• ^ 
 
 B7 
 
 NASCENT STAGES AND THEIR PEDAGOGICAL 
 SIGNIFICANCE. 
 
 By E. B. Bryan. 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 The general aims of education may be classed under two 
 heads : (a) Those that emphasize the individual. (;^) Those 
 that emphasize society. There are those who hold that if all 
 the latent powers of the child, mental, moral, and physical are 
 developed fully and symmetrically with entire emphasis upon 
 him as an individual, we not only get the best individual product 
 possible in a given case but the best social product as well. On 
 the other hand there are those who hold that inasmuch as the 
 child isi born of society, is a member of society, and is becom- 
 ing more and more a potent member of society, his training 
 should be given him with a view to the needs of society rather 
 than to his individual needs, believing that thereby not only is 
 the best social product assured but also that the best has been 
 done for the individual as such. 
 
 There is truth in both these thoughts, and when they are 
 reduced to their lowest terms, we have simply a question of 
 relative emphasis of two fundamental factors in the aim of edu- 
 cation. But whichever phase is emphasized, this surely is true, 
 that any attempt at curriculum making or educational proced- 
 ure which does not take into account the laws and stages of 
 the development of the one to be taught, is apt to go wide of 
 the mark and induce arrested development either by holding 
 the child to work which belongs to a lower stage of develop- 
 ment or by rushing him on precociously to work which pre- 
 sumes a development which he has not yet attained. 
 
 Therefore, from whatever standpoint we view the aim and 
 problem of education, a knowledge of the stages in the devel- 
 opment of people, of the abrupt turns and the deep places in 
 the stream of human life, of the nascent periods, so to speak, 
 of human development is of prime importance. 
 
 In educational literature many hints of the importance of 
 such knowledge are found, and much of the work done in schools 
 and colleges is purported to be based upon such knowledge; 
 and yet, with the exception of the periods of pubescence and 
 adolescence, it must be admitted, I think, that our information 
 
2 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 has been very vague and limited and that the ground on which 
 we have stood has for most part been only a feeling, variable as 
 individuals are variable, that such and such things are true. 
 
 In general literature, the thought that human life is not an 
 unbroken continuum but rather moves in great beats or stages 
 is quite pronounced and dates back to very ancient times. 
 
 An historical study of religious ceremonies performed at cer- 
 tain ages shows how deeply the idea has worked itself into the 
 religious consciousness. A. brief but careful study of the con- 
 temporary religious consciousness has revealed the same thing, 
 and the special studies upon conversion, backsliding and other 
 religious phenomena bring out the same results. 
 
 The change of seasons, the succession of crops, special days 
 for special things, all emphasize the thought that there are cer- 
 tain times that are peculiarly fitted for certain things. 
 
 The old faculty psychology dividing the mind, as it does, not 
 only into intellect, sensibility, and will, but also into the chron- 
 ological apartments of perception, memory, imagination, judg- 
 ment, reason, etc., while largely the result of speculation, is 
 doubtless to a degree both the result of this folk-consciousness 
 and also a potent cause for the tenacity with which the educa- 
 tional world at large clings to the idea of successive stages in 
 development. 
 
 Teachers and students have experienced that some things 
 come comparatively eas}' in early years and other things in later 
 years, and consciously or unconsciously arrive at the conclusion 
 that there should be an adaptation of the kind and amount of 
 work to the stage of development; i. e., that certain times are 
 ripe times for certain things. 
 
 A limited number of experiments upon animals, together 
 with every day observations, tend very strongly to confirm this 
 thought. The results of Spalding's (35)* work with the chick 
 re-enforce the thought and James (20, Vol. II, p. 398) brings 
 out the same thing in his chapter on Instinct. 
 
 Returns from two thousand teachers emphasize ver}^ strongly 
 the fact that if children at certain times have a longing for, or 
 show an aptitude in Drawing, Music, Manual Training, Ath- 
 letics, etc., but are deprived of the opportunity for culture along 
 these lines, the}^ are apt to lose their interest or aptitude or both. 
 
 It is thought that children who become blind before a certain 
 age are not apt to have visual images, while those who become 
 blind after that age are apt to have visual images. The same 
 thing is supposed to be true of the other senses, notabl> the 
 sense of hearing. 
 
 ♦The figures in parentheses refer to similar numbers in Authorities 
 Cited at end of the article. 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 3 
 
 Donaldson (14, p. 37) sa3^s : " Development and the changes 
 involved in growing old, are by no means synonomous, so that 
 although in those animals with a fixed size there are always to 
 be found undeveloped cells, yet it is not a correct inference that 
 these cells are also young in the sense that they might still com- 
 plete their development. It appears, rather, that the capacity 
 for undergoing expansive change is transient, and that those 
 cells which fail to react during the proper growing period of an 
 animal have lost their opportunity forever. ' ' 
 
 The studies that Barnes (3) has made of children's interests 
 show that the things in which children are apt to have a lively 
 interest vary with age. 
 
 All of these things point to the possibility of more or less 
 definite stages or nascent periods in development, and the pur- 
 pose of this paper is to collect and formulate the evidence for 
 such a theory in its application to human development, and to 
 make pedagogical deductions from this evidence. 
 
 Hartwell (17) divides the first twenty-five years of life into 
 four stages (i) Infancy from birth till the first dentition. (2) 
 Childhood, from the first to the second dentition at seven or 
 eigh^ years of age. (3) Boyhood or Girlhood, from second 
 dentition to puberty at thirteen or fourteen years of age. (4) 
 Puberty and Adolescence, from thirteen to the beginning of the 
 twenty-fifth year. 
 
 Ivange (23) has four stages, (i) From birth to two years, 
 highest rate of growth. (2) From two to twelve years, decreas- 
 ing annual increments. (3) Twelve to fifteen years, mental 
 growth. (4) Fifteen to twenty-one years, a sudden decrease 
 in annual increments. 
 
 Zeissing (7, p. 255) found three stages, (i) One of de- 
 crease in the yearly increments of growth up to nine years. 
 
 (2) Increase of yearly increments to the seventeenth year. (3) 
 A later decrease. 
 
 _ Vierordt (7, p. 325) has seven stages, (i) From birth to 
 eight months. (2) From eight months to seven or eight years. 
 
 (3) From seven or eight years to fourteen years. (4) From 
 fourteen or fifteen to t;venty-one or twenty -two. And then 
 early adult, later adult age to the sixtieth year, and old age. 
 Clouston (11) divides the years of development into three 
 stages, (i) From birth to seven. (2) From seven to thirteen. 
 (3) From thirteen to twenty-five. 
 
 That there are varying rates of growth in the development 
 of a child has been established beyond question. There is the 
 seasonal rhythm now slow now fast, there is the variation due 
 to nutrition, variation due to disease, and variation due to in- 
 crease of function; so that the curve of development is not a 
 straight line. 
 
4 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 Also, it is pretty definitely known what an average child (if 
 such a thing there be) is capable of at a given age. (We know, 
 for example, that it does not walk and talk at six months but 
 that it does at thirty-six.) 
 
 Special studies upon individual children have made much 
 more definite the general notions of the unscientific but sympa- 
 thetic observer of children. So that we have a vast amount of 
 unorganized data for the work scattered here and there covering 
 the entire developmental period. It is no part of the purpose 
 of this stud}^ therefore, to redemonstrate that the curve of life 
 is a broken and not a straight line or even to make a contribu- 
 tion of new data. It is rather a work of organization and inter- 
 pretation of facts worked out by various observations, researches 
 and experiments with a view of finding what truth and signifi- 
 cance there may be in the theory of nascent periods; what these 
 nascent periods are in themselves; and what relation they bear 
 to one another. For a convenient resume of the many theories 
 concerning the periods of childhood the reader is referred to 
 Dr. Chamberlain's book on The Child (8a pp. 51-105). 
 
 The hope of fixing hard and fast limits for each or any of 
 these stages is not entertained; the limits will vary with indi- 
 viduals as everything else does. But it is the hope to show on 
 physiological and psychological grounds that in the develop- 
 ment of the child there is a series of periods each more or less 
 homogeneous in itself, but widely different from all the others, 
 that each period serves as a propaedeutic to the one that follows 
 and that each is preceded by a relatively short transitional pe- 
 riod characterized by mental and physical disturbances which 
 serve as the time for rearrangement and preparation for the 
 stage which is to follow. I wish then, in the light of what is 
 found to be true of these periods, to make deductions of some 
 the more obvious pedagogical principles. 
 
 I. 
 
 Infancy. 
 
 Following the months of pre-natal existence, comes birth 
 with the first days of life's experience. Psychically, there 
 come rolling in upon the child floods of sensations, meaning- 
 less in most part and of no present value to him. "All its 
 senses," says Perez (27, p. 8)," are battered by repeated shocks 
 of strange impressions, and it's wailing cries indicate how pain- 
 fully these are felt." I think it questionable, however, whether 
 the cries are due so much to the feeling of pain or whether they 
 are merely reflexive. Clouston (12) I think, comes nearer 
 the truth than Perez when he says that, " At birth a child is 
 absolutely destitute of mental faculty. The thing does not ex. 
 
NASCKNT STAGES. 5 
 
 ist. All competent observers agree on this point; and all newly- 
 born children are equally mindless. There is no exception. 
 But why does the child cry, and seem to feel pain, and move, 
 and feed himself? Those at first are all automatic, or reflex 
 actions unaccompanied by mind, the apparatus for performing 
 which in the brain and spinal cord, is almost perfect at this time, 
 while the mental apparatus is undeveloped. He breathes, too, 
 as well as ever he will do, just because the group of nerve cells 
 in the brain that produces and regulates the breathing move- 
 ments is perfect at birth." 
 
 To quote the much used expression of Prof. James (20, 
 p. 16) "The object which the numerous inpouring currents 
 of the body bring to his consciousness is one big, blooming, 
 buzzing confusion. That confusion is the baby's universe." 
 
 Physically, during the first week of life, the child looks like 
 itself no two days in succession; it readjusts itself to the new 
 environment; it breathes, it takes food through the mouth, 
 every sense is appealed to by outer stimuli, a change in move- 
 ment is possible, and the child becomes less plump and loses in 
 weight. Perez (27, p. 10) says: "Up to the third day there 
 iS a diminution of between three and four ounces in their weight, 
 and it is not till the sixth or seventh day that they get back 
 to what they were at birth." 
 
 Bayard Holmes, M. D., (19) sa5's: "During the first three 
 or four days after birth there is a normal loss of weight of be- 
 tween 6.15 and 6.96 per cent. The average loss of weight is 222 
 grammes. This is followed by a rapid increase in weight, 
 which is greatest during the second month." 
 
 It seems, therefore, that the first few days of the child's life 
 are not a continuance of the pre-natal development, but serve 
 rather as a transitional period, characterized by various psy- 
 chical and physical disturbances, of readustment, and prep- 
 aration for the stage which is to follow. 
 
 For some months following these earliest days, if the child 
 be normal, there is a gradual development — not a development 
 due so much to its reactions upon outer stimuli, but rather an 
 unfolding of its life, the child remaining for most part passive 
 in its relations to the outer world, being receptive rather than 
 expressive. 
 
 By way of food, clothing, etc. , it takes what is given it, its 
 only means of expressing its disapproval being more or less 
 unintelligible mimetic gesticulations and crying. During the 
 first months it cannot balance its head; it cannot sit, nor stand; 
 it cannot roll over, creep, walk, run, jump, or climb; it cannot 
 talk; it cannot eat. Its ability as an aggressor is nil. Never- 
 theless its power to react, to express itself both mentally and 
 physically, is increasing so that at the end of the third or fourth 
 
6 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 mouth it can balance its head; in a few more months it can sit 
 alone, can roll over, and is beginning to creep; and in most 
 cases, by the end of the first year, the child is creeping as well 
 as it ever will; it is beginning to stand, is trying to walk, and 
 climbs whenever an opportunity is afforded. 
 
