Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/159

Rh is evident and has been frequently emphasized in recent years. What is needed most of all to-day in the educational world is a proper perspective of child development. Biology has given us a pretty definite outline of the evolution of the body in that it has discovered the different stages of growth through which it passes, from conception to maturity. This needs to be applied to the psyche and clothed with flesh and blood and made a living, breathing reality; for the psyche, too, has these stages which express themselves spontaneously if given an opportunity to do so. Tyler says, "The interests of the child are as truly symptoms of the attainment of a certain stage of development and real needs as the craving of the legs for exercise or hunger of the body for food," and if the stages of the soma and psyche are not given an opportunity to have their normal course they are likely to become the source of imperfections in adult life. We must come into phylogenetic rapport with the child if we are to undertake to guide his physical and mental growth successfully. It is becoming more and more clear as the child study material accumulates that the child has feelings, motives, instincts and interests that should guide the educator in his work rather than that the educator should undertake to direct and modify the child's development. The child must be allowed to evolve naturally and in harmony with its racial inheritance. But in the school work of to-day the social inheritance of comparatively recent times continues to be imposed upon the child and the deeper impulses of its soul are scarcely touched.

The composite picture of the children's activities given above tend to be misleading so far as the individual child is concerned. Perhaps no single child actually engaged in all these activities. But it is just as true that every child has more or less marked dormant impulses to do all these things, and would do them, if the environment were such as to encourage their expression. Here, then, is the great and crying need of the child. It is needless to say that there are hundreds of other vague instincts, motives, and interests in the child's soul besides those above referred to. The full and complete expression of these would give every child a richness of mind that would characterize it all through life and enlarge its sphere of interests to an extent hardly dreamed of now.


 * 1) Author:Caroline Furness Jayne. String Figures. New York, 1906. p.
 * 2) . The Origin of Invention. London, 1895. 419 p.
 * 3) . Aspects of Child Life and Education. Boston, 1907. 326 p.