Hadow (1931)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Analysis, Preface, Introduction
Chapter 1 The history of the development of the conception of primary education
Chapter 2 The physical development of children between the ages of 7 and 11
Chapter 3 The mental development of children between the ages of 7 and 11
Chapter 4 The age limits for the upper stage of primary education
Chapter 5 The internal organisation of primary schools
Chapter 6 Retarded children in the primary school
Chapter 7 The curriculum of the primary school
Chapter 8 The staffing of primary schools and the training of teachers
Chapter 9 The premises and equipment of primary schools
Chapter 10 Examinations in primary schools
Chapter 11 Summary of principal conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 12 Suggestions on the curriculum of primary schools
Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II Physical development of 7-11 year olds (Harris)
Appendix III Mental development of 7-11 year olds (Burt)
Index

London: HM Stationery Office

APPENDIX III
[pages 254 - 279]

MEMORANDUM ON THE MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILDREN BEWEEN THE AGES OF SEVEN AND ELEVEN BY PROFESSOR CYRIL BURT DSc, PSYCHOLOGIST TO THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL

The years from seven to eleven or twelve might almost be termed the Dark Ages of childhood. Comparatively little is known of the characteristics distinguishing them. The mental peculiarities of puberty have repeatedly been investigated; more recently, much work has been done on the periods of early and later infancy. Stanley Hall has studied the adolescent; Gesell the baby; and Piaget the child of the infant school period. But no psychologist has hitherto concentrated specifically on the characteristics of the growing boy or girl from the age of 7 to the onset of puberty.

Textbooks on the general development of children still treat this period either as a colourless transitional stage with no peculiarities of its own, or else read into it certain distinctive features deduced from some hypothesis about the general character of mental growth. Nevertheless a considerable body of first-hand data now exists; only the material lies scattered in the pages of periodicals and monographs, and has never been brought together for study with this special period in view. Tests of specific mental capacities have been applied systematically to children of all ages; the results have been recorded separately for each year of the child's early life; but the conclusions have been studied rather from the point of view of the particular test than from the point of view of a particular epoch in the child's mental growth. Hence the results have never properly been collated or analysed; and it still remains an urgent problem for the future investigator to inquire what, if anything, distinguishes the mental life of the child at this stage.

The stages of mental growth. The traditional descriptions of mental growth divide the whole period from birth to maturity into a series of sharply demarcated stages. The limits of each stage and the designations employed vary from writer to writer. There is, however, on the whole a preference for a threefold subdivision. A critical change is supposed to overtake the child every seven years; and commonly each of the three intervening phases is further subdivided into two halves, so that in all six successive stages are generally recognised. (1) They might be arranged as follows:

The artificiality of the subdivisions. The chief fixed points in this scheme - the ages of 7 and 14 - are based on physiological rather than psychological changes - namely, the beginning of the second dentition and of puberty respectively. Careful statistical studies, however, show that these two changes are far more variable and indefinite than was originally assumed.

Several of the ages allotted coincide rather with external changes in the child's life than with internal changes. Thus, the age of 4 is approximately the age at which most children first go to school; the age of 7 has long been the accepted age for promotion from the infants' to the upper department; the age of 14 is the age at which the child leaves the elementary school; the age of 21 is the age at which the child ceases to be an infant in the eyes of the law. There can be little doubt that many of the new mental characteristics which appear soon after these ages are due to the external changes which then take place, much more than to any intrinsic principle of mental growth or to the sudden emergence of new faculties or interests.

It is convenient to retain these subdivisions. But the one fact that modern investigations reveal most clearly is the marked continuity of mental development. There are no sudden breaks; and it is to be observed that the suddenness with which these external changes are imposed on the child, so far from conforming to new needs or powers, may sometimes put a severe strain on his adaptability. The mental growth of the child is a fairly steady advance up an inclined plane, not a jerky ascent from one level to another by a series of sudden steps; and the lines drawn between the successive stages of mental growth are more or less artificial. When we think of what distinguishes the infant from the baby, or the youth from the infant, we are not contrasting the child just before the age of 7 with the child after the age of 7, but a child somewhere in the middle of the former period, aged 4 or 5 perhaps, with a child somewhere in the middle of the latter period, aged 8 or 9. With these reservations it may be fairly said that the period between seven and eleven displays features sufficiently characteristic to render it desirable, on psychological as well as on administrative grounds, to treat these years as marking a distinct stage in education.

General theories. One or two notable attempts have been made to bring the general course of mental development under the terms of a single formula. These hypotheses may be briefly stated here. We may then consider how far recent research provides evidence for their support.

(a) Stratification theory. If we accept the view that mental development is spasmodic or rhythmical, we could explain the several stages or steps as due to the emergence of new capacities. Thus many writers have assumed that certain faculties, supposed to be non-existent up to a certain age, suddenly emerge, and develop rapidly to a maximum. As a result, definite layers of mental life are laid down and consolidated, and later on new layers are superimposed on top of these. The prevailing view may be summarised as follows:

(i) During the first year of life mental development is held to consist mainly in the mastery of the primitive senses. The activities of the baby are limited in extent, and declared to be nutritive rather than muscular. But towards or soon after the age of 12 months, the powers of walking and of speech appear, and are rapidly perfected. Then, as the child begins to toddle about, handle things, and learn their names, he gradually extends his range of observation. Thus the period of early infancy is sometimes described as predominantly a period of sense-perception.

(ii) The period of later infancy is usually described as a period of motor activity rather than of sensory activity, of muscular development rather than of perceptual development. Now the child learns to control the actions of the finer muscles; he learns not merely to walk and talk, but to walk firmly, to speak clearly, to dance, sing, play active games, and above all to master the manipulative powers of the fingers. All this takes place during the period of the infant school, and thus the growing child should bring to the junior department steady limbs, well-trained fingers, an observant eye, quick hearing, and a nimble tongue.

(iii) The next phase is said to be characterised by a marked development of memory - of mechanical memory during the junior period and of logical memory during the senior period.

(iv) Finally adolescence is supposed to be characterised by the emergence of the faculty of reasoning, together with greatly heightened interest in the social, religious, and aesthetic aspects of life.

(b) Recapitulation theory. What determines the successive emergence of these different faculties and these various interests? The favourite explanation is that the development of the individual tends to reproduce in rapid and abbreviated form the evolution of the race. Stanley Hall, for example, has endeavoured to explain the supposed arrest of intellectual development between the ages of 7 and 10 by assuming that the child then reaches what was formerly the final stage of maturity for the pre-historic savage of the pigmy type - from whom he supposes civilised man of today to be descended.

Both theories have been accepted by those who have followed Stanley Hall and have been widely adopted in educational textbooks. (2) It is important, therefore, to realise that the present trend of psychological thought is working along lines which, on a priori grounds alone, must largely undermine these plausible generalisations. In the first place, the mind is no longer held to consist of distinct faculties. All intellectual operations, from sense-perception to memory and reasoning, are envisaged as consisting essentially in the association of sensory contents (percepts, images, and ideas) in systems more or less elaborately organised. In the second place, the assumption that the mental characteristics acquired by individuals are transmitted biologically to their progeny, is now held to be without foundation. Memories and habits, and the dexterity which comes from exercise and training, are not inherited: they have to be learnt afresh by each succeeding generation.

It is clear, then, that we can no longer follow the method of earlier psychologists, and deduce mental characteristics from fundamental assumptions as to the nature of physical, biological or mental development. Such deductions may prompt suggestive hypotheses for research or generalisation; but the distinctive features at each age must be discovered by a direct application of experimental tests, or of controlled statistical observation, to the study of psychological qualities at first hand.

General intelligence. The mental capacity which is of supreme importance for intellectual progress is intelligence. Intelligence, in the technical sense, may be defined as inborn, general, intellectual ability. Fortunately this central capacity is the one for which the most reliable tests exist and the one which has been most thoroughly tested and measured at every year of child life.

