONTACT. DuBois. All.

THE CHURCHMAN'S MANUAL. Butler. pp. 109-136.

THE BOOK OF THE CHILD. How. All.

NEWER METHODS. Lee. pp. 32, 34, 35, 37.

Stages or Divisions of Child-Development.

We have seen that the instincts, motives, impulses, desires, interests of the child have a definite method of development, and unfold at well recognized stages or periods in life. Not only is his bodily growth an orderly progress, but his mental activity is, as well. Both of these determine our Method and our Curriculum. Our Point of Contact is the child at each particular stage of development, his needs, his interests, the environment that will be best adapted to the well rounded unfolding of his powers. These definite stages or steps reach from infancy to manhood. The line of demarcation separating them is not by any means clear and distinct. These divisions are:

(1) Infancy, or Babyhood, the suckling period, only to the first year. (2) Early Childhood, the Primary Age, from one to six years, sometimes called the Kindergarten Age. These two stages are divided by Dr. Alvord Butler into the Age of Instinct, from one to three, and the Age of Impulse from three to six. (3) Childhood, from six to twelve years of age, sometimes divided into the primary school age, from six to eight and onehalf or nine (i. e. Third grade Day School). Dr. Butler again makes two divisions of this period, from six to nine, the Age of Imitation, and from nine to twelve, the Age of Habit. (4) Youth or Adolescence, from twelve to eighteen or nineteen years of age, sometimes divided into Early Adolescence, from twelve to sixteen, the Age of Moral Crises, and Middle Adolescence, from sixteen to nineteen, the Age of Romance and Ideality. (5) Later Adolescence, from eighteen to twenty-five, the age of Decision. (6) Manhood, from twenty-five years onward.

We shall now consider the stages of Child Development, bearing in mind constantly the two points already elucidated :

The mental powers develop in a definite order, thus Perception, Memory, Imagination, Reflection, and Insight (these being the former stages of Perception, Analysis, Synthesis, Reason and Philosophic Insight).

The Instincts, that great, crowding army of hereditary desires and impulses, generally rise to maturity and then either remain constant as Habits, or wane and die out; though not all at once, nor in the same order in every child.

I.-The Primary Age, One to Six Years Old. 1-3, Age of Instinct; 3-6, Age of Impulse.

1. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.

Restlessness.-The small child can keep still about fifty seconds, the teacher probably thinks it is less than that. Therefore, the Kindergarten School will provide for movement and motion; opening and closing hymns will be marching songs; the offertory will be taken to a marching collection hymn; Motion hymns will be used; the children will be encouraged to come forward and point out people and objects in their pictures, on the sand table, or the blackboard. There will be constant motion every few minutes for the wee children.

Activity. The child must be doing or he cannot grow. "Growth advances from the more general or fundamental muscles to those that are secondary or accessory. A child uses its larger muscles, those that move the large joints and limbs, and develops them before it trains the smaller muscles that move the smaller joints. A child can run, jump, roll, skip, kick, strike, leap, push, and pull before it can write, sew, carve, draw, tie, knit, and manipulate a musical instrument skillfully, march, or dance gracefully. The skillful use of the hands and feet is acquired after the general and untrained use of the same has been developed," says Haslett. He is by nature rhythmical and loves music. He will move his body constantly in response to the music. About the third year is the beginning of a nascent stage for singing. Music may well consume the major portion of the instruction hour. Pictures, models, blackboard, sand table, action exercises, and stories may occupy the remainder. In Harrison's STUDY OF CHILD NATURE it says: "Making a restless child keep still is a repression of this nervous energy, which irritates the whole nervous system, causing illtemper, moroseness, and general uncomfortableness. If this force could be properly expended, the child would be always sunny-tempered. This legitimate and natural investigative activity needs only to be led from the negative path of destruction into the positive one of construction. Instead of vainly attempting to suppress the newborn power of the young pioneer, or searcher after truth, guide it aright. Give him playthings which can be taken to pieces and put together again without injury to the material. The positive method of training builds up the cheering, optimistic character which is so much needed. Who are the men and women that are lifting the world upwards and onwards? Are they not those who encourage more than they criticise ?"