 It is no longer unable to see as at birth but has its senses of 
 sight and hearing developed, so that on the one hand by the 
 time it attains its first year, its visual accommodation is per- 
 fect ; it looks away at objects and has pleasure in seeing peo- 
 ple and things. On the other hand, its sense of hearing 
 develops from the fourth day when it is able to hear a sharp 
 noise, until at the close of the first year, it not only hears a 
 noise at a distance but adjusts its head to catch the sound. 
 (28 for fuller discussion.) 
 
 During this time the senses of touch, taste and smell have 
 kept pace with the sense of hearing and sight, so that from the 
 physical standpoint, the child is freeing itself from its passive 
 condition at the time of birth and is becoming more and more 
 capable of an active life. In language, which has both psy- 
 chical and physical factors, the child during the first year or 
 year and a half, has made sufiicient start to make his most 
 common wants known ; it distorts its words in many ways, is 
 incapable of speaking in sentences, and finds it necessary to 
 supplement and to re-enforce its oral language with all kinds 
 of gesticulations which are as unskillful as the language itself. 
 It has reached that stage where it is " beginning to talk." 
 
 We have no evidence that in the first months of a child's 
 life it does constructive mental work ; it does not plan and 
 project, it does not arrange means for the accomplishment of 
 preconceived ends ; its mental life is not one of expression. 
 It has sentiments of taste, fears and anger, animal and human 
 sympathies, and often shows signs of afiection ; it frequently 
 manifests presence of will ; it is capable of slight attention ; 
 and it can imagine, remember, and associate. Perez thinks 
 that very young children are capable of elaborating ideas in 
 the form of judgment, abstraction, comparison, generalization, 
 etc. However this may be, it is evident that they are not 
 capable of consecutive thought and are not constructively 
 effective. To use the words of Dr, Lukens (25), " Beginning 
 with the period of almost pure receptivity and open-mouthed 
 wonder and delight in the senses, the child very soon, how- 
 ever, begins to react and, as Froebel says, to make the internal 
 external. In most children, for instance, there is a more or 
 less clearly marked period lasting from a few weeks to several 
 months, during which they understand nearly or quite all that 
 is said to them but have not themselves begun yet to speak." 
 
 In the Neuroses of Development, Clouston (II, p. 8) says : 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 "Sensation, common and special, come next soon after birth, 
 and we have reason to believe that its peripheral, receptive ap- 
 paratus and brain centers rapidly acquire perfection, though its 
 future mental interpretation is a gradual and slow process. 
 Most of the motor processes are more gradual in coming to 
 perfection, and, indeed, cannot be said to have arrived to that 
 stage till adolescence is nearly completed." 
 
 One may safely say, then, that during these first months(i2 
 or i8) the sensory side of the child has developed much more 
 rapidly than the motor side. It has been appealed to in a 
 thousand ways ; it has been awakened, but for most part it has 
 been a recipient in a telling way, but not an effective actor. 
 Its chief business has been to grow and not to act. This is 
 shown by the fact that at the end of the first year the child 
 should be three times as heavy as at birth and half as heavy 
 as it will be at seven years of age (30). Its increase in 
 height the first year will never be equalled in any succeeding 
 year. The increase in brain weight should be five times as 
 great (381 grammes, 945 grammes) as for any succeeding 
 year. 
 
 On an average, the growth of the brain the first year is 
 equal to more than one-third the entire weight at maturity 
 (37)-, 
 
 It is important in this connection to know that out of every 
 one thousand children under one year of age, two hundred 
 twenty, or 22 per cent., die annually. " When we realize that 
 the mortality from typhoid fever is less than ten per cent, of 
 the individuals afifected, and that the mortality during the first 
 year of childhood is over 20 per cent. , and therefore, infer that 
 it is just twice as dangerous to be an infant under one year 
 of age as to have typhoid fever, some idea of the delicacy of 
 the individual at this period of life may be obtained." (10.) 
 
 The child's chief business, then, is to keep alive and grow. 
 
 The pedagogic question is, what are the best things that can 
 come into the life of the child during these earliest months ? 
 Inasmuch as growing is its chief function, all the conditions 
 for normal growth should be observed and all the causes of 
 arrested development averted. 
 
 There should be no crowding ; there should be little re- 
 straint and all undue excitement should be avoided, lest the 
 delicate nervous system be irremediably shocked. One of the 
 prime conditions of normal growth is a sufficient amount of 
 wholesome food, but at this stage the variety of food should not 
 be great if indeed it should not be limited to the one kind 
 which nature has expressly provided. The child is unable to 
 properly prepare solids for digestion and they should be kept 
 from it until it is provided with teeth and proper strength to 
 
8 nasce;nt stages. 
 
 use them effectivel}^ ; and until the alimentary processes are 
 confirmed. Another condition of normal growth is a sufficient 
 amount and proper kind of clothing ; many babies are 
 smothered out of their wits and frozen out of their growth. 
 Cleanliness, sunshine, and an abundant supply of fresh air are 
 prime requisites. It is known to every one that diseases and 
 traumatisms interfere with the growth of the child and often 
 cause permanent arrest of development ; a judicious amount 
 of care should be exercised to prevent disaster from such 
 causes. Only such things as are conducive to the child's 
 good health should be observed during these first months. 
 
 Its development, always in pulse beats, should, however, 
 in the first months have no abrupt turns but should be a con- 
 tinuous wave line — a rather steady and uniform movement. 
 This is the stage of infancy. 
 
 II. 
 
 Transition from Infancy to Childhood. 
 
 Then comes at a 5'ear or a year and a half of age (the time 
 varies greatly with individuals) another transitional period of 
 disturbance and readjustment. The child creeps or walks ; 
 it gesticulates or talks ; it is having its second summer ; its 
 temporary teeth are coming ; it is taking new food ; it is pas- 
 sing from the stage of gastro-enteric diseases to the stage of 
 infectious diseases ; there is great change in its anatomical 
 proportions. It is breaking away from the quiet receptive 
 stage of the infant and is becoming aggressive, as is shown in 
 its impulse toward migration so well brought out by Kline 
 (22), so that when the transition is finallj^ made, it no longer 
 waits and passively receives what is brought to it, but goes 
 after what it wants. It can climb and walk and run ; it no 
 longer waits until its mother bare her breast to gratify its 
 hunger, but eats many things and has teeth with which to eat; 
 it no longer makes known it's wants by grunts and vague ges- 
 ticulations, but uses language for this purpose. 
 
 ' ' From birth when the brain weighs about fourteen ounces 
 up to two years when it has attained twice and a half that 
 weight, there has been a series of new evolutions or creations 
 of new faculties. After that there takes place a gradual per- 
 fecting of those faculties (12)." 
 
 " During the first two years of life, says Dr. Christopher (10), 
 the child, as a rule, possesses a considerable deposit of adipose 
 tissue. As he passes the second year of life and enters the 
 third there is considerable change in his anatomical propor- 
 tions. He grows in height and loses rotundity and plumpness, 
 and passes quite rapidly from a period recognized as that of 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 9 
 
 childhood. From then on the dangers to the life of the indi- 
 vidual from factors in direct relation with its growth and devel- 
 opment are not so great as before. Then comes the period of 
 infectious diseases." 
 
 Thus, the child has moved out of the purel}^ receptive stage 
 of the infant, through a period of disturbance, into the active 
 stage of childhood at about the close of the second year. 
 
 In Miss Shinn's observations (33, p. 411), the child's first successful 
 attempt at creeping was at the age of nine months; at standing, the 
 close of the ninth month; at climbing, eleven months; at walking, 
 twelve months; at running, the close of the fourteenth month. 
 
 In Prof. Preyer's observations, the child's first successful attempt at 
 creeping was at the thirteenth mouth ; at standing, the close of the 
 ninth month ; at walking, the sixteenth month ; at running, the six- 
 teenth month. 
 
 In Mrs. Hall's observations, the child's first successful attempt at 
 creeping was at the age of thirteen months ; at standing, twelve months ; 
 at walking, fourteen months. 
 
 In Mrs. Beatty's observations, the first successful attempt at creep- 
 ing was at the age of nine months ; at standing, eleven months ; at 
 climbing, twelve months ; at walking, fourteen months ; at running, 
 sixteen months. 
 
 In Miss Shinn's observations, the habit of creeping was complete at 
 thfe age of ten months ; of standing, twelve mouths ; of climbing, at 
 the close of the eleventh month : of walking, thirteen months ; of run- 
 tiing, fifteen months. 
 
 In Prof. Preyer's observations, the habit of creeping was complete 
 at the age of fourteen months; of standing, at seventeen months; of 
 walking, at eighteen months. 
 
 In Mrs. Hall's observations, the habit of creeping was complete at 
 the age of fourteen months ; of standing, at fourteen months ; of walk- 
 ing, at sixteen months. 
 
 In Mrs. Beatty's observations, the habit of creeping was complete 
 in the tenth month ; of standing, at sixteen months ; of walking, six- 
 teen months ; of running, at nineteen months or later. 
 
 III. 
 
 Childhood. 
 
 The development of the child from this time up to the sev- 
 enth or eighth year, while not precisely the same during any 
 succession of months or years, will be marked by no decided 
 turns. The annual increase in height and weight will not vary 
 greatl)'^, but there will be a steady growth in both these direc- 
 tions, very much less rapid than in the first year, and less rapid 
 than during the years that immediately follow this stage. The 
 child is becoming more and more active, but owing to a lack 
 of development of the peripheral muscles and the nerves that 
 control them, his movements are unco-ordinated so that he is 
 not effective as a producer, and activity is its own excuse for 
 being. 
 
 Special sense education and the development of language con- 
 
lO NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 tinue at a rapid rate; the brain grows rapidly and approximates 
 its full weight at the age of seven or eight. The sensory side 
 is still in advance of the motor, but the child is by no means 
 receptive only. His activity resulting in no outer product of 
 value, finds its immediate value in itself, and so this is the 
 stage of play. His keen sensory side catches up ever)'- sugges- 
 tion, so that this is pre-eminently the stage of suggestion and 
 imitation. 
 
 He gets most of his information first hand through the senses; 
 further than this his mental life is made up chiefly of repro- 
 duced images and crude products of the imagination, although 
 he is capable of carrying on many of the higher mental pro- 
 cesses in a simple fashion. 
 
 Unless spoiled, the child at this age knows no such thing as 
 shame, or modesty; it is apt to be selfish and fond of teasing and 
 bullying as has been so well shown by Burk (6). His notions 
 of right and wrong are not clearly defined and are very vacil- 
 lating. Any hint of a moral code that he may possess, is not 
 of his own making but has been impressed upon him from with- 
 out through suggestion rather than by precept. 
 
 As in the former stage, growth was the prime desideratum, 
 so here it is the thing of chief importance; not so much a quiet 
 unfolding of the latent powers of the child as in the first stage, 
 but rather a development through activity. But it must not 
 be forgotten that the benefit derived here from the activity 
 of the child is to be found in the child and not in the thing he 
 does. 
 
 ' ' During the period of brain growth in bulk up to the seventh 
 year, when the full size and weight are almost attained, nutri- 
 tive influences are of the largest value. How far this can 
 reach positively, needs future demonstration, but is rich in 
 promise; how far negatively, is well understood, but receives 
 as yet insufl&cient support. There are during these early days 
 more formative power and less output of energy exhibited." 
 (36.) 
 
 All of the essentials for normal growth in the first stage 
 should be diligently observed here as well. Nutrition, cleanli- 
 ness, sunshine, fresh air, and care to prevent arrested develop- 
 ment from diseases and traumatisms. But in addition to these 
 things, there arises here the pedagogic problem of positive 
 training, physical and mental. 
 
 The first question, of course, is this: Should the child re- 
 ceive any systematic training during this stage, or should we 
 simply observe the foregoing conditions for growth and keep 
 hands off? 
 