The curves published for the development of intelligence form practically ascending straight lines from the age of 3 to that of 12; then they show a sharp bend; and become practically horizontal from the age of 16 onwards. (3) This suggests that from the age of 5 to that of 12 the annual increments are about equal, but that with puberty the maturation of intelligence comes rapidly to an end. The majority of these curves have been obtained with the tests in the Binet-Simon Scale; but, since these tests have themselves been standardised on the assumption that the annual increment is equal, the inference is to some extent an argument in a circle. Nevertheless, even with tests in which the unit is independent of the standardisation of the test, the data indicate that - at any rate within the ages for which the test is suitable - growth is fairly uniform.

From the age of 5 to that of 7, girls are slightly superior to boys, the difference being about half a year. Towards the age of 9 or 10, boys, if anything, are temporarily superior; at the ages of 12 and 13 girls are once more better than boys. After puberty, the boys catch up once more; and little if any sex-difference can be established at later ages.

From the point of view of educational organisation, one of the most important facts revealed by intelligence tests is the wide range of individual differences, and its steady expansion from year to year. At the age of 5, children are spread out between the mental ages of about 3 and 7 - a total range of four or five years. By the age of 10 the range has doubled; and probably goes on enlarging until the end of puberty.

Older children, therefore, differ far more widely in intellectual capacity than younger children. During the infant period they can be grouped together without much regard to their different degrees of mental endowment. At the age of 8 or 9, however, to put together in a single room all those who are of the same age would be to organise a class that was extremely heterogeneous. By the age of 10, the children of a single age group must be spread over at least three different standards. And by the age of 12 the range has become so wide that a still more radical classification is imperative. Before this age is reached children need to be grouped according to their capacity, not merely in separate classes or standards, but in separate types of schools.

Special intellectual abilities. For most of the more important special abilities, standardised psychological tests have now been devised; and accurate measurements have been obtained by applying these tests to children at successive ages of school life. (4) No longer have we to content ourselves with vague impression or personal observation for judging the characteristics of any one period of development. The mental difference between one age and another can be precisely measured. The results so obtained may here be briefly reviewed.

The outstanding result is this. Between the ages of 7 and 11 all intellectual activities appear closely correlated one with another. Towards puberty, indeed, these intercorrelations tend to diminish. But, during the period with which we are concerned, one central, underlying factor tends to determine the general level of the child's ability. This discovery seems of itself to disprove the older view that special intellectual capacities emerge suddenly at different ages, or develop more rapidly at one period than at others. The mere fact that one such fundamental function underlies all concrete intellectual activities, and determines their efficiency, is presumptive evidence against the view that mental development could consist in the successive appearance of a number of isolated faculties one after the other.

The essential characteristics of sense-perception exhibit but little change during the school period. They are the activities which mature earliest; and, during the stage with which we are concerned, probably change less than any other intellectual process. Nevertheless, the age norms lately obtained with standardised tests show that in the two senses which are most important for the traditional work of the school - sight and hearing - the power of fine discrimination undoubtedly improves.

Vision. The eye of the child is an imperfect organ; it is, during earlier years, naturally under-focused, and ill adapted for close work such as reading and writing. With age the amount of normal vision steadily improves: on first coming up from the infants' department about one child in three has normal vision; before leaving the public elementary school about half the children have normal vision. At the same time, however, the percentage of grave defects greatly increases. Thus, although on the average there is a gradual improvement in the acuity of vision (due no doubt to the development of the eyeball and to general training), there is among a limited number a marked deterioration (due doubtless to pathological causes, some perhaps induced or at any rate aggravated by the school conditions). In the infants' school the commonest defect is hypermetropia or longsightedness; but in the upper department myopia or shortsightedness becomes increasingly frequent. The child's sight not only improves for near objects; but clear vision tends, in many individuals, to become limited to objects close to the eye. These facts have a direct bearing upon the reading materials which the child is required to use. Up to the age of 7 the letters should be large: the minimum height of the face of the short letters should be about 3mm. From the age of 8 to 11 the height may be reduced to about 2mm. From the age of 12 onwards the child can read with ease a good ordinary type suitable for the adult, say about 1.5 mm.

Defects of visual acuity are somewhat commoner among girls at this age. Their colour discrimination, however, is much superior; and colour blindness, comparatively frequent among boys, is extremely rare among girls.

Hearing. The available data indicate that by the age of 7 auditory acuity is practically mature. It is true that from the age of 7 to that of 12 the actual figures show a slight improvement; probably, however, this is mainly due, not to any change in the sense organ itself, but to increased ability to understand and undertake the test. The infectious ailments of early childhood, such as measles and scarlatina, are responsible for a large proportion of the increase in grave defects (e.g. partial or total deafness) manifested in earlier years. Medical treatment of such conditions as adenoids and catarrh or suppuration of the middle ear, explains the subsequent decrease. Much deafness, however, still obtains which is definitely preventable; and its prevention will depend not merely on the results of brief medical examinations at the beginning or end of the period, but upon the alertness of the teacher in watching for mild and intermittent symptoms from the earliest years. Undetected visual defects in the infants' school and undetected auditory defects in the junior department are responsible for much educational backwardness later on.

The discrimination of pitch, as distinct from the mere capacity to hear faint sounds, shows a more steady improvement. It has often been argued that young children at the age of 7 or 8 cannot appreciate tones with sufficient accuracy to make it worth while to attempt any musical education until a later age. Tests of auditory discrimination dispose of this argument. Certainly, at the age of 6 children can barely discriminate 12/32 of a tone, i.e. not much less than a semitone, Their discrimination, however, rapidly improves to about a quarter tone (9/32) at the age of 7, and 5/32 at the age of 11. The inaccurate singing of children at the age of 8 is thus due more to poor muscular control and lack of training than to auditory incapacity; and we may conclude that the pupils entering a junior school are fully capable of the tasks ordinarily required of them in musical instruction.

All investigators except Seashore (one of the most careful investigators of the musical capacities of children) agree that in pitch discrimination girls are slightly superior to boys. This certainly holds good of children tested in Oxford, London, and Liverpool.

During the greater part of the junior school period, harmony does not appeal to the child so much as melody, nor melody so much as rhythm. His favourite rhythm, developing as it does from the natural swing of the limbs as in walking, is based on duple time rather than on triple time, on the march rather than on the waltz; and the major key is almost always preferred to the minor. (5)

Touch. The sense of touch is one of the few capacities in which children are definitely superior to adults. It is broadly true to say that between the ages of 7 and 17 touch discrimination degenerates by about one half. From the age of 8 onwards girls become increasingly superior to boys in this form of sense discrimination.

Muscle sense. There is a sixth sense which is of great importance for practical work in school, namely, the so-called muscle sense. It is through this sense that we appreciate movement and position in our limbs, hands, and fingers. The usual way of testing it is to employ a graded series of weights; it does not necessarily follow, however, that other forms of muscular discrimination are correlated with ability in this test. Using tests such as these one or two earlier investigators concluded that in muscular discrimination 'the younger children were almost equal to the older ones, and both were not far from adults'. More elaborate investigations in America, however, seem to show that a steady improvement continues from the age of 7 up to the age of 12 or 13, when boys and girls can distinguish differences which are only half the size of those distinguishable at the age of 7. All investigators find boys superior to girls in these tests, at any rate between the ages of 8 and 11. (6)

The refinement of the muscle sense is an essential factor in the improvement of manual dexterity - an improvement which is a great feature of the years from 7 to 11. Possibly because the sensations received from the muscles and joints are so dim and vague, possibly, too, because they find no name or place in the traditional list of the five human senses, the muscle sense is greatly neglected. It is capable of extremely delicate training; and more should be done at this period towards cultivating it.

The young child gains far more knowledge of the external world through this sense than does the adult. For him immediate contact, and the experiences of movement, weight, resistance, and relative position, ascertained through so-called 'touch', are of supreme significance and interest. Hence object lessons and concrete demonstrations should consist in allowing the child not merely to gaze but also to feel, handle, and manipulate. The label and the injunction 'Please do not touch' should be discarded at this age.

