The pictures on the walls should be hung at the right eye-level, and the windows low enough for looking at the outside world—­whatever it may be.  The teacher’s desk should be in a corner, not in the central part of the room, for she must remember that the children are still in the main seeking experience, not listening to the experience of another.  They should have access to the garden and playground, and all the incitements to activity should be there—­similar to those of the Nursery School, or those provided by the London County Council in parks.  The bare wilderness of playground now so familiar, where there is neither time nor opportunity for children to be other than primitive savages, does not represent the outside world of beauty and of adventure.

The lower classes of Junior School should differ very little in their miniature world.  Life is still activity to the child of eight, and consequently should contain no immovable furniture.  There will be more books, and the children may be in their seats for longer periods; the atmosphere of guided but still spontaneous work is more definite, but the aim in choice of both furniture and apparatus is still the gaining of experience of life, by direct contact in the main.  Such is the Requisition Sheet to be presented to the Stores Superintendent of the Local Education Authority in the future, with an explanatory note stating that in a general way what is actually required is the world in miniature!

CHAPTER XVIII

GAINING EXPERIENCE BY PLAY

     “The Second Principle is that the method of gaining
     experience lies through Play and that by this road we can
     best reach work.”

Play is marked off from work chiefly by the absence of any outside pressure, and pleasure in the activity is the characteristic of play pure and simple:  if a child has forced upon him a hint of any ulterior motive that may be in the mind of his teacher, the pleasure is spoilt for him and the intrinsic value of the play is lost.  In bringing children into school during their play period, probably the most important formative period of their lives, and in utilising their play consciously, we are interfering with one of their most precious possessions when they are still too helpless to resent it directly.  Too many of us make play a means of concealing the wholesome but unwelcome morsel of information in jam, and we try to force it on the children prematurely and surreptitiously, but Nature generally defeats us.  The only sound thing to do is to play the game for all it is worth, and recognise that in doing so education will look after itself.  To understand the nature of play, and to have the courage to follow it, is the business of every teacher of young children.  The Nursery School, especially if it consists chiefly of children under five, presents at first very hard problems to the teacher; however strong her belief