 This much can be said in regard to this question, — biology 
 and psychology tell us that what one can do at any given time 
 
NASCENT STAGES. II 
 
 depends more or less upon what he has been doing; i. e., the 
 life of one stage is determined by the life preceding this stage. 
 From about two up to seven or eight the child is acting and 
 reacting. He is giving himself his first kinks and turns. _ He 
 is laying out the lines for his future automatisms and driving 
 the stakes. His style of sitting, walking, speaking, throwing, 
 etc. , his style of reaction to authority, his style of social reaction, 
 are all becoming defined and taking set during these plastic 
 years. The lines are being laid for the child or against it 
 whether it will or not. Enough care and systematic training, 
 and no more, should be given during this stage as will assure 
 the best approach in all of these lines to the years that are to 
 follow. (The essentials for such guidance are sensible sympathy 
 and a rare fund of insight and self control). 
 
 Where we do not know, the watchword should be ' ' hands 
 off. ' ' But the most common-place teacher or parent does know 
 that if a child sits ' ' humped up ' ' the first years of its life the 
 chances are that it will never sit erect; if it is allowed to fly 
 into a fury and scream and tear its hair during these years, the 
 tendency later on will be to do something worse; if it does every- 
 thing in a slouchy, careless, half-finished way, with great difl&- 
 culty will it ever learn to do them in any other way. If 
 it is allowed to lie and steal with impunity, it will develop 
 into a thorough-going liar and thief. Concerning these and 
 similar things the child should not be allowed to develop at ran- 
 dom. Who knows more, can do more; who knows less, should 
 most assuredly do less. In a word, then, our motto for this 
 stage should not be "hands ofi"" but rather this: a better 
 knowledge of child life, and greater sympathy with it, so that 
 we may be able to know how and when to lay hands on. 
 
 I^et us notice a second question — If the child is to receive 
 more or less systematic training at this time, what should it be? 
 
 It has already been observed that during this stage the child's 
 keen sensory side catches up every suggestion, so that on the 
 one hand this is the stage of suggestion and imitation. This 
 is one of the keys to the solution of the problem. Another 
 key is to be found, I think, in the fact that this is pre-eminently 
 the play stage. We have here a hint at both matter and method, 
 (i) The greater part of the child's activity and, indeed, all of 
 it at the beginning of this stage, should be play and not work. 
 (2) Work should be only introduced gradually in proportion 
 as the child develops in mental and physical control. (3) The 
 child should not be held for a perfect piece of objective work. 
 
 In regard to method, but two things can be said with any 
 degree of definiteness. (i) Suggestion should play an impor- 
 tant role. (2) The spontaneity of the child should have full 
 freedom. 
 
12 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 This gives us a basis for the discussion of these two practical 
 questions: a. What things may be taught the child at this 
 time? b. How should they be taught? 
 
 It would require many volumes to discuss the merits and 
 demerits of the entire catalogue of subjects, so the purpose 
 here will be merely to touch upon enough things to bring out 
 the thought and illustrate the principle. 
 
 lyct us make the application to the child's play, work, and 
 conduct. 
 
 Play. If play is to serve its highest end, it must be play in 
 the highest sense spontaneous for most part, free from outer 
 direction and careless of ends. Play under close supervision is 
 a self-contradiction — it not only defeats the ends of play but 
 ceases to be play. Parents and teachers need to remember that 
 to require children to play according to prescribed formulae 
 means to have them quit play and go to work, and at the same 
 time robs them of all the benefit of the initiative; and that 
 thereby the main avenue of approach to the child's life is closed. 
 It is a matter of common observation that to know a child, or 
 any one else for that matter, he must be free to live his own 
 life. This free living of the child is his play. It is commendable 
 in parents to join in the plays with their children, but if they 
 do so they must do so for most part at the suggestion of 
 the child, and play the part the child would have them play 
 in a way he would have them play it. Kindergartners and 
 teachers in elementary schools would do well to observe 
 the same thing. To call work play, doesn't make it play, 
 and any performance planned and closely supervised by 
 the teacher, however attractive it may be in itself, realizes 
 less in play results than in work results. This suggests the 
 amount of freedom and spontaneity that should characterize the 
 school plays of this early stage whether within or without the 
 school room. If the kindergarten emphasizes play as an ele- 
 ment in its curriculum, it must not be tardy in recognizing 
 what are the essential elements of play. Furthermore, Sheldon 
 (32) and Gulick (16) have shown that during these years chil- 
 dren do not take kindly to organized play or so-called team 
 work, and when inveigled into it are very unsuccessful. It 
 must not be forgotten that during these years, the accessory 
 muscles are not under good control, that movements are unco- 
 ordinated, that the child is not effective as a producer, and that 
 activity finds its own immediate value in itself. Co-operation 
 is essentially a work factor and not a play factor; and, this being 
 pre-eminently the play stage, the child is not successful in co- 
 operative games. Ample opportunity for unorganized, unham- 
 pered, spontaneous activity on the part of every child should be 
 the play ideal of every kindergarten and elementary school. 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 1 3 
 
 Work. In considering the work appropriate to this stage, 
 some things need to be restated as a basis for discussion. First, 
 that the end of work is a definite product — physical or mental. 
 Second, that this is the stage of imitation and suggestion par 
 excellence. Third, that the accessory muscles are not under 
 good control. Fourth, that the child's mental life is made up 
 chiefly of percepts, reproduced images, and crude products of 
 the imagination. 
 
 Taking them up in the order named, the child should be re- 
 quired to do only those things for which it has a fair degree of 
 efficiency, otherwise, the end for which work is intended is de- 
 feated and through the force of habit a positive injury may 
 come to the child. But those things for which he does have a 
 fair degree of capability, he should be required to do. For, if 
 it be true that at this time all work and no play makes Jack a 
 dull boy, it is also true that all play and no work makes Jack 
 a mere toy. The principle is equally applicable in the fields of 
 mental and physical work. 
 
 In making pedagogical deductions from the second point, 
 viz., this is pre-eminently the stage of suggestion and imitation, 
 it need only be said in passing that both common observation 
 and psychological reasearch have shown that this is true. ( i : 
 2: 15: 18: 34.) 
 
 What the child gets through suggestion at this stage amounts 
 to infinitely more in every way than what he gets in the form 
 of precepts. To illustrate, — Neither formal grammar nor 
 even language lessons are necessary to insure good usage on 
 the part of the child that has lived among people who speak 
 correctly; and no amount of both will insure correct usage 
 on the part of the child that is not so situated. A year's 
 change of residence served to alter in every way the pronun- 
 ciation of two children aged three and six whose parents were 
 entirely unaffected. Such cases could be multiplied indefi- 
 nitely. In fact, suggestion and imitation are the basis for the 
 development of language both in the race and the individual, 
 and should be the chief and, aside from incidental correction, 
 the only means of helping the child in his language at this 
 time. lyCt the child hear correct usage and as soon as he is 
 able to read let him have access to a variety of well written 
 story books, and he will be helped infinitely more than by 
 any amount of formal instruction. The latter method of help- 
 ing the child not only fails in its purpose but even does pos- 
 itive harm inasmuch as it prematurely brings him to a con- 
 sciousness of his own mistakes and of errors of which he would 
 otherwise happily remain entirely ignorant. The language 
 ideal at this time is saturation in good forms. Let the eye and 
 especially the ear feast upon good language but never make the 
 
14 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 child acutely conscious of the fact that this is good and some- 
 thing else is bad. An acute consciousness of good usage is 
 only second in harmfulness to an acute consciousness of bad 
 usage. This is the ripe age to give the child a start in the foreign 
 languages providing he is so situated that he may apply both 
 eye and ear to the work. If those with whom he associates 
 use the foreign language, and if the literature at his disposal 
 is written in this language, almost as easily will he at this time 
 learn this language as he did his mother tongue. But, if he 
 hears the mother tongue only or mostly, and the foreign lan- 
 guage in the class-room onh^ it would perhaps be better to 
 defer the work till a later stage. (See p. 389.) 
 
 In the second and third points we have ground for determin- 
 ing the nature of the manual work suitable for this stage. 
 
 Since President Hall's first lectures upon the subject some 
 3^ears ago, and the publication of Burk's work ('96) on the 
 development of the nervous system from fundamental to access- 
 ory, many kindergartners have verj^ wisely discarded work which 
 requires fine movement and delicate adjustment such as fine 
 needle work, work upon delicately perforated cardboards, lay- 
 ing of small sticks, etc., and have harmonized their require- 
 ments in writing more with the facts of modern physiology and 
 psychology, by making greater use of the board and allowing 
 children to do this work on a larger and freer scale in every 
 way. The efiect upon drawing has been equally wholesome 
 and this, together with the facts brought out by lyukens and 
 Barnes, gives a pretty safe basis for determining the work in this 
 subject at this stage. The researches of Ross (31, p. 83), 
 Bryan (5) and Burk (8) indicate that from the standpoint of 
 physiolog)' and psychology, the work in drawing at this time 
 should be just what Lukens (24) and Barnes (3) have found it 
 to be when the child is unhampered and left perfectly free to 
 express himself. The former have shown that there is but little 
 peripheral control at this time but with proper practice control 
 may be developed rapidly toward the close of this stage at seven 
 or eight years of age, while the latter have shown that the 
 earliest drawings of the child are apt to be mere scribbles. 
 The former have shown that the child is incapable of fine move- 
 ments and delicate adjustments, but can easily make larger 
 movements, and the latter have shown that after the scribble 
 stage the child naturally draws with a few large telling lines 
 making the drawing quite simple. I/Ukens agrees with Barnes 
 in his thought that this is the time for the alphabets of drawing 
 but that the technique or grammar of the subject should be de- 
 ferred till a later time, say about the ninth year, and Mr. Henry 
 T. Bailey, in the Massachusetts Report of the Board of Educa- 
 tion, ('94- '95) says that " if the power to draw is not acquired 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 1 5 
 
 before the end of the ninth year, it is not acquired in the public 
 schools." (29.) 
 
 Inasmuch as the purpose of this paper is to set out in relief 
 the stages in child development with some of the more obvious 
 pedagogical deductions only, the subject of drawing as such 
 cannot be discussed fully — merely some of the primal facts 
 that will serve as guides in working out the details. As the 
 ideal at this stage on the side of physiology and psychology 
 should be not so much a definite product but rather a bridging 
 over from the unorganized, uncontrolled movements at the 
 beginning of this stage to a higer degree of mental and physical 
 co-ordination and control at its close, so at this time the ideal in 
 drawing should be not so much one who can draw, but rather 
 a movement away from scribble to plain definite lines whose 
 combinations have more or less meaning. (Great care should 
 be taken to avoid arrest of development either from crowding, 
 retardation, or reversion.) Inasmuch as suggestion plays so 
 important a role at this time, "interest in drawing should be 
 early developed by giving children access to an abundance of 
 good pictures, illustrated books, magazines and plates of great 
 m^n, great scenes; and great sculptures, paintings and edifices. 
 These helps are of the utmost importance in all art education, 
 and should be in the environment of the child from the begin- 
 ning. Drawing thus becomes a pleasure to children, and they 
 acquire considerable skill without any instruction." (24.) 
 
 The general principles in a rational course in Drawing would 
 serve equally well in other lines of manual work. Local con- 
 ditions will be a determining factor in the technique of all of this 
 work, but not in the principles underlying it. And, in all of 
 the manual work up to seven or eight years of age, the spon- 
 taneity of the child should be allowed to assert itself. In many 
 cases other forms than drawing will be taken up. Instead of 
 drawing many children take to paper cutting first, and follow 
 this with drawing. I have seen the pictures of animals, cut by 
 a boy seven years of age, so true to life that even the mental 
 mood of the animal could easily be detected. Although the 
 pictures in themselves were plain, the conception and execution 
 were that of a potential artist. This work for him was, above 
 all things else a mode of expression, just as speaking, writing 
 or drawing are for other children. It was followed by coloring 
 and writing with unusually rapid progress in both. It is diflS- 
 cult to guess what the results would have been if this child at 
 the age of four or five had been required to conform to a cut- 
 and-dry course of manual work. But we can not take what this 
 child did so well as evidence that all children of his age should 
 do a certain amount of paper cutting. The valuable pedagogical 
 suggestion that it contains is that children should be supplied 
 
1 6 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 in the home and in the school with a variety of materials and 
 have an opportunity to express themselves with perfect free- 
 dom. 
 