Muscular strength. On the whole, capacity for movement develops later than capacity for sensation. Sheer strength increases far more rapidly towards the end of the school period than towards the beginning. In tests of grip, for example, there is a moderately rapid improvement from the age of 4 to that of about 6 or 7; but from the age of 7 to that of 12 the improvement is decidedly slower - very slow indeed compared with the rapid increase in gripping-power from the age of 12 to that of 15 (in girls) or that of 17 (in boys).

Even at these early years boys show more muscular strength than girls. The difference, however, is very small compared to that obtaining in later years. The sex difference in muscular endurance has also begun to show itself by this period. Accordingly, although within the classroom the two sexes may be educated at this age along similar lines, outside the classroom - particularly in games and physical feats - the sex difference cannot be ignored.

Speed. In speed of movement (as tested, for example, by rate of tapping) there is a fairly steady improvement from the age of 6 to that of 18. The figures suggest that speed increases most between the ages of 9 and 11, and that about puberty there may even be a slight drop. These results are corroborated by tests of speed of writing: this increases more rapidly after the age of 7 than before, and most rapidly of all between the ages of 7 and 10.

Dexterity. With tests of manual dexterity, sufficient data have not yet been obtained to determine the yearly increments clearly. From the age of about 5 up to that of 9 there appears to be a marked improvement; but thereafter the improvement seems to diminish. Towards puberty, indeed, there seems to be a definite retrogression. There is no clear or consistent sex difference at this age. If anything in fine finger-work (e.g. neat writing) girls are perhaps a little more dextrous. Boys are rather better at drawing, at any rate before puberty.

During the infant stage the child is learning to control the larger muscles of the trunk and limbs; during the junior period he is learning to control the finer muscles - those of the eye, of the tongue, and above all of the fingers. The use of the eye in reading and in active observation, the use of the tongue in clear and expressive speech, the use of the fingers in simple arts and crafts of every kind - this should be among the threefold aim of the school curriculum for boys and girls at this stage. The theory, alluded to above, that the infant stage and not the junior stage is the epoch of motor activity is gravely mistaken; and if it leads to or supports the view that handwork is work for juniors and not for infants, it is likely to do much harm. All through the junior period children are pre-eminently active, and learn by doing; at this stage, therefore, so far as possible, every subject might be taught through active work rather than through mere passive reception. And it must be remembered that the young child, unlike the older child, is still far more interested in the actual job in hand than in the acquisition of dexterity or new forms of skill as such.

The higher intellectual capacities are more vaguely defined. Standardised tests have not as yet been used on any extensive scale; and less reliable data are at present available.

Attention. For the various aspects of what is loosely called attention innumerable tests have been devised. Perhaps the most definite are the tests for the scope of attention.

The limited scope of attention proves to be one of the main intellectual differences between the child of 7 and the child of 14. A time-honoured question, put again and again to the psychologist, is this: to how many things can a child attend at once - to one thing only or to several? The answer, for a child as well as for an adult, is simple: we can attend to as many things as we like, provided they are so organised as to form a single whole. It is in this capacity for mental organisation - for 'noetic synthesis' as it is sometimes called - that the young child is chiefly lacking.

The limits of his apprehension are narrowed to a point which few teachers ordinarily realise. For a child to apperceive any group of ideas - for him to attend to them, that is, as forming a single unitary whole and conveying a systematised meaning - the number of ideas must be extremely few, and the scheme according to which they are combined must be extremely simple.

Other tests of attention are concerned, not with its scope, but with its duration. The child's power of sustaining voluntary attention increases rapidly from the age of 7 to that of 11. Nevertheless, the traditional work of the lower standards still overestimates that power. There is still a tendency to expect the child to sit motionless for long periods listening to protracted discourses, or to keep him bending over his desk, working out long sums or reading lengthy paragraphs. If the efforts of concentration are made brief but intense, it will be found that the child's intellectual penetration is far sharper than is ordinarily assumed. What is presented to him, therefore, whether by way of oral instruction, reading matter, or arithmetical exercises, should be limited to a few simple facts or to two or three short steps. The actual length of the total lesson does not matter so much, so long as it is broken up into small digestible morsels. If, during the course of it, there is plenty of change, and the child is allowed ample freedom to use his hands, freedom to move about the room, freedom to talk if he wishes, his attention will keep renewing itself. As he grows older, however, and reaches the end of the junior period, the child may well be practised in the power of maintaining attention by a continuous effort of will - learning to keep steadily at stiff tasks even when interest is waning and the pleasure of novelty has worn off.

Fatigue and boredom. At these ages the young child is singularly tireless. What the teacher takes to be mental fatigue is usually nothing but boredom. It is not the child's capacity but the child's interest that quickly becomes exhausted.

The lessons in which so-called mental fatigue is likely to show itself most are first of all arithmetic, and secondly those in which the fine muscles of the fingers and eye are over-strained, such as prolonged reading and writing. In these directions, therefore, the tasks ordinarily set to the child in existing syllabuses might well be eased; and the burden of long sums, of lengthy compositions and dictations, and of memory drill on tables or on spelling might well be lightened.

The older medical and psychological textbooks are full of warnings against the dangers of overworking young people at this tender age. Yet, between the ages of 7 and 11, genuine instances of overwork are exceedingly rare; and serious harm hardly ever appears as a result of excessive intellectual activity. The damage, if any, is likely to be physical in origin rather than mental - due to lack of exercise and fresh air, and to the maintenance of an unnatural sedentary posture. Even later the blame, as a rule, has still to be laid on emotional rather than intellectual causes: the symptoms of over-pressure spring, not from excessive brain-work, but from worry about examinations, strained relations at home, and powerful disturbances of feeling of various kinds. The child of the junior school, however, is less sensitive to these emotional troubles than the young adolescent.

Memory. Tests yield no evidence for any remarkable acceleration in power to memorise at the beginning of the junior school period. Memory goes on improving, but it improves at a fairly even rate. The child's memory appears strong at this period only because his higher intellectual capacities are comparatively undeveloped or unused. It is far easier for a teacher to get the young child to learn a fact by rote than to get him to understand its causes, and rediscover it when he wants to recall it, by the aid of reasoning from experience or first principles: hence the preference for memory work is the teacher's rather than the child's. Certainly, at the earlier stages, i.e. up to the age of about 8 or 9, the tiny child shows a singular fondness for mechanical reiteration, for routine-like repetition, and for an almost obsessive performance of the same act over and over again. In Standards I and II, therefore, advantage may still be taken of this tendency; and the reaction against mechanical memorisation must not be allowed to go too far. But by the age of 9 the mechanical methods of memorisation are being superseded by intelligent methods; and the teacher should take due note of this change.

Nevertheless, the junior school is undoubtedly the place where the child must finally master the three Rs. The mechanical elements of reading, writing (including spelling), and arithmetic, must be so thoroughly learnt that by the time the child is transferred to the secondary or post-primary school they come to him automatically, and his attention is left free to turn itself to higher things. Hence a certain amount of sheer memorisation will be indispensable at this stage. At the same time, much of the present drill and drudgery may be diminished, and memorisation may be greatly facilitated if a proper interest be stimulated in what is to be memorised, and if appropriate incentives be provided for the task of memorisation.

(i) Reproductive imagination. A good deal of experimental work has been done upon the child's capacity for memorising material, according as it is presented or recalled in different sensory terms - through the eye, through the ear, through touch or the muscle sense. During the later stage of primary education the majority of pupils appear to be visualisers. They imagine things with the mind's eye. If the teacher could penetrate into the consciousness of such a child, he would find the child's thoughts unrolling themselves before him rather like a cinematographic film. Within the teacher's mind the film is probably a talking film, and the film itself is less clear than the talk - the chief talker being the teacher himself. And the teacher is too apt to talk out his thoughts before the child much as he talks them over to himself without troubling to call up concrete visible pictures.

