Primary Education (1959)

(page numbers in brackets)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages (i-xiii)
Foreword, Preface, Contents

Part 1 Historical
Chapter I (1-11)
Recent History of Primary Education

Part 2 The Primary Schools
Chapter II (15-26)
Introduction
Chapter III (27-36)
Nursery Schools and Classes
Chapter IV (37-55)
Infant schools
Chapter V (56-77)
Junior Schools
Chapter VI (78-105)
The Working of the School
Chapter VII (106-110)
Special Educational Treatment

Part 3 The Fields of Learning
Chapter VIII (113-116)
The Curriculum
Chapter IX (117-129)
Religion
Chapter X (130-134)
Physical Education
Chapter XI (135-178)
Language
Chapter XII (179-212)
Mathematics
Chapter XIII (213-246)
Art and Craft and Needlework
Chapter XIV (247-259)
Handwriting
Chapter XV (260-274)
Music
Chapter XVI (275-288)
History
Chapter XVII (289-313)
Geography and Natural History

Part 4 The Special Problems of Wales
Chapter XVIII (317-329)
Wales

Index (331-334)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1959
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

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To speak of children's language is to speak of their lives at home and at school, at once mirrored in language and in no small degree managed and shaped by it. In an articulate community, speech comes naturally to children, and they have usually acquired language enough for their practical purposes by the time they reach the age of compulsory education. The school's aim is to extend the world which they know and talk about, and to develop and refine their speech so that it becomes a more fluent, accurate and pleasing expression of facts, ideas and feelings, an effective instrument of understanding and thought, and hence, of communication. Society today takes literacy for granted, and children growing up in this background may attempt very early to read and to write. It is for the school to foster their interest and to provide skilled help as they become ready for it. At every stage, the good school is as concerned with supporting the wish to read and write as with teaching the necessary techniques, and as concerned with the matter as with the manner of reading and writing. Story and poetry, which introduce children to a concentration and interpretation of human experience, memorably worded, are among the most powerful educational resources.

Speech, reading and writing, and the enjoyment of story and poetry are interwoven in children's growth in language; but, as a matter of convenience, each of these aspects is separately treated in the following pages. In considering speech, much that is said is particularly relevant to nursery and infant schools, the stage at which progress in talking is most rapid; in the discussion of reading, a special emphasis is placed on the infant school. But children do not learn to speak or to read and write once and for all; they are always needing help in speaking, reading and writing at ascending levels of difficulty and in widening fields of learning.

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There are, moreover, no clear-cut divisions between the attainments and reach of children at successive stages of education. Practices characteristic of infant schools are needed by many juniors, and suggestions made for juniors have a bearing on the work in the lower forms of secondary schools. The growing similarity in the point of view of enlightened teachers in all types of school promises well for children's continuing development in language.

(a) Early development

If the term 'language' is taken metaphorically to mean any form of communication or expression, then children's language can be said to begin in their first months of life with the movements and sounds which their mothers hasten to interpret. Even in a more literal sense, children begin very early to notice and to experiment with language. Most babies not only hear the speech of others but are themselves talked to, particularly when they are fondled and when their physical needs are being met; gradually they come to associate the sounds with the smile and the warmth of contact. Relying at first probably on the tone of speech rather than on the words spoken, they relate the sounds to the situation and in however vague and general a way begin to understand them. From the outset, comprehension tends to outrun the power of expression, a fact which is not infrequently overlooked in estimating children's capacity to appreciate story and poem.

As a child looks and listens, he begins to imitate the speech of those around him, and his first fumbling words, like his efforts to walk, are confirmed by the response he gains and the approval he earns. At this early stage, speech is intimately connected with behaviour, and much of the speech of very young children consists in making the sounds that go with certain movements, as in such games as 'Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man'. Repetitions serve a child's sense of mastery and his need for human contact. Many of the nursery jingles belong to this stage of speech, and some of the questions of the slightly older children are in part conversational formulas by which the child makes contact, as adults do through the conventional greetings and gestures in which this type of language survives into maturity.

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From the beginning, language is a means of social conformity but it contains throughout a spontaneous element and is a highly personal means of expression. The babbling and gurgling which precede speech are an expression of feeling as well as a rehearsal of the sounds which will be needed for the spoken word. Children's first approximations to the word 'mother' not only indicate a situation, and a little later a person, but are often heavily loaded with feeling. From infancy, feeling interpenetrates language in another way; children's use of words is, like their babbling, influenced by the pleasure they take in sound and rhythm, a pleasure which explains the appeal of many nursery rhymes.

'Sail a boat, sail a boat
Sail a little sailing boat.
Sail a boat, sail a boat,
Sail a little sailor boy.'

The languages of primitive peoples are said to reflect a specific environment, food supply and set of occupations as well as the universal interests of man. Similarly the range of children's experience affects the range of their language. But the impact of experience is itself determined to some extent by the words children know, and its assimilation depends on opportunities for listening and talking. Often it is through hearing a name that a child's attention is drawn to a particular element in his environment; and what can once be named is noticed, is distinguished from the mass of imprecision that surrounds him. A mental image can then be formed, can be recollected, and when stored in the memory can go on collecting associations. So much is true of adults and children alike, for both of whom it is a common experience to notice repeatedly a flower or a bird whose name they have recently learnt. But for young children the question 'What's that?' has an added significance; names retain for them the almost magic properties they have for primitive peoples and in fairy tales and are hardly distinguished from things. What is named is in a sense mastered and fitted into its appropriate place; what is nameless may be too great, too evil or too worthless

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to find a place in their scheme of knowledge. Children's anxiety to be given a name for every minor character they hear about in a story is a reflection of this phase.

The development of thought itself depends on a multiplication of names and a perception of the categories and concepts they imply. To use a word is to begin to classify. Children will at first use even the most general of nouns almost as a proper noun: 'dog' is their name for a particular dog, be it a mastiff or a poodle, their neighbour's or their own. The first extension of meaning seems to be by identification of other animals with the one they know, but, as knowledge and vocabulary extend, types and individuals are distinguished, and true generalisations can be made. Children's generalisations begin in the groping use of half-understood words, thought and language going hand in hand.

The younger the children, the stronger the purely imitative element in their language and the less well defined and exact their generalisations. But as personal experience deepens and is clarified and extended in conversation and story, so an increased precision and refinement are introduced into the meaning of concrete words and of words which refer to attitudes and feelings. Vocabulary grows in size and in accuracy, and also in depth of meaning, as words are seen to vary according to their contexts and as they acquire the overtones, the personal and group associations, on which all of us, as well as the poets, rely. Children's speech, dominated at first by nouns and verbs whose meaning can be attested by the senses, gradually comes to include more abstractions and an increasing proportion of words and grammatical constructions whose meaning has to be inferred from a context.

The extension of meaning in language is a lifetime process, though its pace slows down in maturity. Closely related to this extension of meaning, contributing to it and resulting from it, is the development of children's power to converse. For his talking and listening, the baby needs at first the intimacy, the concentrated support and stimulus of his mother. Her intuition enables her to reach for his meaning, to turn a word into a phrase and to make her own speech understood by gesture and expression. But it is part of her responsibility to wean the child from this dependence, to encourage him, though without too much anxiety, to substitute for 'baby language' or words of his own

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invention the turn of phrase which will be generally understood, and to involve him in the conversation of a widening family circle. Many children who have had this kind of help at home can carry on a conversation with an adult before they reach the age of five, and most children have enough language by then for their immediate needs. They can say what they want, and their command over their feelings is growing as they become able to explain them. But even such children as these do not usually get very far in their conversations with each other. They lack detachment and patience, and need the special consideration which an adult generally gives to their point of view.

By seven or eight the situation is changing. Children are beginning to share enthusiasms and to enjoy talking about them together. They are becoming conscious of the group to which they belong and like to use the words which reflect their set. But though at this stage children learn much from each other, it is still mainly through conversation with adults that they enlarge their vocabulary and learn to say what they mean fluently, exactly and simply.

There can be no better introduction to language than the daily life of a good home. As children are washed and dressed, as they have their meals and are put to bed, opportunities recur for a repetition of familiar phrases and for an exploration of fresh words and meanings. When the older members of the family are at school or out at work, the young child often enjoys a large share of his mother's talk and thought. The talk will be not only of what is immediate and present; letters may come from relations far away and be the occasion for hearing about past happenings; plans may be made not only for tomorrow's dinner but for shopping expeditions, outings and holidays. In this way the child meets expressions referring to varieties of time and degrees of certainty. Distinctions of tense, number, gender, and mood are established almost entirely by usage. Each time that the child shares in a family meal, or listens with his mother to the radio, he may be introduced to an adult range of experiences, language and voice. If he is fortunate, his mother finds time to repeat the traditional rhymes to him or to tell him a story. Often he will assimilate story and conversation by repeating snatches to himself when he is in bed or as he plays in the garden. He talks as he plays; his play helps his talk and talk his play, and when he is puzzled he can run to his mother for help.