Love of Play, which to the child is serious and earnest work. The educational value of play is now fully recognized by the Day School. Coe says: "The plays of the young, since they reveal the spontaneous interests, have become a clue to educational problems; and since spontaneous interest has become the leverage of the teacher in the education of the child, the conscious effort of teachers has been to make the work of the schoolroom somewhat like the work of the playground. There is no

absolute dividing line between the two kinds of work. Nor is this all. For play itself turns out to be a first-class educational process. The play instinct is Nature's way, and so God's way, of developing body, mind and character. Quickness and accuracy of perception; coördination of the muscles, which puts the body at the prompt service of the mind; rapidity of thought; accuracy of judgment; promptness of decision; self-control; respect for others; the habit of coöperation; self-sacrifice for the good of a group all these products of true education are called out in play and games. Further, the play instinct varies with the different species and with the two sexes, so that its specific forms prepare the individual for his specific functions. The plays of a lamb prepare for the activities of a grazing animal; those of a lion's whelp foretell the pursuit and killing of prey. The plays of a girl look forward to motherhood; those of a boy to protecting, building, acquiring. In short, play is a part of Nature's school.

"Relation of Play to Religious Education. The relation of play to religious education demands a specific word. Just as the gap between the school and play is being filled up, so the home and the Church should now at last awake to the divine significance of the play instinct and make use of it for the purpose of developing the spiritual nature. The opposition between the play spirit and the religious spirit is not real, but only fancied; just as that between play and schooling in general. Through our ignorance we have put asunder that which God hath joined together. Here is the secret of much of our lack of power with young people. We teach children to think of their most free and spontaneous activities, their plays, as having no affinity for religion, and then we wonder why religion does not seem more attractive to them as they grow toward maturity! We mask the joy and freedom of religion by our long faces, our perfunctory devotions, our whispers and reticences, and then we find it strange that young people are so inordinately fond of worldly pleasures!"

As late as the year 1900 a prominent Sunday school leader insisted upon keeping up this paralyzing distinction. "It is wrong," he said, "to talk about the kindergarten of the Bible school. Wise primary workers are averse to turning any part of

the Bible school into a kindergarten because the thought of play should be kept for places other than God's house, and for times other than the Lord's day. The little ones should be taught reverence very early in life." As long as such notions prevail, we should expect children to exclude God from their plays, think of religion as unnatural, and either grow up indifferent to religion or else reserve their reverence for the Lord's Day and the Lord's House. Unless we discover the unity of play with education in religion as well as with so-called education, we shall never secure control of the whole child or the whole youth for Christ.

Savagery. In his life history a child repeats the history of the race, physically and psychically, socially and religiously. This is what is known as the Recapitulation Theory. It is expounded very fully by Haslett (pp. 218 to 225).

Little children are savages. They manifest such unthinking cruelty at times that any explanation of it is difficult apart from the theory of savage characteristics of ancestors being repeated in the children. Instincts are inherited habits. They are our ancestors' ways of doing things handed on to their offspring. They are individual habits that have become racial. The Culture Epochs Theory attempts to determine what those interests are and the time of their natural appearance and the proper food for their nourishment. Passing through the stages of racial history in its pre-human development; the child ascends from savagery to civilization in a broad and general way, with, of course, individual variations.

Dr. Coriat writes: "This evolution, and consequent mental and moral development, is the result of experience, environment, and the acquisition of knowledge, even knowledge of the most abstruse and philosophical kind, for no one to-day holds to the doctrine of innate ideas. I have said that children resemble savage and primitive man; that is, they are over-credulous, plastic, simple, open to and reacting to all kinds of suggestions. A blind, non-selective belief is the chief characteristic of childhood. As is well known, children assent to everything. Imagination runs riot in them; they have a maze of ideas without

« ForrigeFortsæt »