The Meaning of Infancy
Before examining the changes which take place during school life, it will be instructive to review the general matter which has been discussed by John Fiske under the title “The Meaning of Infancy.”[62] Writing from the point of view of the student of evolution, Fiske calls attention to the fact that the period of infancy has gradually lengthened with the increase in complexity of animal forms. The lowest animals have practically no period of infancy. They begin their independent lives with all of the capacities of the adult. For example, when a unicellular animal is produced, it results from a division of the parent cell into two equal parts. Each part immediately takes up an independent life, and it may be said that adulthood begins at birth. Further up the scale the parent organism provides protection and food, and the infant requires a longer period of time to arrive at adulthood.
This lengthening of infancy is paralleled by an increase in complexity of the animal form itself. The highest stages of complexity are reached in man, and here we find also the longest period of infancy. The human infant is helpless for years, and the care which parents must give to it includes not only the provision of food and protection but also the gradual training of the child to assume the responsibilities of an independent life.
When viewed by the evolutionist, infancy and even childhood thus appear to be the clearest evidences of the need of educational care. Indeed, childhood may be described as a period of preparation or of gradual maturing of the powers until the individual can carry on his independent personal activities.
The Period before entering School
Just as the period of childhood taken as a whole has a clearly definable character and purpose in the economy of life, so each epoch within this period can be set off from the others as serving a distinct purpose in the child’s development. This is especially clear with regard to the years that precede school. In all civilized countries there is practical agreement that regular schooling shall begin with the normal child in the sixth year. To be sure, there are special institutions like the kindergarten, which receive children at an earlier age, but these institutions aim to serve in a somewhat more systematic way the same purposes that under other circumstances are served by home training.
What is the character of the education given in the home or the kindergarten preliminary to the work of the primary school? The answer to this question can be given negatively by saying it is not of a type which belongs to a public institution. When the pupil comes to primary school he must be reasonably prepared to live with people who are comparative strangers. This implies that he must have a sufficient command of language to make his wants known and to understand what others want him to do. He must be somewhat independent of maternal care, and must be ready to be initiated into a social world where his individuality will be recognized as somewhat detached from that of everyone else. Put in positive terms, the pre-school training may be described as training in language and in personal independence of a very elementary type.
This statement can be applied to the kindergarten, where the purposes of the pre-school training have been brought to fairly clear consciousness. The kindergarten gives the child much opportunity to play with things that are given to him. He must learn to distinguish objects for himself; he must learn to handle them with enough skill so that he becomes an independent individual. Second, he must play with other children, learning through games that social life consists of a give and take which marks him off from others and yet makes him responsible to the group. The social training of the kindergarten is a preparation for life in an institution where the pupil will have to recognize the reciprocal duties of life in a large group. Third, the chief instrument of social life, and the most important means of effective contact with the group, is speech. The kindergarten child, through songs and stories, learns words and sentences and cultivates the power to which home-training also contributes—the power of independent oral communication.
The kindergarten does in an energetic and systematic way what the home does incidentally, for in any home, however meager its resources, the child learns in five years something of his mother tongue and something of the demands of group living. The pre-school period is an important epoch in education as well as in physical growth. We recognize the physical fact that the child must cultivate strength enough to run around independently and to use his hands in holding what he needs. So it is also in the sphere of his mental life; he must be able to take care of himself.