How then can we secure for him that the new experiences presented to him in school will be in line with the old?  We will take three typical cases of children to illustrate the real nature of this problem.

The first is the case of a child living in a very poor district of London or of any large town.  The school is presumably situated in a narrow street running off the High Street of the district, the street where all the shopping is done; at the corner is a hide factory with an evil smell.  Most of the dwelling-houses abut on the pavement, some with a very small yard behind, some without any.  Several families live in one house, and often one room is all a family can afford; as that has to be paid for in advance the family address may change frequently.  The father may be a dock labourer with uncertain pay, a coster, a rag and bone merchant, or he may follow some unskilled occupation of a similarly precarious nature; in consequence the mother has frequently to do daily work, the home is locked up till evening, and she often leaves before the children start for morning school.  It is a curious but very common fact that, free though these children are, they know only a very small radius around their own homes.  They are accustomed to be sent shopping into High Street, where household stores are bought in pennyworths or twopennyworths, owing to uncertain finance and no storage accommodation.  Generally there is one tap and one sink in the basement for the needs of all the families in the house.  There is usually a park somewhere within reach, but it may be a mile away; in it would, at least, be trees, a pond, grass, flowers.  But an excursion there, unless it is undertaken by the school, can only be hoped for on a fine Bank Holiday; there is neither time nor money to go on a Saturday, and Sunday cannot be said to begin till dinner-time, about 3 P.M., when the public-houses close, and the father comes home to dinner.

It is difficult to imagine the conversation of such a household; family life exists only on Sunday at dinner-time; the child’s background of family life is a room which is at once a bedroom, living room and laundry.  There is nearly always some part of a meal on the table, and some washing hanging up.  Outside there are the dingy street, the crowded shops, the pavement to play on, and both outside and in, the bleaker and more sordid aspects of life, sometimes miserable, sometimes exciting.  On Saturday night the lights are brilliant and life is at least intense.  Bed is a very crowded affair, in which many half-undressed children sleep covered with the remainder of the day’s wardrobe.

What store of experiences does a child from such a neighbourhood bring to school, to be assimilated with the new experiences provided there?  What do such terms as home, dinner, bed, bath, birth, death, country, mean to him?  They mean something.[34]

[Footnote 34:  See Child Life, October 1916.]