15.
CHAPTER XV
PLAY AND WORK IN THE CURRICULUM:
1. The Place of Active Occupations in Education.
— In consequence partly of the efforts of educational reformers,
partly of increased interest in child-psychology, and partly
of the direct experience of the schoolroom, the course of study has in
the past generation undergone considerable modification. The
desirability of starting from and with the experience and capacities of
learners, a lesson enforced from all three quarters, has led to the
introduction of forms of activity, in play and work, similar to those in
which children and youth engage outside of school. Modern psychology
has substituted for the general, ready-made faculties of older theory a
complex group of instinctive and impulsive tendencies. Experience has
shown that when children have a chance at physical activities which
bring their natural impulses into play, going to school is a joy,
management is less of a burden, and learning is easier.
Sometimes, perhaps, plays, games, and constructive occupations are
resorted to only for these reasons, with emphasis upon relief from the
tedium and strain of "regular" school work. There is no reason,
however, for using them merely as agreeable diversions. Study of mental
life has made evident the fundamental worth of native tendencies to
explore, to manipulate tools and materials, to construct, to give
expression to joyous emotion, etc. When exercises which are prompted by
these instincts are a part of the regular school program, the whole
pupil is engaged, the artificial gap between life in school and out is
reduced, motives are afforded for attention to a large variety of
materials and processes distinctly educative in effect, and coöperative
associations which give information in a social setting are provided.
In short, the grounds for assigning to play and active work a definite
place in the curriculum are intellectual and social, not matters of
temporary expediency and momentary agreeableness. Without something of
the kind, it is not possible to secure the normal estate of effective
learning; namely, that knowledge-getting be an outgrowth of activities
having their own end, instead of a school task. More specifically, play
and work correspond, point for point, with the traits of the initial
stage of knowing, which consists, as we saw in the last chapter, in
learning how to do things and in acquaintance with things and processes
gained in the doing. It is suggestive that among the Greeks, till the
rise of conscious philosophy, the same word,
τεν,
was used for art and science. Plato gave his account of knowledge on
the basis of an analysis of the knowledge of cobblers, carpenters, players
of musical instruments, etc., pointing out that their art (so far as it
was not mere routine) involved an end, mastery of material or stuff worked
upon, control of appliances, and a definite order of procedure—all
of which had to be known in order that there be intelligent skill or art.
Doubtless the fact that children normally engage in play and work out of
school has seemed to many educators a reason why they should concern
themselves in school with things radically different. School time
seemed too precious to spend in doing over again what children were sure
to do any way. In some social conditions, this reason has weight. In
pioneer times, for example, outside occupations gave a definite and
valuable intellectual and moral training. Books and everything
concerned with them were, on the other hand, rare and difficult of
access; they were the only means of outlet from a narrow and crude
environment. Wherever such conditions obtain, much may be said in favor
of concentrating school activity upon books. The situation is very
different, however, in most communities to-day. The kinds of work in
which the young can engage, especially in cities, are largely
anti-educational. That prevention of child labor is a social duty is
evidence on this point. On the other hand, printed matter has been so
cheapened and is in such universal circulation, and all the
opportunities of intellectual culture have been so multiplied, that the
older type of book work is far from having the force it used to possess.
But it must not be forgotten that an educational result is a by-product
of play and work in most out-of-school conditions. It is incidental,
not primary. Consequently the educative growth secured is more or less
accidental. Much work shares in the defects of existing industrial
society—defects next to fatal to right development. Play tends to
reproduce and affirm the crudities, as well as the excellencies, of
surrounding adult life. It is the business of the school to set up an
environment in which play and work shall be conducted with reference to
facilitating desirable mental and moral growth. It is not enough just
to introduce plays and games, hand work and manual exercises.
Everything depends upon the way in which they are employed.
2. Available Occupations.
—A bare catalogue of the list of activities which have already
found their way into schools indicates what a rich field is at hand.
There is work with paper, cardboard, wood, leather, cloth, yarns, clay
and sand, and the metals, with and without tools. Processes employed
are folding, cutting, pricking, measuring, molding, modeling,
pattern-making, heating and cooling, and the operations characteristic
of such tools as the hammer, saw, file, etc. Outdoor excursions,
gardening, cooking, sewing, printing, book-binding, weaving, painting,
drawing, singing, dramatization, story-telling, reading and writing as
active pursuits with social aims (not as mere exercises for acquiring
skill for future use), in addition to a countless variety of plays and
games, designate some of the modes of occupation.
