2. The environment and what it provides of opportunity for physical activity, exploration, social relations, and for direction of interest.
The apotheosis of unnatural environment for the child is an expensive “high class” city apartment, no other children, one or more domestic servants, absentee parents who are interested and intelligent in everything but child care and training.
For the child under six years, and possibly under ten, the most educative environment, in every sense, is in the country with hills, valleys, woods, water, plants and trees, wild and domestic animals, other young children, the freedom of the kitchen, the necessity for personal physical care, and elders who enter sympathetically into his life, not obtrusively but intelligently, ready to give assistance when it is needed. With good library facilities, wholesome neighborhood recreations, and occasional trips to a city for its opportunities of art galleries, great music, wholesome plays, industrial activities, the simple home life and rural surroundings, even with mediocre teaching in a rural school, provide through early adolescence the environment most favorable for developing richness of life, greatness of personality, social efficiency.
As part of the environment which his guardians select are (a) his clothes, which have an influence both upon bodily health and on personality; (b) his furniture, which should be adapted to his size; (c) his toys and playthings, which are both a stimulus and a means for expression of his interest; (d) his pictures, books, and music, which are influencing his æsthetic taste, his emotions and his moral life; (e) his associates, both children and adults, who furnish the examples that he imitates constantly in speech, manners, actions, and whose personality subtly—and often unconsciously is molding his personality.
The scope of education is as comprehensive as life itself. The following aspects must therefore be developed in the complete education of the child:
1. Disciplinary: developing in the child his power to use efficiently his mental possibilities,—concentration, observation, memory, imagination, invention, judgment, his motor powers, his emotions, his will
2. Physical: training in habits and ideals of health, in skill and grace of motor coördinations
3. Cultural: bringing the child to a living interest in great literature, art, biography, history, and an appreciation and enjoyment of their values
4. Scientific: leading him to a knowledge and appreciation of the principles that control the world of nature and of mind
5. Social: training him to live harmoniously and serviceably with his fellows