Walk about the room (sempre) always on tip-toe.
meaning that the child should all the while go on tip-toe; if the child began to walk on tip-toe and continued to do so for a long time, trying to express sempre (always—forever) he would find himself facing a serious problem. Hence the spontaneous query: "What must I do to express myself correctly?"
A little girl once wrote "Walk around the tables," meaning that the children should form a line and walk in and out around each table. Instead she saw her companions form a line and walk round the entire group of tables. Red in the face and out of breath she kept calling: "Stop, stop. That isn't the way," just as if this difference between the thought she actually had in mind and the way it was being executed were hurting her intolerably.
This is only a passing suggestion of something which, I think, will merit much further development later on, after more thorough experiment. It will suffice, however, to bring to the teacher a notion of a most fertile field for the development of the written language in its most rigorous purity. It is evident that the experiment shows the possibility not only of having spontaneous compositions without grammatical errors (just as the mechanical writing was spontaneous and without errors), but of developing a love for clearness and purity of speech which will be a potent factor in improving the literary appreciation of the masses, and popular culture generally.
When the children are seized with this passion for accurate expression of their thoughts in writing, when, spontaneously, clearness becomes the goal of their efforts, they follow the hunt for words with the keenest enthusiasm. They feel that there are never too many words to build with exactness the delicate edifice of thought. Problems of language come to them as a revelation. "How many words are there?" they ask. "How many nouns, how many verbs, how many adjectives? Is there any way for us to learn them all?" They are no longer content with their little copy-books of words. They ask for a wealth of word material which they now enjoy with all the delight of attractive and orderly interpretation. They never get tired of it.
These developments in our work suggested to us the idea of giving the children a large vocabulary comprising a sufficient number of nouns, verbs, and adjectives and containing all the words of the other parts of speech. The difference in bulk between the real content of language (substance and modification, that is, nouns with their adjectives, and verbs with their adverbs) and the other words which serve to establish relations and consolidate this content, is something very impressive to children of eight. It is for them that we tried to prepare our word charts and the dictionaries of synonyms for nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Here, meanwhile, are some of the commands which the children wrote themselves—things which they improvised all of a sudden, by an explosion of energy, as it were, developed as the result of inner maturity. Compare the aridity and uniformity of the commands we invented ourselves with the variety and richness of ideas appearing in the children's commands! We very evidently show the weariness the preparation of the material caused us. They, on the contrary, reveal an ardent, vivacious spirit, a life full of exuberance.
COMMANDS IMPROVISED BY THE CHILDREN
—Build the pink tower very badly.
—Make accurately a pose for each of the pictures in the room.