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(b) The school's contribution

The school is a supplement to, not a substitute for, the home. Teachers need then to know as clearly as possible what they are building on, to be able to distinguish between children who have enjoyed at home such experiences as have been described and those whose language is stunted through too much cosseting or through neglect. It is useful also to be able to recognise the 'old-fashioned' child, who may have elderly parents or be the youngest in a grown-up family and whose vocabulary may have outstripped his understanding. For some newcomers, social and physical confidence, for others, conversation, for many children, first-hand experience of things, will be the school's most important contribution, but each of these elements will play a part in the linguistic education of all children.

(i) Language and social relationships*

Little more than an allusion is necessary to the contribution of good social relationships to development in language, since this aspect of school life is dealt with elsewhere in this book, and is well appreciated by primary school teachers. The two and three year old, though he enjoys playing in company with other children, needs above all an intimate relationship with one or two adults. Children's development in language calls for a generous proportion of staff to children in the nursery school and for a grouping which ensures that a young child is not looked after by the staff at random but is the special care of one or two adults. As he grows older, he can profit in language, as in other things, from an extending circle of adults and children but, even in the infant school, some children suffer setbacks from too rapid changes of class and teacher. All the suggestions which were made in Part 2 about the importance of establishing good relationships when children first go to school or are transferred from school to school, have relevance here if children are to gain in language from the stimulus of new surroundings and not forfeit their gain through emotional stress.

(ii) Experience inside and outside the school building

At home it is through the whole of a child's experience that his language develops depth as well as range. Teachers who are

*See Part 2.

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concerned for quality in language will be as anxious to extend and to spotlight experience, direct and indirect, as to provide opportunities for talk about it. The younger the child, the greater the need for words to be rooted in first-hand sensory experience, if he is to understand the language that describes the sensible world and appreciate later the many metaphorical extensions of meaning. In the nursery and in the infant school, much of this first-hand learning takes place when children are playing, particularly when they are playing with simple, everyday materials. In this way they may learn, for example, what is meant by the dripping, the trickling, the sprinkling, the gushing of water - and later may realise the implications of a 'gush of feeling' or a 'patter of conversation'. The traditional playthings, which initiate into adult life, often provide a better stimulus to learning and language than do commercial novelties. The richer and more varied the classroom environment, the more food for language. And as children investigate and use materials, as they explore with the help of dressing-up clothes and simple properties something of what it is to be a mother, a cowboy, a teacher or a queen, as they watch the growth of flowers or the movements of animals or fish; so they need to talk about what they see and do.

The bulk of school learning must take place within the school boundaries. When there is easy contact between home and school, out of school life will permeate and invigorate language in school. Yet it is hardly possible to overestimate the stimulus which a well-chosen experience, shared by teacher and children out of school, can bring to children's speech and, later, to their writing. Exciting incident creates exciting language. In the nursery school it is usually taken for granted that children should go on the kind of expedition which they might otherwise have had with their mothers: if they are in the country, to gather primroses or watch the gulls following the tractor; if they are in the town, to see the postman empty the pillar box or the signal go down as the train approaches. In the infant school the size of classes may add to the difficulties of taking children out. Sometimes there is useful material almost on the doorstep; much can be made of the new buildings that may be going up or the household services that are being installed, as well as of the birds that come to the bird table in winter. Most districts have resources that can enrich language at the poetic as well as at the utilitarian

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level; the market, the fire station, the lorry loaded with goods for the docks, to mention only a few. But teachers may think a special effort justified to take children at all stages of primary school life from industrial areas to enjoy the country scenes which have inspired much of our literature and underlie much religious symbolism. If there is a sense in which, as Herbert Read says, 'we ... only see a colour once, see, hear, touch, taste and smell everything but once, the first time',* it is important that the first vision should occur while the eye is still innocent and unsophisticated. The impressions of childhood echo through the words which are spoken and heard in later life.

(iii) Opportunities to talk in the nursery school and infant school

Most teachers appreciate that it is by a running commentary that young children sort out and assimilate these experiences, but they do not always appreciate the importance of the teacher's own intervention. Children need an audience; they need to talk to an adult who will help them to relax and who will no more forestall them when they fumble for a word than when they fumble with their coat buttons. They need encouragement to use in conversation the gestures which reinforce language rather than those which take its place. They need to ask questions and hear exact answers, to meet such names as 'fly-catcher', 'woodpecker', 'song-bird', while their minds are alert to meanings which may carry them forward to rough classifications. They need to check with an adult's help the generalisations and deductions they are always making: 'I've put six moons in my picture, because it's dark and the bus couldn't see the way'. It is not reasoning power that a five year old child lacks so much as experience, confirmed by the experience and thought of others. The difficulty, particularly for the infant school, is for teachers to find enough time to talk to individual children and to make sure that the quiet and withdrawn child is not neglected. Informal, individual records can be a check on this. Heads might regard talking and listening to individual children as one of their more important duties. In some schools, where staff and children sit down together at the dinner table, a most useful occasion is pro-

*Herbert Read, Annals of Innocence and Experience. Faber and Faber.

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vided for children to talk to adults and to hear adults talking to each other.

When the older children in an infant school break into small groups for imaginative and constructive work, their eager discussion often demonstrates what has been gained from the pioneer work of those infant teachers who accepted talking as the normal accompaniment of the day. But though much progress is apparent at this stage, the flow of children's conversation continues to be interrupted by misunderstandings and bald assertions. Useful openings may be left undeveloped, and deadlocks, emotional and intellectual, may threaten both conversation and cooperation. Again and again the teacher's intervention is needed if collaboration and thought are to be fostered. Often her function in these discussions is not to solve a problem but to restate it in such a way that the children can feel after a solution for themselves.

After they have been working for a time as individuals or in groups, an opportunity may be found for them to talk to each other about what they have been making or doing. With something in front of them to prompt their words, children can talk more fluently and interestingly, but care is needed not to press or prolong these discussions till they become monotonous.

Influenced by the tradition of class instruction, teachers may be too quick to assume that children are ready to talk to the whole class. The result may be to put the speaker to too great a nervous and vocal strain, and to waste the time of those listening to him. The retelling of stories by children tends to blur the lively impression left by the teacher.

The news period, which in many infant schools has replaced the 'conversation' lesson, may be open to some of these objections. Though teachers should find time for children's confidences, it is to presume much to suppose that day by day events will occur which merit the attention of the whole class. Yet from time to time there will be a welling-up of interest, even in a younger infant class, which will demand discussion by the whole class. It may be concerned with a public event or an individual experience; it may follow a story or relate to an interesting addition to the classroom; it may preface or follow a school expedition. Much will depend on the teacher's skill in seizing the moment and in guiding and welding into a whole the incomplete and sometimes inconsequent remarks of the children.

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(iv) Discussion and narration in the junior school

When children are transferred from the infant school to the junior school, they sometimes move from a background in which conversation is taken for granted to one in which talk is severely rationed and few voices are heard save the teacher's. Some change of atmosphere is natural and necessary. It is reasonable that children should grow out of the monologue which is proper to the younger child. Although in moments of strain they may revert to a running commentary on their doings and feelings, much more of their talking ought now to be a matter of seeking and giving information, of sharing views and reaching agreement. When practical tasks are to be undertaken, skilfully guided discussion can prevent false starts or disheartening failures, and yet allow the children more share in what they are doing than if they simply follow the teacher's directions. Discussion which leads to action will carry its own sanctions, since faulty explanation or failure to understand will lead to faulty execution. The capacity to make a meaning plain should be the first goal the junior school teacher sets for the children, and this objective should not be obscured by attempts to force the spoken language into the conventions of the written language. When children answer questions in monosyllables, teachers might reconsider the way in which their questions are framed. Though most teachers welcome children's questions and take them seriously, they do not always realise how valuable is this framing of questions, this posing of problems, in clarifying children's minds and in developing their capacity for clear speech.

There will then be discussion about practical enterprises, everyday events and interests, and about books which are being read. More will arise from such subjects as religious instruction, history, geography and science. Some of this conversation will be shared by the whole class, some by a group, and much, it is hoped, will be between teachers and individual children. Opportunities for spontaneous speech will also arise in drama. If more are needed, recourse may be had to some of the parlour games with which children are familiar such as those used on radio and television broadcasts. The conventional phrases associated with some of their games can be used by an ingenious teacher to give children practice in constructions in which they offend against normal usage. Accuracy in speech is established

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mainly by ear. Good teachers are able to draw children's attention to the errors they make, without impeding the flow of speech.

Many children, before they leave the junior school, are able to narrate and describe at some length, and means have to be found for them to practise this skill. Sometimes a suitable occasion arises from a group interest, when a spokesman puts the findings of his companions, all of whom can share in meeting the questions of the class. At this stage children are developing hobbies and enthusiasms about which they like to talk. Some teachers find it helpful to put up a list on which children enter subjects they are ready to speak about or in connection with which they could set up - and comment on - a small exhibition. Intelligent children, who have been listening critically to broadcast talks and other programmes, will have already become aware that success or failure in communication depends not only on the interest of the subject matter but also on the force and good sense of its arrangement, and on persuasive and audible speech. The teacher's guidance can extend to all these points; one child will need help with his material and another with its planning; the nervous and self-critical child will profit from encouragement to speak briefly without notes, before the strains of adolescence have reinforced an innate diffidence.

