of play
pure and simple: if a child has forced upon him a hint of any ulterior
motive that may be in the mind of his teacher, the pleasure is spoilt
for him and the intrinsic value of the play is lost. In bringing
children into school during their play period, probably the most
important formative period of their lives, and in utilising their play
consciously, we are interfering with one of their most precious
possessions when they are still too helpless to resent it directly. Too
many of us make play a means of concealing the wholesome but unwelcome
morsel of information in jam, and we try to force it on the children
prematurely and surreptitiously, but Nature generally defeats us. The
only sound thing to do is to _play the game_ for all it is worth, and
recognise that in doing so education will look after itself. To
understand the nature of play, and to have the courage to follow it, is
the business of every teacher of young children. The Nursery School,
especially if it consists chiefly of children under five, presents at
first very hard problems to the teacher; however strong her belief in
play may be, it receives severe tests. So much of the play at first
seems to be aimless running and shouting, or throwing about of toys and
breaking them if possible, so much quarrelling and fighting and weeping
seem involved with any attempts at social life on the part of the
children; there seems very little desire to co-operate, and very little
desire to construct; as a rule, a child roams from one thing to another
with apparently only a fleeting attempt to play with it; yet on the
other hand, to make the problem more baffling, a child will spend a
whole morning at one thing: quite lately one child announced that he
meant to play with water all day, and he did; another never left the
sand-heap, and apparently repeated the same kind of activity during a
complete morning; visitors said in a rather disappointed tone, "they
just play all the time by themselves." One teacher brought out an
attractive picture and when a group of children gathered round it she
proceeded to tell the story; they listened politely for a few minutes,
and then the group gradually melted away; they were not ready for
concentrated effort. If those children had been in the ordinary Baby
Room of a school they would have been quite docile, sitting in their
places apparently listening to the story, amiably "using" their bricks
or other materials according to the