 If the development of the race and child have any pedagogical 
 significance, this is evidently the ripe time for the beginning of 
 the study of nature. We are not, neither shall we be, free from 
 the need of and interest in the three fundamental human needs, 
 viz., food, clothing, and shelter. The poet and philosopher can 
 not prosper on rhyme and speculation alone. They, as well as 
 the scientist and laborer, must have life before they have their 
 own peculiar lives; they, too, must be fed, clothed and sheltered. 
 We have here a center in which the interests of all humanity 
 converge. The poorest and most ignorant have little more, and 
 the most favored have nothing that can be substituted for them. 
 The need for biologic knowledge was the first and continues to 
 be the primary need of life. To know in some way which 
 things are for us and which against us, which will cure and which 
 will kill, in short to know the life with which and in which we 
 live is our primary need. This is not only true chronologically, 
 but logically and biologically as well. There is no escape from 
 it. If there is any truth in the "recapitulation theory," and 
 if the natural, spontaneous interest of the child is to be a deter- 
 mining factor in the selection of material for the kindergarten 
 and elementary school, it would seem to be a gross error to omit 
 those things which have been the earliest and most persistent 
 elements in the development of the race and in which the child 
 finds its greatest delight. 
 
 It would be outside the scope of this paper to discuss the 
 standpoints, sources, and methods in Nature Study, sufiice it 
 to say that the most prevailing standpoints are what are known 
 as the (i) Mytho-poetic, (2) Human value relation, (3) Ethi- 
 cal value, (4) Esthetic value, (5) Intellectual value. None of 
 these is all-comprehensive and, indeed, it may be that all of 
 them are not, but each will serve as an organizing idea for the 
 work. A pedagogical question which arises is, which should come 
 first, second, etc.? The interest of the child must determine this 
 very largely. Perhaps, for young children, better and more 
 varied results could be gotten from the Mytho-poetic standpoint. 
 Perhaps, for the adolescent, the standpoint of Ethical values 
 could be used most effectively. We see here how intricately 
 related are all the problems and phases of pedagogy. To plan 
 a course in Nature Study one not only needs to know nature 
 as it is to-day, but also the cultural stages through which the 
 race has passed and above all he needs to be a student of chil- 
 dren. Whoever tries to solve this or any other pedagogical 
 problem from the standpoint of some little phase of work in 
 which he may have particular interest is more apt to go wrong 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 1 7 
 
 than right. The great text book of nature is open before us. 
 In this, both the race and the child find their most primary 
 and fundamental needs supplied, and their first and most abid- 
 ing interest awakened. In the kindergarten and elementary 
 school, when practicable, the care and culture of animals and 
 plants should be the first aim ; where this is not practicable, 
 association and acquaintance with them should be encouraged. 
 This study should constitute the very core and heart of elemen- 
 tar}^ education and should be secondary to no other phase of 
 work. 
 
 This is also the time to use Myth and Narrative History. 
 For the child the world is shrouded in mystery and peopled 
 with strange and unheard of beings. The mysterious appeals 
 strongly to all, but especially to the child whose experience is 
 limited and to whom the world is largely a mystery. Although 
 his curiosity for meaning is intense, the world cannot be inter- 
 preted to him scientifically or philosophically. Myth offers 
 a splendid opportunit}'^ for introducing him to many of the 
 forces and passions, hopes and fears, victories and defeats that 
 have made his world what it is. It should be taught as the 
 counferpart of Nature study, the one introducing the child to 
 life as it is found in plants and animals and the other introduc- 
 ing him to human life and spirit. Following close upon Myth 
 or carried along with it, should come Narrative History — not 
 the history grind but the historical story. Children have great 
 delight in change, in movement, in events. This is especially 
 true where the agents are human or where they are conceived 
 as possessing or being ruled by spirit akin to human spirit. 
 The child is not interested in the intricately complex principles 
 and processes of modern society, but its interest in the simple 
 and more tangible beginnings is absorbing. Any phase ot 
 history that can be subjected to the form of the simple narra- 
 tive story is most excellent pabulum for the child at this 
 time. 
 
 There remain to be discussed the subjects of Reading, Writ- 
 ing, and Arithmetic (the three R's) for children before their 
 seventh or eighth year. To make more firm the ground on 
 which deductions in regard to these subjects are to be based, 
 let us notice some additional things that are true of the child 
 and his development during this stage. In his address on 
 Movement and Psychic Processes, Mosso (26) says : "In man 
 the brain develops later than in all other animals, because his 
 muscles also develop later. The striped muscles are more in- 
 complete at birth in man than in any other animal. For this 
 fact that the human brain develops so slowly, I am able to 
 discover no other reason than this, that at birth the organs 
 which effect movement over which the brain exercises its 
 
1 8 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 authority, are not yet complete. Modern views show a ten- 
 dency to confirm what the great philosophers of Greece 
 already recognized, viz., that children ought to begin to read 
 and write only with the tenth year ; that it is injurious for 
 the development of the brain to be fettered to the school-desk 
 when only five or six years old. Attention produces not only 
 the same chemical effects and the same fatigue as muscular 
 exertion does, but we feel also, when we are attentive to any 
 thing, the characteristic muscular strain on the occiput, the 
 forehead, and other parts of the body. The more mobile the 
 extremities of an animal are, the more intelligent it is. • 
 
 " The mutual relation of intelligence and movement is one of 
 the most constant factors in nature, the movements always 
 change where intelligence changes. Microcephalic individuals 
 have an awkward gait, and an inconsiderable dexterity in the 
 movement of the hands. This change is still more striking 
 in the case of idiots. When the brain has been fatigued by 
 exclusively intellectual activity, the sensitiveness of the hand 
 and direct irritability of the muscles are also decreased. The 
 influence of the hand upon the development of a language is 
 evident from the fact that an aphasic patient is made to write 
 in order that he may gradually regain the power of speech. 
 The relation between muscular movements and conscious pro- 
 cesses is so intimate that when the arms and hands of a hyp- 
 notized person are brought into certain positions, and certain 
 muscles by external contact made to contract, certain emotions 
 are induced corresponding to those muscular contractions. ' ' 
 
 But, as has already been noted, Ross, Bryan and Burk have 
 shown that before seven or eight years of age, the child is to a 
 high degree inaffective as a motor being. The work of Lukens 
 and Barnes on Drawing as well as common observation by 
 every one, re-enforces the thought. If there is then this close 
 parallelism between movement on the one hand and psychic 
 processes on the other, as is claimed by Mosso, it must follow 
 that inasmuch as movements are spontaneous, unco-ordinated, 
 and but slightly under the voluntary control of the child, so 
 will its thoughts likewise be spontaneous, flitting and illogi- 
 cal; and this is exactly what we find in every-day observa- 
 tion. Dr. Vulpius has studied the fibers which horizontally 
 traverse the surface of the hemispheres, which he calls the 
 tangential fibers. These appear on the outer layer of the cor- 
 tex in the fifth month of life; in the seventh month the tangen- 
 tial fibers can be found in the deep layers; while in the layer 
 between, the cross fibers only appear after a year. In the 
 child of eight, and even perhaps of seven years, the fibers of 
 the cortex and medullary substances are complete in number 
 and caliber, and have taken the same arrangement as in the 
 
NASCENT STAGES. I9 
 
 adult. It is during the development of the brain and nervous 
 system before birth and during these first years of growth, 
 that malnutrition and perverted action occur, which result in 
 defective mental power. ' ' The point in this that needs to be 
 emphasized here is the close relation between nervous nutrition 
 and mental power. Neurologists and students of children's 
 diseases all agree that up to seven or eight years of age is the 
 period that brings out the effects of bad heredity due to the 
 rapid rate of growth and instability of the organism. If, as 
 Hurd says, in the process of education, energy designed to 
 further the growth of the brain is dissipated in functional 
 activity, hereditar)^ tendencies to disease become thereby devel- 
 oped, or the development of the brain is limited and defects 
 become evident which under more favorable circumstances 
 would not have existed. 
 
 To summarize the foregoing, we have (i) a close relation 
 between movement and intelligence. (2) The child's move- 
 ments are unco-ordinated and spontaneous. (3) Therefore, 
 the child's mental life at this time is apt to be spontaneous, 
 flitting, and illogical. (4) The brain is developing primarily 
 in grewth and not in function. (5) We should, therefore, 
 expect a very simple kind of mental life. (6) The necessity 
 for brain nutrition and not brain functioning to bridge over the 
 period when hereditary tendencies to disease are most apt to be 
 developed. If these things are true a question for pedagogy to 
 answer is, are reading, arithmetic and writing as daily assigned 
 tasks, conducive to the best development and highest welfare 
 of the child ? Is the amount of information and so-called disci- 
 pline derived from their study by children under eight years of 
 age worth the cost ? A comparison of the outlay with the in- 
 come, compels the conclusion that they are not worth the cost. 
 My reason for so answering is that work in these subjects flies 
 directly into the face of the foregoing facts of child life and de- 
 velopment during this stage. First let us notice reading in the 
 light of the summarized statement of facts. 
 
 Perhaps no one who reads this will remember his own pecu- 
 liar psychology when he learned to read his mother tongue, 
 but most will remember how it was in learning a foreign lan- 
 guage. Students of the French and German language find at 
 first if they are very careful about their pronunciation they are 
 apt to go over a page without extracting the thought, on the 
 other hand they find that if they are anxious about the thought, 
 their pronunciation is bad. Young men and women find it 
 very difiicult to get both faultless form aud meaning until they 
 have spent many years upon the language. And, yet. we re- 
 quire of the child with his simple undeveloped unco-ordinated, 
 physical and mental life to perform an even more difficult task. 
 
20 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 Is there any one who does not remember what a fearfully difii- 
 cult thing it was even to keep the place ? But this is only one 
 element in the child's difficulty; he must hold his book up, 
 hold it open, keep the place, and by close attention and delicate 
 adjustment of the eyes, he must decipher the characters in 
 themselves and keep them related to each other and then we 
 expect him to get the meaning and read with the spirit and 
 understanding. The performance of such a task is not only 
 injurious but in most cases impossible, and its requirement 
 positively cruel. Such work should not be a fixed daily task 
 of the child until there is a fair degree of muscular co-ordination 
 and control, and mental strength commensurate to such physi- 
 cal development, and until the period for the cropping out of 
 weak hereditary tendencies due to instability of organization 
 and rapid growth is passed over, which would be at about the 
 age of nine or ten. For essentially the same reasons work in 
 arithmetic and penmanship should be taken up, if at all, only 
 incidentally during this early stage. 
 
 Aside from the purely concrete number work. Arithmetic is 
 sufficient!}' abstract and general to demand at least a fair degree 
 of brain functioning and the ability to direct attention and to 
 carry on in a simple way at least the processes of abstraction, 
 association, and generalization. There is nothing in the physi- 
 ology or psychology of development that indicates that the 
 average child of seven or eight is capable of these things. By 
 constant appeals to the child, together with scolding and threat- 
 ening, a few arithmetical facts may be literally hammered into 
 its head, but no one would ever guess that he could do anything 
 worth while with these facts outside of the school room; on the 
 contrary, every one who has given the matter even passing atten- 
 tion knows that he cannot. If the child should give all the time 
 and energy that are worse than wasted on Arithmetic, to sensi- 
 ble work in Nature Study, Myth, and Narrative History, for 
 which he has both an interest and ability, the world would be 
 revealed to him in innumerable ways, learning would not be a 
 drudgery and a bore, time would be found for the introduction 
 of many kinds of work that have a real significance and value 
 for him, and even more effective arithmetical knowledge and 
 ability would be gained incidentally in connection with the sub- 
 jects of vital interest and importance than are gained by the 
 humdrum, formal study of the dry-as-dust arithmetic. 
 