The talks which are given by these children commonly reflect the rapidly expanding book-knowledge of older juniors. It is inevitable that what is 'known by description' will increase in proportion to what is 'known by acquaintance', but care is needed that the process does not go too far and that there are sufficient opportunities for the discussion through which the knowledge children have at first hand and at second hand is reconciled. It is often the able child, the child whose later education will be predominantly verbal, who in the junior school most needs an emphasis on the real. He is the child who by imitation and memory will use words correctly and almost persuade us that he understands. He may 'talk like a book', which may imply that he is using generalisations unsupported by knowledge. Childhood is a time for building up a stock of first-hand impressions and of words which are rich with imaginative associations. Lack of experience can mean vague, half-dead words, and vague words lead to vague thought.

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(v) Speech Training

If children have serious speech disabilities the head teacher should see that they are brought to the notice of the school medical officer. Arrangements can usually be made for help to be given at a school clinic or special centre by a trained speech therapist.

Opinions differ widely about the part that formal instruction and practice can play in improving the tone, pitch, clarity and pronunciation of children's speech. Speech is a very personal matter, and children associate their own way of speaking with those they care about in their homes and neighbourhoods. Moreover, many dialects are rich in historical and linguistic interest, and it would be improper and unwise for teachers to try to discredit their use. Indeed, the speech which many people find attractive is so because of the flavour of local intonation or accent persisting in it. A teacher will want his children to speak audibly and in a way that is pleasant to listen to, that will be readily understood outside their own area and that will not handicap them as they grow older. More important than anything else is the quality of the voice. Children of junior school age are apt to let their voices become strident, thoughtlessly and exuberantly, or they try to make themselves more audible by 'speaking up' and shouting. They can be helped by tactful suggestions and reminders: but the most powerful influence on them is the quality and pitch of their teacher's voice and the emotional tone of the class.

Audibility is not always easy to cultivate. It depends on breathing and resonance as well as on the proper use of lips, tongue and throat. But it is advisable only for those whose training has given them reliable knowledge and techniques to try to improve articulation by formal exercises. Jingles and rhymes, repeated in chorus, have only a very limited effect. More often than not, young children's desire to read or speak well is sufficient to awaken their powers of imitation and give them a measure of success. Appreciation and encouragement can help to sustain their effort until acceptable speech becomes a habit. Singing can do much to develop clear articulation and a pleasant tone. So, too, can the custom of encouraging the children to read aloud, with due attention to clear and pleasant speech, a passage of prose or verse which they have prepared carefully. The

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teacher's reading aloud of prose and verse and the encouragement of the children to learn by heart passages enjoyed as much for their sound as for their sense are also helpful.

Among the ranks of teachers there are a few who have been especially prepared in speech and voice training. Schools fortunate enough to have such teachers should make full use of them, both to help the children and to help other teachers in their work with children. From time to time, short courses are available at which teachers can get skilled guidance. Training the ear is as necessary as training the voice, and tact is as important as technique. What matters most of all is for teachers themselves to develop a manner of speaking, clear, pleasing and unexaggerated, which is worthy of imitation by the children.

(vi) The teacher's contribution

The good speech of many teachers, together with the influence of radio and television, has already brought about a substantial improvement in speech. If almost any effort is worthwhile to improve a teacher's voice, his supreme instrument, thought is also needed about the words and phrases which are used. All the while, a reasonable balance must be maintained between the adult world into which children are growing and the world of childhood which they now inhabit. Good teachers try to see as children see; otherwise they cannot help them; they certainly do not talk as children talk, for what is required by the children is the foil of an understanding adult; good teachers are careful not to put a false value on immaturity and so prolong children's babble or fantasy, and are no less careful to preserve and consolidate whatever in a child's language and outlook will enrich his adult life. As members of society, children need some stock phrases of conversation, but teachers might watch lest their own talking contains too many of these phrases and lest they blunt children's sensitivity by familiarising them with the most deadening of clichés - those that refer to the arts. Skilled teachers are quick to welcome an enterprising word, even if its use is slightly inexact, and expert in turning it back in a way that will clarify meaning and usage. Their objective is to enlarge children's vocabulary in a natural context, and to arouse an interest in words. They should aim at vigorous speech, while avoiding the exaggerations and the belittling of great words to which children are subjected in advertisements and in the

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popular press. If the teacher's language is to nourish children's power to communicate and their imaginative way of expressing what they think and feel, it should be sparing with generalisation which children lack experience to substantiate; only if it is precise, colourful and detailed will it increase knowledge and evoke the visual images which form so large a part of children's thought, memory and imagination.

A consideration of children's speech leads naturally to a discussion of reading and writing, which are extensions of listening and talking. Until children can listen attentively to a story, until they can forget themselves sufficiently to entertain another point of view in conversation, until they have experience and vocabulary enough to share an author's meaning, they are unlikely to make much genuine progress in reading. Similarly, they are unlikely to write effectively until they can make a simple purpose clear in speech. The first and most important contribution of home and school to literacy is to foster a child's command of spoken language.

(a) An informal introduction to reading and writing

Although children are not ready for systematic instruction in reading and writing until they have achieved reasonable confidence and fluency in speech, many will have had some acquaintance with reading and have experimented with writing before they come to school. If they have seen their father reading, playing at being 'father' will probably include 'pretend' reading. Children whose parents read to them associate sounds and story with books, and they invent the sounds they are 'reading', as they look at books by themselves. When they see their mother writing a letter or making a shopping list, they often ask for pencil and paper and scribble their own letter or draw a picture. But young children can approach the meaning of reading and writing in a more real sense than is implied by this imitation. They may learn to distinguish a favourite story book by the name or picture on its cover and to recognise the number on their front door or on the bus that takes them into town. They may know their own name when they see it on a present and may ask for help in

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writing it on a Christmas card. They have already associated, however loosely, things, words and written symbols.

Teachers and helpers in the nursery school and class do much to support the introduction to reading and writing which children receive in a good home. Suitable paper and tools are made available for children's play at writing. Picture books, chosen for their subject matter and for the quality of their illustrations, can attract children to books and accustom them to handling books. Many nursery teachers make the most of the high standard of photography in contemporary periodicals, and supplement printed books with home-made picture books, books that fit perhaps with a story about the children themselves that the teacher is making up or with the particular interests of the moment. The most successful introduction to books is often the story told or read to a small group of children (or, sometimes, to one child) who can look at the pictures and interrupt the story to clear up misunderstandings about language or about the conventions of illustration, and whose questions are invaluable in deepening the teacher's awareness of children's difficulties.

In the infant school it becomes even more important to develop an environment in which the skills of reading and writing, though not disproportionately laboured, appear desirable to the children and a normal part of everyday life. In the first place, children need to see their teachers turning readily to books and they need to be let into the secret of the enjoyment and information to be found in books. If only for this reason, stories should be read as well as told. It is also helpful when teachers bring some of their own books to school to share them with children for a particular purpose. More will be said later of the choice of books for the classroom; it will suffice now to say that they should be, as far as possible, of a kind that would be bought for young children in an educated home, and should be displayed so that they are readily seen, accessible and attractive. What requires most faith in teachers is to believe that their time is well spent in looking at books with small groups of children. The children in the book corner, so it may be argued, are quietly occupied; it is those who may spill the paint or who do not know how to use the scales who need attention. The competing claims of children for adult help are a real difficulty for the infant teacher, but in no respect is encouragement more important than in the use of books. There may be children in the class who have never had

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the experience of looking at the pictures of a story book as its text is read to them. Moreover, when they have followed a story with the teacher's help they will be better able to sustain their interest when they are looking at the pictures by themselves. Some may learn to identify the nursery rhyme by its picture in the Mother Goose book, and a few children, repeating the words to themselves, associate the pattern of words with the sounds and teach themselves to read as did some of their ancestors from reading the Lord's Prayer on the Horn Book.

Among the books in the infants' classroom, the home-made book which incorporates children's favourite phrases and interests has a special place. When telling a story, teachers often build up a book of the story, the reading of which becomes an almost ritual-preface or conclusion to a continuation or retelling. Children begin to perceive that things, pictures and words can be complementary in communicating meaning, and ask their teacher's help in adding words to the pictures they paint or the models they make. Often they read and copy these words, and indeed, for some children, writing proves the best approach to reading. If the life and play of the classroom are sufficiently like the life outside, many opportunities occur for the introduction of the written language, without the teacher's going to the length of labelling 'cupboard', 'table' and 'window'. The children's private possessions, class tools and equipment generally have their places designated by the appropriate names, and there are occasions when written reminders of the need for cleanliness and care may be useful. Dramatic play, based on home, hospital, shop, or railway station, will demand its lists, prescriptions, tickets and notices. Children, who are content at first with the crudest of symbols, come to want greater realism in these as in other properties.

In this kind of incidental introduction to reading and writing, which is particularly characteristic of the younger infant classes, some stimulus is given to all children, whatever their ability. For one child the play or story is all; another child pretends to read; a third is in fact learning the shapes of words; all are being offered an incentive to read. An experienced teacher knows by children's response when they are ready for systematic instruction in reading. A diagnosis is based on an all-round impression of children's maturity, on their competence in speech, their attitude to books and their interest in and recognition of words

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and phrases. To hold back an able child who has had at home many of the experiences which other children do not meet until they come to school, is to risk disheartenment and boredom. On the other hand the preoccupation with reading shown by some young children is the product of their parents' anxiety, and too early a start on a primer may lead to disappointment and failure which can prejudice later attempts to read. In most infant classes, some children are likely to be reading fluently while others are most profitably occupied with books as a part of their play.

