Chapter II: =The Ages from Four to Eight=

203. The real boundary line is fixed not by age, but by that stage of development when the helplessness of the first stage is superseded by control of the limbs and a connected use of language. And the mere fact that children are now able to free themselves from much momentary discomfort carries with it greater calmness and cheerfulness.

204. In proportion as the child learns to help himself, assistance from without must be withdrawn. At the same time government must increase in firmness, and with many children in severity, until the last traces of that wilfulness vanish, which the former period does not as a rule wholly escape. But this presupposes that no one provoke the child unnecessarily to any kind of resistance. The firmer the established order of things about the child, the readier his compliance.

205. The child must be given as much freedom as circumstances will permit, one purpose being to induce frank self-expression, and to obtain data for a study of his individuality. Still, the main thing at this age is to guard against bad habits, especially such as are connected with objectionable tendencies of disposition.

206. Two of the ethical ideas concern us here directly, each, however, in its own way. They are the ideas of good-will and perfection. Some particular aspects of the latter a child will almost always hit upon himself. The former less often springs up spontaneously; it has to be implanted, and this cannot always be done directly.

207. The ill-will, which many children exhibit frequently, is always a bad sign,--one that needs to be treated very seriously. A character once perverted in this respect can no longer be radically changed for the better. And this perversion sometimes begins very early. The steps to be taken in this connection are determined by the following considerations:--

208. In the first place, younger children are not to be left alone very much. Their life should be a social life, and their social circle one subject to strict order. This requirement fulfilled, all manifestations of ill-will are at variance with the rule; and as soon as they appear, the child finds himself opposed by the existing state of things. Now, the more he has grown accustomed to participation in the common will, to occupying his time, and being happy within its pale, the less will he be able to bear the feeling of isolation. To punish a child for an exhibition of ill-will, leave him alone.

209. But such punishment presupposes the undiminished sensitiveness of the younger child, who, on being left alone, begins to cry, and feels utterly helpless and weak, but who, on the other hand, becomes cheerful again the moment he is readmitted into the social circle. If this period has been neglected, if the ill-disposed child has already caused aversion in the circle in which he could have been happy, one feeling of ill-will begets another in return, and nothing remains but to insist on strict justice.

210. The mere social spirit which keeps ill-will at a distance, is, of course, very far from being good-will; children are even prone to look upon descriptive illustrations of the latter, in the ordinary run of books for children, as fables easily invented. Hence the first thing to make sure of is faith in good-will. We have in mind here especially the child who through force of habit has lost his appreciation of the kindnesses constantly showered upon him in the course of his education. Deprive him of some of the care to which he is accustomed; its renewal will then make him recognize and prize it as a voluntary act. When, on the contrary, children regard what is being done for them as their right, or as the effect of some sort of mechanism, this blunder of theirs becomes a fruitful source of the most manifold moral evils.

211. To the union of kindness with the necessary degree of severity, we must add friendliness, lest the heart of the child become chilled, and the germs of good-will perish. During the period under consideration, the child’s frame of mind is still determined directly by the treatment he receives. Continued unfriendliness of manner produces dull indifference. The twofold problem of lifting the idea of good-will into adequate prominence and of actually awakening sentiments of good-will can, it is true, not be solved as early as childhood. But much has been gained if sympathy, supported by sociable cheerfulness, unites with a belief in the good-will of those on whom the child feels dependent, as if they were higher beings. The soil is ready now for religious culture and its furthering influences.

212. The idea of perfection in its universal aspect is indeed as foreign to the child’s mind as that of good-will; nevertheless, the rudiments of what this idea implies can be imparted with far greater assurance of success. As the child grows and thrives, his strength and accomplishments increase likewise, and he takes pleasure in his own progress. But here innumerable differences in kind and in degree demand our observation, particularly in view of the purpose of linking instruction to the stage of growth. For it is during this period that synthetic as well as analytic instruction begins, although it does not as yet normally constitute the chief occupation of the child.