The problem of the educator is to engage pupils in these activities in
such ways that while manual skill and technical efficiency are gained
and immediate satisfaction found in the work, together with preparation
for later usefulness, these things shall be subordinated to
education—that is, to intellectual results and the forming of a
socialized disposition. What does this principle signify?
In the first place, the principle rules out certain practices.
Activities which follow definite prescription and dictation or which
reproduce without modification ready-made models, may give muscular
dexterity, but they do not require the perception and elaboration of
ends, nor (what is the same thing in other words) do they permit the use
of judgment in selecting and adapting means. Not merely manual training
specifically so called but many traditional kindergarten exercises have
erred here. Moreover, opportunity for making mistakes is an incidental
requirement. Not because mistakes are ever desirable, but because
overzeal to select material and appliances which forbid a chance for
mistakes to occur, restricts initiative, reduces judgment to a minimum,
and compels the use of methods which are so remote from the complex
situations of life that the power gained is of little availability. It
is quite true that children tend to exaggerate their powers of execution
and to select projects that are beyond them. But limitation of capacity
is one of the things which has to be learned; like other things, it is
learned through the experience of consequences. The danger that
children undertaking too complex projects will simply muddle and mess,
and produce not merely crude results (which is a minor matter) but
acquire crude standards (which is an important matter) is great. But it
is the fault of the teacher if the pupil does not perceive in due season
the inadequacy of his performances, and thereby receive a stimulus to
attempt exercises which will perfect his powers. Meantime it is more
important to keep alive a creative and constructive attitude than to
secure an external perfection by engaging the pupil's action in too
minute and too closely regulated pieces of work. Accuracy and finish of
detail can be insisted upon in such portions of a complex work as are
within the pupil's capacity.
Unconscious suspicion of native experience and consequent overdoing of
external control are shown quite as much in the material supplied as in
the matter of the teacher's orders. The fear of raw material is shown
in laboratory, manual training shop, Froebelian kindergarten, and
Montessori house of childhood. The demand is for materials which have
already been subjected to the perfecting work of mind: a demand which
shows itself in the subject matter of active occupations quite as well
as in academic book learning. That such material will control the
pupil's operations so as to prevent errors is true. The notion that a
pupil operating with such material will somehow absorb the intelligence
that went originally to its shaping is fallacious. Only by starting
with crude material and subjecting it to purposeful handling will he
gain the intelligence embodied in finished material. In practice,
overemphasis upon formed material leads to an exaggeration of
mathematical qualities, since intellect finds its profit in physical
things from matters of size, form, and proportion and the relations that
flow from them. But these are known only when their perception is a
fruit of acting upon purposes which require attention to them. The more
human the purpose, or the more it approximates the ends which appeal in
daily experience, the more real the knowledge. When the purpose of the
activity is restricted to ascertaining these qualities, the resulting
knowledge is only technical.
To say that active occupations should be concerned primarily with
wholes is another statement of the same principle. Wholes for
purposes of education are not, however, physical affairs. Intellectually
the existence of a whole depends upon a concern or interest; it is
qualitative, the completeness of appeal made by a situation.
Exaggerated devotion to formation of efficient skill irrespective of
present purpose always shows itself in devising exercises isolated from
a purpose. Laboratory work is made to consist of tasks of accurate
measurement with a view to acquiring knowledge of the fundamental units
of physics, irrespective of contact with the problems which make these
units important; or of operations designed to afford facility in the
manipulation of experimental apparatus. The technique is acquired
independently of the purposes of discovery and testing which alone give
it meaning. Kindergarten employments are calculated to give information
regarding cubes, spheres, etc., and to form certain habits of
manipulation of material (for everything must always be done "just so"),
the absence of more vital purposes being supposedly compensated for by
the alleged symbolism of the material used. Manual training is reduced
to a series of ordered assignments calculated to secure the mastery of
one tool after another and technical ability in the various elements of
construction—like the different joints. It is argued that pupils
must know how to use tools before they attack actual
making,—assuming that pupils cannot learn how in the process of
making. Pestalozzi's just insistence upon the active use of the senses,
as a substitute for memorizing words, left behind it in practice schemes
for "object lessons" intended to acquaint pupils with all the qualities
of selected objects. The error is the same: in all these cases it is
assumed that before objects can be intelligently used, their properties
must be known. In fact, the senses are normally used in the course of
intelligent (that is, purposeful) use of things, since the qualities
perceived are factors to be reckoned with in accomplishment. Witness
the different attitude of a boy in making, say, a kite, with respect to
the grain and other properties of wood, the matter of size, angles, and
proportion of parts, to the attitude of a pupil who has an object-lesson
on a piece of wood, where the sole function of wood and its properties
is to serve as subject matter for the lesson.
