ABSTRACT
One of the greatest values which Play Centre work has for the students is that it gives them an intimate, friendly contact with children, and that it gives it to them early in their training, and continuously throughout it. Many students come to College longing for the moment when they will come into contact with children. Some of the best students have chosen the profession of teaching because of their interest in children, and it is very disappointing to them to have to wait for weeks before they have an opportunity of handling them. Others feel they know little about children, and are anxious to begin work with them, and restless until they feel sure that they will know how to interest them. To both types of student the opportunity given by Play Centre is eagerly welcomed. The student who feels her interest in children growing and deepening as her training proceeds is equally glad of the possibility of permanent contact with children in Play Centre. To a student whose main interest in education is the development of children, school practice is always unsatisfactory as the sole opportunity for meeting children. There is not time for her to get to know the children well, nor to see the development of the things she is beginning to teach, and she is often too much concerned with her early difficulties of organization and arrangement of subject-matter to have leisure for considering the individual child. Play Centre gives her ample scope for getting to know individuals and seeing their point of view, for having time to watch children and to listen to them. The absence of school discipline and instruction means that a student can see a child as he really is, what interests and what does not interest him, and of what spontaneous achievements he is 127capable. One student said that the great value of Play Centre was ‘being able to get at the children in an entirely unofficial way.’ She also realizes what appeals to a child as worth striving for and what arguments leave him cold. Many students who have shown tendencies to moralize to children in their first teaching practice, have found it so ineffective in Play Centre that they have adopted a much more positive attitude to children the next time they met them in the classroom. They begin to realize what behaviour is normal in children of various ages, and when they find that a nine-year-old is always playing like a four-year-old they begin to seek the cause of his difficulties.
