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are absorbed in sense impressions. This statement is true if it means that colors and sounds constitute the content of experience. It is false if it is meant to teach that little children are absorbed in the study of objects. The sounds and colors which hold the attention of primary children are those which attach to people. A little child will give up a plaything which he has in hand for a less attractive plaything in the hands of some one else. Primary children are social creatures first, last, and all the time.

This description of the primary child's mental attitudes gives us the formula for the organization of the primary course of study. There is an eager desire on the part of the firstgrader to write his name. He does not need any artificial stimulation to undertake writing. Other people write; that is enough for him. He is eager to be initiated. Other people look into books; he must do the same. The period is not a period for nature study in any analytical scientific sense. It is a period for social companionships. The primary child likes animals as playthings; he is not interested in studying their structure. Show an animal to a little child and let him ask questions that are in his mind, and social questions are the only ones which will come. "Where can I get one?" "Will it bite me?"

The judgment of the race has been right; this is the period for the teaching of reading and writing. The oral language which the pupil acquires in the pre-school period is the basis on which the primary work must be erected. The first reading lessons are lessons in the association of known oral symbols with those complicated social devices, the printed symbols. The ability to live in society which the pupil brings to the first grade must be extended through the mastery of language in its written and printed forms. The utter absorption of the child of this age in society rather than in material things is attested by his credulity for fairy tales which are full of people but are grotesquely impossible in their description of material facts. In his eager desire to illustrate every story he hears, the child produces drawings which have very little merit as representations of things but are often expressive of action in the highest degree. A child of this age is keen in his observation of people but neglectful of things.

13. Period of Individualism (or the Formative Stage) [JUDD, C. H., Introduction to the Scientific Study of Education, pp. 189-190. Boston, Ginn & Co., 1918.]

The primary attitude of mind lasts about three years. In the normal child nine years of age is a turning point. By this time he has learned to read fairly independently. He can write and can solve simple problems in arithmetic. He has control of some of the simpler objects about him. He has imitated his elders until he has habits of his own. Now comes a change. Sometimes the change is sudden and violent. The pupil who has been laboriously writing from copy throws the example of his copybook to the winds and composes a note to one of his friends in a rapid, scrawling hand. The child has become an independent master of writing for his own private purposes. So it is with his other activities. Even in social matters he asserts his independence by refusing to follow the dictates of the teacher. School discipline suddenly comes to be a serious problem.

The change here described reflects itself in a fact of administration which is of frequent recurrence. Pupils fail of promotion in the fourth or fifth grade much more commonly than in the second, third, or sixth. In other words, there is here, just after the primary grades, a period of violent readjustment.

The readjustment which comes at this point can be described by saying that the pupil is entering on a period of self-recognition. The primary child is an imitator absorbed in social examples. The intermediate child is an individualist. He is aware of his own powers and ambitions. The boys of this period have been described as young barbarians. They are disregardful of the rights of others. They step on the little children; they refuse to be friends with the girls. They are ambitious to leave school and do something to assert their independence. The school has dealt with this period with much less intelligence than it has exhibited in the primary years. In general, the intermediate grades have followed in subject-matter and in methods too closely the example of the successful primary grades. The result appears in the fact that the migration out of elementary schools is very common in the fifth and sixth grades. The intermediate grades have been described as periods of drill. If there is one kind of work that is not appropriate here, it is routine drill. There ought to be a new and thoroughgoing study of the needs of this period and the introduction of

a type of instruction which will meet the needs of children who are vividly aware of themselves and of their personal relations to the world.

That a change is coming about in the methods of dealing with pupils in these years is shown by the fact that the elementary school is setting apart the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades as the years in which the strictly elementary work is to be completed. Much that is postponed to the seventh and eighth grades under the older form of organization will doubtless be brought down into the intermediate grades. The children will no longer be drilled in the forms of the social arts while waiting for the enlarged opportunities of the upper grades, but will be introduced at once to experiences with the objects of the physical world. They will be encouraged to see things and handle them for themselves.