The failure to realize that the functional development of a situation
alone constitutes a "whole" for the purpose of mind is the cause of the
false notions which have prevailed in instruction concerning the simple
and the complex. For the person approaching a subject, the simple thing
is his purpose—the use he desires to make of material, tool, or
technical process, no matter how complicated the process of execution
may be. The unity of the purpose, with the concentration upon details
which it entails, confers simplicity upon the elements which have to be
reckoned with in the course of action. It furnishes each with a single
meaning according to its service in carrying on the whole enterprise.
After one has gone through the process, the constituent qualities
and relations are elements, each possessed with a definite meaning
of its own. The false notion referred to takes the standpoint of the
expert, the one for whom elements exist; isolates them from purposeful
action, and presents them to beginners as the "simple" things.
But it is time for a positive statement. Aside from the fact that
active occupations represent things to do, not studies, their
educational significance consists in the fact that they may typify
social situations. Men's fundamental common concerns center about food,
shelter, clothing, household furnishings, and the appliances connected
with production, exchange, and consumption. Representing both the
necessities of life and the adornments with which the necessities have
been clothed, they tap instincts at a deep level; they are saturated
with facts and principles having a social quality.
To charge that the various activities of gardening, weaving,
construction in wood, manipulation of metals, cooking, etc., which carry
over these fundamental human concerns into school resources, have a
merely bread and butter value is to miss their point. If the mass of
mankind has usually found in its industrial occupations nothing but
evils which had to be endured for the sake of maintaining existence, the
fault is not in the occupations, but in the conditions under which they
are carried on. The continually increasing importance of economic
factors in contemporary life makes it the more needed that education
should reveal their scientific content and their social value. For in
schools, occupations are not carried on for pecuniary gain but for their
own content. Freed from extraneous associations and from the pressure
of wage-earning, they supply modes of experience which are intrinsically
valuable; they are truly liberalizing in quality.
Gardening, for example, need not be taught either for the sake of
preparing future gardeners, or as an agreeable way of passing time. It
affords an avenue of approach to knowledge of the place farming and
horticulture have had in the history of the race and which they occupy
in present social organization. Carried on in an environment
educationally controlled, they are means for making a study of the facts
of growth, the chemistry of soil, the rôle of light, air, and moisture,
injurious and helpful animal life, etc. There is nothing in the
elementary study of botany which cannot be introduced in a vital way in
connection with caring for the growth of seeds. Instead of the subject
matter belonging to a peculiar study called botany, it will then belong
to life, and will find, moreover, its natural correlations with the
facts of soil, animal life, and human relations. As students grow
mature, they will perceive problems of interest which may be pursued for
the sake of discovery, independent of the original direct interest in
gardening—problems connected with the germination and nutrition of
plants, the reproduction of fruits, etc., thus making a transition to
deliberate intellectual investigations.
The illustration is intended to apply, of course, to other school
occupations,—wood-working, cooking, and on through the list. It
is pertinent to note that in the history of the race the sciences grew
gradually out from useful social occupations. Physics developed slowly
out of the use of tools and machines; the important branch of physics
known as mechanics testifies in its name to its original associations.
The lever, wheel, inclined plane, etc., were among the first great
intellectual discoveries of mankind, and they are none the less
intellectual because they occurred in the course of seeking for means of
accomplishing practical ends. The great advance of electrical science
in the last generation was closely associated, as effect and as cause,
with application of electric agencies to means of communication,
transportation, lighting of cities and houses, and more economical
production of goods. These are social ends, moreover, and if they are
too closely associated with notions of private profit, it is not because
of anything in them, but because they have been deflected to private
uses:—a fact which puts upon the school the responsibility of
restoring their connection, in the mind of the coming generation, with
public scientific and social interests. In like ways, chemistry grew
out of processes of dying, bleaching, metal working, etc., and in recent
times has found innumerable new uses in industry.
