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 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY. 47 I have in previous essays l argued that the rude analogical lethod by which children apply names should not be en- mraged by perpetuating their errors. Individualism is so trong to-day in educational theory that we often find a mgerous approximation to the view that every child should ivent his own language. I am loth to appear to condemn method which, by insisting on the activity of the child self, has done so much to put an end to the one-person- ilking-about-what-the-other-does-not-understand method of teaching ; but I have for some time objected to the purposely false nomenclature which the advocates of this system enjoin. Perhaps in view of its educational importance I may be per- mitted a digression. Two cubes side by side do not resemble a table, and when you put a third cube on one of the others you have not built a very obvious chair. In a school in the Midlands which I visited in 1897, the children in the Kinder- garten class, having just made the table and chair, did not know which was which. So that even the spontaneous ap- plication of the name was wanting, and the theoretical basis of the method was not complied with. The fact is, these Kindergarten names are very rarely spontaneously applied, and when their use is insisted on in the class, the names do not remain associated with the Kindergarten object, but, in spite of their school training, the children apply the terms to le objects of daily life. To give one instance. An excellent [indergarten teacher, who had, I am sure, taken care that svery little child in her class had frequently manipulated Kindergarten 'bricks' and 'sticks,' was introducing a new occupation by letting the children repeat What are we going to do to-day ? Not bricks to build or sticks to lay My questions received answers which showed : i. That the word " bricks," where it meant anything to the children, referred to the real bricks of the school wall. ii. That the word " stick " had reference to the sticks they played with out of school ; one chubby little urchin producing a formidable and knotted specimen from under his waistcoat, and brandishing it triumphantly. We may, I think, without hesitation, condemn such a system of teaching language. Firstly, it pretends to a spon- taneity which it does not possess, and, secondly, the conven- tions which it adopts are really a hindrance to learning the actual language of life. 1 Problems in Education.