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15
In schools where exercises and simple drills, using movements of massive character, are already
practised, it would be a very great mistake to abolish such work. The only proviso about physical
exercises in the Infant school is that they should not be done slowly, and no finished execution in
movement be expected. With a caution in regard to these two points the present syllabus of work
for the Infant schools should be maintained. I have seen the exercises in an Infants' Department
carried out so slowly as to call for very carefully graduated movements, and thereby become so
exceedingly fatiguing that the children were yawning. This is the danger to be avoided.
Most children can speak, but as a rule imperfectly; this must be developed, as it is of great
importance to the physical well-being of the child. The value of a good and correct vocabulary
cannot be over-estimated. Simple things and simple happenings in his daily life will provide
material enough, but care should be taken with articulation.
Children see and hear much automatically or subconsciously. They see and hear, but the
amount of reasoning from things seen and heard is much less than would at first sight appear
probable. This becomes very evident in testing vision or hearing in very young children. They
classify things in large groups, very often according to slight characteristics only. Much detail is
wasted on children, and the difficulty of learning letters and words becomes a mental one from
want of evolution in the higher centres. The teacher says the child has no memory for these
things, whereas it is really the learning that is premature, and therefore often fatiguing and very
objectionable to him. Learning to write with a pencil is also exceedingly tiring and exhausting, as
is, in fact, any fine work in which the finger muscles are involved. Such fine finger work should be
eliminated under six years of age. Pens, pencils, paper, pins and needles should not be handled in
school by children below six. As regards omission of sewing, after years of discussion, this is still
allowed by the recent Code of the Board of Education, but with permission to omit if wished.
Children of three will spontaneously attempt drawings, and after spoken language the
spontaneous drawings of the children should be one of the chief means of expression in the Infant
Department. This faculty appears to furnish a considerable indication as to the child's mental
possibilities. Such drawing should be taken frequently in the course of lessons, and is best done
with chalks, with a child standing at a large blackboard, or at a large stretched canvas on the wall;
in practice the last is best. It should not be attempted sitting in the desk with a six or eight inch
piece of cardboard leaning up in front of it.
The value of real freearm drawing (not this spurious desk work attempt at it) is quite settled,
and it must be looked on as a subject which will take a large part in Infant school work in the
future. It is suited to the stage of nervous development of the child in the Infant school, and at
first the use of both hands may be even encouraged as helping the establishment of a muscular
sense of space. This is quite different from ambidexterity, which, as an educational gospel, is to be
deprecated. This idea of training both hands to do similar work can only be described as an
educational crank. Almost every action performed involves the use of both hands, part is done
by the right, part by the left. Tie up the left hand and most individuals will find themselves
much incommoded.
When learning the letters, as the first step towards writing, the letters shown should be of a
large size ; they should be drawn in sand; they should be modelled in clay, laid with sticks or
shells, or bent with wire to fix their structure indelibly in the muscular sense of the child, for it
seems very probable that the child visually remembers them to some extent by the movements of its
eye muscles caused by focussing the yellow spot in the optical axis of the eye on each part of the
letter separately. It is important to fix these movements by the early use of large letters, to
magnify, as it were, the movements made. Most children will learn to read almost unconsciously
if letters are employed in naming the drawings they make on the blackboard, and each child should
first be taught to print its own name on its work. As far as possible, all work in the Infant
Department should be distant work; there should be nothing that requires the child to bend its
head over, and it should learn the letters so perfectly that it could write any letter as large as its
hand on the blackboard with its eyes shut. The majority of Standard I. children cannot do this
with their eyes open. If this is aimed at, there will be little difficulty later about teaching writing
in copy-books, and the cases of nervous strain from school work will enormously diminish.
The young child has an undeveloped eye which is shorter in the length of its axis than it will