Extent of such ability. 1. as evidenced by individual examples of children's judgments.
Let us see to what extent this view holds when examined in the light of children's actual conduct. A first-grade pupil who had attended the kindergarten the previous year remarked to his former kindergarten teacher, "I wish I was back in the kindergarten." "Why?" said the kindergartner. "Because," said he, "we did hard things in the kindergarten last year." Then he added confidentially, "You know our teacher was in the fourth grade last year. She used to come in to see us when we were playing, and she thinks we can't do anything else. Why, the things she gives us to do are dead easy." His teacher herself afterward admitted that his criticism was just.
A small boy, being asked if he went to Sunday school, replied "Yes." "Have you a good teacher?" was the next question; to which came the response, "Yes, pretty good; good for a Sunday school. She would not be much good for day school." Wasn't he probably right?
A five-year-old boy was taken to Sunday school for the first time by his nurse. There the chief topic of instruction happened to be eternal punishment. On the way home he was not altogether good, and the nurse, in the spirit of the day's lesson, assured him that he would go to the bad place when he died, and would burn there always. When he entered the house he hurried, sobbing, to his mother and declared vehemently: "Nurse says I'll go to the bad place when I die, and that I'll burn there always. I won't burn always; I know I won't! I may burn a little bit. But I'm bad only part of the time; I am good part of the time; and I know I won't burn always." His reasoning on theology was as sound as that of many a preacher.
I was standing near a second-year class in reading one day when I overheard a boy say "Nonsense!" to himself, after reading a section. I agreed with him too fully to offer any reproof.
An eight-year-old girl said to her mother, "May I iron my apron? I ironed a pillowcase." "Did Sarah [the maid] say that you ironed it well?" asked the mother. "No, she didn't say anything," was the response. "But I know that I ironed it well." Is that an entirely passive attitude?
Rebecca had spent six years in the public schools of two large cities when she entered the seventh grade of the State Normal School. She had been called a "quiet child," "nervous" and "timid," by different teachers. After a very few days in the new school, however, she volunteered this expression of her thoughts: "I didn't think the Normal School would be anything like that. It's very different from the public schools. There only the teacher has opinions and she does all the talking; but in the Normal School the children can have opinions, and they can express them, and I like it."
Any one who has had close contact with children knows that they have a remarkably keen sense of the justice or injustice of punishments inflicted upon them. As a rule, I would rather trust their judgment of their teachers than their parents' judgment, although it is true that parents form such judgment largely from hearing remarks from their children. Children are reasonably reliable, also, in judging one another's conduct, which they are prone to do.
Such facts as these indicate that it is quite natural for children—even very young ones—to pass judgment of some kind on things about them, and that their judgments are fairly sound. They are hardly to be called merely passive receivers of ideas, mildly agreeing with the people about them.
2. As evidenced by the requirements of the school.