What is presented or suggested to the child of this age, then, should be presented or suggested in concrete, pictorial, and visible form. Towards adolescence there seems no doubt that the power, or at any rate the habit of visualisation, tends to diminish; and the more intelligent children tend to think in terms of words rather than in terms of concrete images. How far this is due to the verbal and bookish character of current instruction need not be discussed here. But the teacher who deals with boys or girls of 8 or 9 must bear constantly in mind that, while he himself finds it easy to think in verbal terms, they require rather to think in terms of concrete things and of visual images. Throughout this period the school subjects and their presentation must be kept closely related to the child's concrete everyday knowledge and his own immediate experience.

In the ordinary timetable the most abstract subject is arithmetic; and I believe every psychologist would strongly plead that the amount of arithmetic usually set at this period should be reduced. The child should not be troubled with quantities, or fractions of quantities, which he cannot possibly visualise; and it should be remembered that, so long as the arithmetical problems are such as naturally arise out of his own ordinary activities (shopping or handwork, for example), mental work is for him less abstract than work on paper.

(ii) Constructive imagination. Imagination, in the ordinary sense of the word - the exercise of creative as distinct from reproductive imagination, should undoubtedly be cultivated during this period. In scientific, as well as in literary or artistic work, it will be found that, even at this early stage, the child's imagination is quite capable of taking intellectual flights, if only what is to be imagined can be pictured in concrete form. But, as the child grows from an infant into a junior, it is important first of all to control and stabilise his gift of fantasy. He should be gently brought down from the world of private make-believe to the world of matter-of-fact. The recrudescence of fantasy, that will overtake him later on during adolescence, will lose its risks, if close contact be established with reality at this stage.

(iii) Contents of the junior's mind. With what particular images, then, is the young mind stored? What ideas has he already gathered from the life around him?

One of the earliest experiments carried out by German psychologists consisted in taking a careful inventory of the ideas familiar to young children when they entered the kindergarten or the primary school. Such investigations always reveal amazing variations, and a surprising number of gaps, in the child's general information. Stanley Hall, for example, repeating the experiment with Boston children of 6 to 7 years of age, gives the following figures: 54 per cent of the children do not know what a sheep is like; 20 per cent have never seen a butterfly; 80 per cent do not know what a beehive is, where the lungs are, what dew is, or a triangle or an island; 90 per cent do not know the origin of flour, of cotton things or of leather things; over 50 per cent do not know the origin of butter, bricks, or wooden things: and so on through a hundred or more items. (7)

With London children of the age of 7 at the present day these percentages would be reduced by more than half. But it may be safely said that the working contents of the average child's mind, on entering the upper department of the primary school, are likely to be far more limited than most teachers assume. Two points are clearly brought out by such inquiries. First, during these earlier years, the greater part of the imagery with which children do their thinking has been acquired not in school, but out of it. Secondly, however varied or instructive may be the child's environment, many things may pass before his eyes day after day and still remain unnoticed. Evidently, therefore, at this stage it will not be sufficient to use names of common everyday things and assume that the child at once calls up a clear and concrete picture of the things for which the names stand.

(i) Perception of relations. There is a widespread notion that during these early years the child cannot reason. Reasoning is supposed to be a faculty which only emerges towards adolescence. Reasoning, argues Stanley Hall, is the mental capacity which evolved last of all in the history of the race, and consequently it appears last of all in the development of the individual. 'Children', he writes, 'cannot reason much beyond their experience and environment until puberty'. What, then, is meant by reasoning? We no longer regard it as a new and unanalysable faculty. Thanks to recent research its detailed nature is now well understood. (8)

Reasoning depends essentially upon the perception of relations. Both memory and reasoning work through associations. But in memory the association between the facts is not itself made conscious or explicit; in reasoning, the child not only associates two things, but also clearly perceives the relation between them.

The commoner and simpler relations - those of space, time, number. quantity, similarity, contrast, and the like - can all be grasped by the child before the age of 7, provided only the material is made sufficiently simple and sufficiently familiar, and adapted to his limited powers of observation. (9) It is not, however, until a somewhat later age that the child begins to observe these relations spontaneously. His progress in this respect is easily tested by what are technically known as tests of observation and testimony. Binet's familiar test of describing a picture brings out clearly several distinct stages. At the age of 3 or 4 the child merely enumerates isolated objects or persons that he sees in the picture; by the age of 6, however, the child describes the actions of the person. Colours are sometimes noticed as early as 7; but other qualities are not often mentioned until much later. By the age of 8 or 9 the child begins to notice the spatial and even the numerical relations of what he sees in the picture; temporal relations are not noticed until a later stage, and causal relations (as a rule) not until 12 or 13. And only then does the child relate the isolated items, not merely with each other, but with the central motive of the whole, organising it mentally as a self-contained and rational unity. Thus it is not until the age of thirteen that the child (in Binet's phrase) genuinely 'interprets' the picture. Binet thus distinguishes three stages: the infant is an 'enumerator'; the junior a 'describer' or 'relater' (in both senses of the word 'relate'); and the senior an 'interpreter'.

(ii) Deductive reasoning. Reasoning, however, does not depend merely upon the perception of a relation, but upon the perception of relations between relations. This involves a power to analyse out a fairly complex presentation, and to grasp its organisation as a system of logically related ideas. What limits the child's ability to reason, therefore, is not so much his inability to apprehend logical relations as his inability to apprehend ideational systems of more than a low degree of complexity. Recent experiments with tests of reasoning in London schools show clearly that, contrary to earlier presuppositions, all the elementary mental mechanisms essential to formal reasoning are present before the child leaves the infants' department, i.e. by the mental age of 7, if not somewhat before. (10)Development consists primarily in an increase in the extent and variety of the subject matter to which those mechanisms can be applied, and in an increase in the precision and elaboration with which those mechanisms can operate.

I am of opinion, then, that from the age of seven onwards the average child can and should be taught to think scientifically and to argue logically. The only qualification is that the logical steps must be extremely few, rarely more than one or two at the outset, and that the scientific conceptions put before him must be such as he can clearly grasp.

For example, even at the age of 7 (perhaps before), the child is already capable of reasoning about numerical relations so long as the numbers are small and the problems are simple. Hence I would suggest that a good many of the facts which at present are usually memorised in the form of tables should first be presented to the child as discoveries that he himself can make about the nature of numbers; and to some extent he should be encouraged to assist his mechanical memory by reasoning out these facts afresh, as he requires them, instead of relying upon mere parrot-work. At the same time, because of their abstract and intellectualistic nature, such exercises should be kept to a minimum.

Space relations are more concrete. Embodied in actual objects or diagrams, attention can fix and fasten on them easily; and, even without actual lines or diagrams, such relations can be visualised easily. Hence I would suggest that far more use might be made of simple geometrical reasoning, at any rate, with the nine year olds and ten year olds. On the other hand, although time is one-dimensional and space is tri-dimensional, problems in time seem more difficult for juniors than equivalent problems expressed in terms of space.

Causation can best be taught in the first instance in terms of mechanical operations, beginning with working models that the child himself operates. The principle of cause and effect has, until late, been singularly neglected in elementary instruction. It will have to be introduced, first of all, in connection with nature study and the physical science of everyday life rather than (as has of late been the tendency) in connection with geography or history. The child's appreciation of temporal sequence, of cause and effect, and his experience of the interactions of human beings in society, are so limited that much that is at present given to him in the shape of history is really beyond his grasp until a later stage. Similarly geography must still be presented to him rather in its descriptive aspects than in its scientific aspects. This does not mean that the child's memory is to be burdened with dates, place names, geographical facts and historical events, which any intelligent adult would search for in a book of reference, not in his own memory. At present the aim is to fill his imagination with ideas, not his memory with facts, and above all to enable him to see the world around with an understanding eye. History, geography, nature study and informational subjects generally, should start from the concrete things of daily life with which the child is already familiar.

