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been kept at home suffer mentally when they begin to ask questions. If these
questions are not answered to their satisfaction they suffer acutely by feeling a
sense of repression.
It is not to be expected in these days
that the mother will be prepared at all
times, or indeed that she can possibly at all
times answer all the questions of an
enquiring mind.
I want to make it quite clear that whilst this is to be said on the credit side,
there is a debit side which has to be faced, and that is the children come into
contact with mass infection at an age younger than the sixth year which is the normal
time for a child to go to school. I do believe there are more running noses and
catarrhal conditions among children who go to school at a very early age than
amongst the stay-at-homes, but generally speaking their mental and physical vigour
compares more than favourably with that of the children who are kept at home.
There is something to be said for the mother also. It is only, comparatively
speaking, yesterday that man became civilised. In his natural state the care of
the child was not the all absorbent twenty-four hour job it is for a mother in the
20th century. She had in her primitive state, as need she must, periods of
relaxation, and today it is just as necessary for the mother's mental health as for the
child's mental health that arrangements be made for The child to be cared for under
such circumstances.
A colleague of mine, learned in literature, sums up the situation by saying
"Hamlet never went to a Nursery Class". Had he done so, I have no hesitation
in saying Shakespeare would have been robbed of his "Prince of Denmark".
Quite frankly children are essentially imitative, they develop most naturally
by imitating other children, usually a little older than themselves; children kept
at home imitate people much older than themselves—they become quaint—but
are not normal.
Number of Nursery classes
in Barking 20
Number of children attending
620
SPECIAL SCHOOLS AND SPECIAL CHILDREN.
Question:—How do Special Schools meet the needs of " Special "
Children?
Answer:—Faircross School was opened in the year 1922 since when a great
deal of very useful information has been acquired.
There is in my opinion no doubt that where a child can be taught in an
ordinary school that child should be taught in such a school because, as I have said