Where passion and excitement are instantly arrested, where appreciation for strong colours, fierce punishments, loud noises, is killed, where fear is ridiculed, where primitive likes and dislikes are interpreted as coarseness, there is no emotional freedom.  A child must have these experiences if he is to come to his own later:  this is not the time to stamp out but only to deflect and guide; otherwise he becomes a weak and pale reflection of his elders, with little resource or enthusiasm.

Where it is almost impossible to be openly naughty, where there is no opportunity for choice or for making mistakes, where control is all from the teacher and self-control has no place, there is no moral freedom.  The school is not for the righteous but for the so-called sinner, who is only a child learning self-control by experience.

Self-control is a habit gained through habits; a child must acquire the habit of arresting desire, of holding the physical side in check, the habit of reflection, of choice, and most of all the habit of either acting or holding back, as a result of all this.  If in the earliest years his will is in the hands of others, and he has the habit of obedience to the exclusion of all other habits, then his development as a self-reliant individual is arrested, and may be permanently weakened.  There is no other way to learn life, and build up an ideal from the raw material he has gained in other ways.  In the rehearsal of life at school he can do this without serious harm; but every time a mode of conduct is imposed upon him when he might have chosen, every time he is externally controlled when he might have controlled himself, every time he is balked in making a mistake that would have been experience to him, he will be proportionally less fit to choose, to exercise self-control, to learn by experience, and these are the chief lessons at this impressionable period.

The fourth principle therefore is that the atmosphere of freedom is the only atmosphere in which a child can gain experiences that will help to develop character and control conduct.

These four vital principles will be applied to practical work in the following chapters.

II.  PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF VITAL PRINCIPLES

Before applying these principles it is necessary for practical considerations to set out clearly the various stages of this period.  During the first eight years of life, development is very rapid and not always relatively continuous.  Sometimes it takes leaps, and sometimes appears for a time to be quiescent.  But roughly the first stage, of a child’s developing life ends when he can walk, eat more or less ordinary food, and is independent of his mother.  At this point the Nursery School stage begins:  the child is learning for himself his world by experience, and through play he chooses his raw material in an atmosphere of freedom.  When the period of play pure and