This is what we should mean by saying that handwork is a method of learning.
But handwork has its own absolute place as well. A child wants to acquire skill in this direction even more consciously than he wants to learn: if he has been free, in the nursery class, to experiment with materials, and if he knows some of his limitations, he is now, in the transition class, ready for help, and he should get it as he needs it. This may run side by side with the more didactic side of handwork which has been described, but it is more likely that in practice the two are inextricably mixed up; and this does not matter if the two ends are clear in the teacher's mind; both sides have to be reckoned with.
The important thing to know is the kind of help that should be given, and when and how it is needed. It is well to remember that in this connection a child's limitations are not final, but only mark stages: for example, in his early attempts to use thick cardboard he cannot discover the neat hinge that is made by the process known as a "half-cut"; he tries in vain to bend the cardboard, so as to secure the same result. There are two ways of helping him: either he can be quite definitely shown and made to imitate, or he can be set to think about it; he is given a cardboard knife and allowed to experiment: if he fails, it may be suggested that a clean edge can only be got by some form of cutting; probably he will find out the rest of the process. The second method is the better one, because it promotes thinking, while the first only promotes pure imitation and the habit of reckoning on this easy solution of difficulties. A dull child may have to be shown, but there are few such children, unless they have been trained to dulness.
Imitation is not, however, always a medicine for dulness, nor does it always produce dulness. There is a time for imitation and there is a kind of imitation that is very intelligent. For example, a child may come across a toy aeroplane and wish to make one; he will examine it carefully, think over the uses of parts and proceed to make one as like it as possible: here again is the maximum of consciousness, the essence of thinking. Or the imitation may consist in following verbal directions: this is far from easy if the teacher is at all vague, and promotes valuable effort if she is clear but not diffuse: the putting of words into action necessitates a considerable amount of imagining, and the establishment of very important associations in brain centres. Such cases might occur in connection with weaving, cardboard and paper work, or the more technical processes of drawing and painting, where race experience is actually given to a child, by means of which he leaps over the experiences of centuries. This is progress.
If a teacher is to take handwork seriously, and not as a pretty recreation with pleasing results, she should be fully conscious of all that it means, and apply this definitely in her work: it is so easy to be trivial while appearing to be thorough by having well-finished work produced, which has necessitated little hard thinking on the child's part. Construction gives a sense of power, a strengthening of the will, ability to concentrate on a purpose in learning, a social sense of serviceableness, a deepened individuality: but this can only be looked for if a child is allowed to approach it in the right way, first as an experimenter and investigator, or as an artist, and afterwards as a learner, who is also an individual, and learns in his own way and at his own rate: but if the teacher's ambition is external and economic then the child is a tool in her hands, and will remain a tool. We cannot expect the fruits of the spirit if our goal is a material one.
One of the lessons of the war is economy. In handwork this has come to us through the quest for materials, but it has been a blessing, if now and then in disguise. In the more formal period of handwork only prepared, almost patented material was used; everything was "requisitioned" and eager manufacturers supplied very highly finished stuff. Not very many years ago, the keeper of a "Kindergarten" stall at an exhibition said, while pointing to cards cut and printed with outlines for sewing and pricking, "We have so many orders for these that we can afford to lay down considerable plant for their production." An example in another direction is that of a little girl who attended one of the best so-called Kindergartens of the time: she was afflicted, while at home, with the "don't know what to do" malady; her mother suggested that she might make some of the things she made at school, but she negatived that at once with the remark, "I couldn't do that, you see, because we have none of the right kind of stuff to make them of here."
It is quite unnecessary to give more direct details as to the kind of work suitable and the method of doing it; more than enough books of help have been published on every kind of material, and it might perhaps be well if we made less use of such terms as "clay-modelling," "cardboard-work," "raffia," and took handwork more in the sense of constructive or expressive work, letting the children select one or several media for their purpose; they ought to have access to a variety of material; and except when they waste, they should use it freely. It is limiting and unenlightened to put down a special time for the use of special material, if the end might be better answered by something else: if modelling is at 11.30 on Monday and children are anxious to make Christmas presents, what law in heaven or earth are we obeying if we stick to modelling except the law of Red Tape.
CHAPTER XXV
EXPERIENCES OF THE LIFE OF MAN
This aspect of experience comes in two forms, the life of man in the past, with the memorials and legacies he has left, and the life of man in the present under the varying conditions of climate and all that it involves. In other words these experiences are commonly known as history and geography, though in the earlier stages of their appearance in school it is perhaps better to call the work—preparation for history and geography. They would naturally appear in the transition or the junior class, preferably in the latter, but they need not be wholly new subjects to a child; his literature has prepared him for both; to some extent his experiments in handwork have prepared him for history, while his nature work, especially his excursions and records, have prepared him for geography. That he needs this extension of experience can be seen in his growing demands for true stories, true in the more literal sense which he is coming fast to appreciate; undoubtedly most children pass through a stage of extreme literalism between early childhood and what is generally recognised as boyhood and girlhood. They begin to ask questions regarding the past, they are interested in things from "abroad," however vague that term may be to them.