While training of character and conduct is the accepted aim for education in general, to make this useful and practical each teacher must fix her attention on how this ultimate aim affects her own special part of the whole work.  By watching the free child she will discover how best she can help him:  he knows his own business, and when unfettered by advice or command shows plainly that he is chiefly concerned with gaining experience.  He finds himself in what is to him a new and complex world of people and things; actual experience is the foundation for complete living, and the stronger the foundation the better the result of later building. The first vital principle then is that the teacher of young children must provide life in miniature; that is, she must provide abundant raw material and opportunities for experience.

The next question is that of the best method of gaining this actual experience.  The child is unaware that he is laying foundations, he is only vaguely conscious that he finds great pleasure in certain activities, and that something impels him in certain directions.  He realises no definite future, he is content with the present; he cannot work for a purpose other than the pleasure of the moment; without this stimulus concentration is impossible.  In the activities of this stage he probably assimilates more actual matter than at any other period of his life, and it is the same with his acquirements of skill.  In happy unconsciousness he gains knowledge of his own body and of its power, of the external world, of his mother tongue and of his relations to other people:  he makes mistakes and commits faults, but these do not necessarily cripple or incriminate him.  He is not considered a social outcast because he once kicked or bit, or because he threw his milk over the table; he learns to balance and adjust his muscles on a seesaw, when a fall on soft grass is a matter of little importance, and this is better than waiting till he is compelled hastily to cross a river on a narrow plank.  It is all a kind of joyous rehearsal of life which we call Play.  We can force a child to passivity, to formal repetitions of second-hand knowledge, to the acquisition of that for which he has no apparent need, but we can never educate him by these things.  “Children do not play because they are young, they have their youth that they may play,” as surely as they have their legs that they may walk.

The second principle is therefore that the method of gaining experience lies through Play, and that by this road we can best reach work.

The third principle is the nature of the experience that a child seeks to gain—­the life he desires to live.  How can we he sure that the surroundings we provide and the activities we encourage are in accord with children’s needs?

Let us imagine a child of about five to six years of age, one of a family, living in a small house to which a garden is attached; inside he has the run of the house, but keeps his own toys, picture books and collections of treasures.  We will suppose that not being at school he is free to arrange his own day, sometimes alone, and sometimes with other children, or with his parents.  What does he do?