(iii) Inductive reasoning. Because it is usually a more concrete form of reasoning, induction is often easier for the child than deduction. Beyond a doubt, far more use of it should be made in education; and the child should be taught to apply it to problems of everyday life. Inductive reasoning (including reasoning by elimination of alternative hypotheses) is well within the child's grasp even at the early age of 8.

(iv) Logical criticism. So far I have discussed what might be termed constructive reasoning. Contrary to what might be anticipated, destructive or critical reasoning develops later in the child than constructive. The detection of 'absurdities' does not appear in Binet's scale of tests until the age of 11. Thus it is not until after the close of the junior period that a boy can point out the inconsequence of short statements like the following: 'I have three brothers. Jack, Tom. and myself'. 'I know an easy road to town which is downhill all the way there and downhill all the way back'. Teachers will be greatly surprised if they put this problem to their pupils: 'Captain Cook made three voyages round the world. In one of these voyages he was killed by savages. Which voyage was it - the first, the second, or the third?' Dr Ballard, who has widely applied this test problem, points out that, even at the age of 13, 40 per cent of the children fail to give the right answer (of course, with a sufficient explanation to show that the answer is not a blind guess). (11)

Careful testing shows that a few of the simplest logical fallacies (such as illicit process, undistributed middle, petitio principii) can be detected even by the age of 8 or 9, provided the instances are sufficiently glaring or the children have had a little practice. Certainly, both boys and girls will gain amusement and profit from critical exercises on what, to an educated adult, would seem patent non-sequiturs, But until he reaches the senior age the average child remains quite blind to the more subtle forms of fallacious reasoning. (12) Indeed, at this age, the majority of appeals to reason which parents and teachers are so constantly making (e.g. in their ethical arguments) leave the child quite unaffected intellectually or else provoke quibbles and sophistications of whose fallacy the child is unaware. (13)

In the past both our psychological theories and our educational practice have been excessively intellectualistic. Intellectual processes will seldom function to their full capacity unless there is an emotional incentive behind them. The child never works so well as when he is enthusiastically interested. Thus one of the most important groups of characteristics which the teacher must take into account are the child's own natural interests. How do children's interests differ from age to age? Are there any predominant interests which are specifically characteristic of the junior period? Are there other interests which have either died out or have not yet emerged, and to which, therefore, an appeal will be made in vain? And how can the child's spontaneous interests be made the basis and the motive for the higher interests which the child would not achieve without the teacher's aid?

In man certain interests seem to be universal, common to the race, and inherited by each individual; and, since they are not all present at birth, the psychologist has assumed that these interests mature, in a fixed order and at fairly definite dates, as a result of the natural growth of the mind.

The simplest theory propounded explaining the nature and appearance of these spontaneous interests is the theory of human instincts. The popular view is that animals are guided by instincts instead of reason; and that man is guided by reason instead of instincts. The evolutionary psychology of today believes that man has received from his primitive ancestors instinctive tendencies similar to those inherited by all the higher mammals and adapted primarily for wild life in a pre-civilised condition. Thus the interests which appear spontaneously in the child result from the ripening of certain inborn nervous mechanisms within the brain, not unlike the mechanisms which subserve the simple reflex actions, but far more rich and complicated.

This theory has been most fully expounded by McDougall. McDougall and those who follow him point out that an instinct must include, not merely an innate tendency to carry out certain coordinated actions (chasing, attacking, running away, and the like), but also an innate tendency to perceive and pay attention to objects or situations of particular kinds - the natural prey or food of the species, its natural foes, its defenceless offspring, the opposite sex, etc. Further, attention to the object is heightened, and the ensuing action rendered more vigorous, by the fact that every instinct, when excited, releases a fund of emotion.

The lists of human instincts, with their correlated emotions, vary from one author to another. Those most commonly given are the following: feeding; sorrow and crying; joy with smiling and laughter; fear and the instinct of escape; anger and the fighting instinct; tenderness (or love) and the protective (or parental) instinct; the herd instinct and the social feelings; self-assertion (pride) and the instinct to domineer or lead; self-submission (humility) and the instinct to accept a lead; the hunting, wandering, acquisitive, and constructive instincts; curiosity and the instinct of investigation; disgust and the instinct of aversion; and finally the sex instinct. In their simpler forms a large number of these instincts, together with the corresponding emotions, appear very soon after birth - for example, feeding and crying out; others, like the sex instinct, do not ripen until a much later date. (14)

Many investigations have been undertaken to discover what are the natural stimuli for these primitive interests and what is the mode and time of their manifestation. The favourite method of inquiry (not a very reliable one) has been the questionnaire.

Originally the aim of these inquiries was to discover the age at which every interest first appears. First appearance, however, turns out to to be a very elusive point. Accordingly, subsequent investigators have looked chiefly at the age when the interest rises to its maximum. Yet it is doubtful whether even this is an easier point to ascertain. The more trustworthy curves show no sharp peaks; and, in the whole series of inquiries, one of the most striking results is the continuity of mental development. On the emotional side as on the intellectual, there are no sudden breaks and no abrupt transitions.

Thanks to the results so far collected, a fairly definite sequence is undoubtedly discernible in many of the commoner interests shown by children as they grow up from babyhood to maturity. Psychologists have imagined a parallel between the order in which such interests develop in the individual and the order in which they have appeared during the evolution of the race. This theory of parallelism is an extension of the recapitulation theory described above. From this wider generalisation many have ventured to fill in the gaps, deducing the missing details from the general course of civilisation, and often omitting to verify the deduction by direct observation or experiment on the child himself. And then, in accordance with this theory, they have suggested that the curricula should be reorganised, and have prescribed the successive ages at which particular subjects should be introduced and the mode in which those subjects should be presented.

These proposals rest on what is known as the hypothesis of 'culture epochs' - a hypothesis applied to education by Herbart and his followers. It assumes that, in the evolution of the race, the successive stages of culture develop, as a result of some intrinsic impulse, everywhere in the same order; and it is argued that the most natural form of education is one which closely follows this order in dealing with the individual child. 'Education', says Spencer, 'should reproduce in little the history of man's civilisation'. (15)

The stages suggested are not unlike those enumerated above in discussing intellectual development.

From birth up to the age of about 7 or 8 the development of the child is compared with the gradual evolution of the primates, from the level of the arboreal ape up to that of man of the old stone age.

(a) Babyhood. The earliest interests of the tiny babe are, as we have seen, nutritional. For long he is mainly absorbed in the sensations he gets from his own body - particularly during simple physiological processes. But very soon he seeks to make contact with the outside world. Sounds, bright lights and moving objects around him early attract his attention. So far as the material world is concerned, he is interested primarily in its simple sensory aspects, and particularly in things that he can see, seize, pick up, and convey to the mouth. So far as the social world is concerned, his emotions are primarily concentrated on the few persons that immediately surround him - first of all his mother or nurse, and later on his father, and his brothers and sisters. The early attitude that he develops towards his parents is apt to influence very profoundly his relations with all persons with whom he comes into emotional contact later on - particularly his teachers.

(b) Infant school period. During the infant school period the child's interests have been broadly described as at once general and subjective. (16) As yet the child's activities show but little specialisation, such as would be conferred by definite aims or purposes; his interests in the outer world are personal rather than impersonal, and his inquiries into things always have a tacit relation to himself or his immediate needs. Few if any specialised instincts emerge during this period - at any rate none so well defined as the mechanism for walking or talking during the previous stage, or that for sex reproduction later on. The only instinctive activity that might be picked out as more characteristic than the rest is curiosity. The child loves to explore cupboards, to pull out drawers, to look inside a watch 'to see the wheels go round', to tear things to pieces 'to see what happens', to tug wings off flies 'to see what they will do'; and he pours out a ceaseless spate of questions.

Left to himself the infant's play shows towards the end of this period the germs of increasing purpose; but the purpose is mainly acquired by imitating adult behaviour, and, to that end, developing make-believe on a vast scale. Collaboration in play begins at about the age of 5; but there is not much genuine cooperation until 7. He plays in the company of others, but he seldom plays with others; and the conversation of infants amongst themselves, as Piaget's brilliant studies have shown, evinces little real exchange of thought. (17) The child is as yet too self-centred to take more than a momentary interest in the thoughts and doings of his fellows, except so far as they control or interfere with his own. The first beginnings of cooperative play are shown in such games as those of 'families' or 'school' played by children (girls more often than boys) towards the beginning of the junior period.

