CHAPTER II

GENERAL METHOD OF THE PLAY WAY

And, in after years,

When these wild ecstasies shall be matured

Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind

Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,

Thy memory be as a dwelling-place

For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,

And these my exhortations!

WORDSWORTH

THE subject of this chapter is such a wide one that the various matters to be dealt with can best be discussed under a few positive maxims.

The method of study is quite as important as the matter studied.

The classroom should to a very large extent be considered the boys' place, and not a sanctum nor a penitentiary. Vittorino da Feltre, that playmaster among Renaissance educators, called his school at Mantua "La Casa Giocosa," or the House of Delight, and decorated it accordingly, so that the children might be brought up in beautiful surroundings. But teachers of to-day have to work under authorities so blind to the finer influences of education as to provide only the barest accommodation. But our methods of teaching the children need not be bleak and gloomy to match the surroundings.

Gata The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

mister

The creative fancy of Littleman in play can "make a sunshine

in a shady place," and under due encouragement he will not only make this dungeon bright, but will triumph over many another obstacle which would seem to the teacher to make real play impossible. If the classroom is really regarded as the boys' room, if the boys' point of view is given fair consideration in all that takes place in that room, then many play-methods will come into being of their own accord. Certainly the teacher must initiate many play-ways, but there can be no doubt that the boys if they are given leave will initiate many play-ways of their own.

A teacher's chief thought all the while he is in the classroom should be for the boys. If he is not present simply for the sake of the boys what is he doing in the classroom at all? Is he practising there for a slave-driver, or cramming the poor wretches for an examination; or is he simply earning a living while he fits himself for another profession?

It is not denied that many teachers do give careful thought to presenting the subject-matter of their teaching in an interesting way. But few, if any, have realized for themselves (or will be ready to admit now that it is suggested) that with young boys the method of study is quite as important as the matter studied.

It is upon a recognition of this principle that most of the classroom practice in play is based. Consider what that statement implies. The teacher instead of being mainly, if not exclusively, interested in putting some particular subjectmatter before the class, and seeing that they swallow that and attend to nothing else, will be quite ready to find emerging out of the subject he introduces some method of study which will develop a life of its own. It may even leave his original subject-matter far behind. It will occur time and again that what was at first undertaken only as a method of dealing with certain subject-matter will become itself the main concern.

Can such a thing be justified? Let us take an illustration. In the kindergarten and the elementary school play-methods are quite familiar. The simplest illustration, then, can be drawn from the teaching of very young pupils.

There are lessons for which the children bring daffodils to school. The lesson begins perhaps with questions and

answers connected with a simple study of the daffodil (nature
study). Then Wordsworth's "Daffodils" is read and discussed
(poetry). In many cases teachers have songs about flowers
for the children to learn (singing). And however many lessons
all this may have taken it is certain that, before they have
finished their study of the daffodils, the children will make
pictures of them (drawing and brush-work). And there is no
teacher of little children who would not, if she had the means,
bring out of those few simple words

And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils

all the joy of spring which the poet put into them, by teaching the children to perform a "Dance of the Daffodils." Series of lessons such as this, comprising a play-activity of several kinds, are an everyday occurrence in elementary schools. The fact that the verses used in such lessons are too often the merest rubbish, and the music and dancing, when included at all, of the worst possible type-sentimental wishy-washy stuff— is a great pity, but it does not in any way affect my illustration. The subject-matter of such a lesson as this might be described as "The Daffodil." It probably is thus simply entered in the syllabus of work done. But it is obvious that the whole value of the lessons lies in what the children have done in reading, singing, painting, and dancing, and in the way all this activity is bound up with the beauty of flowers, the joy of spring-time, the feeling for music, and the glad experience of rhythmical movement. Here then are many of the finest experiences of life centred round the alleged study of one flower. The value has come, not from the subject, but from the method of treating it.

Could not something of the same method be carried out in secondary schools? Why should we give up all that is active and real and alive in method so soon as the subject with which we are concerned becomes of serious moment? Why should children be considered adult so soon as they leave the kindergarten? The play-method is not asking for every school subject to be treated as though it were a parlour game. But it is asking that school studies should be brought more into relation with x the activities of daily life. Some teachers speak and behave 1

as though a man actively engaged were always just amusing himself, or otherwise wasting time which he might be devoting to study !

Others imagine that while active movement may be desirable and easily possible in connexion with such things as the acting and making of plays, it is in no way an essential part of more formal subjects such as mathematics, science, or language study. It is often thought that an active play-method in connexion with such studies can only be introduced as a means of diversion or for the lightening of the burden of abstract study. That in itself were surely reason enough for including a measure of play in all our teaching, But it happens that play as treated in this book includes always two meanings, one, the sheer enjoyable activity of a game, and the other, that active side, that bringing into play of what one knows, which in real life is always as large a part of any undertaking as is the learning side. That is a modest statement, for in real life we gain proficiency far more through practice than we do through instruction or theoretical study.

What active measures of play, then, can be suggested in the study of the more formal subjects? At this point I can only offer a few tentative and rather humorous suggestions which would have to be shaped into practical use by the specialist teachers of such subjects; for one cannot give detailed proposals for the teaching of subjects of which one knows nothing. But I am convinced that the general method of the Play Way is in accord with the nature of boys, and that it can be adapted by any original teacher to suit his special circumstances.

Small boys learn geometry nowadays instead of Euclid; and this, I understand, has the advantage of giving them a few little operations to perform carefully with instruments. This exercise requires some dexterity and neat fingering to ensure absolute accuracy. But we should go further than this in the use of implements and handiwork in connexion with mathematical study. Milton says, "At the same time might be taught them the rules of Arithmetic, and soon after the Elements of Geometry, even playing, as the old manner was.” Several mathematicians have assured me that many parts of

their subject could be taught actively in connexion with handicrafts, such as carpentry. Working to scale from a plan suggests itself at once. Accuracy and clean work are essential to a carpenter. That necessary precision of a joiner, who by measurement makes things fit, is surely a mathematical quality. There is assuredly much scope for active handwork and the making of things in connexion with elementary mathematics.

66

In addition to plays there are many other sides of English teaching which have flourished in our classroom in an atmosphere of games and " goings on." If such an essentially literary thing as a poem can be turned into a game, if a good prose style can be honestly shown as the outcome of a course of noisy play, what an opportunity there must be for the teachers of mathematics, elementary science, and handicraft to come near to the boys' real interests. For most boys are fascinated by technical and mechanical things. They love engines and motors and dynamos and explosives and aeroplanes and photography. If their intense love of these gins is not made use of in connexion with the school subjects most nearly concerned, then those teachers are surely neglecting a most powerful aid to their work. Even such a commonplace toy as a boy's kite offers scope for much in the way of practical lessons. If an ingenious master of geometry should give a course of lessons, as a result of which twenty-five boys had made twenty-five kites, I think those toys would not be the sole result. And what a sight it would be when they all trooped out on the first windy day to fly them on the hills!

More than once I have sat in a classroom and looked on at a fascinating lesson, in which one determined the width of a given river, not by direct measurement, but by doing learned things with convenient and obliging trees by means of angles, and many strange signs and tokens. Possibly the position of the sun was brought in also, but of this I am not sure. I was always consumed with a desire to ask two questions. First, why one should want to know the width of the river? and secondly, what one would do if the tree were not there, or happened to be in the wrong position? I have spent many days boating or swimming, or lounging by the river-side, but