Play has two functions in the school: (1) Motor play is necessary to growth, development, and health. The constant activity of the child is what brings about healthy growth.

In the country it is not difficult for children to get plenty of the proper kind of exercise, but in the larger cities it is difficult. Nevertheless, opportunity for play should be provided for every child, no matter what the trouble or expense, for without play children cannot become normal human beings. Everywhere parents and teachers should plan for the play life of the children.

(2) In the primary grades play can have a large place in the actual work of the school. The early work of education is to a large extent getting the tools of knowledge and thought and work—reading, spelling, writing, correct speech, correct writing, the elementary processes of arithmetic, etc. In many ways play can be used in acquiring these tools.

One aspect of play particularly should have a large place in education; namely, the manipulative tendencies of children. This is essentially play. Children wish to handle and manipulate everything that attracts their attention. They wish to tear it to pieces and to put it together. This is nature’s way of teaching, and by it children learn the properties and structures of things. They thereby learn what things do and what can be done with them. Teachers and parents should foster these manipulative tendencies and use them for the child’s good. These tendencies are an aspect of curiosity. We want to know. We are unhappy as long as a thing is before us which we do not understand, which has some mystery about it. Nature has developed these tendencies in us, for without a knowledge of our surroundings we could not live. The child therefore has in his nature the basis of his education. We have but to know this nature and wisely use and manipulate it to achieve the child’s education.

Summary. Instincts are inherited tendencies to specific actions. They fall under the heads: individualistic, socialistic, environmental, adaptive, sexual or mating instincts. These inherited tendencies are to a large extent the foundation on which we build education. The educational problem is to control and guide them, suppressing some, fostering others. In everything we undertake for a child we must take into account these instincts.

CLASS EXERCISES

  1. Make a study of the instincts of several animals, such as dogs, cats, chickens. Make a list showing the stimuli and the inherited responses.
  2. Make a study of the instincts of a baby. See how many inherited responses you can observe. The simpler inherited responses are known as reflexes. The closing of the eyelids mentioned in the text is an example. How many such reflexes can you find in a child?
  3. Make a special study of the fears of very young children. How many definite situations can you find which excite fear responses in all children? Each member of the class can make a list of his own fears. It may then be seen whether any fears are common to all members of the class and whether there are any sex differences.
  4. Similarly, make a study of anger and fighting. What situations invariably arouse the fighting response? In what definite, inherited ways is anger shown? Do your studies and observations convince you that the fighting instinct and other inherited responses concerned with individual survival are among the strongest of inherited tendencies? Can the fighting instinct be eliminated from the human race? Is it desirable to eliminate it?
  5. Make a study of children’s collections. Take one of the grades and find what collections the children have made. What different objects are collected?
  6. Outline a plan for using the collecting instinct in various school studies.
  7. With the help of the principal of the school make a study of some specific cases of truancy. What does your finding show?
  8. Make a study of play by watching children of various ages play. Make a list of the games that are universal for infancy, those for childhood, and those for youth. (Consult Johnson’s Plays and Games.)
  9. What are the two main functions of play in education? Why should we play after we are mature?
  10. Study imitation in very young children. Do this by watching the spontaneous play of children under six. What evidences of imitation do you find?
  11. Outline the things we learn by imitation. What is your opinion of the place which imitation has in our education?
  12. Make a study of imitation as a factor in the lives of grown people. Consider styles, fashions, manners, customs, beliefs, prejudices, religious ideas, etc.
  13. On the whole, is imitation a good thing or a bad thing?
  14. Make a plan of the various ways in which dramatization can be profitably used in the schools.
  15. Make a study of your own ideals. What ideals do you have? Where did you get them? What ideals did you get from your parents? What from books? What from teachers? What from friends?
  16. Show that throughout life inherited tendencies are the fundamental bases from which our actions proceed, on which our lives are erected.
  17. Make a complete outline of the chapter.

REFERENCES FOR CLASS READING