(b) Systematic instruction in reading in the primary school

There is so much sound practice and common ground in the teaching of reading in infant schools that the various methods can be briefly summarised and discussion concentrated on points of controversy. Within living memory, four main methods and innumerable modifications and combinations of them have been tried. The 'alphabetic' method has virtually disappeared, though some teachers continue to teach the alphabet at a very early age. The able child who may have already picked up the names of the letters from rhymes or games, and the shapes from ABC books, establishes a useful piece of learning which is necessary for the use of a dictionary or a gazetteer. It may be wiser to defer consolidation of the letter-names with less able children until they have accepted the idea that one letter may stand for several sounds.

Where the 'alphabetic' method introduced children to letter-names, the 'phonic' method teaches them letter-sounds and common combinations of sounds. It has the advantage of offering children a means of reading unfamiliar words. Though sounds were, and still are, often taught to whole classes, containing children of widely varying ability and attainment in reading, 'phonic' teaching has increasingly taken account of individual needs. But most teachers would agree that the method has disadvantages. English spelling is notoriously non-phonetic and many of the most common words in a young child's vocabulary cannot be read by 'phonic' means; conversely, a primer which consists almost entirely of words that can be 'sounded' is bound to be stilted, even though such extreme examples as 'an ox is on it' or 'hug the pug Meg' are passing out of use. If children get

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little help from the sense in a phonic primer, they also get little help from the shape of the words, since, in order to simplify the range of sounds, the vocabulary is usually limited to short words of similar appearance. The difficulties children experience in practising this method are illustrated by the way in which some fail to combine initial and final sounds which they have successfully identified, and others continue to 'sound' words which they can read at sight.

Considerations such as these have prompted experiments with further methods of teaching reading, generally known as the 'look and say' and the 'sentence' methods. In the first, children memorise the look of words; in the second, they are introduced to whole sentences and phrases, which they later break down into the component words. The strength of such methods is that from the outset children read material that they understand, though, in primers based on the 'sentence' method as in others, the need for frequent repetition of vocabulary is bound to reduce interest. Children who are taught exclusively in this way may be bewildered when they meet a word which is new to them, and may be too quick to guess at the general sense instead of looking carefully at the words they are reading.

There is something to be learnt from each method which has been found useful in the past. Most teachers of young children will agree that just as we recognise objects by the evidence and counter-check of our senses, so children are helped to read by having a variety of aids and methods available to them, reading now by the look of the word, now by its initial sound, now by guessing from the context. The last is a method as useful in reading Shakespeare as in reading a primer. Where teachers differ is in the proportion of each method in their usual prescription and in the extent to which they adjust the proportion to the needs of individual children. There is very general agreement, though theory and practice do not always coincide, that children should begin by reading material that has interest and meaning for them. All that has been said earlier about creating an environment of which written language is a natural part is an amplification of this point. The ablest children may deduce for themselves a knowledge of the letter-sounds which makes formal instruction unnecessary for them. Children with good visual memories can also go a long way towards success by 'sentence' and 'look and say' methods. For most children a stage will come

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when some teaching of combinations of sound, coupled with an explanation of its limitations as a key to reading, will increase confidence and a readiness to tackle fresh words.

There are differences also in the extent to which teachers rely on primers and on commercially produced reading apparatus. Many start by reading home-made books relating to the stories they tell and to their pupils' lives at home and at school, but it is still possible to find a room for the youngest children dominated by pictures and flash-cards featuring the characters about whom the slower pupils may not be reading until two or three years later. A few teachers continue to rely on home-made books for early formal instruction in reading and may use them until children can enjoy story books. Most teachers, however, feel that they need the support of primers in diagnosing and in securing progress. The advantages of the better kind of primer are undeniable; a carefully graduated vocabulary, frequent repetition, suitable print and an attractive lay-out. Substance and style, particularly of the first books in the various series, are often less satisfactory. The limitation of vocabulary tends to produce a thin and artificial style and helps to explain a lack of interesting characters and incident, which may also be due to an exaggerated vogue for the homely in children's intellectual diet. If primers are used, it is important that achievement in the skill of reading should compensate for some lack of interest, and that children should not work so long on them that the purpose of reading, to find out and to enjoy, is obscured. Teachers need therefore to give thought to the right moment for introducing primers to individual children. They also need to give concentrated help at critical moments of progress when 'Hear me read' becomes a constant request.

When children's progress is slow, some teachers arrange for them to read successively the first primers of several series. Unless vocabularies are very similar, this practice may sacrifice the main advantage of primers - a carefully controlled vocabulary - without obtaining the balancing gain in interest and narrative of a simple story book. It may be better to use a varied range of primers as alternatives. The child who is easily discouraged might be given a series in which each book is brief enough to be quickly covered. The slower children usually need primers which defer the difficulties of word-synthesis until a fair vocabulary has been established. A child who fails with a primer

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biassed towards one method of teaching reading, may have more success with a series with a different emphasis. The ablest children should spend little time on primers or on reading apparatus, but should very soon be reading real books. The allocation of considerable spells of time to reading apparatus, like the consecutive use of several first primers, may point to a premature start on reading. Many gifted and conscientious teachers improvise useful apparatus for specific purposes. When classes are large, they may also occupy some children with commercial apparatus so that they themselves can concentrate for the time being on other children, talking to them, hearing them read and helping them to put down ideas in writing. They would do well to review the apparatus critically from time to time and not to overestimate the volume of learning which derives from it. For many children there must be a laborious stage in the process of learning to read but when this is prolonged there is reason to suspect an error of judgement in assessing reading readiness or in selecting suitable methods.

The 'alphabetic' and 'phonic' methods of teaching reading originated in a period when class teaching was taken for granted and when it was the practice for children to read in unison or to read round the class, each individual reading in turn. The development of reading in groups represented a great advance; it opened the way to a better adjustment of work to ability and provided opportunities for individual help and practice. Many teachers have now substituted the individual child for the group. This does not exclude some provision for class reading, particularly with older junior children, nor does it mean that teachers of younger children will never economise their time by working with a group. But the group is fluid and children are not held back in their reading to the point they have reached with their teachers or their companions. 'Group reading', as a specific technique for increasing the amount that each child reads aloud, survives most commonly in the lower part of the junior school. In assessing its value, teachers might consider the quality of the books being read, the effect on the 'leaders', who are frequently reading books which are less stimulating than the ones they would choose for themselves, the standard of reading aloud in a group which is not receiving immediate help from the teacher, and the distraction caused by several children reading aloud simultaneously. They might also compare the time allowed for

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silent reading with that allowed for reading aloud, recollecting that it is commonly in silent reading that most attention is given to meaning. Teachers may come to the conclusion that, with the present development of individual reading, there will rarely, if ever, be occasion for the whole class to be reading aloud in groups, though to read a prepared passage to a small group may be a useful exercise for children who are not yet able to read aloud to the class. Opportunities will readily be found for children who are sufficiently skilled to read to their class, or, on special occasions, to the school.

(c) Transition from the infant school to the junior school

Most children will have made progress in reading before they leave the infant school, and many will have read widely from the good collection of books which should always be provided. It is important that these children should find as generous a provision in their new schools. It is also necessary to remember the children who have not yet responded to the stimulus to read and who still need the incidental approach to reading through conversation, interests and home-made books that is characteristic of the infant school. The junior school requires experts in these and other methods of teaching reading. Consistency of attitude and plan throughout the primary school stage matters more than continuity in detail, but some overlap in the books available in the infant and junior schools will give children confidence after their move. A child who is making rapid progress with particular books should be given an opportunity to continue with them. On the other hand, too pedantic a regard for continuity may result in children working at books which they associate with failure and which may be too babyish for their maturing interests. An intimate contact between infant and junior schools provides a more reliable guide to children's attainments than the results of word recognition tests, which often bear little relation to the children's ability to read in a context. Testing immediately after the move to the junior school can be disturbing to children and misleading to teachers. In exceptional cases of prolonged reading difficulties, Heads and assistants may find the evidence of objective and diagnostic tests a useful addition to their other knowledge of the children. To give tests

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frequently and to all children can absorb time which is better spent in teaching.

(d) Individual reading in infant and junior schools

The rudiments of reading mastered, children need a plentiful supply of books of good quality, and time and quiet in which to read them. In many primary schools the distinction between 'library books' and other books is gradually disappearing. If too much time is given to 'readers', which usually consist of short stories and passages, children may be denied the opportunity of developing the power of sustained interest which should be a reflection of their increasing maturity. Moreover, if children are to develop a taste for reading, they must be able to browse and sample for themselves, though the teacher's knowledge and individual advice will be an invaluable help in their selection of books. A choice once made, children need conditions for reading which take some account of their varying spans of attention. To make 'library books' available only for odd moments or for one period a week is to ask children to read on terms which most adults would find intolerable, and, in all probability, to lower the standard of what is read. In a growing number of schools, books can be taken home as well as read in school. Children who have good conditions for reading at home sometimes find difficulty in reading at school because of the distraction of other things going on in the classroom. For their sake and even more for the sake of those who do not know quiet at home and may never achieve complete concentration there, teachers need to contrive times and places so that children can read at length and in peace. Now that silence is no longer expected in the classroom, children's indifference to noise may be exaggerated.

