counted as such in our economic system of education; they have taken their chance:  few inspectors ask to see whether children know how to “play the game,” and yet they are so soon to play the independent game of life.  But the individual output of reading and sums of a sneaking and cowardly, or assertive and selfish child, is as good probably as that of a child that has the makings of a hero in him.  And then we wonder at the propensities of the “lower classes.”  It is because we have never made sure that they can play the game.

To summarise:  play in the Nursery School stage is unorganised, informal, and pursued with no motive but pleasure in the activity itself; it is mainly individual.  Play in the Transition Class is more definitely in the form of games, i.e. organised play, efforts of skill, mental or physical; it becomes social.  Play in the Junior School is almost an occasional method, because the work motive is by this time getting stronger.

CHAPTER XIX

THE UNITY OF EXPERIENCE

“We find in the child’s spontaneous choice the nature of the surroundings and of the activities he craves for; in other words, he makes his own curriculum, and selects his own subject matter.”

The next problem we have to solve is how to unify the bewildering variety of ideas and activities that a child seeks contact with during a day.  We found that the curriculum of the Infant School of to-day presented a rather confusing variety of ideas, not necessarily arranged as the children would have chosen; they would certainly not have chosen to break off some intense interest, because an arbitrary timetable hurried them to something else, and they would have been right.  If we asked the children their reasons for choosing, we would find no clue except that they chose what they wanted to, neither could they tell us why they spent so much more time over one thing than another.  If a similar study were to be made of a child from a slum also free to arrange his day, we should find that while certain general features were the same others would be different:  he would ask for different stories, probably play different games, or the same games in a different way, his back-yard would present different aspects, the things he made would be different.

It is evident that the old correlation method has little or nothing to do with the matter; a child may or may not draw the rabbit he feeds, he certainly does not play a rabbit game because of the rabbit he has fed, nor does he build a rabbit-hutch with his bricks.  He might try to make a real one if the rabbit really needed it, but that arises out of an obvious necessity.  If he could put his unconscious promptings into words, he would say he did the things because he wanted to, because somebody else did them, or because of something he saw yesterday, and so on; but he would always refer back to himself.  The central link in each case is in the child, with his special store of experiences derived from his own particular surroundings; he brings to new experiences his store of present experiences, his interests not always satisfied, his powers variously used, he interprets the new by these, and seeks for more in the line of the old.  It is life he has experienced, and he seeks for more life.