Mathematics is now a highly abstract science; geometry, however, means
literally earth-measuring: the practical use of number in counting to
keep track of things and in measuring is even more important to-day than
in the times when it was invented for these purposes. Such
considerations (which could be duplicated in the history of any science)
are not arguments for a recapitulation of the history of the race or for
dwelling long in the early rule of thumb stage. But they indicate the
possibilities—greater to-day than ever before—of using
active occupations as opportunities for scientific study. The
opportunities are just as great on the social side, whether we look at
the life of collective humanity in its past or in its future. The most
direct road for elementary students into civics and economics is found
in consideration of the place and office of industrial occupations in
social life. Even for older students, the social sciences would be less
abstract and formal if they were dealt with less as sciences (less as
formulated bodies of knowledge) and more in their direct subject-matter
as that is found in the daily life of the social groups in which the
student shares.
Connection of occupations with the method of science is at least as
close as with its subject matter. The ages when scientific progress was
slow were the ages when learned men had contempt for the material and
processes of everyday life, especially for those concerned with manual
pursuits. Consequently they strove to develop knowledge out of general
principles—almost out of their heads—by logical reasons. It
seems as absurd that learning should come from action on and with
physical things, like dropping acid on a stone to see what would happen,
as that it should come from sticking an awl with waxed thread through a
piece of leather. But the rise of experimental methods proved that,
given control of conditions, the latter operation is more typical of the
right way of knowledge than isolated logical reasonings. Experiment
developed in the seventeenth and succeeding centuries and became the
authorized way of knowing when men's interests were centered in the
question of control of nature for human uses. The active occupations in
which appliances are brought to bear upon physical things with the
intention of effecting useful changes is the most vital introduction to
the experimental method.
3. Work and Play.
—What has been termed active occupation includes both play and
work. In their intrinsic meaning, play and industry are by no means so
antithetical to one another as is often assumed, any sharp contrast
being due to undesirable social conditions. Both involve ends
consciously entertained and the selection and adaptations of materials
and processes designed to effect the desired ends. The difference
between them is largely one of time-span, influencing the directness of
the connection of means and ends. In play, the interest is more
direct—a fact frequently indicated by saying that in play the
activity is its own end, instead of its having an ulterior result. The
statement is correct, but it is falsely taken, if supposed to mean that
play activity is momentary, having no element of looking ahead and none
of pursuit. Hunting, for example, is one of the commonest forms of
adult play, but the existence of foresight and the direction of present
activity by what one is watching for are obvious. When an activity is
its own end in the sense that the action of the moment is complete
in itself, it is purely physical; it has no meaning (See p.
90). The person is either going through motions
quite blindly, perhaps purely imitatively, or else is in a state of
excitement which is exhausting to mind and nerves. Both results may be
seen in some types of kindergarten games where the idea of play is so
highly symbolic that only the adult is conscious of it. Unless the
children succeed in reading in some quite different idea of their own,
they move about either as if in a hypnotic daze, or they respond to a
direct excitation.
The point of these remarks is that play has an end in the sense of a
directing idea which gives point to the successive acts. Persons who
play are not just doing something (pure physical movement); they are
trying to do or effect something, an attitude that involves anticipatory
forecasts which stimulate their present responses. The anticipated
result, however, is rather a subsequent action than the production of a
specific change in things. Consequently play is free, plastic. Where
some definite external outcome is wanted, the end has to be held to with
some persistence, which increases as the contemplated result is complex
and requires a fairly long series of intermediate adaptations. When the
intended act is another activity, it is not necessary to look far ahead
and it is possible to alter it easily and frequently. If a child is
making a toy boat, he must hold on to a single end and direct a
considerable number of acts by that one idea. If he is just "playing
boat" he may change the material that serves as a boat almost at will,
and introduce new factors as fancy suggests. The imagination makes what
it will of chairs, blocks, leaves, chips, if they serve the purpose of
carrying activity forward.
From a very early age, however, there is no distinction of exclusive
periods of play activity and work activity, but only one of emphasis.
There are definite results which even young children desire, and try to
bring to pass. Their eager interest in sharing the occupations of
others, if nothing else, accomplishes this. Children want to "help";
they are anxious to engage in the pursuits of adults which effect
external changes: setting the table, washing dishes, helping care for
animals, etc. In their plays, they like to construct their own toys and
appliances. With increasing maturity, activity which does not give back
results of tangible and visible achievement loses its interest. Play
then changes to fooling and if habitually indulged in is demoralizing.