The more time that is allowed for individual reading, the more thought must be given to the purchase of books, which are difficult to select from the multitude that are published each year. Several useful annotated lists of children's books have been printed in recent years and can be kept up to date by the publications of the various Library and Book Associations and the reviews in reliable periodicals. A knowledge of children's books is so important that in some schools one member of staff acts as specialist adviser to the Head and to his colleagues. Though there has been a remarkable development in recent years, it is not yet common enough to find a sufficient range in

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the class libraries for young children. On the one hand there should be well-loved simple books, books to which children can return as in good homes they go back to old favourites when they need to relax or to be reassured; on the other hand the books should match the wide range of attainment in children of the same age and the extraordinary strides which they can make in the course of a year. Story books should be chosen both for substance and for style, and should include a balance of the established children's classics and of good contemporary stories. In selecting poetry books, contents and appearance should be considered. Some books are rightly chosen primarily for the pleasure of their pictures and layout, others for the information they contain. At first there will be many books on natural history and on the mechanical inventions which absorb much of the interest of young children. Later a heavier representation of true adventure stories and accounts of our own times and of the past can be included. Reference books, accurate and not oversimplified, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, atlases and maps should be easily accessible to all. There should be books to awaken interest and books to satisfy it, and a recognition that children can learn much from difficult books when curiosity is aroused. Throughout the primary school, the classroom collection of books should include attractive books, of as many types as possible, within the interest and reach of the less proficient readers. These children in particular need an inducement to read. However good the training in use of books, wastage must be expected in a library that is constantly used; it is almost as important to remove the worn-out as to keep up with children's current interests.

It is the experience of most teachers that children are so dependent on their classroom base in the infant school and the lower part of the junior school that the class library is more important at these stages than a central collection. For the younger infants, there is much to be said for shelving of the rack type which can take books lying flat without straining the binding; as the children grow older a bigger proportion of books can be traditionally shelved, as long as the shelves are accessible and there is provision for special display. The arrangement of the classroom library may vary from year to year, and indeed more frequently, according to the taste of the class and its particular needs. There may be occasions when books are distinguished

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according to their difficulty and others when the usual simple arrangement based on subject matter is adjusted to fit the current work that is being undertaken by the class. The central library, though it is never likely to replace the class library in a primary school, is sometimes successful in infant schools and increases in importance in the junior school. It can be housed in any space where it is possible for the books to be arranged with some dignity, for books to be borrowed without disturbing a class, and for a group of children to read in reasonable conditions. It might include an overflow of recreational books from class libraries, the more expensive reference books of which only one copy is available, and also periodicals; and the books can be arranged and their borrowing organised so as to provide a simple introduction to the practice in a public library.

(e) Range and quality in reading

However skilfully books are selected and arranged, much will depend on the way teachers introduce books or authors to the class, and on their discussion of books with individuals or groups. Most teachers find it helpful for children to keep a record of the books they read, and various devices such as the writing of comments and the answering of questions have been tried as checks on the thoroughness of children's reading. Discretion is needed to ensure that these devices do not become routines which destroy concentration and pleasure in reading; realism is added if children know that their comments will be discussed with them and will be borne in mind when replacement of books is considered. In assessing the development of a child's reading and the guidance to be given, a teacher needs to take a broad view and be prepared to tolerate the period of standstill which may be a reaction to strain in another field or may be the pause which precedes further progress.

Throughout the primary school, children should be enjoying books at several levels of difficulty, and their choice of books should be influenced not only by class and individual discussion but also by the direct example of the books the teacher reads to the class. Towards the top of the junior school, the abler children will profit from following in their own copies some of the books which are read to them and from taking some share in the reading aloud. Even this may not meet the needs of the ablest children, who need special help just as much as the weakest, and might

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sometimes be formed into a group to read, perhaps with the Head, a book too exacting for the rest of the class. Occasional class use of history and geography textbooks and careful supervision in the use of informative books for individual and group work are usually more economical ways of practising and testing comprehension than can be found in the exercises on detached passages in 'English Courses'.

An estimate of success in teaching reading must look far beyond the mechanical skill of reproducing the right sounds and include the understanding, use and enjoyment of the written word. It is not enough to ask 'Can children read?' We need to ask 'Do children read?' and 'Do some of the books they choose represent the highest level of which they are capable?' Where children are being taught to read in this sense, some are using books of an adult kind before they leave the primary school. And of those whose mastery of reading is secure, many are able to read aloud a prepared passage in a way that gives pleasure to those who listen.

(f) Writing in the infant school

In this chapter, reading and writing are separately treated for convenience; but many infant teachers find that children make most progress when reading and writing are regarded as interdependent. Many years ago, writing other than copy writing was considered too difficult for young children and even their copy writing might be confined to single letters and to lists of similarly sounded words. A survival of this underestimate of children's powers is to be seen in schools where children who can read fluently are limited in their writing to answering questions and to filling in blanks, or where the class waits to try its hand at writing until all are ready. It is becoming more usual for children to be encouraged from the beginning to write the phrases and sentences, about their everyday life and the story-book world, which form the basis of their introduction to reading. Reference has already been made to the writing, often a mixture of real and 'pretend' writing, which arises from play, and to the words children dictate to their teachers. As children's fluency in speech and in reading develops, they will embark, with little thought of the difficulties, on accounts of their own experiences and on invented stories, relying now on their reading books as dictionaries, now on the lists of words and picture dictionaries in

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the classroom. Very young children enjoy making individual dictionaries and ask for their teacher's help in putting in the words they need. In encouraging this spontaneous writing, teachers may have been influenced by the flowering of young children's painting in recent years. The present development of writing is little less remarkable and takes forms various enough to correspond with all the activities of an infant school. It includes diaries, news books, longer records of special occasions, nature records, books that supplement models as a phrase supplements a picture, books arising from individual interests which may range from pets to planets, stories invented or retold, playlets and verse. The conditions of success are similar to those for children's painting: encouragement and individual help from the teacher; suitable tools and paper, and help in making home-made books appropriate in size to the purpose children have in mind; examples of good handwriting; the stimulus of experience at first hand and indirectly through story and poem, and of talk to clarify it.

There are dangers to be avoided in this heartening development. In encouraging children to write and in putting a value on fluency, care should be taken not to imply that there is virtue in sheer length of writing unrelated to what has to be said. Moreover new conventions may be only a little less limiting than old: the compiling of a diary or a news book, when interest in it is dead, can produce writing as repetitive and monotonous as that which often resulted from questions on a picture. Finally, though there is a pattern of taking in and giving out, of receiving impressions and giving new shape to them, the pattern cannot be automatically completed. Factual learning often calls for an immediate outcome in language, but deeper experiences may demand a longer pause for reflection and assimilation.

The function of the teacher is in no aspect of education more delicate than in relation to children's original work. Many children will be anxious before they leave the infant school to use their writing as a means of communication. If a letter is to be understood by its recipient, a record of plant growth to be of use to the class, or a story to be added to the class library, some approximation to the conventions of spelling and punctuation becomes necessary. By reading aloud what they have written, children can be helped to see the purpose of the simpler forms of punctuation. Correction, at this stage above all, should be positive. It

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should be done in the child's own presence and be primarily directed to helping him to fulfil his own purpose in writing. Help in spelling and punctuation will usually be given to individuals, sometimes to a group and rarely to the whole class.

(g) Development in the junior school

When children transfer to the junior school they might usefully take examples of their written work with them. Some children will have hardly begun to read and write, but many will already be writing fluently and can suffer a severe setback if they are made to begin again from the beginning. It is well to note that the simple sentence may represent for children a retrogression from the sequence in thought and appreciation of relationships implied in their use of the conjunction 'and'. Moreover, the loss of vigour and fluency which results from confining their writing to exercises in the use of the simple sentence is worse than the discursiveness and shapelessness the exercises are intended to cure. Fluency may also be endangered by a premature or excessive emphasis on handwriting or by a failure to give children the help they are needing with it. This matter is fully dealt with elsewhere;* it is necessary here only to stress the variations in the ages at which children are ready to be taught style in handwriting and the use of pen and ink. Transitions should be gradual and children should be allowed to do as adults do and fall back on pencil when the substance of their writing is making heavy demands.

At this stage, as in the infant school, the essentials in composition are to have a reason for writing and something to write about, to have frequent opportunities to write, to have time to finish, to be neither over-anxious about accuracy nor lacking in respect for the reader. The recapitulation of stories offers opportunities for writing in which sequence is controlled by the action of the story. Help in using a suitable vocabulary can be given in the first telling and consolidated in preparation for writing. Similarly the description of experiences which teacher and children have had in common will offer an occasion for writing preceded by discussion. The quality of children's writing will be partly determined by the help they are given in savouring experience to the full. Accurate observation is as important as subsequent discussion about what has been seen. The recording

*See Chapter XIV Handwriting.