 Reading and arithmetic should not be taught as formal sub- 
 jects until the close of the transitional period which closes out 
 the stage of childhood at about the age of nine or ten. The old 
 conservatism which keeps us doing things simply because we 
 have been doing them must be broken away from whenever 
 there is ground for so doing, and especially when it is plain that 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 21 
 
 there is a better thing to do. When reading and arithmetic 
 constituted almost the entire curriculum, child life and its devel- 
 opment were not the criterion. Social rather than physiological 
 and psychological facts were the determining factors. Professor 
 Dewey (13) has well said that " The primary school grew prac- 
 tically out of the popular movement of the sixteenth century 
 when along with the invention of printing and the growth of 
 commerce it became a business necessity to know how to read, 
 write and figure. The aim was distinctly a practical one; it was 
 utility; getting command of the.se tools, the s3^mbols of learning, 
 not for the sake of learning, but because it gave access to careers 
 in life otherwise closed." Neither should the social aspect of 
 education to-day be ignored in the planning of school work, but 
 it should not be emphasized to the hurt of the child. As was 
 stated in the introduction, any attempt at curriculum making 
 or educational procedure which does not take into account the 
 laws and stages of development of the one to be taught, is apt 
 to go wide of the mark and result in positive injury. 
 
 Co?iduct. In deducing some of the more general principles 
 which underlie the conduct and moral training of the child up 
 to seven years of age, we must here, as in its play and work, 
 make our determinations from the standpoint of the child itself 
 and not from the standpoint of the adult. Two points must be 
 borne in mind, (i) Many things which would be grossly 
 immoral for the adult have no moral significance whatever for 
 the child. (2) The child's standard of morality, so far as he 
 can be said to have a standard, does not come to him so much 
 by intuition as by precept, and not so much by precept as by 
 unconscious suggestion and imitation. The first point will be 
 helpful in determining the content of morality for the child, 
 and the second will serve as a guide in determining the method 
 in moral training. Nothing could be more deadening to the 
 development of the child than an attempt to make it conform 
 in every way to the moral standard of the adult. Because the 
 child appropriates at this age that which does not belong to it, 
 it is not therefore a thief as its father would be under the 
 same conditions. Because the child in the vividness of its 
 imagination does not adhere strictly to the literal truth it is not 
 therefore a liar. Because the child connives in every conceiv- 
 able way to attain a desirable end, it is not therefore a trickster; 
 and because the naked child, even at seven or eight, manifests 
 no sense of shame, it is not therefore disgracefully immoral. 
 From the standpoint of the adult these things would all be 
 gross breaches of morality, while from the standpoint of the 
 child they have but little or no moral significance. On the 
 other hand there will come a time in the life of the child when 
 these very things will have great moral significance, and the 
 
22 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 pedagogical question which must be met is, what can be done 
 for the child at this time which will result in a sense of right 
 and wrong and a disposition to do the one and avoid the other, 
 but which will not result in prudishness or a precocious and 
 morbid sense of moral delinquency? Prudishness and moral 
 morbidness, above all things else, must be avoided during these 
 years. Better no sense of morality at all, than that the child 
 of six or seven should either hold himself up as a bright and 
 shining example of right conduct, or that he should magnify 
 his childish mistakes into cardinal and unpardonable sins. 
 Such moral attitudes are by far more hopeless, even, than almost 
 any overt childish misdemeanor. It is not good for the child 
 to be acutely conscious either of his goodness or his badness. 
 His mind for most part should be, and under normal conditions 
 will be. occupied with something other than self It is in this 
 connection that direct, positive, moral training at this time not 
 only fails to accomplish desirable ends, but does positive harm; 
 the child and his behavior are apt to be made the topic of dis- 
 cussion. For this reason, in all attempts to teach morals, an 
 indirect method — the reading of a story, the relating of an inci- 
 dent, etc., — is superior in every way to the more direct treat- 
 ment, which should be held in reserve for special cases. We 
 often teach the child to discern the right from the wrong, and 
 admonish him to cleave to the one and forsake the other, only 
 to find that as a result of our teaching, or in spite of it, the 
 second state of that child is worse than the first. As a rule, 
 the discriminations that he is capable of making are not effective 
 in determining the course that he will pursue. Fine discrimi- 
 nations and admonitions are apt to be valuable in proportion to 
 their scarcity. Nowhere in the development of the child do 
 suggestion and imitation play so lasting and important a role 
 as in the development of morals and conduct. As nothing helps 
 the child so much in the acquisition and use of good language 
 forms as saturation in good language forms, oral and written, 
 so nothing will instill within him the habit of using pure rather 
 than vulgar language so much as association with those who 
 always use pure language. No amount of moralizing on the 
 sinfulness of lying will help the child so much as living with 
 people who always speak the truth; and nothing will more 
 readily and effectively develop in the child a sense of personal 
 and property rights than association with those who are careful 
 to observe the rights of their fellows, and who do not appropri- 
 ate to their own use that which does not belong to them. The 
 first great concern of parents and teachers, who are interested in 
 the morals of their children, should be their own behavior. 
 
 The moral ideal for the stage of childhood is innocence of 
 right and wrong, morally considered. Every child knows that 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 23 
 
 there are some things that may be done and some that may not. 
 This knowledge should come to him more as a matter of course. 
 He soon learns to keep his hands out of the fire because he 
 doesn't like the result of putting them into it; and so he must 
 early learn to desist from many things for the same simple rea- 
 son that he doesn't like the consequence; but he does not, 
 neither can he look upon these things in themselves as right or 
 wrong. _ I have known children to repeat the oaths of their 
 elders with as little sense of guilt as if they were repeating the 
 catechism, and in so doing they were not therefore immoral. 
 The danger, however, is that having the language at their com- 
 mand, it will be but a short step to supply the content, which 
 means profanity. Something should be done to prevent such 
 results. Prohibition of the use of such language, with little or 
 no emphasis upon the naughtiness of it, is the most rational 
 and effective remedy. And so it is with the child's conduct in 
 general. The experience of the parent and teacher must count 
 for something, else what is the significance of parenthood or 
 control in school ? There will come a time when the child should 
 be thrown upon his own responsibility — left more or less free to 
 do as he desires, without let or hindrance, but not so now. 
 Indeed, at the beginning of life, so far are we removed from the 
 possibilities of such an ideal that implicit obedience should be 
 insisted upon. Some on^ has wisely said: " If the child does 
 not obey when first commanded he should be punished; but if 
 the teacher even succeeds in securing obedience after he has com- 
 manded many times, he, and not the child, should be punished." 
 
 Teachers must know how demoralizing it is to keep nagging 
 at children. They must also know that for many reasons there 
 are some requests whose reasonableness cannot be explained to 
 the child. In such cases implicit unquestioned obedience should 
 be expected. The child with a healthy mind does not contem- 
 plate the wickedness of one possible line of action and the good- 
 ness of another possible line, and upon the basis of this discrimi- 
 nation determine his act. If he be a normal child, he does desist 
 from doing certain things, because he has learned that these 
 are things that must not be done, and he falls into the habit of 
 letting them alone. On the other hand, if he be a normal child, 
 he does certain things over and over again, until his habit of 
 action begins to take form; and, so, the child should pass from 
 his childhood into the early years of youth with the alphabets 
 of moral habits pretty firmly fixed, but in no sense a contem- 
 plater of deeds. 
 
 Summary. 
 
 To summarize the stage of childhood briefly: 
 
 (i) There is here, as elsewhere, a close relation between 
 physical movement and mental efficiency. 
 
24 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 (2) The child's physical movements are spontaneous, unco- 
 ordinated, and but slightly under voluntary control. 
 
 (3) Its mental movements are likewise spontaneous, flitting 
 and illogical. 
 
 (4) The end of work is a definite product — physical or men- 
 tal. 
 
 (5) This is the time of rapid nervous growth and great 
 nervous instability. 
 
 (6) The brain approximates its full weight at seven or eight, 
 at which time development turns more to function than to size. 
 
 (7) The child's mental life consists chiefly of percepts, repro- 
 duced images, and crude products of the imagination. 
 
 (8) This is the time when suggestion and imitation play their 
 most important role. 
 
 (9) In general, for the child of this age, right is what he may 
 do; wrong is what he may not do. He has but little notion ot 
 right and wrong in themselves. 
 
 Based upon the foregoing and their corollaries, the following 
 deductions are made: 
 
 ( 1 ) The chief business of the child up to seven or eight should 
 be growth; hence, nutrition in its widest sense is its greatest 
 need. (2, 3, 5, above.) 
 
 (2) The child is incapable of producing effectively, and is 
 apt to be permanently injured by trying to do so (2, 3, 5, 
 above), hence, he finds his chief occupation in play rather 
 than in work. 
 
 (3) The child should be required to do only those things for 
 which he has a fair degree of efficiency (2, 4, 5, above), and for 
 most part those things which appeal to him. 
 
 (4) The child is helped more through suggestion and imita- 
 tion than by formal instruction. (7, 8, above.) 
 
 (5) Through suggestion and imitation his social and natural 
 environment have great influence upon him. (8, above.) 
 
 (6) The aim of training at this time should be the production 
 of the healthiest child possible, and not information, (i, 2, 3, 
 5, 6 above.) 
 
 (7) Some things besides play which appeal to the child at 
 this time and which give him mental vigor, and at the same 
 time do not interfere with his development, are Nature Study, 
 Myth, Narrative History, Paper-cutting, Free-hand Drawing, 
 and Singing. 
 
 (8) Arithmetic and reading require muscular and mental 
 ability and control that the child has not yet attained, and should 
 not be a part of the regular school work. (2, 3, 5, 6, 7, above.) 
 
 (9) Nothing has so great moral effect upon the child as the 
 things he sees and hears. (8, above.) 
 
 (10) Unquestioned obedience to rational, intelligent authority 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 25 
 
 should be the principle in the management of young children, 
 and freedom from this principle will increase with the develop- 
 ment of the child. 
 
 In the negative discussion of reading and arithmetic for the 
 stage of childhood, I have already anticipated some things 
 which from the positive standpoint belong to the following 
 stage. But before passing to this stage the transitional period 
 which comes between these stages must be treated. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Transition from Chii^dhood to Youth. 
 
 As has already been shown, the stages of infancy and child- 
 hood are ushered in by short transitional periods, which are 
 both retrospective and prophetic. So, in passing from the stage 
 of childhood to that of youth, at about the age of eight, there 
 is a marked transition which carries into it and ofttimes through 
 it, many of the characteristics of the preceding stage, and at the 
 same time develops new features which are peculiar to the stage 
 that follows. As in the other transitional periods, so here there 
 ca^ be drawn no hard and fast lines, but in general the time is 
 between seven or eight years of age at the beginning and nine 
 or ten at the close. Old things are passing away and new ones 
 appearing. 
 
 At about seven or eight years of age the brain has approxi- 
 mated its full weight, and is changing in its development from 
 increase in size to increase of function. Along with this there 
 is also a change in the rate of bodily growth; so that the annual 
 increase will be greater at the beginning of this stage than it 
 has been through the stage of childhood. 
 
 The child is losing its first teeth and the permanent ones are 
 coming. This more objective and superficial change seen in the 
 case of the teeth has many physical and mental counterparts; 
 the child is not quite at its best either physically or mentally. 
 
 Doubtless many of the disturbances of this time are due to 
 bad nutrition which finds its cause in improper mastication of 
 the food, the child having sometimes as many as three or four 
 teeth out at a time. 
 