14. Characteristics of Children of the Intermediate Grades

This is the period of individualism. While the child must depend upon and tolerate adults for food, clothing, and shelter his interests, activities, plans and motives are very different from those of the adult. The boy or girl of the intermediate period is likely to regard the adult's activities and motives as incomprehensible, foolish, or unjust. Perhaps at no other period of child life is there so much impatience and misunderstanding between the child and the adult. The teacher or parent who would instruct and guide pupils at this period must be able to appreciate the real motives at work in the child. He must be able to enter into his sports and be "game" enough to play up.

This period is further characterized by the child's impulsiveness, imperfect reasoning, eagerness to experiment and investigate. It is this inventiveness and curiosity which gets him into so much mischief. His sense of honor and sense of ownership are not as yet well developed. For these reasons, he is likely to get into difficulties about his own belongings and those of others.

15. The Teacher of the Intermediate Grades

[HALL, G. Stanley, "The Ideal School Based on Child Study," Proceedings of the National Education Association, 1901, pp. 474ff.]

Lastly, the ideal teacher at this age will be the captain of the child's soul; will be able to do some things with his or her body that the child cannot; will be able to answer most of the questions suggested by the field, the forest, the beach, the street and their denizens; will suggest plays and umpire games; will perhaps know a little of coaching, but will be a stern disciplinarian, genial withal, but rigorous and relentless in his exactions, and intolerant of all scamped work; will love occasional excursions and expeditions; will perhaps sing, play, and draw a little; will be able to do something expertly well; and, as perhaps the culminating quality, will have a repertory of the greatest stories the human race has ever told or heard.

Finally, the teacher should have good manners, a uniform disposition, much joy of life, and sympathy with just this age. Some persons are made to love children in this stage most of all.

16. Purpose in Studying Adolescence

[From The High School Age, by Irving KING, p. 85. Copyright, 1914. Used by special permission of the publishers, the Bobbs-Merrill Co.]

The study of adolescence has two possible objects, the one, to discover as far as possible the natural tendencies and characteristics of the period, and the other, to determine how they can best be brought to a successful issue in maturity, that no untoward events or influences may dwarf the budding spirit of maturity or start it to developing along lines which will harm or destroy its future efficiency. The birth of the new self in the teens is often fraught with quite as much danger as the birth that first brought the child into the world.

17. The Youth's Passion for Achievement

Young life, wherever it is found, has a passion for doing. The activities of one age differ in some respects from that of another. In normal development and under proper guid ance, ideas and purposes play a powerful rôle in determining conduct. Maturity brings with it control of the impulses and desires for the sake of the ends to be realized.

In early childhood, the end of achievement is immediate,

but as the child develops and grows older, activities may be engaged in where the end is remote. Like the young child, youth takes great pride in personal achievement. This interest is fostered in many ways, such as physical growth and school experience.

18. Early Adolescence-a Period of Social Consciousness [JUDD, C. H., Introduction to the Scientific Study of Education, pp. 190-192. Boston, Ginn & Co., 1918.]

The close of this period of individualism is marked by physical and mental changes of a very definite and significant type. From twelve years on the child begins to realize anew the social world about him. Physical changes are going on within him that stimulate this type of thought. The literature of education has emphasized the fact that at this period there is a maturing of the sex organs and an accompanying development of feelings and interests in the opposite sex. There has been doubtless an overemphasis on the sexual characteristics of this period. The fact is that a profound general physical and mental change is going forward.

On the physical side the organism which has been accumulating powers through its mastery of the fundamental processes of life is now ready for its last large development. We shall understand the meaning of this statement only when we realize that the organism has to cultivate a whole series of internal habits in order that it may be internally harmonious. The little child is easily disturbed, for example, in his digestion. This means that the habits of digestion are not established. The immature nervous organism of the pupil needs training to bring it to the point where digestion will go forward without interruption or distraction. The same is true of circulation and respiration. The organism has to learn to live. The school period is a period of mastery of these internal processes quite as much as a period of intellectual training.

At about twelve years of age the inner coördination is reaching its consummation. If one were to select for discussion the most significant physical fact that marks this period, one would lay stress on the development of the heart. This organ grows rapidly in size and strength. Its more vigorous action raises the blood pressure throughout the body. Organs which have been slow in their development now grow rapidly. The whole life of the individual is intensified. It is not alone the sex organs

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