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of group work will provide practice in summary, and the subsequent compilation of a class book may raise useful questions about arrangement of material. Young children often approach such problems more easily on a large scale through the idea of chapters in a book than through paragraphs in a composition.

Where good use is made of such opportunities as these, there will be little need for formal composition, but in addition to this directed writing there should be much that is personal and spontaneous, weighted towards the factual or the imaginative according to a child's own gifts and interests. The teacher's contribution to such writing is best made through individual discussion; a proportion of what is written may be done in rough; some part should be polished so that it reaches the highest standard of which the child is capable. He will be the readier to strive for this standard if he feels that what he has to say is really important, and still more if he knows that his writing will be read by others.

From a study of individual children's writing, the teacher can diagnose what help is needed for this or that individual if clarity, grammatical accuracy, punctuation and spelling are to maintain some relationship with fluency. Wide reading of books of good quality can help in all these respects, as also does the teacher's discriminating correction of written work. Frequently a child's best exercise is to improve, after discussion, a short passage of his own writing. Exercises in correctness and punctuation are best devised for a specific purpose and are often required only by a group. Adjustment to attainment and need in this kind of work has lagged behind practice in other aspects of the curriculum, and many teachers continue to make their pupils work systematically through textbooks of English exercises. While helpful ideas are to be found in some of these books, the exercises should always remain subordinate to children's writing and be used with great caution. Some exercises may have value as a basis for oral discussion but to write them out subsequently will add little; other exercises may have a value for a section of the class; exercises such as those which require the use of homonyms in a sentence may be unnecessary for some children and confuse others for a long time; some exercises blunt children's sensitivity to language by requiring them to pair as synonyms words which have their own distinctive flavour. In general, too much time is spent by older and younger juniors on

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exercises of this type and on comprehension exercises which bear little relation to their other work.

Despite the difficulties of English spelling, many children assimilate correct spelling mainly through their reading. They pick it up. Other children need the support of the few rules that are generally valid and of the systematic memorisation of the look of the more common words which they spell incorrectly when they write. Children who have poor visual memories may be helped by spelling out words. The ablest children can be interested in language and given an aid to memory by hearing of the derivation of words whose spelling is associated with their origin. Though most teachers now realise that most children learn little from dictation, it is still too common for the same spellings to be set for a class of widely varying ability and for spellings to include words outside children's usual vocabulary and needs. Junior school children should be able to use a dictionary and should have one in their desk for reference. It is generally found that the spelling in a class reflects the teacher's care for it and his appreciation of good spelling when the class achieve it.

With the older and abler children, attention can be given not only to accuracy and fluency but also to the elements of form and style. Some of their writing should be limited in length so that it can be as polished as possible. Their sights can perhaps be raised by reading and discussing with them narrative and descriptive passages of good quality as a preliminary to attempts at writing of a similar kind. Their attention can also be drawn to effective beginnings in the books they read and they can be encouraged to give especial thought to their own opening and concluding sentences, without being pressed to an introductory paragraph which may make for a slow or irrelevant start. Similarly they can be encouraged to arrange their thoughts in order without being tied down to a plan of paragraphs which may impede the growth and flow of thought. Able children are ready to choose their words with some deliberation but particular care is needed to ensure that they do not make their written work a patchwork of clichés and of stilted expressions. The best safeguards are the sincere, exact and lively speech of the teacher, the good quality of what is read, the omission of exercises whose purpose is to perpetuate hackneyed similes, 'green as ...', 'cool as ...', and the avoidance of such subjects for writing as 'a walk

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in spring' save on those occasions when children will be protected from the conventional by the vitality of a recent experience. At this time children may also need to be laughed gently out of the extravagances of substance and vocabulary which often result from too heavy a diet of 'comics'. Much can be done by the competing influence of well-written books which feed children's love of action. In all this training, teachers have a most valuable instrument in the commendation they give to what is best in a child's writing.

At the top of the junior school the most important writing will continue to be that which arises naturally from the daily life of the school. History, geography and scripture can afford many opportunities for narrative writing and for summarising information discovered from books or learnt from the teacher. Occasions can also be found for recording first-hand observations and experiments of a mathematical or scientific kind. Children readily appreciate the need for accuracy, for clear statements and correct order in this kind of writing. At this stage, some teachers introduce prescribed composition in order to secure a balanced range of writing. The topics set should always be within children's experience or their imaginative reach. They can include direct experiences and the experiences children hear about and see through books, the radio, the cinema and television. Originality does not require the bizarre for a stimulus but rests often on a sensitive response to the familiar. A special warning may be needed about subjects so established by tradition as the autobiographies of inanimate objects - which, by imputing feelings to them, almost force children into insincere writing - and the reflective essay, be it on hobbies or pets, which demands a detachment and generalisation which even the abler children of this age can scarcely achieve without artificiality. Whether or not some compositions are prescribed, frequent opportunities should be found for children to write on subjects freely chosen by themselves. Class newspapers and magazines can provide an incentive for this kind of writing and should demand a high standard of accuracy. Much of the writing can be given a preliminary reading and editing by children responsible for the appropriate section of the news-sheet or magazine, and appeal need be made to the teacher only in case of difficulty. Where drama is lively and poetry is enjoyed, some children attempt to write plays and verse. Many occasions can also be

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found for the writing and sending of personal letters, which allow for freedom in subject matter while requiring good standards in execution.

Opportunities will occur in connection with most fields of learning for stimulating children's awareness of language. Material rich in linguistic interest can be found, for example, in the names of arithmetical measures or in the names of flowers and herbs growing in the school garden. Many aspects of language can arouse the curiosity of children of primary school age, provided that the treatment is not too systematic. They are interested in the meaning of their own surnames and of place-names. They can follow some of the extensions of meaning of such words as 'head' and 'cross', and appreciate the relationship between 'pig' and 'pork' or 'gentleman' and 'villain'. Even in the infant school, some children notice the connection between sound and sense in onomatopoeic words such as 'crack' and 'crash' or 'murmur' and 'whisper'. Discussion of the daily uses of simile and metaphor in slang expressions can open children's eyes to more subtle examples of figurative language. Work of this kind should encourage children to make use of the standard dictionaries, which should be available, in addition to individual dictionaries, in each classroom. The recognition of the simpler parts of speech and of their function in the sentence can be included in this language study with the abler pupils, who will be interested to see how some common words play many parts; its purpose, like that of most language study, will be to deepen understanding rather than to correct usage.

The test of all that is done will be its effect on children's speech, on their understanding of words and on their writing. In evaluating children's writing, it is hardly possible to dissociate what is said from the manner in which it is said. Where children's writing lacks vigour, sincerity or coherence, teachers need to look critically at the whole range of children's experiences in school. Towards the end of the primary school, a very wide diversity in type and quality of written work is to be expected, including work prescribed and spontaneously undertaken on every aspect of the curriculum. It should serve the purpose for which it is intended, should reflect with increasing competence children's widening knowledge and should bear also the stamp of their personality.

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(a) Story

In all that has been said so far, much emphasis has been placed on children's need to have something to talk and to write about. This material is to be found no less at second hand than at first hand, and great stories will not only enlarge experience but will also illumine and interpret it. The contribution of story and other literature is so often taken for granted that it is worth pausing to consider in some detail its value for children, for only if teachers know why they tell stories will they choose wisely and afford them sufficient emphasis. In stories, the youngest children seek an opportunity to learn about themselves, to explore their own situation without the strain of personal entanglement and to reconcile themselves to it. This is the justification for the homely story, for stories about children and their parents and the routine of the day. For all but the very youngest children, such a story needs detail if it is to be convincing. It is even more important that the world of childhood that is portrayed should be authentic and its dark places neither shunned nor falsified. The child is fortunate who discovers in a story his own problems of self-control and who first meets the sorrows of separation and death in the setting of a story rather than face to face. And if in story children explore themselves and their relationships, they can also find in story a respite and relief from present strains. The lonely child forgets his isolation in stories of friendship, and most children need from time to time to escape from the pressure and frustration of the moment into the fantasies of the fairy and animal worlds. Sometimes indeed children may flee too far into fantasy but often they are only escaping from themselves, as they are, to the characters they may become. In the religious story and heroic story they can see the possibilities that are open to them: they can see the weak triumph by faith and persistence and they can see failure redeemed by heroism; and as children identify themselves, now with one hero, now with another, suggestion can help to form - yet not constrain - the self which will finally emerge. From the interchange of roles which story offers to children, the beginnings of sympathy can grow - the ability to put oneself in another's place and to appreciate new relationships and an unfamiliar material background. This is one way in which detachment can be fostered, the detachment with-

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out which imagination and perception will be distorted. It is moreover from stories and from example that the abstractions are bodied forth in children's minds: good and evil become more than actions prescribed or forbidden; gentleness, truth and justice become ideals which can help to create the virtues they represent. Many of the greatest stories told in school are a world heritage, and others are the common property and bond of unity of those countries whose culture stems from Greece and Rome and Christian Europe. But we have a special obligation to transmit to children the stories of our own country, from which we derive much of our sense of community and national values, and which carry, in addition to their original meaning, the significance which the centuries have given them.