 This same thing is seen in many of the domestic animals, 
 notably the horse which gets his second teeth at the age of four. 
 Dealers in horses for the market will not buy under five years 
 of age. Their stock remark is that a horse at four is no account. 
 While this is not literally true, anyone who has handled young 
 horses knows that a four-year-old does not have either the en- 
 durance or trustworthiness of a three-year-old. Reggner (4) 
 observed that young monkeys often sickened and died of fever 
 when shedding their milk teeth, and the same process is cer- 
 
26 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 tainl}^ not free from risk in the human subject. Nervous chil- 
 dren often become emaciated during its progress, or suffer much 
 from neuralgia or cough; and from having been hard}^ and 
 robust, they become pale and delicate. Apparentlj^ in connec- 
 tion with it also complaints are sometimes made of headache, 
 tenderness of the eyes, and lassitude. 
 
 At this period is encountered also that curious and sometimes 
 puzzling perversion of the moral nature, known as malingering. 
 From egotism and insatiable craving for notice and sympathy, 
 from a desire to escape work, from jealousy, or from some more 
 complex motive, the boy or girl simulates disease, and may do 
 so with considerable ingenuity and success, or exaggerates some 
 trifling ailment. 
 
 The disorder is generally povert37- of the blood and nervous- 
 ness, which not rarely are connected with constitutional changes 
 associated with the second dentition. 
 
 There is a change in the vascular system at this time. Krohn 
 has found that the child of eight fatigues much more easily 
 than the one of six or seven or the one nine years of age. 
 There is apt to be dilation of the heart and cardiac incompe- 
 tence, such as shortness of breath and readiness of fatigue. 
 The reason for the dilated heart at this time is the sudden in- 
 crease in weight of the child without corresponding increase in 
 size of heart muscle. . The dilation or tendency to dilation and 
 fatigue curves, represent the fact that the child must conserve 
 its strength until its heart grows to its work, (9, p. 114.) 
 
 Dr. Christopher (10, pp. 330-331) says, — "We must recog- 
 nize that the period from seven to nine years of age, quite irre- 
 spective of the other conditions of the life of the child, is one 
 in which fatigue occurs very readily and is one in which damage 
 to the heart is likely to be produced. This period in child life 
 is one to which special attention should be called because of the 
 extremely insidious character of its approach. It is not only 
 in physical fatigue that it manifests itself, but in mental fatigue 
 and in the exhibition of many nervous symptoms otherwise 
 utterly unaccountable. 
 
 One of the commonest manifestations is the appearance of 
 general laziness on the part of the child, and it is extremely 
 common to conclude that the child needs more exercise. As a 
 matter of course it is perfectly evident that, of all things, the 
 child does not need more exercise at this period, but in every 
 way its force should be conserved and its labors reduced to the 
 smallest possible degree consistent with the maintenance of 
 health. The duration of this period lasts occasionally a few 
 months, although in a number of in.stances I have known it to 
 last two years and even longer, during which time the child's 
 failure to develop sufl&cieut progress at school, and its manifest- 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 27 
 
 ations of unpleasant nervous symptoms have been the cause of 
 great anxiety on the part of parents. It is clear that the school 
 work during this period of life should be diminished to a point 
 below that which has been done the previous year and which 
 may be undertaken safely the next year." 
 
 The studies of Jastrow (21) indicate that at this time there is 
 a transition, change or stage in the development of the special 
 senses notably the sense of sight. The results of his investiga- 
 tions and observations show that children who have lost their 
 sight before about seven years of age (the time coincides to the 
 time for the approximate weight of the brain) do not have visual 
 images, and, as a rule, those who lose their sight after this time 
 do have. This, perhaps, does not point so much to a change in 
 the development of the organ as it does to a central change. 
 However this may be, it is significant as marking a time of 
 transition in the course of development, and is fraught with 
 great pedagogical value not only for those who teach all classes 
 of blind, but also for those who teach normally developed 
 people. 
 
 , One of the most striking changes that occur at this time is 
 to be seen in the entirely different nature of the somatic dis- 
 eases preceding and following this period. As has been shown, 
 during the stage of infancy from two to seven, is the time for 
 infectious diseases, and in his treatise on The Di.seases of Infancy 
 and Childhood, Holt shows that after this time there is a tran- 
 sition from the infectious diseases of childhood to the diseases 
 which are more often found in adults than in children. The 
 change in nervous diseases at seven or eight indicates even more 
 clearly than does the change in somatic diseases that this is a 
 time of transition. Before this time which Clouston (11) des- 
 ignates as the period of most rapid brain growth, special sense 
 education, motor co-ordinations, and speech, the prevailing 
 nervous diseases are convulsions, squint, stammering, back- 
 wardness of speech, night terrors, infantile paralysis, tubercular 
 meningitis, hydrocephalus and rickets. ' ' Every one of these, ' ' 
 he says, ' 'can be connected with the immense brain growth of the 
 period, with the development of certain essential brain functions 
 at this time, such as speech equilibration, and the other essen- 
 tial muscular co-ordinations, with the intense trophic activity, 
 and with the rapid metabolism of every tissue, with education 
 of function of special sense organs and their brain centers." 
 
 The character of the nervous diseases which follow this short 
 transitional period in most cases differs very greatly from that 
 of the diseases preceding it. We have now, says Clouston (11), 
 the period when muscular motion becomes co-ordinated fully 
 with emotion, as seen specially in facial expression; and the 
 nervous diseases which characterize the years from eight or nine 
 
28 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 to thirteen or fourteen are chorea, some cases of epilepsy and 
 somnambulism, megrim, asthma, and some eye defects. 
 
 In this transitional period, at about eight years of age, there 
 are as many striking indications of physical disturbance and 
 readjustment as are found in the pubescent period with which 
 all are acquainted, and about which so much has been written 
 and spoken. I think there can be no doubt that if the period 
 at eight carried with it any objective sign of the birth of a func- 
 tion so deep-seated and universal as is the sex function, it would 
 not have been so long in receiving the attention due it. For in 
 other ways the changes which occur at about eight are even 
 more striking than those that occur at about thirteen. 
 
 As was said in the introduction of this topic, the life at this 
 time is both retrospective and prophetic. We have both the traces 
 of the stage preceding it and suggestions of the stage following. 
 Part of the child's teeth are temporary and part of them are per- 
 manent; the child's brain, although it has approximated its 
 growth in size, and is turning toward development of function, 
 nevertheless continues to grow at a slow rate, and functions often 
 inaccurately and with difficult3\ The vascular system is as it 
 was, while the muscular system has taken a sudden leap ahead, 
 and the disproportion in the development of these two systems 
 at this time results in cardiac incompetence and fatigue. 
 
 The somatic and nervous diseases are about evenly divided 
 between those characteristic of the stage preceding and the one 
 following. 
 
 There seems to be no abrupt change in the development of 
 the senses at this time, and yet the period is significant, inas- 
 much as those who lose their sense of sight before this time are 
 apt not to have visual images and those who lose their sense 
 of hearing before this time are not apt to have auditory images. 
 
 This then is a time of readjustment in the vascular, muscular 
 and nervous systems, and of great disturbance in the functions 
 of circulation, digestion and nutrition. Coming at about the 
 age of eight, when the child is apt to be in his third or fourth 
 year of school, these facts are fraught with great pedagogical 
 significance. It seems evident that the child is not capable 
 of the same amount of physical and mental activity and endur- 
 ance as he was at six or seven or as he will be at nine or 
 ten, and this fact in itself would demand on the one hand a 
 decrease in the amount of work required and on the other hand 
 the provision of ample opportunities for pleasant recreation and 
 amusement and quiet rest. 
 
 Dr. Jackson (4) says, referring to the disorders incidental to 
 the second dentition, "The remedies which I have found most 
 useful are as follows: — First, a relief from study or from regular 
 tasks, yet using books so far as they afford agreeable occupation 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 29 
 
 and amusement. Second, exercise in the open air, preferring 
 the mode most agreeable to the patient and in more grave cases 
 the removal from the town to the country." 
 
 V. 
 
 Youth. 
 
 Although no two records on the growth of children coincide 
 throughout, there seems to be in a general way agreement that 
 at about eight or nine years of age there is a sudden increase 
 followed by a slight decrease in annual increment until the time 
 just preceding puberty. So far as is known there is nothing 
 peculiar in the development of the nervous system at this time. 
 There seems to be a steady development of its functioning 
 power and a very slight increase in the weight of the brain. 
 These 5'ears of slow growth from about nine to twelve or thir- 
 teen years mark a third definite stage in the development of the 
 child. Both the physical and psychical life are unique and de- 
 mand a unique pedagogy. The child is not simply his former 
 self grown larger but he is in many ways an altogether differ- 
 ent being. The transitional period from seven to nine has 
 served to transform him not only nominall}^ but actually from 
 the stage of childhood to that of youth. 
 
 The chances for life are better now than they have been here- 
 tofore, the girls being least susceptible to disease at 11 (3.23 
 per 1000) and the boys at 12. (3.42 per loco. ) (17.) The 
 somatic diseases to which the child is liable, while not peculiar 
 to this stage, are almost entirely diflferent from those of the stage 
 preceding this; while the nervous diseases to which he is most 
 liable are to a high degree peculiar to this stage. The heart 
 muscle has increased in size proportionately to the size of the 
 body and so fatigue is less easily induced than at the age of 
 eight. " Sensation, special and common, and its organs have 
 been developed; muscular co-ordination has progressed far; 
 and many of the mental faculties, such as memory, fancy 
 and emotion, have all acquired some strength, but muscular 
 action has not been fully co-ordinated with feeling, and 
 this is the period of life when this co-ordination takes 
 place." (11.) This is the period of endurance and of co-or- 
 dination mental and physical, and mental with physical; the 
 time for the storing up of reserve power and the establishment 
 of automatisms — the essential forerunners of the reproductive 
 function. It is the intermediate stage of life between the stages 
 of greatest brain growth and of highest functional advance; be- 
 tween the pure gathering in of egoism and the appearance of 
 the higher altruism. Above all things else this is the "laying 
 up," the " salting down " stage of child life. ... As be- 
 
30 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 fore, let us consider this stage from the three-fold standpoint 
 of play, work and conduct. 
 
 Play. In regard to the child's play at this time the princi- 
 ples recognized in the earlier stage should not be lost sight of 
 here. It should be unhampered, spontaneous and careless of 
 ends. But there are other elements entering now that were not 
 present before. This is the time when the transition is made 
 from the purely individual games and plays to the full fledged 
 co-operative games. Every nine-year-old boy has his nine and 
 eleven or belongs to the teams of some other boy. From the 
 immediate artistic standpoint all such co-operative play is a fail- 
 ure, but its mental and physical significance to those who par- 
 ticipate can hardly be gainsaid. At first the captain of a team 
 will hardly be able to hold his men together long enough for a 
 single game; a bruised finger, a bad start, an imaginary slight 
 sustained by a prominent member of a team, and a multitude 
 of equally trifling matters play havoc with the captain's organ- 
 izing genius. 
 
