ABSTRACT
For this description given in my first book I am indebted to my collaborator Mrs A. Jenkinson who helped me throughout the three years of the study and made frequent visits to all the schools concerned.
Two types of Infant Schools
Let us imagine that you are visiting two schools, each very good of its kind and staffed by efficient and interested teachers, but using very different methods based upon an important difference of principle.
When you enter the first school, ‘A’, you find the hall full of children. One characteristic of this school is that the teachers are greedy for space, and use every bit they have to its best advantage. You will hear busy, interested children’s voices – ‘Move that barrow, then we can build this line right round’ – ‘Can I have some of your red paint?’ – ‘Why don’t you put a propeller on your aeroplane?’ There are the children – building, hammering, sliding, washing; you will have to search for the teacher – she will at first be scarcely visible among her class of forty or more. When you discover her, perhaps she is holding John’s nail while he bangs, because everyone else is busy and he cannot quite manage on his own; and at the same time, she is turning round to call, ‘Mary, that doll does look comfortable, you have made that bed well – everything in the right place’; ‘Yes, Ian, the screws are in my cupboard, bottom shelf’; and so on and so forth.
Besides this set of children using the hall, there will be others passing through on all sorts of errands to do with their own affairs. These will 21be walking, dawdling, running, skipping, according to temperament, but all quite clear about where they are going and why.
You may meet in the corridors a whole class going out to play with brightly coloured balls, ropes, hoops, etc. They will probably be on one side of the corridor, if its width makes that the sensible thing to do; but they will certainly be walking along easily, in twos and threes, chattering.
If you look through the windows or possibly the open doors of the classrooms, you will see children standing before easels or sitting on the floor painting on large papers with fat brushes, putting dolls to bed, scrubbing tables, polishing handles, moulding clay, making sand-pies, measuring water, hammering wood, serving in shops, sewing stage clothes, building bricks, doing sums, reading to themselves, to each other, or to the teacher, writing letters to invite the children in the next class to a play performance, or occupied in many similar pursuits.
A child may be folding up, in order to take home, a very attractive drawing, while one not nearly as good is being pinned on the wall by the teacher as the painter looks on proudly. Another may be writing very carefully and not very tidily the word ‘buttercup’, which he will then put before a jar so that all may know and recognize the contents, while he sets about finding how to spell and write ‘daisy’; whereas a really beautifully written, ‘Dear Alan, our rabbit has had some babies. What shall we feed them on?’ goes into the recipient’s pocket and is never seen again.
Some children sit still some of the time, some sit still none of the time, none sit still most of the time. This recognized right to move about freely means that space is needed; so in these classrooms there is nothing except the things the children need and use, whilst tables and chairs are moved without fuss as and when required. Pictures are hung so that people three feet high can look at and touch them; shelves are low, so that they can fetch and carry the things they need. In short, the school is a child-sized world for children to move in and learn in.
The impression made on you cannot fail to be one of purpose. All these children know what they want to do and how to set about it. You get a sense of poise which is confirmed when you ask the way to the headmistress, for as you are taken to her you will almost certainly be entertained by friendly conversation and much information, of a kind which is only given when a child’s relations with grown-ups are easy and serene.
22Now let us go to the second school, ‘B’.
The very first thing you notice, when you go into the hall, is the quiet; no talking, laughing, shouting; at most, a chant from a whole class, reciting a poem or a table. The second thing is the absence of children. Where are they? If there are any in the hall, and there well may not be, since such schools do not need space so urgently – they will be in one group, doing the same thing, and the teacher will be in front of them, striving by word, action, and suggestion, with a very high degree of skill and energy, to influence the forty children before her in the direction she thinks desirable.
Through this hall there will be no stream of purposeful children, but at most an occasional one or two, very probably on some errand for their teacher.
If you meet a class going out, the children will probably have the same attractive-looking apparatus, but they will certainly be in a straight line, and very probably not talking.
As you look through the windows of the other classrooms your first impression cannot fail to be of ‘desks’ (you will automatically think of them as ‘desks’, though they may in fact be tables), then of a teacher, and finally of children in the desks. There they will be, children of all ranges of intelligence and temperament, doing sums, or painting, or plasticine or paper-cutting; doing several rather interesting kinds of things, but the members of each class doing the same thing at the same time. The children hardly ever exchange ideas with each other as they work, since in such schools creative thinking is not as important as acquiring skills, such as neat cutting-out, good writing, etc. Talking whilst practising these skills would waste time. It is, therefore, not approved and often, for long periods, is not allowed.
As you pass you will see many lessons given which from the technical point of view are excellent. Many attractive materials will be used. You will not be able to doubt that the teachers are efficient and well-disposed towards the children. But look at the groups of children and see if there is one class, whatever its activity, in which every child is interested and using his powers for that activity to his fullest extent!