Observable results are necessary to enable persons to get a sense and a
measure of their own powers. When make-believe is recognized to be
make-believe, the device of making objects in fancy alone is too easy to
stimulate intense action. One has only to observe the countenance of
children really playing to note that their attitude is one of serious
absorption; this attitude cannot be maintained when things cease to
afford adequate stimulation.
When fairly remote results of a definite character are foreseen and
enlist persistent effort for their accomplishment, play passes into
work. Like play, it signifies purposeful activity and differs not in
that activity is subordinated to an external result, but in the fact
that a longer course of activity is occasioned by the idea of a result.
The demand for continuous attention is greater, and more intelligence
must be shown in selecting and shaping means. To extend this account
would be to repeat what has been said under the caption of aim,
interest, and thinking. It is pertinent, however, to inquire why the
idea is so current that work involves subordination of an activity to an
ulterior material result.
The extreme form of this subordination, namely drudgery, offers a clew.
Activity carried on under conditions of external pressure or coercion is
not carried on for any significance attached to the doing. The course
of action is not intrinsically satisfying; it is a mere means for
avoiding some penalty, or for gaining some reward at its conclusion.
What is inherently repulsive is endured for the sake of averting
something still more repulsive or of securing a gain hitched on by
others. Under unfree economic conditions, this state of affairs is
bound to exist. Work or industry offers little to engage the emotions
and the imagination; it is a more or less mechanical series of strains.
Only the hold which the completion of the work has upon a person will
keep him going. But the end should be intrinsic to the action; it
should be its end—a part of its own course. Then it affords a
stimulus to effort very different from that arising from the thought of
results which have nothing to do with the intervening action. As
already mentioned, the absence of economic pressure in schools supplies
an opportunity for reproducing industrial situations of mature life
under conditions where the occupation can be carried on for its own
sake. If in some cases, pecuniary recognition is also a result of an
action, though not the chief motive for it, that fact may well increase
the significance of the occupation.
Where something approaching drudgery or the need of fulfilling
externally imposed tasks exists, the demand for play persists, but tends
to be perverted. The ordinary course of action fails to give adequate
stimulus to emotion and imagination. So in leisure time, there is an
imperious demand for their stimulation by any kind of means; gambling,
drink, etc., may be resorted to. Or, in less extreme cases, there is
recourse to idle amusement; to anything which passes time with immediate
agreeableness. Recreation, as the word indicates, is recuperation of
energy. No demand of human nature is more urgent or less to be escaped.
The idea that the need can be suppressed is absolutely fallacious, and
the Puritanic tradition which disallows the need has entailed an
enormous crop of evils. If education does not afford opportunity for
wholesome recreation and train capacity for seeking and finding it, the
suppressed instincts find all sorts of illicit outlets, sometimes overt,
sometimes confined to indulgence of the imagination. Education has no
more serious responsibility than making adequate provision for enjoyment
of recreative leisure; not only for the sake of immediate health, but
still more if possible for the sake of its lasting effect upon habits of
mind. Art is again the answer to this demand.
Summary.
—In the previous chapter we found that the primary subject matter
of knowing is that contained in learning how to do things of a fairly
direct sort. The educational equivalent of this principle is the
consistent use of simple occupations which appeal to the powers of youth
and which typify general modes of social activity. Skill and
information about materials, tools, and laws of energy are acquired
while activities are carried on for their own sake. The fact that they
are socially representative gives a quality to the skill and knowledge
gained which makes them transferable to out-of-school situations.
It is important not to confuse the psychological distinction between
play and work with the economic distinction. Psychologically, the
defining characteristic of play is not amusement nor aimlessness. It is
the fact that the aim is thought of as more activity in the same line,
without defining continuity of action in reference to results produced.
Activities as they grow more complicated gain added meaning by greater
attention to specific results achieved. Thus they pass gradually into
work. Both are equally free and intrinsically motivated, apart from
false economic conditions which tend to make play into idle excitement
for the well to do, and work into uncongenial labor for the poor. Work
is psychologically simply an activity which consciously includes regard
for consequences as a part of itself; it becomes constrained labor when
the consequences are outside of the activity as an end to which activity
is merely a means. Work which remains permeated with the play attitude
is art—in quality if not in conventional designation.