From 7 onwards interests become more objective and more specialised. The child becomes less and less absorbed in his personal sensations and movements as such; his attention is attracted more and more by definite objects, by particular occupations, and by specific branches of knowledge, and by problems of activity increasingly restricted and defined. In noting the spontaneous play of children at this stage many observers have thought that they detected the emergence of definite instincts surviving from prehistoric times.

During the transition from the previous period to the present, one or two special types of game become exceedingly common. Just before the age of 7, games of making houses and of hiding come rapidly to a climax; and this is supposed to correspond to the stage of the cave dwellers. Soon after 7 (or perhaps a little before) playing with dolls appears to reach a climax; and this in turn is supposed to correspond in the history of the race with the beginnings of organised family life.

By the age of 8, however, the more babyish games of mimicking adults, making houses and nursing dolls are already beginning rapidly to decline. The recapitulationists assume that this marks an intrinsic advance towards a new stage of life. More probably the promotion from the infants' school to the upper school makes the child ashamed of infantile forms of play.

The more primitive interests, however, should not be repressed too suddenly. Instead of being abruptly swept away, they may well be elaborated and developed; and the energy underlying them made to provide enthusiasm for matters more advanced. Questioning, for example, should not be suppressed, but positively encouraged. Curiosity is the one instinct which directly stimulates the desire for knowledge; hence to repress spontaneous curiosity is the most foolish form of discipline an educator can practise. The doll, instead of being ridiculed as a babyish toy, may be converted into a model infant; and the growing girl taught the elements of mothercraft in a concrete and practical fashion. Fifty years ago a toy engine (usually a wooden imitation pulled on a string) was a thing every self-respecting boy of 10 would scorn, but nowadays good small working models of railways, submarines, and aeroplanes can be procured; and will not only fascinate the 10 year old, but serve as the channel for discovering valuable principles of physics and mechanics. 'Educative toys' and 'didactic apparatus' (called, let us hope, by some other name) may be devised by ingenious teachers to illustrate the working of scientific principles of every kind: and will lead on to a taste for books on inventions and discoveries - books, as we shall see in a moment, which may easily take the favourite place with the bright boy of 10 or upwards.

At this stage one widely spreading interest now comes rapidly and remarkably to the fore, and remains one of the most characteristic features of the whole period. This is the interest in making things. It has all the characteristics of an instinctive urge.

About constructive activities little is said in the questionnaire collected by Stanley Hall and his school. But in the replies that I have obtained for London children, 'making things' is reported as one of the commonest forms of recreation at every year from the age of 9 to 12. It is undoubtedly an instinct that might well be exploited, even more freely than at present, by the teacher and the syllabus of the junior school. It should not be limited to an occasional lesson in handwork, but pervade almost the whole of the timetable.

From 7 on to puberty the thoroughgoing recapitulationists distinguish four successive phases which roughly correspond with the four stages in the scheme set out above. These they term, somewhat fancifully, the hunting, the pastoral, the agricultural, and the commercial phases, respectively. (18) Unfortunately, the actual facts collected by this group of psychologists do not precisely fit the order which they have thus laid down. But undoubtedly, during the first of these periods - the junior period - many of the games of the young child resemble the occupations of primitive man during the hunting and combative epochs, while the games of the senior and adolescent stages are suggestive of the more serious occupations of agricultural or commercial communities with their more elaborate social organisations.

(a) Junior stage. If the infant stage is the period of solitary play, and the senior and adolescent stage the period of gregarious play, the intervening epoch - the junior stage - is the period of individualistic play. The child still does not, strictly speaking, play with others; he plays against others. Games of chase, which later on turn into enterprises of depredation, are a prominent feature at this age, particularly with boys. Anything that increases his speed is welcomed: flying by on a scooter, dashing off on roller skates, and (when parents and roads permit) coasting at top speed on a fairy cycle, will occupy the child for hours. Throwing things, aiming things, and above all games with balls, begin to be well-marked activities. The country lad goes off fishing in streams, climbing trees for apples and nuts, knocking down conkers, and rifling bird nests for eggs. All this is presumed to correspond to the hunting stage of primitive life.

Presently, competitive games come strongly to the fore; and the spirit of rivalry and emulation - beating one's own record as well as one's neighbour's - might even be at times exploited as a wholesome incentive in the classroom. Towards the age of 10 the pugnacious impulses grow stronger and stronger: wrestling, boxing, fighting become more and more frequent; and the child is now supposed to advance to the stage of the warlike tribes. Games of 'King of the Castle', Redskin raids, mimic combats with sticks and toy pistols, usher in this phase; and now is the age when stories and films of fights and all forms of adventure have the strongest appeal. Well-told stories of great heroes, of hand to hand combats, and later on of battles by land and sea and the bravery of explorers and discoverers, can serve to interest the child in some of the more dramatic events and personages of history.

With the girls the pugnacious instincts are less violent; and the maternal instinct remains well to the fore. Girls are fond of stories where children themselves are the heroes or even the victims, though the modern young girl is secretly growing more and more to relish the typical boy's story. In girls the self-assertive instincts tend to snow themselves in a different way. They love to dress up, pose before an audience, dance, and recite. These histrionic tendencies can be exploited to illustrate both history and literature. Already dramatic performances figure as solemn events in many senior schools; but even at an early stage, and in the form of hastily improvised 'scenettes', they might be introduced on a less pretentious scale in the junior classroom. Possibly it is code and tradition, quite as much as lack of aptitude among the boys, that prevent this form of the instinct of self-display being so manifest in the male sex.

Towards the age of 9 the child takes more and more to outdoor life. He is still a restless, active creature: but owing to his increasing strength, size and independence, he demands - and should be given - a wider radius of movement. Wandering and truancy are the commonest delinquencies. Here the migratory instinct is supposed to be developing and the child is said to be advancing towards the stage of the pastoral nomads. I fancy that the statistical increase in truancy and wandering at this stage is due mainly to the fact that, after the boy leaves the infants' school, the mother no longer considers it necessary to escort him to and from school or to shut him up indoors. Undoubtedly, however, the child now seeks to explore his concrete environment further afield. Hence he will be interested in the topography of his own immediate neighbourhood; and love expeditions to places of interest. If geography were treated as a kind of imaginary tour undertaken by the child himself, and if emphasis were laid not only on the strange peoples that he would meet but also upon the strange plants and fruits and animals, then the geography lesson, instead of being one of the most unpopular, might become, at any rate with the boys, almost the favourite.

(i) The junior child's interests as shown by his spontaneous handwork. These new interests are largely reflected in the special constructive activities to which the child takes at this period. As shown by the pastimes of the country child, much that the boy, left to himself, would make at this period would consist of tools and weapons to aid him in his hunting enterprises and games of combat - bows and arrows, popguns, catapults, fishing tackle and the like. The town boy makes a wooden sword and defends his dug-out in the sandpit, or constructs a wigwam out of sacking and plays Indians and cowboys - the details all borrowed from the local cinema; or else he goes off to the nearest canal with a home-made butterfly net and a jam jar to catch minnows.

But even in the earliest years of this period the constructive tendencies exist for their own satisfaction as well as to satisfy these more aggressive interests. To some extent this interest in making things emerges first of all as a result of the development of the child's finer muscular control. He is now able to handle small tools - a pocket knife or hammer and nails, and later the needle and the brush or pencil. But even so, occupations of this sort are something more than mere manual activity. An emotional zest accompanies them. The interest is not yet centred in the acquirement or the display of delicate skill: that arrives later; and to expect it now is a common mistake of the junior school. The child's present satisfaction comes definitely from being a maker and creator of something new, something which is his own. The favourite materials are modelling-clay at the beginning of the period (or, failing that, simple sand or mud), and later cardboard, scissors, wood, tin tacks, and presently, if he can procure it, a saw. At the outset he is still a little too restless to concentrate on lengthy constructions; but at nine or ten many will spend whole winter evenings and long rainy days in building churches with toy bricks or constructing cranes with meccano sets.