The ideal role of story, consolidating, compensating for and extending children's experience, has been described, but it remains to apply it to each stage of primary education. The earliest beginnings of story, told to the two or three year old, need to be so closely related to children's lives that stories of the teacher's invention are usually the best. It is helpful if each stage of the story is complete in itself since very young children cannot appreciate development, and it is best to defer the difficulties caused by an autobiographical form until children are able to use pronouns with confidence. A story read at this time or a little later can be told with the book in the hand. Occasions should be sought when a group of children can cluster round, a group small enough for all to see the pictures in the book. The storyteller can enlarge on the matters on which the children are anxious for more detail but remain faithful to the rhythmic phrases or repetition in which the youngest wish to join. They will already enjoy the humour of topsy turvydom and they may take particular pleasure in the word of unusual sound, whether it is nonsense such as 'Hi cockalorum' or a sophisticated word picked up from adult speech.

It is pleasing that in the infant school the tradition holds firm of a story a day, and that some stories are told and some are read. Teachers are often very skilful in creating the intimate setting required for a story: to have the children grouped round them contributes to a sensitive adjustment between teacher and children and helps the children to play an active part in the story. Such clear thought is not always given to the choice of stories to be told and read. At moments of strain, when a new baby is born

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in the family or when children first come to school, it is helpful for them to hear stories of those who are faced by similar situations. This need has been well understood in our times and has influenced a great proportion of books written for young children. But it is right also to bear in mind Dr Johnson's remark, 'Babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles and of somewhat which can stretch and stimulate their little minds'. If children's play shows a need to investigate their own lives, it shows no less clearly their desire to grow up; as they move towards the top of the infant school, they are ready to leave the security of 'here and now' for the romance of 'once upon a time' and the adventures of 'far away'. Many of the traditional fairy tales, myths and folk stories are particularly suitable for children of this age because of the universality of their themes and imagery, the boldness of their characterisation and situations, the consistency of their fantasy and the clarity of their moral judgements. Children are often surprisingly matter of fact in their attitude to death and disaster as long as its background is not too similar to their own, but it is important that right should triumph, that the small, the weak and the good, with whom they tend to identify themselves, should 'live happily ever after'. If there is reason to suppose that a story will strain children's emotions too far, the right course is to defer rather than to bowdlerise it. Much will depend on the teacher's confidence and skill in handling the story.

It has already been suggested that some stories should be told and that some should be read so that children can have an insight into the pleasures to be found in books, and this principle holds good throughout the primary school. Stories chosen to be read aloud should have some distinction of language, whether in the range or interest of vocabulary or in the rhythm of its arrangement. There is no better way for children to catch the rhythm of good prose than by hearing it well read. If teachers are to do justice to such language they need to read the story beforehand, so that they can identify themselves imaginatively with it, be quick to insert a synonym for a difficult word and light in their occasional comment on a humorous passage, a happy description or an unusual word. There are some stories, such as Uncle Remus, Alice in Wonderland and The Just-So Stories, whose virtue is so inextricably associated with their language that no retelling can catch their quality; they should

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be left alone until their language can be enjoyed. There are other stories, such as some of the adventures of Odysseus or the story of Chanticleer and the fox, which can be told at different levels to children of almost any age, though, when the time comes, the vigour of a modern translation of an original text can infuse fresh life into die familiar. Whether the story is to be told or read, it is important that teachers should turn to the best version that can be found, making their own judgements about the merits of an eighteenth or nineteenth century translation of the Arabian Nights or of the Norse sagas as contrasted with the terseness of the latest translation. If teachers are themselves accustomed to going to the original, or as near to it as possible, they will be in a better position to discriminate between good versions of well-known stories for the children's library and the even greater number of travesties.

The problem of quality of reading - whether by the teacher to the children or by the children for themselves - which exists already in the infant school, becomes more serious in the junior school, where literature is sometimes relegated to one period a week. This economy goes some way to explain the use of the retold classic, its story so compressed that it may become meaningless, the characters attenuated, the description omitted and the quality of language lost. This treatment is the more unfortunate because the primary school years offer an ideal opportunity for introducing children to the fairy tales of East and West, to the myths of Greece and Rome and Northern Europe, to the heroic stories of the Middle Ages, to knights as various as Gawain, the Red Cross Knight and Don Quixote, and to the exploration of new worlds in Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe and Pilgrim's Progress. In addition to this adult literature which children in successive generations have made their own - and it is a mark of the great book that it can be enjoyed at many levels - teachers will want to acquaint their pupils with some of the best of the books which have been written on both sides of the Atlantic since children's literature became an established genre. These will probably include the fairy tales of Hans Andersen and George Macdonald, domestic stories as varied as those of Johanna Spyri, Louisa Alcott and the prolific Victorian children's novelists, the adventure stories of Mark Twain and Stevenson, and the stories of Lewis Carroll, Kipling and of Kenneth Grahame which defy classification. Any child must be

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the poorer who does not meet Walter de la Mare's prose and verse. But the contemporary also speaks to children, and teachers should make a serious effort to know the best writers of their own time in their own and in other countries and should accept their books into the canon of literature on which they spend time with the children.

Some children are already beginning to ask whether a story is true before they leave the infant school, and the older juniors will place a high value on the truth of an adventure story. It is not always easy to find true stories and factual accounts of literary quality to read to children, but this is a field in which skilful teachers intersperse story and reading, and often share short passages from their own reading with their pupils. In this way able juniors can enjoy suspense and heroism from biographies and autobiographies - or from the better escape stories of the second world war - the quiet humour of reminiscences of Victorian childhood, the vision of wild life and of little known peoples in books of travel, and many passages from the great naturalists.

There is a danger that in preparing stories and in choosing books teachers will underestimate children's ability to respond to good language and style. Good style in story-telling knows no age-limits, though such techniques as the long-deferred appearance of the hero in the Odyssey or the inversions of time common in many modern stories are likely to be too difficult for all but the older children. Teachers might give special thought to the beginnings and endings of stories, and to the place of climax and anticlimax. Above all they need to be selective and not over-simple in the words they use, stimulating children with language that is exact, colourful, sonorous and amusing.

In choosing literary material to present to children, teachers might also keep in mind the interdependence of imaginative and first-hand experience, the extent to which children notice the things they have already heard about and imagine the more vividly when some parts of their imaginative experience can be referred back to the real world. Constant opportunities will be needed for the kind of discussion through which children reconcile the real and the story-book worlds.

(b) Poetry

Good stories have a special claim to inclusion in young

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children's education because of the light they throw on life and because of their power to foster sentiments and nourish the imagination. The same is true, in equal degree, of the national heritage of poetry; and poetry, if sensitively chosen and presented, can make a unique appeal to children if only because the poet and the child have much in common in their perception of the world and in their use of language. Both poet and child see freshly and delight in detail of sight and sound; both tend to think and remember in images and by association of imagery; both see what is new in terms of likeness to what is known and rely in their language on simile and metaphor. Children's use of figurative language, due in part no doubt to a shortage of vocabulary which forces a novel use of such words as are known, can range from the odd description of a zebra as 'a horse in pyjamas' to the evocative 'deep London' for Piccadilly Circus or 'shadow of a sound' for an echo.

But poetry will not take its proper place in school unless it is enjoyed by teachers as well as by children; only then will selection be sure, only then will it be possible to avoid the twin pitfalls of the fixed poetry period, in which the amount read is mechanically determined by the length of the period, and the too casual allocation of odd moments to poems lightly chosen and read with little preparation.

On the informal programmes of the nursery school and of the younger children in the infant school, times of quiet and relaxation when children are ready to respond to poetry are not difficult to find. Save where speech training rhymes have ousted the nursery rhyme, the traditional material holds its place, though teachers' choices do not always range widely enough in the many excellent collections of rhymes. In nursery rhyme, they can find romance of thought and language - 'How many miles to Babylon?', beauty of imagery and sound - 'Grey goose and gander, waft your wings together ...', lively narrative and robust humour - 'There was an old woman, as I've heard tell ...' a surprisingly wide vocabulary, and the repetitions which help memorisation. It is at the stage immediately following the nursery rhyme, for which a profusion of verse, peopled by insipid fairies described in monosyllables, has been written, that particular care is needed to see that the poetry chosen keeps pace with children's interest and vocabulary. If the general idea of a poem is within children's understanding, good reading by

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the teacher and the children's delight in sound will carry them over verbal difficulties. On this basis, medieval carols, folk songs, some of Shakespeare's songs and short extracts from lyrical and descriptive poetry are within children's reach before they leave the infant school. If it is felt necessary to add some verse, including nonsense verse, written specifically for children, examples can best be sought among the works of those who are poets at an adult level and who have written for themselves as well as for children. It would be well to omit the whimsy but retain the fantasy, to cut out the mawkish or at least to retain it at its best in the gentle child of A Child's Garden of Verse, who was, after all, the product of years of sickness and insomnia, to balance the mildness of the Land of Counterpane with the robustness of Walter de la Mare's:

'No bed, no bed' we shouted,
And wheeled our eyes from home
To where the green and golden woods
Cried 'Come!'*

*Walter de la Mare. Collected Rhymes and Verses. By permission of the Literary Trustees of Walter de la Mare and the Society of Authors as their representative.

