ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the ‘activity method’—that unfortunate term—has three valuable characteristics: first, the children are physically active, which is their natural state; secondly, they learn by doing rather than by being told, and in that way learn more thoroughly and more deeply; thirdly, the impetus to master skills comes from their own desire to make something, and so has behind it an inexhaustible fund of energy. The one aim of this depressing type of lesson is accuracy in measurement, which is a branch of arithmetic, not art, and the other is the practice of a skill. This is clearly shown in the activities which go on in the best of our Primary Schools. Such activities are a central core which needs in addition a certain amount of straight learning, and a certain amount of free creativity, in which children can explore their personal problems. This is an imaginative and dramatic retelling, but it rouses the interest.
