[Footnote A: Remember these were second-grade children—most of them seven or eight years old.]
"The need of invitations, of price lists, and of bookkeepers the day of the sale, was also recognized and led to much needed practice in written English. The prices were determined by a study of the latest food catalog, a small group with a teacher undertaking this work. It necessitated the use of an alphabetical index, and in some cases the calculation of the price of pints, when only quarts were listed, as we had used both pint and quart jars.
"Further preparation consisted of the making of labels for the jars and of posters for the room. The art teacher, when called in to advise, taught the children how to make accurate square letters, which they used in various sizes for the labels and posters. The making of fifty or more small labels with half-inch letters proved irksome to the little people, but they showed much persistence in completing the task, because of their interest in the sale. The eight children who made the final large posters did a great deal of intelligent, painstaking work. From the artistic point of view, the posters were not noteworthy, but they represented the children's own suggestions.
"The sale was conducted by the children, who made their own change, kept records of sales and wrapped up purchases. The various duties were agreed upon by the class, in accordance with each one's proved ability to carry them out, and everyone had some share."
In this simple account of an experimental class conducted at the Ethical Culture School, in New York, under the direction of Miss Mabel R. Goodlander, are many references to drill and practice. But throughout all of the work it was possible to maintain the interest of the children because, apparently, the attention was not on the drill as an end in itself, but upon the special skill or knowledge as a means to a more remote end. And this remote end was not the formal one of "passing," or being promoted, or getting a good mark, but the vital, urgent purpose of raising money through the sale for a sick baby's milk. Undoubtedly the "motives" of the several children in this class were varied and mixed—like the motives of good citizens who are united in support of a particular candidate, or a particular platform. But there was enough common purpose to insure cooperation and persistence and effort from every single child in proportion to his ability. The learning of stupid sums and the practice in penmanship are no more attractive to these children than they are to ordinary children in ordinary schools in all parts of the country. But they overcame all internal obstacles, went through with all of the monotony and drudgery, and to that extent triumphed over any disposition to shirk or to loaf or to dawdle or to flit from work to sensation.
And how is it with the learning of responsibility, with acquiring a sense of duty? Many of us have no doubt learned what we have learned of duty and responsibility, through the constant repetition of "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" by our elders during our own growing years. But results at least as valuable have been obtained in the cases of others through the constant rubbing up against their equals in a free give-and-take atmosphere. Children learn to live with others by living with others. They learn to work with others—to "cooperate"—by working with others. They learn to play the game, to do teamwork, to play fair, to play in good form, to hit hard only by playing according to rule, with others, with worthy opponents, under good supervision. In short, the "discipline" that makes for power and freedom may be quite as easily obtained through the exercise of freedom as through external coercion—nay, more easily, and more effectively.
It is fair to ask whether training for a game is not quite analogous to our idea of training for life; and whether the methods which are found to be effective in the former kind of training are not equally valuable for the latter. Assuming the analogy, would you have a child learn the rules of such games as baseball or tennis from a book before allowing him to handle a ball, or before letting him see a game? Would you expect him to cooperate in teamwork after a long period of drill upon the rules governing team cooperation? Would you expect him to hit hard because he has learned the correct answer to the question, How should a player hit?
This may not seem a fair comparison to some of the "training" that has actually been tried. Perhaps a more familiar analogy would be in teaching a child correct movements for the game to be mastered, separated from any experience with real games. Boys are "practicing" for a game, and each one is drilling on some special detail, hitting, catching, running bases, long throws, or what not; each one of them has in mind as part of his moving purpose not only his team's success and glory, but his own individual responsibility. Contrast this with the same boys required to drill at precisely the same movements on the theory that the "exercise" will do them good, or that some time in the future they might have to meet a situation in which a long throw or a swift run would be significant. Do you expect the same enthusiasm and energy to be developed in both cases? And if not the same enthusiasm and energy, can we expect the same results—whether we view the results as so much skill or technic, whether we view the results as so much "training in drudgery," or whether we consider the results from the viewpoint of moral values as so much devotion, self-sacrifice, restraint? The "moral" values that have been for years attributed to athletics appear after all to be the effects of intense, enthusiastic, and interested participation in teamwork—that is, in purposeful and energetic concern with joint undertakings.
The responsibilities we wish to develop, the sense of duty, no less than the application and persistence, no less than knowledge and skill, are types of habits which are best formed under the glow of satisfying experience. Far from assuming a soft life for the child, the idea of interest assumes the most strenuous kind of life. And the experiences of all who have tried it justifies the assumption. The experimental class already mentioned, similar experiments by Mrs. Marietta Johnson at Fairhope, Alabama and elsewhere, experimental classes at the Lincoln School and at the Horace Mann School, at various "play" schools in this country and in England, all show more continuous application of the children to whatever they happen to have in hand, longer periods of intense activity, and no sign whatever of loafing or shirking. The activities selected by the children themselves involve just as much "discipline" as anything that can be selected for them.
In these schools the children never hear the teacher call for "attention," for although everybody knows that attention is an essential of effective work, the attention takes care of itself where the children already feel a genuine concern in the outcome. And this concern insures satisfactory application, since the children look forward to satisfying results. This does not mean, of course, that either the work itself or the result is necessarily "pleasant," in the ordinary sense. Often, indeed, it is quite the reverse, as when the racer is exerting every last reserve of his energy in the final spurt, or when the contestants are in suspense awaiting the decision of the judges as to which is the best cake. And the endless grind of practice and preparation is no more "pleasant" to the child who knows the purpose and approves the purpose of his efforts (having taken part in selecting the undertaking) than similar exertion is to the child whose work is all planned and directed by outsiders; but the satisfactions connected with the exertions are different in the two cases, and the corresponding results are correspondingly different.