In addition to the flowers chosen for beauty of colour, this lover of
children and of gardens wants Canterbury Bells to ring, Forget-me-nots
because they can stand so much watering, and "flowers with faces,"
pansies, sweet-peas, lupins, snapdragons, monkey flowers, red and white
dead nettles, and red clover to bring the bees. Some of these are chosen
because the child can do something with them, can find their own uses
for them, can play with them. And, speaking generally, playing with them
is the child's way of appreciating both plant and animal. Picking
feathery grasses, red-tipped daisies, sweet-smelling clover and golden
dandelions; feeding snapdragons with fallen petals, finding what's
o'clock by blowing dandelion fruits, paying for dock tea out of a fairy
purse, shading poppy dolls with woodruff parasols, that is how a child
enjoys the beauty of colour, scent and form. He gets not more but less
beauty when he must sit in a class and answer formal questions. "Must we
talk about them before we take the flowers home?" asked a child one day;
"they are so pretty." Clearly, the "talk" was going to lessen, not to
deepen the beauty. And animals? The child plays with cat and dog, he
feeds the chickens, the horse and the donkey, he watches with the utmost
interest caterpillar, snail and spider, but he does not want to be asked
questions about them--he does want to talk and perhaps to ask the
questions himself--nor does he always want even to draw, paint or model
them. Mostly he wants to watch, and perhaps just to stir them up a
little if they do not perform to his satisfaction. He does not
necessarily mean to tease, only why should he watch an animal that does
nothing? "The animals haven't any habits when I watch them," a little
girl once said to Professor Arthur Thomson.
All children should live in the country at least for part of the year.
They should know fields and gardens, and have intercourse with hens and
chickens, cows and calves, sheep and lambs; should make hay and see the
corn cut. They would still want the wisely sympathetic teacher, not to
arouse interest--that is not necessary, but to keep it alive by keeping
pace with the child's natural development. It is not merely living in
the country that develops the little child's interest in shape and
colour and scent into something deeper. People still "spend all their
time in the fields and forests and see and feel nothing of the beauties
of Nature, and of their influence on the human heart"; and this, said
Froebel--and it is just what Mr. Clutton Brock is saying now--is because
the child "fails to find the same feelings among adults." Two effects
follow: the child feels the want of sympathy and loses some respect for
the elder, and also he loses his original joy in Nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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