 These things are not so true of the twelve-year-old team. 
 Three years have served to work a transformation. Now teams 
 are organized that remain intact all season — and so almost 
 every town has its " North Enders," " South Enders," " West 
 Siders ' ' and ' ' East Siders. ' ' Whereas the nine-year-olds hardly 
 knew the "outs from the "ins," the twelve-year-olds know 
 the game as well as the most inveterate "rooter." Further- 
 more they have attained the muscular strength and co-ordina- 
 tion to execute it. Hand in hand with this development of 
 muscular strength and control have gone mental strength and 
 control. So that the team hangs together after a half dozen 
 crushing defeats. They do not disband because the pitcher has 
 an off day or because the center rush fumbles. They have 
 learned that to have one's own way absolutely in play means to 
 play alone, and that team work means self-control in the high- 
 est sense. Aside from health, which should be the chief con- 
 sideration, the great gains to be derived from play at this time 
 are to be seen in the increased mental and physical control 
 developed in co-operative games and plays. Along with this 
 control and subjection of one's whims and caprices for the sake 
 of the group there must be found the same spontaneity and free- 
 dom as characterized the stage up to seven. The chief differ- 
 ence lay in this, that whereas in the earlier stage the plea was 
 made for the absolute freedom and spontaneity of the individual, 
 here we must insist upon the .same degree of freedom and spon- 
 taneity on the part of the group. There the individual quit 
 playing with its doll and began playing with its toes at will. 
 Here the group quits playing ball and begins playing war at 
 will. There the child exercised the initiative in every particu- 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 3 1 
 
 lar Here the group exercises this prerogative. There must 
 in the latter as m the former case, be absolute freedom froni 
 external control. Better that a team should disband a dozen 
 times a day than that it should be organized by the captain's 
 lather and sustamed through paternal compulsion. On the 
 other hand, one of the things that every child must learn sooner 
 or later is that if he is to live in society there are some thin erg 
 he may do and many things he may not do. One of the hardest 
 lessons that a boy has to learn who moves from the country 
 into the city is that he cannot throw stones in every direction 
 :i'f '^?l-^^7 ^""'^ ^'™ ^° reconcile himself to the proposition 
 tnat all his throwing must be straight up. But that is the price 
 one must pay for social life. There is no place where this les- 
 son can be taught so naturally and brought home to the child 
 so forcibly and in a way that it will be accepted so readily as in 
 !l^ 0^° co-operative games and plays. Thus unconsciously to 
 the child and entirely incidentally has come to him one of the 
 most essential and fundamental lessons of social life. 
 
 Co7iduct. In the following discussion of work for this stac^e 
 and of conduct for the previous stage, most things that b?ar 
 upftn conduct at this time are given. All of the principles sug- 
 gested for the earlier stage should be observed here But it 
 must not be forgotten that the child's notion of right and wrong 
 has ^^v&Xo^^^ pari passu with his physical and mental develoo- 
 ment. He should, therefore, be held responsible for his conduct 
 m a way that heretofore would have been unjust. Insight and 
 rational sympathy on the part of the teacher and parent are 
 of the greatest importance. Judicious but close discipline should 
 be exercised. While the fundamentals for work as sucro-gsted 
 below are being drilled into the child at this time, it^i^ just 
 as necessary that the fundamentals in conduct should not be 
 slighted. No task should be set that is too difficult for the 
 child to perform, and no performance should be accepted that 
 is not well done. Irremediable injury will come to the child who 
 is allowed to roughly approximate a standard in work and con- 
 duct. Fairness should always characterize any requirement in 
 conduct, and the child should be expected to fulfill this require- 
 ment^ promptly, fully and unequivocally. These are the years 
 for discipline in conduct as well as in work. 
 
 Work. The stage from nine to thirteen differs from the one 
 up to seven in that the earlier was pre-eminently the play stage 
 while the later should be pre-eminently a work stage. It was 
 found that before seven the child is not apt to have developed 
 mental and physical control sufficient to enable him to produce 
 effectively and that he is apt to be injured by trying to do so. 
 After the transitional period, at about eight, the average child 
 is found to possess sufficient strength and control in both these 
 
32 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 lines to produce effectively in various ways without endanger- 
 ing his health or development. It must never be lost sight of 
 that an injudicious amount of work is to be avoided at all 
 times. 
 
 This, then, is the time when the child should be initiated 
 into hard work. It is a time, also, when his tissues, muscular 
 and neural, are plastic and when he is largely exempt from 
 disease. It is the time for drill, for practice, for discipline and 
 even for drudgery. This is in no way contradictor}^ to the 
 doctrine of spontaneity advocated in the preceding period. 
 The conditions of life that I have just enumerated show that 
 the child does not now run the risk of arrested development 
 that he has heretofore and there is one very important chapter 
 of psychology that is too little considered in the discussions of 
 the spontaneity and natural interest of the child. This is the 
 dependence of interest upon attention. The emphasis is almost 
 always placed upon the obverse proposition that children attend 
 to whatever they have an interest in, but it is just as true that 
 they are apt to become interested in whatever they attend to. 
 Owing to the conditions of development, I should say for the 
 stage up to seven, for most part let them attend to those things 
 which attract them without assistance and for this stage let 
 them attend to those things which serve as the alphabets of 
 formal school work even though at times their interest in some 
 lines must be induced by attention to them. 
 
 Many lines of work which the child was capable of pursuing 
 only incidentally in the previous stage should now be taken up 
 in earnest, while the things he has been doing he should in a 
 degree continue to do. 
 
 Nature Stud}^ should not be supplanted by arithmetic, and 
 the story will still have its place in the curriculum, but there 
 will be readjustment of work so that the course will be strength- 
 ened by the addition of subjects. Reading should now be made 
 one of the daily assigned tasks. The average child by this time 
 possesses the mental and physical strength and control which 
 will enable it to use the instruments of reading as a source of 
 enjoyment and information without endangering its health and 
 robbing it of time that could be much more profitabl)' used in 
 other ways. The child of nine or ten will not consume all its 
 energy in holding the book open, keeping the place, and inter- 
 preting the thought. The end to be attained should be facility 
 rather than ability to pronounce polysyllables. To this end there 
 should be a well selected list of books treating of all subjects of 
 human and especially of childish interest accessible to the child, 
 and he should have perfect freedom in the selection of his reading 
 material. A great amount of oral reading should be encouraged. 
 Facility to catch the thought and to express it intelligently 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 33 
 
 must be sought. The aim should not be to develop critics but 
 to master the subject as a tool; to become proficient in the use 
 of it as a joiner is in the use of his chisel. It need hardly be said 
 that the child's opportunity for such drill is not limited to his 
 reading and story books, but that every book he uses, regard- 
 less of subject matter, serves equally as well. If the time given 
 to reading before the child is seven years old were given to real 
 things in which he has a lively interest, as was suggested in the 
 discussion of work for that stage, it would bring such a fund of 
 information and interest to its reading work at nine years of 
 age that the problem of method in teaching reading would prac- 
 tically solve itself. It has been demonstrated over and over 
 again that the way for an adult to get a working mastery of a 
 language is to become absorbingly interested in the subject 
 written in that language. And so it is with the child. If he 
 can arrive at this stage with a first-hand knowledge of and inter- 
 est in rivers and hills, flowers and trees, birds and bugs, ani- 
 mals and people of all sorts, reading will be a key whose use he 
 will not be long in learning. Arithmetic should also cease to be 
 onl)'^ an incidental study and should become one of the regular 
 studies of the programme. The child now possesses a fair degree 
 of brain functioning power, and the ability to direct its attention 
 and to carry on, in a simple way at least, the processes of abstrac- 
 tion, association and generalization. It also has physical develop- 
 ment sufiicient to use the materials of arithmetic to some pur- 
 pose and without injury to itself The aim at this time in 
 arithmetic should be a mastery of the fundamentals; the estab- 
 lishment of the alphabets of arithmetic. For two reasons this 
 should be done. There will never be a time when the child can 
 do this kind of work better than he can now; and advance in the 
 subject is absolutely hopeless without it. The child must learn 
 to read and write numbers, whole numbers, fractions, decimals 
 and denominate numbers. He must learn the addition and 
 multiplication table until, shuffle it however you will, it will be 
 as familiar to him as his own name. He must become thor- 
 oughly at home in the tables of denominate numbers. No effort 
 should be made to put the child through the book or to make 
 a mathematician of him. He should not be held so much for 
 his method as for his work. He should not be held for the logic 
 of his work but for the performance of it. He is not necessarily 
 ignorant of his work because he cannot explain it. The aim in 
 arithmetic at this stage should be drill upon the fundamentals 
 until the child uses them with as much ease as he feeds himself. 
 The foreign languages should be taken up at this time. Indeed, 
 if the child is .so fortunately situated as to hear these languages, 
 or if skillful teachers can be secured, they may be taken up much 
 earlier. (See p, 370.) But under no conditions should they be 
 
 f .r. 
 
34 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 allowed to be deferred to a later time than this. Observation 
 and testimon}^ both show that seldom is a person who begins 
 the study of a foreign language at a later stage entirely free 
 from the accent peculiar to his own language and in every way 
 as proficient as a native born. This is the time when children 
 manufacture language; when they speak the so-called "pig 
 latin;" when they distort their words and sentences; when they 
 communicate in abbreviations; when they use secret language; 
 when they begin to talk by gestures and use the deaf and dumb 
 alphabet. It is the ripe time for the grafting on of new modes 
 of expression. Furthermore, the wisest and most successful 
 teachers of foreign languages advocate its study at this time, 
 and some of them even earlier. As in the use of the reading 
 and arithmetic book, so here the child is able to use the 
 materials necessary for such study. The thing to be aimed at 
 is facility. The conversational method should be insisted upon. 
 Whoever cannot teach by this method should be considered 
 unfit for the modern languages as one who does not know the 
 multiplication table without the book is unfit to teach arith- 
 metic. Correct forms should be insisted upon from the start. 
 This end will not be attained so much through a grind upon 
 technical grammar as by reading and hearing good forms and 
 exercise in the use of them. 
 
 The ideal for the foreign languages at this time will be much 
 as the ideal for the mother tongue was in the earlier stage and 
 indeed as it is for most part in this stage. Saturation in good 
 forms both oral and zvritten with perfect freedom of expression. 
 
 The work in Nature Study will serve as the most natural 
 introduction to the more formal study of geography. The 
 child's interest in his natural environment will be extended 
 to an interest in nature in general. Through his knowledge 
 of and interest in the plants and animals of his own region he 
 can easily be led into a study of the fauna and flora of different 
 countries, and this will in its turn serve as an excellent intro- 
 duction to the study of biology a little later. In the same way 
 an interest in the mineral world will bring him naturally to the 
 study of geology. The child knows that many things that he 
 consumes in the way of food and clothing are not produced at 
 home and he also knows from his previous work in Nature 
 Study that these things have their origin in plants and animals. 
 Here is an additional incentive to study the plants and animals 
 of different regions but it serves its highest end as an introduc- 
 tion to the study of the two great geographical topics of com- 
 merce and manufacture. No more dreary task was ever as- 
 signed a child than the one of committing to memory outright 
 all the agricultural and manufactured products of the different 
 States in Asia or the imports and exports of Australia. And 
 
NASCSNT STAGES. 35 
 
 no more valuable or absorbingly interesting piece of work can 
 be undertaken than the tracing out of the processes that resulted 
 in the shoes or the hat that he wears or the salt and pepper that he 
 eats. Instead of getting a few isolated facts which are dismissed 
 after the recitation for others just as valueless, the child would 
 thus get things in their relations and the phases of original 
 production, transportation and manufacture would signify some- 
 thing to him. Without any attempt at philosophizing, a thing 
 to be studiously avoided at this time, a question which always 
 arises in the mind of the child is, — "Why don't they raise 
 pepper and cotton in New England ? " " Why is the meat that 
 I eat carried from the Mississippi Valley ? " " How is it that 
 the people in the plains and their neighbors on the mountain 
 side producesuch widely different things?" "Why is Vancouver 
 so much warmer than Labrador ? " It need hardly be said that 
 such questions show that the time is ripe for the study of 
 climatic conditions — the significance of altitude, latitude, ocean 
 currents, relief, contour, movements of the earth, the change 
 of seasons, and all the geographical conditions which make 
 the products of one region differ so widely from those of an- 
 other. The study of the relief of a country, its climate, etc., 
 paves the way to a study of the geographical basis for the 
 history work. Children at this age can be led to see and have 
 great interest in seeing why, for example, Illinois does not ex- 
 tend a little farther west, Indiana a little farther south and 
 Massachusetts a little farther east; that ancient Greece was not 
 divided into more than twenty States through mere resolutions, 
 and why modern Switzerland is divided up into twenty-six 
 cantons. 
 