The value of handwork as such is now sufficiently realised; but teachers are still prone to impose upon the child a logically graded syllabus whereby the junior is expected to begin by learning the qualities of materials and a technical dexterity with tools. Thus the child is required to make humble but useful domestic articles - mats, brackets, soapboxes, or trays - things which appeal more to his parents than to himself and in which the great aim is accuracy and finish on an unambitious scale. I would suggest, on the contrary, that the selection of work should be guided far more by what the child wants to make than by what the teacher would like him to make, and that constructional work should be employed far more freely to illustrate the informational subjects of the curriculum - geography, history, literature, and science. The house-building interest, for example, can be used in making models of dwellings typical of different epochs or countries - from a log cabin built of twigs to a Norman castle cut out in cardboard and painted. Every boy of nine loves to pull the kitchen clock and the electric bell to pieces; and is almost as eager to put these simple mechanisms together to make them work. By home-made models he can learn the construction of locomotives, looms, and revolving lighthouses, and later the more important principles of mechanics, engineering, and magnetism and electricity in their simpler applications. All through, things that will move or aid movement - railway signals, scooters, sugarboxes on perambulator wheels - these, however roughly made, fascinate him far more than a stolid stationary bracket or a soapbox with the neatest of joints and the smoothest of planed surfaces. A working model of a pile-driver, that he has himself designed and constructed, will please him and teach him far more than a picture frame or a tea tray constructed to a printed pattern.

Soon he will begin to appreciate the importance of measurement, and later on the advantage of making a preliminary design or plan. This will lead on to the incidental teaching of much valuable knowledge in arithmetic and geometry. I would suggest the introduction of this type of work into girls' schools as well as into boys', and would certainly postpone the age at which the girl begins to knit and particularly to sew: towards the end of the period, girls - and boys, too - can make simple and wearable clothes - aprons, overalls, and even knitted jerseys; but once more anything demanding much fine work or prolonged application should be out of the question before the age of 9½ or 10.

(ii) The junior child's interests as shown by his spontaneous drawing. Under the general heading of constructive work I include spontaneous drawing. An examination of children's drawings year by year will show that from the age of 8 to 11 there is a remarkable improvement in the young draughtsman's skill. After this period and during adolescence, appreciation becomes more marked than execution, criticism than construction. The child then grows shy about his own creative efforts. Drawing ability declines; and the child is content to remain more of a learner than of a maker. But now he shows that he is not in the least ashamed of his cruder efforts with chalk, pencil, or paintbrush.

The child's spontaneous drawings vividly display what appeals to him most in this direction; and should be the chief basis in selecting subjects for the drawing lesson. During the junior period, at any rate among English children, the favourite subject is always the human figure: 80 per cent of their drawings are drawings of men. In a set of drawings made by Indian children and collected for me by one of my Hindu students, I find animals almost as prominent as human beings. In the Londoner's drawings, animals appear in only 16 per cent. Next to these two subjects come mechanical vehicles - ships, buses, and trams. Indeed, these threaten to oust animals from drawings almost entirely as they have ousted them from the modem street. With girls, flowers form a favourite subject: household furniture, and, of course, designs for dresses, interest them almost as much, particularly towards the later ages.

Colour fascinates the small child. Every youngster should have his own crayons and paints, and approach drawing in this way. They love shutting their eyes and drawing the colour schemes which the retina's own activity provides. Quite early, a child will amuse himself by inventing complicated patterns that grow under his hand as he plays with pencil or with colour. To the adult this looks a dull occupation; but to the child it is often fascinating. It may help to cultivate his decorative tastes, his feeling for harmony of tint, and an interest in geometrical design.

The child's interest in the human figure should be given much freer scope for expression in school. Teachers, unlike the modern artist, are still possessed by the notion that all good drawing and painting aim at the realism of a photograph: hence, if a child cannot make his subject life-like, they consider it to be above his head. There is, however, no reason, either aesthetic or educational, why the child should not be allowed to pursue his own quaint symbolic and schematic inclinations. The absence of proportion and perspective that we accept in the primitives or the post-impressionists need not shock us in the productions of the child. If encouraged, the child can produce the most vigorous drawings of action and incident by simply manipulating what is sometimes called the matchstick figure, where a blob serves for the head, a line for the trunk, and angles for the arms and legs. Up to the age of 9, the child is impelled to draw, not for the purpose of representing what he sees, but for the purpose of expressing his knowledge and his feelings. He should be encouraged to realise on paper his mental images of the subjects, places, or incidents he hears of in history, geography or nature study. Indeed, the talks and stories on these subjects should lead up to self-contained items which the child can illustrate in this way. And, by getting the child to draw visible things that appeal to him, like flowers or animals, observation may be improved and the foundations laid for scientific instruction in such subjects as botany and biology.

The interest in the human figure might also be used in handwork. The child is not to be expected to make life-like dolls, but will enjoy putting together working puppets out of jointed strips of cardboard or wood. Little figures of this sort will give a great deal of animation to his various constructions - his model village or soldiers' camp - and may lead on to a knowledge of the mechanical principles of human anatomy. Towards the age of 10, my returns show a curiously wide interest in the toy theatre, usually home-made; and the equipment of such toy theatres - uniting both handwork and drawing - might serve to illustrate much in history, geography and literature.

(iii) The junior child's interests as revealed by his spontaneous reading. Another favourite method of studying children's interests has been to inquire into their preferences in reading. What do they like to read best, or, if too young to read for themselves, what do they like to have read to them? At the outset, and particularly when read to, tiny children are fond of simple poetry, beginning with nursery rhymes, and advancing to poems that are short and easy but less childish. All through the junior stage girls show a greater interest in poetry than boys; by the age of 9 the boy's interests in reading, as in other directions, grow more and more matter of fact.

Earlier investigations suggested that the favourite literature of the small child consists of fairy stories. Children's tastes have perhaps changed a little. Fairy stories still appeal to little girls; but among small boys stories about animals seem now to take precedence, at any rate after the age of 8. All through the junior period both sexes show an intense interest in animals. Boys, however, prefer to hear about wild beasts, big game hunting in Africa, or escapes from wolves in snow-clad Russia; girls prefer tales about domestic animals and pets. After the fairy stage comes an interest in folklore and legends; and towards the age of 10 adventure begins to dominate particularly with the boy. He must have excitement - copious incidents and a hero. Tales of rough horseplay and wild escapades have a strong appeal; and what is comical or crudely humorous attracts the boy far more strongly than the girl. For boys the events must be realistic; but they care little for style. Sentiment has for them far less attraction than for girls.

Adventure stories lead on to an interest in travel and biography; and towards the end of the junior period the brighter boys show an increasing interest in books on history and science. This remains characteristic of the senior period. Girls, however, still show a predominating preference for fiction. At every stage of the junior period there are a number of girls who prefer stories about children to stories about adults, especially if the heroine is a girl. They like narratives about domestic life, and do not revolt, as boys often do, against stories written by women.

(iv) The junior child's interests as revealed by his preferences for different school subjects. From the age of 7 onwards children show marked likings and dislike for different subjects of the elementary curriculum; and both favourites and aversions alter from year to year. I have obtained orders of preference from boys and girls separately at each successive year of their elementary school life. One child, of course, differs appreciably from another in his predilections; but the average order may be taken as representative of a given group as a whole. The orders for the ages of 7, 10, and 13 are given below (19).

