Finally, we discover that imitation, where not mere collective play, is eminently promotive through tradition of various departments of culture. Few of our acquisitions in that line are due to physical heredity. Time may increase the intensity of the social impulse, and possibly diminish the force of our pugnacious tendencies (although to my mind a comparison with the so-called lower-standing peoples offers little encouragement to the hope), and intelligence may be further refined if the limit has not already been reached; still this store of culture must be acquired by each individual anew. Play does much to make its attainment possible, and, above all, dramatic imitation play. I would refer the reader again to Signe Rink’s description of the children brought up in Greenland. If parental interference could have been obliterated and imitation allowed free play, while the child, it is true, would not have become exactly like a Greenland woman, she would have come very near to it in her thoughts and feeling, and it is doubtful whether any subsequent training in European customs could have wholly extinguished this influence.
6. The Pedagogical Standpoint
The fact that the natural school of play affords a necessary complement to pedagogics was recognised by educators of old, with some notable exceptions, however. For example, the pietist Tollner uttered this sentiment at a conference: “Play of whatever sort should be forbidden in all evangelical schools, and its vanity and folly should be explained to the children with warnings of how it turns the mind away from God and eternal life, and works destruction to their immortal souls.”[686] On the whole, however, the educational value of play has been recognised from the time of Plato to the present day.[687] It affords a reaction from the stress and strain of work. It satisfies the natural demand for pleasure so impressively set forth by Luther, giving opportunity for free, self-originated activity and practice to the physical and mental capacities.[688] A discerning educator could not afford to ignore so important a coadjutor.
There are two ways of regarding the relation of play to education. Instruction may take the form of playful activity, or, on the other hand, play may be converted into systematic teaching. Both methods are natural to us, and may be carried to extreme lengths. The history of pedagogics gives much interesting information as to experiments with the first; for example, Joachim Böldicke, inspired by reading Locke and Baratier,[689] set forth his method in the following programme in 1732, as “an attempt to educate by the help of games, music, poetry, and other entertainment through which important truths may be imparted.” Thanks to the originators of the plan, ten intelligent children, twelve years of age when they began, could understand in their fifteenth year German, Latin, French, Italian, and English, and were well grounded in all useful general knowledge. The writer proceeds to give an example of the riddle games as follows: “I know an animal which eats grass, has two horns on its head, a tail, and four cloven feet. What can it be? When in need of anything, it lows. It has calves, suckles them, and allows itself to be milked.” Whereupon the penetrating youth promptly responds in Latin: “Non est, quod nomen addas; de vacca emin cogitasti, quae est herbatica, cornuta, quadrupes, biscula, mugire, vitulos parere, lactari et emulgeri potest.”[690]
Against such trifling it is sufficient to repeat the warning that J. G. Schlosser published in 1776. At school one should learn to work, and he who does everything playfully will always remain a child. Other things being equal, it is most natural and advantageous to distinguish clearly between play and study work.[691] Among primitive races, where the life work is for the most part guided by natural impulse, at least in the case of males, boys may get sufficient preparation from play for their later life, though even they usually have some instruction at the outset. But with civilized peoples usage to earnest, persistent effort that is not dependent on caprice or impulse is an indispensable condition of success in the struggle for life, and for this reason school life should promote a high sense of duty as opposed to mere inclination.
Yet this distinction should not be so stringent as to exclude entirely the play impulse. We have repeatedly found in the course of this inquiry that even the most serious work may include a certain playfulness, especially when enjoyment of being a cause and of conquest are prominent.[692] Between flippant trifling and conscientious study there is a wide chasm which nothing can bridge; but not all play is such trifling. Who would forbid the teacher’s making the effort to induce in his pupils a psychological condition like that of the adult worker, who is not oppressed by the shall and must in the pursuit of his calling, because the very exertion of his physical and mental powers in work involving all his capabilities fills his soul with joy? Since play thus approaches work when pleasure in the activity as such, as well as its practical aim, becomes a motive power (as in the gymnastic games of adults), so may work become like play when its real aim is superseded by enjoyment of the activity itself. And it can hardly be doubted that this is the highest and noblest form of work.
Another question is how far the teacher’s effort should go in this direction, and to answer this definitely something more than a purely theoretic inquiry is needed, since many points are involved which have more to do with the art than the method of education. On the whole, we must concur with Kraepelin that in view of the danger of overstrain and overfatigue it is probably fortunate that the majority of teachers do not possess the faculty of turning study into an amusement, and that those who do possess it make a great mistake in employing it constantly. Yet, while disapproving totally of all trifling in education, we still maintain that the school which is conducted exclusively by an appeal to the stringent sense of duty, with no incentive to the higher form of work in which the deepest earnestness has much of the freedom of play—that such a school does not perfectly fulfil its task.
In passing to our second question we must touch upon that connecting link between work and play which we call occupation. The hobbies of adults furnish voluntary activity like play, which is undertaken chiefly from the pleasure it affords, but often has aims outside the sphere of play. Pedagogical occupation is, on the contrary, playful practice in the line of the child’s instruction, and forms an adaptive means of transition from the freedom of the first years of life to school work. Froebel’s kindergarten system is most valuable in this way. Its occupations suggest to the children something beyond mere play, and supply definite aims for their activity and study, but they should always be kept near the limits of play; forced occupation against the child’s will does not fulfil the purpose of such exercise. Since in what follows I shall be limited to the consideration of actual play, I take occasion to mention here that there is a certain analogy to pedagogic occupation among savages. Brough Smith sends from Australia an account of an old woman’s direction of the occupation of young girls: “The old woman herself collected the material, built a skin hut, and taught each of the little ones with great care to make small ones like the large model. She showed them where to get the gum and how to use it. She sent the girls to gather rushes, and taught them to weave baskets over round stones, etc.”[693] This is not exactly systematic education like that of our schools, but it may properly be classed with kindergarten work.
After this digression we now proceed to our second leading question: How far may a teacher direct play to pedagogic ends without destroying its freedom and genuineness? In this direction, too, many teachers err. Campe thought that the irrepressible tendency to popular sport should be allowed to indulge in only those of its inventions which developed the reason, perception, judgment, etc., and even those persons who recognise the value of Froebel’s system bring the charge, which for a teacher is a damaging one, that by his methods, and especially by the songs he uses so much, spontaneity and naïveté are almost totally destroyed. Every user of the system should be cautioned against a careless or thoughtless application of it. Jean Paul says strikingly, “I tremble when any grown-up, hardened hand meddles with these tender buds from childhood’s garden, rubbing off the bloom here and marring the delicacy of tint there.”
Yet it would be unfortunate and in a sense unnatural for the teacher, and even more so for the parent, to leave the playing child entirely to his own devices. Adults have three important tasks in this direction which are imperative—namely, general incitation to play, encouragement of what is good and useful, and discouragement of injurious and improper forms of play. Animals teach their young to play, and for this reason I have said it would be unnatural for parents to be unconcerned about their children’s games. While all animals show a greater or less disposition for sportiveness, it is strongest in the mother with her young, and gives rise to some of the most attractive phases of animal life. Love toward the small, helpless creatures manifests itself as well in playing with them as in nursing and caring for them. The mother not only submits to their tumbling all over her and pulling at her as their movement and fighting instincts impel them to do, but she encourages them to active play. This instinct is much stronger in our own race. Not the mother alone, but every normal woman feels again a child at the sight of children, and the father, too, is conscious of an irresistible drawing toward the nursery in his leisure moments, there to indulge in a short excursion to the lost paradise of childish play.