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It is possible to make only the broadest generalisations on the treatment of poetry in the classroom. The earliest appeal of poetry through the nursery rhyme rests partly on an element of incantation. Teachers who know some poetry by heart and are ready with it at the right moment can hold their classes as spellbound as was the wedding-guest by the Ancient Mariner. But whether teachers read, or speak poems with the book in the hand, great importance attaches to the interpretation. First hearings are as important for children as other first impressions, and poetry is meant above all to be heard. Children also should be given many opportunities for reading poetry aloud, but, if as much thought is given to those who listen as to those who read, classes will not be made to listen to an unconsidered succession of readings.

Children will not be able to choose poems to read to others unless they have opportunities for reading much to themselves. From the first the classroom library should include poetry, no less attractively bound and produced than prose, though a decorative page is perhaps to be preferred to illustrations, which may interpose themselves between the 'inner eye' and its vision. Anthologies, however good, are not sufficient, but need to be supplemented by selections of the works of individual poets, including those of the present time. It will then be possible for children to make their own collections of favourite poems. Similarly some periods may be set aside as sessions in which children read aloud poems they have chosen for themselves, guided sometimes by previous agreement on a theme. The preparation for such a session might include an informal arrangement of the room and, more important, individual help and practice for children in the reading of their selected poems.

Some of the poems read in class may lend themselves to dramatic or choral treatment. This treatment can add to children's enjoyment of poetry, provided that it is not extended to poems unsuited for it by their substance or by the difficulty of their rhythm. It is seldom rewarding in the primary school to 'produce' and polish verse-speaking for public performance, nor should it be exploited as a means of speech training, though it may contribute incidentally to better speech.

It is most difficult of all to advise on how much talk there should be about poetry and poets. The practice of individual teachers varies very much. Though the poems matter far more

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than the poets, a word or two about a poet may give children a feeling of intimacy with him. A light touch is all-important, whether in the explanation of a phrase before reading a poem or in the skilful juxtaposition of two poems which may aid children's understanding without denying them the sense of personal discovery. Though many children are well able to explain what the words and sounds of a poem suggest to them, little purpose is served - and indeed harm may be done - by asking them whether they like it.

In the past, poetry often became a drudgery because of an emphasis on memorisation, but whenever poetry is loved, much is learnt by heart. The youngest children will demand the repetition by which rhymes can be memorised, though the pleasures of the familiar need to alternate with the stimulus of the novel. If the atmosphere of a classroom is favourable to poetry, and particularly where a teacher himself has set an example in memorisation, children can readily be encouraged to select full-length poems or extracts from them that they will enjoy learning. Many take pleasure and pride in their memorised collection. But the memorisation of a poem should not be made a test of industry and accuracy. Though children should often speak the poems learnt, they may need to have the book beside them to ensure that the quality of their interpretation is not impaired by self-consciousness or strain. The old exaggerations of expression have so far disappeared that it is hardly necessary to mention them.

An appreciation of poetry comes as much from writing poetry as from reading it, but the writing should not be made a compulsory task. Children are helped in the writing of their own verse if they hear poetry in as wide a range of rhythms as possible. The inclusion of some blank verse will show them that they need not always strain after rhyme. Abler children at the top of the junior school also enjoy getting the feel of rhythm by practising writing in such marked rhythms as that of 'Hiawatha', but it is unlikely that it will be on these occasions that their writing will be nearest to poetry.

(c) Drama

The beginnings of drama are to be found in children's play, which serves some of the same purposes for children as drama

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for the adult. Through dramatic play children can soliloquize, can express their feelings about their everyday experiences and go some way towards overcoming their fears and solving their problems. At first this play seems to be largely imitative, though, at an early stage, play with an imaginary playmate can find a place. As children grow older they begin to act versions of the stories they hear, and to identify themselves so closely with the characters from these stories that they can weave fresh incidents round them and invent new companions for them. The beginnings of dramatic form - the arrangement of incidents to build up to a dramatic climax - do not usually appear until late in the junior stage. Last of all comes conscious interpretation for the benefit of an audience. In the early years, dramatic play is solitary and the small spontaneous groups that may develop among children of four and five years old are short-lived. Even when children have reached the stage of acting stories, they often prefer individual play, in which each is a hero or plays each character in turn, to the discipline of a group. There is a parallel development in the contribution made by speech. At first the play is expressed predominantly through movement; monologue and snatches of conversation and comment result from the movement rather than stimulate it. The older the children, the more coherent the group, the bigger becomes the part played by dialogue, though even children of eight and nine are often more concerned with what they are doing than with what they are saying, and represent characters by posture, gesture, facial expression and incident, and only subordinately by speech. When language is used by children who have thrown themselves into a part, it is often, if terse, very much to the point, and when children are playing stories which have moved them, vivid language from the story may overflow into the play. Before they leave the primary school, the abler children may be anxious to script their parts on special occasions, and some children will be writing complete short plays.

What has been described is the development of spontaneous dramatic play at home or in school, though anyone who recollects family charades will realise that even at home young children's play is often made to fit the designs of older children, and that the influence of a visit to the pantomime or of a television programme may be considerable. But to accept this is not to commend the practice, which survives in some infant schools, of

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expecting five-year-old children to act in a coherent group, nor to believe that time is well spent by children whose dramatisation of stories consists in repeating their teacher's phrases and gestures. Even in infant schools, children are sometimes expected to 'speak up' for the sake of a classroom audience which is often itself gaining nothing. In some junior schools, children are taught prematurely the conventions of playing to an audience, and spend much time in reading, and, for special occasions, in memorising, short plays of very doubtful value. In other schools drama is limited to the kind of dramatisation in which dramatic techniques are used as a means of consolidating knowledge.

A growing number of schools have become dissatisfied with the tradition of directed dramatisation and premature play-reading, and are trying to replace it by work which gives more rein to originality. In the nursery school there are few problems; dressing-up clothes are almost universally provided and chairs or tables can suffice for garage or engine or cinema queue. As children approach infant school age they appreciate a house or shop big enough to play in; they continue to enjoy dressing up and like to use dramatic properties. Often they need no more than a symbol, as long as the symbol is relevant: the long train for the queen, the apron for the nurse, the walking stick for the old man. Careful thought is needed about the decent housing of dressing-up clothes and properties, which might include some of a kind to stimulate the development of group play. For the rest, children need space for their play and the discreet word from the teacher which may help one child to sustain a role and encourage another child to experiment in a new part. Teachers should watch for the progress in dramatic play which can be expected as children move through the infant school.

Some teachers find that children who have begun to act stories enjoy miming a story as it is told to them. Teachers need, however, to be on their guard lest they play too much on children's emotions, and to be careful that their narration does not block the emergence of spontaneous speech. Children's use of words can be encouraged but should not be so emphasised that it cramps movement. Once children have begun to work in groups, stories can be discussed by the class and split into sections, each of which can be played by a group. The subject matter of religious instruction and history often supplies excellent material

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for dramatic purposes, provided that children are imaginatively involved in it.

The next phase is often associated with improvisation: an idea or theme is suggested which children work out for themselves in terms of movement and speech, the proportions of each varying very widely. Particularly when children have derived satisfaction from their improvisation or story-play, they may want to do further work on it. This is the stage when they will profit from discussions with their teachers about sequence, characterisation and dialogue. The result may be the transformation of an acted story into a coherent play, though the actors may know nothing of the unities of time or place and may approximate much more closely to the unrestricted sequence of folk drama. When dialogue has developed, some children may want to polish their plays by committing them to paper. They may also be becoming ready, by the top of the junior school, to interpret the plays of others. The difficulty is to find suitable scripts. Medieval mystery plays and mummers' plays are often more rewarding than plays written specifically for schools and are nearer to the children's own conventions. At this stage some children like to have an audience. A 'domestic' audience is best, an audience which is of the players' own level of maturity, or, if adult, one which does not distract the children and which understands the difference between children's plays and the theatre. Inventiveness can be deadened by an adult stage with a proscenium. Children need plenty of space for movement and can make good use of portable blocks to provide settings in which their action can be viewed from all sides.

The quality of dramatic work derives in part from the basic relationships in school, in part from all the other work which is going on in movement and in language. Training in exact and imaginative observation, nourishment with good literature, and the kind of atmosphere in which there is no self-consciousness, are as important as discussion on problems of a specifically dramatic kind. Throughout the primary school, the degree of children's absorption in their play-acting will be an essential element in any assessment of its worth, as also will be the extent to which the play contributes to a more sensitive understanding of the story or experience which it represents.

In no field of education are the teacher's personal influence, taste and values more important than in the arts, whose power

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to affect men's lives is greater than many suspect. Children are highly vulnerable - vulnerable in their sensitivity and in the quickness with which they form impressions - vulnerable in their lack of discrimination, which, if it leaves them exposed to what is good, leaves them also exposed to the evil and the shoddy. The not infrequent clash of standards between the outside world and the world of school presents many problems; but the main answer must lie in the quality of what is put before children in school, the quality of the experiences the children enjoy and of the learning which is gained from them, the quality of the teacher's speech, of the stories he tells and the poetry he reads. To this must be added the teacher's skill in drawing children's attention to what they as individuals most need. The teacher's concern for quality, and his understanding of children and their individual difficulties, are indeed the conditions for progress in the whole field of language, both at the primary stage and afterwards.