It will be seen at once that there are distinct changes from one stage to the next, and that these changes are to a large extent what would be expected from the descriptions here given of the child's chief interests at each successive stage. Girls, too, diverge appreciably from boys; and the divergence increases in the later years. The more active subjects, particularly those that give scope for constructive work - handwork, drawing, singing, and dancing (with the girls) - are the prime favourites. Nature study and geography (among the boys) come next. Reading, which during the stage of mechanical acquirement ranks low, is now moving to a higher place, and carrying literature and composition with it. Abstract or formal subjects, like grammar, spelling and arithmetic, are heartily disliked - though boys are now taking better to arithmetic and girls are rapidly mastering the difficulties of spelling. A literary bias among the girls and a scientific bias among the boys is already discernible.

The psychologist is tempted to suggest that, particularly during the early years of this period, a far larger space in the timetable should be given to the favourite subjects, and that the unfavoured subjects should largely be taught through the medium of the former.

With the later periods of school life we are not here concerned. A few words are needed to complete the picture of the child's evolution; and one or two points may be noted to contrast the undeveloped junior with the older youth, and to indicate the level towards which the child is moving as he leaves the junior stage.

(b) The senior period. About the age of 10 or 11, it is said, the instinct for acquisition and the passion for collecting things rise to their height. This is supposed to correspond to the late epoch in human civilisation, when man settles down into social life, acquires property, and eventually passes to a commercial stage. I myself should put all these features in the child at a somewhat earlier date. In any case, the tendencies which are said to reach a climax at between 10 and 12 are undoubtedly fairly strong in the junior child; and his love of collecting and owning might well be exploited in the classroom. Indeed, the sense of ownership and a respect for the possessions of others can and should be cultivated from the outset, even during early infancy.

Puberty and adolescence are essentially marked by the ripening of the sex instinct. It is a popular notion that now for the first time sex interests become suddenly active in boy and girl. Adolescence, however, simply marks an acceleration and a culmination point in tendencies that have been existent, in immature or latent form, from early infancy and throughout the junior and senior periods. With this fundamental change come others, often so striking and so novel that many psychologists have considered them to mark a fresh burst of evolution in the history of the race. There is in particular a marked intensification of the emotional life, leading first to a general instability, and then to new aesthetic susceptibilities and a new moral earnestness. Now, too, both sexes show a great interest in other persons than themselves. There is a remarkable increase in social feeling. Boys and girls alike become gregarious. They form cliques and gangs and willingly enrol as members of clubs or juvenile societies. The favourite games are team games. All this is supposed to mark the emergence of the herd instinct, and to correspond with the final evolution of organised social communities.

With this increased social intercourse and this increasing interest in others goes a heightened consciousness of self. The child becomes sensitive about himself, thinks about himself, and forms an ideal for himself. As a result, too, he begins to acquire definite purposes which he regards as specifically his own. He forms ambitions and decides to devote himself to certain aims or studies and not to others. He specialises. It will be noted, however, that in one or two respects, the recapitulation theory here breaks down. In the child, as contrasted with the race, the so-called commercial interests seem to show themselves before the social interests; and the sex instinct, which is one of the earliest to appear in the course of evolution (long before the maternal instinct or even the sucking instinct), is about the last to ripen in the individual.

Footnotes

(1) The earliest endeavour to deduce such subdivisions from scientific data seems to be that of Vierordt (Physiologie des Kinder salters 1881, see esp. p. 209). For summaries of the various schemes proposed, see Chamberlain The Child (1906, p. 70), Claparede, La Psychologie de l'Enfant (1916, p. 420), and Busk, Experimental Education (1910) - a brief textbook based on Meumann's monumental work Die Experimentelle Padagogik, 1907.

(2) An interesting attempt to base a scheme of education upon these two theories will be found in Cheiron's Cave, by D Revel (see especially p. 38 for a vivid picture of mental development conceived along these lines).

(3) For the results of intelligence tests, as applied to English children, see LCC Report on Mental and Scholastic Tests, especially the curve of development plotted on p. 146.

(4) For a convenient collection of test results see Whipple, Manual of Mental and Physical Tests.

(5) These conclusions are based on rather early investigations; and, in view of the great improvement now taking place in musical instruction, perhaps need reinvestigation.

(6) At 7 and again at 11 to 13 girls are possibly equal or slightly superior.

(7) See especially the chapter on the 'Contents of Children's Minds ' in Stanley Hall's volume on Aspects of Child Life and Education (1907, pp.1 et seq.),

(8) The important work of Spearman and his school (lately published in his book on Intelligence and the Principles of Cognition) brings together the more important facts, and the theories that emerge from them. The principles that Spearman has thus brilliantly unravelled have a close and perhaps a revolutionary bearing on teaching methods at this stage - implications, however, which have hardly yet been worked out.

(9) See Journal of Experimental Pedagogy (1919), 'The Development of Reasoning in School Children'.

(10) These and the foregoing test problems deliberately deal with non-scholastic topics in order to rule out differences in knowledge or teaching.

(11) PB Ballard, Group Tests of Intelligence, page 47.

(12) See the investigation on the Development of Reasoning in School Children quoted above for details as to the ages at which logical fallacies can usually be detected (loc. cit. page 15).

(13) Mrs Susan Isaacs' recent volume on Intellectual Growth in Young Children (1930) is full of suggestive observations and inferences, made by a most cautious and well-informed observer, and is equally rich in instructive ideas for the education of young children at these earlier stages.

(14) It should be noted that the experiments of the behaviourist school and the inquiries of the psychoanalytic school indicate that the doctrine of instincts, as here briefly summarised, is probably an over-simplification of the facts. The behaviourists point out that the commoner tendencies of older children, as actually manifested in everyday life, are a complex collection of miscellaneous reactions, due largely to tradition, social influence and habit; the psychoanalysts believe that the child's ultimate interests are, more or less unconsciously, the outgrowth of extremely primitive physiological interests, dominant in infancy, with which the superficial observer might never think of connecting them. There is much truth in these contentions. Hence the several instincts as here enumerated must not be viewed as isolated and unitary functions, corresponding on the emotional side of the mind to the old-fashioned 'faculties' on the intellectual. They are to be regarded rather as 'specific factors', analogous to the 'specific abilities' discussed above, and assumed in order to explain why the correlations between certain elementary activities are far closer than between others. Probably, on the character side as on the intellectual side, the solution of the entire problem of fundamental factors will be largely reached by the application of statistical analysis. To disentangle the genuinely innate from the acquired factors will be a harder question, perhaps of little more than academic interest.

(15) The theory is far older than is popularly supposed. It appears in poets like Goethe, and philosophers like Lessing and Hegel, Rousseau and Comte. The most eminent of living educational psychologists - Professor Thorndike in America, and Professor Godfrey Thomson in this country - are exceedingly dubious about its value. 'There seems to be no doubt', writes Professor Thomson, 'that boys do have Boy Scout instincts strongly developed. But that is about all that direct observation shows in favour of the Recapitulation Theory'. On the other hand, so cautious an anthropologist as Professor C Read considers that we may even effect a tentative reconstruction of the stages in man's emergence from the beast by observing the spontaneous activities of children. Professor Sir Percy Nunn also considers that the recapitulation theory 'though sometimes pressed to extravagant lengths, has considerable validity as an educational principle'.

(16) See Nagy, Die Entwicklung des Interesses; Zeitschrift fur experimentelle Padagogie, V; 1907. Also Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood, 1927.

(17) See The Language and Thought of the Child (1926), esp. page 73.

(18) The clearest formulation of these phases is that of W Hutchison, a pupil of Stanley Hall. For a discussion of his views, see Varendonck, Archives de Psych., VII, p. 381.

(19) It should be observed that the names that I have used for the different subjects are a little arbitrary and refer rather to topics than distinctive lessons. Their meaning will be sufficiently obvious to the teacher, though, of course 'handwork' is different for boys and girls respectively, and 'literature' means different things at the age of 7 and at the age of 13. But for the sake of compactness and comparison I have kept the same headings for either sex and every age. Needless to say, the mode in which a given subject is taught may make all the difference between a high position and a low position in the total series. Similar studies of children's preferences have been made by various investigators in different countries; and the order tallies pretty closely with that found in London.