Sunday, October 20, 2013

Manual arts and small children...

From Robert Keable Row, The Educational Meaning of Manual Arts and Industries, 1909...
"Because the sensory and motor impulses are usually strong in young children they present a condition that must be met. Generally the children will strive very hard to find some way of expressing these dominant impulses. If the school does not provide for their expression so much the worse for the school; it has a problem in repression. If it succeeds in repression, so much the worse for the children, It is true that, under the right conditions, many kinds of children's games do much for the development of motor control, but it must be remembered that play has its limitations. Play alone can never express the impulse to make, to decorate, to own, to design and plan, to produce something of value. For expression and development along these lines the young child needs much regular training in various forms of manual arts."
If we fail to take advantage of children's natural inclinations toward industry, or are in fact successful at suppressing or diverting their natural inclinations, what kind of world will we have made for them?

Today I will work on edited materials for my new book, ans spend some time at school preparing for Monday's classes.

Make, fix and create...

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