 It must be admitted that these suggestions do not at all times 
 run parallel to the logic of the subject, but it must also be ad- 
 mitted that they do run parallel to good pedagogy and we care 
 more for pedagogy than we do for a smooth running piece of 
 logical machinery. The chief reason that geography has been 
 a bore to students and a burden to teachers and a grief to 
 pedagogues is, that we have been trying to organize it and 
 present it logically, beginning with mathemathical, in which 
 the child can possibly have no interest, and going from this 
 through physical to political. If the wits of the pedagogic 
 and scientific world were summoned to devise a more unprom- 
 ising and fruitless scheme for geography work than the one 
 of following out the logic of the subject, their work would 
 surely result in unequivocal failure. 
 
 In the same way the history stories and the myth of the 
 earlier stage bring the child naturally to the more careful and 
 detailed study of history. The work at this time should be 
 full of human interest. The time has not yet come for the more 
 
36 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 abstract study of treaties, constitutions and government docu- 
 ments. In the stud}'^ of American history, the beginnings of 
 our history appeal very strongly to children of this age. Well 
 written stories of the voyages of Columbus; of the expeditions 
 of Drake and DeSoto; of the work of La Salle and Marquette; 
 of the landing of the Pilgrims; of the founding of Jamestown 
 and St. Augustine; the winning of the West; the stories of 
 David Crockett, Daniel Boone, and George Rogers Clark have 
 a very great fascination for the child at this age and will be 
 retained with remarkable tenacity. This is the "blood and 
 thunder" age of the child. He will follow out in detail the 
 manoeuvers of an army, the rough plan of a campaign, the re- 
 sults of battles with more delight and often with more accuracy 
 than he will at a later stage. One reason why so much of the 
 time given to wars by older students instead of to interpretation 
 and historical documents on the ground that there is no time 
 for the latter is, that the former were not taught when they 
 should have been taught. Any normal child who has had ra- 
 tional training up to the age of ten will read the battles of the 
 American Revolution from lycxington and Concord to Yorktown 
 with approximately as much understanding and infinitely more 
 pleasure and enthusiasm than he will at twenty. Only let the 
 history be authentic and written decently, and do not piece- 
 meal it but let it be read, a whole campaign or a whole war at 
 a time. No wonder a child loses interest and enthusiasm when 
 the lesson closes in the middle of a retreat and the child is pun- 
 ished for reading beyond the prescribed limits of the assignment. 
 Biography should constitute a large part of the history course 
 at this time. The strong interest in human life and activity so 
 characteristic of the earlier stage has not waned. A majority 
 of our children come from the public schools after three or four 
 years spent in the study of some text-book history without any 
 very definite idea of any of it. If we would but take advantage 
 of their normal interests and introduce them to the lives of the 
 men and women who have made history, the results obtained 
 would be more in proportion to the time and energy spent. It 
 would be unwise perhaps to advocate biography exclusively 
 for this stage but I have no doubt that if the average ten-year- 
 old child could have access to the biographies of twenty of the 
 most influential citizens of our country, representative of dif- 
 ferent times and movements, his real knowledge of our history 
 would be as far in excess of what it usually is as a mountain 
 exceeds a mole hill. In the life of Washington alone he would 
 be introduced to colonial government, the French and Indian 
 war, attempts at union, the colonial and continental congress, 
 the various grievances of the colonies, the declaration of inde- 
 pendence, government under the articles of confederation, the 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 37 
 
 revolutionary war, the adoption of the constitution, the birth 
 of the government, the division of the people into parties, etc., 
 etc. The aim must be to present the work in a connected form. 
 It will be time enough to cross section it and bring together 
 everything that happened everywhere in a given year after the 
 children have the longitudinal lines laid. We must have the 
 historical warp before we try to put in the historical woof. 
 
 Manual work adapted to the development of the child should 
 constitute a regular part of the programme during this stage. 
 Just what this work should be, external circumstances and the 
 interest and ability of the child must determine, but in most 
 cases drawing, carving and similar exercises requiring not too 
 fine an adjustment of the muscles are desirable. And this is 
 above all things the time for practice and drill in those lines of 
 muscular activity that are to become habitual. The child who 
 is to become an expert pianist, or violinist for example, should 
 devote these years to laborious drill upon these instruments. 
 Work in voice culture should be begun at this time, although 
 judicious care needs to be exercised later when the voice is 
 "\:hanging " to prevent permanent injury. The one who is to 
 have complete mastery of his body, of the physical movements, 
 must not neglect the work in physical culture. There is no 
 time in one's life when it is so true that "as you live now will 
 determine how you will always live," as this time. 
 
 I have in the pedagogical discussions studiously avoided 
 dogmatism. It would argue a lack of comprehension of the 
 entire subject to say that at a given time such and such parts 
 of such and such subjects and nothing else should be given. I 
 have merely tried to show that many things the schools are try- 
 ing to do at certain times are out of place and have tried to 
 show what would be better. I have, therefore, in displacing 
 some of the standard studies (reading, arithmetic, etc.,) 
 before seven years of age suggested some lines of work that 
 are suitable for this time without drawing a line between the 
 things that must and the things that must not be done. Indeed 
 I should be surprised if there are not many things unnoticed 
 in that discussion that should have a place in the curriculum. 
 The purpose was simply to work out the principle and illustrate 
 rather fully. And so, in the discussion of work for this stage 
 from nine to twelve or thirteen, it cannot be said what are all 
 the things that may be done and all that may not. But I have 
 taken up the subjects that were discarded in the previous stage 
 and have tried to show that they should now have quite a 
 prominent place in the curriculum, and have made suggestions 
 as to the nature of all the work for the entire period without 
 any attempt to go into details. The results of my observations 
 and studies have led me to this conclusion in regard to the work 
 
38 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 for the two stages ending at seven or eight and twelve or thir- 
 teen respectively, that the work in the earlier stage as a rule is 
 too heavy and that too much is expected of the child; and that 
 the work of the later stage is too light and too little required 
 of the child. I wish in conclusion to emphasize the fact 
 that many of the fundamentals in training of all kinds can 
 be gotten only through service, through long continued ap- 
 plication and that there is no time in the life of the individual 
 so well suited from the standpoints of mental capital and de- 
 velopment, and physical capital and development to drill work 
 as the years just preceding the dawn of adolescence. 
 
 I desire to express, here, my thanks to President G. Stanley 
 Hall and Dr. William H. Burnham for valuable suggestions 
 and criticisms, and to Mr. I^ouis N. Wilson, lyibrarian of Clark 
 University, for his cordiality and help in securing literature 
 upon the subject. 
 
 No attempt has been made in this paper to treat the adoles- 
 cent period. For this the reader is referred to President G. 
 Stanley Hall's forthcoming work on the subject. 
 
 Authorities Cited. 
 
 I. Baldwin, J. Mark. Mental development in the child and the 
 race. The Macniillau Co., New York, 1895. pp. 496. 
 
 2. . Social and ethical interpretations in mental develop- 
 ment. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1S97. pp. 574. 
 
 3. Barnes, Earl. Studies in education. A series of ten numbers 
 
 devoted to child study and the history of education. Stanford 
 University, Cal., 1896-97. pp. 400. 
 
 4. Browne, J. Crichton. Education and the nervous system. Mor- 
 
 ris : Book of Health. Cassell and Co., New York, 1884. pp. 
 269-380. 
 
 5. Bryan, William L. On the development of voluntary motor 
 
 ability. Am. Jour, of Psy., Nov. 1892, Vol. V, pp. 125-204. 
 
 6. Burk, Frederic Teasing and Bullying. Ped. Sent., Apr., 1897, 
 
 Vol. IV, pp. 336-371- 
 7. . Growth of children in height and weight. Ant. Jour. 
 
 of Psy., Apr., 1898, Vol. IX, pp. 253-326. (Bibliography, pp. 
 
 315-326.) 
 8. . From fundamental to accessor}'^ in the development of 
 
 the nervous system and of movements. Ped. Sent., Oct., 1898. 
 8a. Chamberlain, Alexander, F. The Child : A Study in the 
 
 Evolution of Man. (Contemporary Science Series.) Charles 
 
 Scribner's Sons, N. Y., 1900. See especially Chap. IV, The 
 
 Periods of Childhood, pp, 51-105. 
 9. Christopher, W. S. Significance of infancy in human being. 
 
 Trans. 111. Soc. for Child Study (1897), Vol. II, No. 2, pp. 109- 
 
 114. 
 10. . Three crises in child life. Child Study Monthly, Dec, 
 
 1897 Vol. Ill, pp. 324-335. 
 
NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 12 f- '-'"^eraii'^ Boyd, Edinburgh, 1891. pp.138 
 
 Edinburtrh 1884 ) "opl«-) Edinburgh Health Society, 
 
 ';■ yS!-,at,sS^\^^)^:^^, - the Boston 
 
 ■ ^"-S, S'-^o^i fsr?'","' ''>'1"'°S^- He'^HoIt'and 
 course^ ,6 ' ' ' " ™'=- PP' <^85' 7°4. See also Briefer 
 
 ™'d^r''Se?irt h,','" °" °°';°'f"' KorpergrSsse des Mensehen von 
 wLen ,?„d ? T j5- Lebeosjahre uebst Erlauternngen Uber 
 
 S"irie"°S?h'nrn';d'lrS-n'^s^5S:l;:;"'"T °/'lT'"^ '^ 
 Mitnchen, ,8,6. pp.38. ( Wi^S twr^e^urin^'chartf l""""' 
 
 ~^ ■ ^ P°i°t of difference between race and individual np 
 cfe'ty^T8T6.- p.lr."^ "'^^ '°°^ °' ^^^ National nlrbart So"- 
 
 ^°S^/^''? a"*^; Psychic processes and muscular exercise Decen 
 mal Celebratio7i of Clark University, 1899. (Published bv Hi ^' 
 University, Worcester, Mass.) pp. 383-395. ^ ^^^ 
 
 27. Perez, Bernard. The'iirst three years of childhood Ed and 
 
 SuTlv \ w'L^d '^'^'- '''^^^ "^ introduction by^James 
 toully. C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., 1889. pp 294 
 
 28. PREYer W Mental development in the child. Translated by 
 
 H^W. Brown. D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1893 pp^ 
 
 ''• ^Ton.^L^t^sX'''"""'^^"'"'^^^^^^^^ ^- 
 
 30. Roberts Ch.^ri,es. A manual of anthropometry, or a euide to 
 an^d ";'' ri exam nation and measuremLt of tfcSumIn body 
 J. and A. Churchill, London, 1878. pp. 54. -^ 
 
 22. 
 23- 
 
 24. 
 25- 
 
 26. 
 
40 NASCENT STAGES. 
 
 31. Ross, James. Handbook of the diseases of the nervous system. 
 
 J. and A. Churchill, London, 1885. pp. 723. 
 
 32. Sheldon, Henry D. Institutional activities of American chil- 
 
 dren. Am. Jour, of Psy., July, 1898, Vol. IX, pp. 425-448. 
 
 33. Shinn, MiLiCENT W. Notes on the development of a child. Univ. 
 
 of California Studies. Published by the University, Berkeley, 
 Cal., 1893 and 1899. pp. 424. 
 
 34. SmalIv, Maurice H. The suggestibility of children. Ped. Sent., 
 
 Dec, 1896, Vol. IV, pp. 176-220. 
 
 35. Spalding, Douglas A. Instinct. With original observations on 
 
 young animals. Macmillan's Magazine, Feb., 1873, Vol. XXVII, 
 pp. 282-293. 
 
 36. Taylor, J. Madison. The causes of mental impairment in chil- 
 
 dren. A. M. S. Bulletin, July 15, 1895. 
 
 37. ViERORDT, H, Das Massenwachsthum der Korperorgane des 
 
 Menschen. Arch. f. Anatomie und Physiologic, 1890. (Sup- 
 plement volume.) pp. 62-94. 
 
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