213. As the child’s sphere of free activity widens and his own attempts create a growing store of experiences, which the teacher will often find it very necessary to augment by purposely showing him about, the earlier fancies are gradually being overbalanced by experiential knowledge, although different individuals may exhibit great variations of ratio. From this impulse to appropriate the new, spring the numerous questions children put to the teacher, on the tacit assumption that he is omniscient. They are the outcome of the mood of the moment, they are purposeless, and most of them do not recur if not answered then and there. Many of them concern words alone, and cease on mention of some suitable designation of the object in question. Others relate to the connection of events, especially to motives underlying the actions of human beings, fictitious and real alike. Now, although many questions cannot, while others must not, be answered, the tendency to ask questions should, generally speaking, receive constant encouragement as a sign of native interest, of the absence of which the teacher often becomes painfully aware later on without being able by any skill on his part to revive it. Here an opportunity is presented for preparing the ground in many directions for future instruction. Only, the teacher has to refrain, in answering questions, from the prolixity of untimely thoroughness; what he ought to do is to sail on the waves of childish fancy. And this does not usually lend itself to experiments; its movements are, on the contrary, often inconveniently capricious.

214. So long as there can be no fixed time for the analytic lessons woven into answers to the questions of children, analytic instruction is coincident with the guidance of the child’s attention, with his social intercourse, with his occupations and the consequent cultivation of habits, with hardening exercises, ethical judgments, and the earliest religious impressions; in some measure also with reading exercises.

215. To the latter portion of this period belong the first steps in synthetic instruction, reading, writing, ciphering, the simplest modes of arrangement, and the first observation exercises. If the child is as yet incapable of uniform attention during a whole hour, the teacher will be satisfied with smaller divisions of time; the degree of attention is more important than its duration.

Note that the subjects enumerated fall into different groups. Counting, arranging, observing, are different phases of the natural development of the mind. Instruction does not create these activities; its business is merely to accelerate them. At the beginning, therefore, our mode of procedure must be as much as possible analytic. On the other hand, reading and writing can be taught only synthetically, although on the basis of an antecedent analysis of speech sounds.

(1) Arranging--commonly neglected, though wrongly so--is an exceedingly easy exercise in itself, and facilitates the performance of many other tasks. It is therefore appropriate for children. That three objects may change places from right to left (from front to rear, from above to below) and _vice versa_--this is the beginning. The next step is to show that three objects admit of six permutations in a straight line. To find how many pairs can be formed out of a given number of objects, is one of the easiest problems. How far to go, is a matter to be determined by circumstances. Not letters, however, but objects,--the children themselves,--should be changed about, permuted, and varied in position. The teaching of a subject like this must in a measure have the semblance of play.

(2) The first observation exercises begin with straight lines drawn vertically or cross-wise. Use may be made also of knitting needles variously placed, side by side or across each other, of domino checks, and of similar objects. Next comes the circle, subdivided and presented in manifold ways.

(3) For arithmetic, likewise, concrete objects are needed,--coins, for example, which are counted and arranged in different groups to illustrate sums, differences, and products. At first the highest number employed should not exceed, say, twelve or twenty.

(4) For work in reading we may avail ourselves of letters and numbers printed on cards, which lend themselves to a variety of arrangements. If children are slow about learning to read, the blunder must not be made of neglecting their mental culture in other directions, as though reading were its necessary prerequisite. Reading often demands a large amount of patience, and should never be allowed to produce a feeling of aversion to teachers and books.

(5) Writing is ushered in by the elementary drawing that must accompany observation exercises. Writing itself, when once well started, furthers reading.

216. But already at this point many fall behind. Puzzled at first by the demand upon them for the dull labor of learning, they surrender themselves later on to the feeling of incapacity. In large schools, where there are always some outstripping the rest, and where the majority are trying to keep up with the pace set, performance can be had more readily, although it is performance by imitation rather than by an inner sequence of thought. And even here we find thoroughly disheartened laggards.