I shall not have time to speak of the work of the older children, where
the original crude instincts of construction and communication have
been developed into something like scientifically directed inquiry, but
I will give an illustration of the use of language following upon this
experimental work. The work was on the basis of a simple experiment of
the commonest sort, gradually leading the children out into geological
and geographical study. The sentences that I am going to read seem to
me poetic as well as “scientific.” “A long time ago when the earth
was new, when it was lava, there was no water on the earth, and there
was steam all round the earth up in the air, as there were many gases
in the air. One of them was carbon dioxide. The steam became clouds,
because the earth began to cool off, and after a while it began to
rain, and the water came down and dissolved the carbon dioxide from the
air.” There is a good deal more science in that than probably would be
apparent at the outset. It represents some three months of work on the
part of the child. The children kept daily and weekly records, but this
is part of the summing up of the quarter’s work. I call this language
poetic, because the child has a clear image and has a personal feeling
for the realities imaged. I extract sentences from two other records
to illustrate further the vivid use of language when there is a vivid
experience back of it. “When the earth was cold enough to condense, the
water, with the help of carbon dioxide, _pulled_ the calcium out of the
rocks into a large body of water where the little animals could get it.”
The other reads as follows: “When the earth cooled, calcium was in the
rocks. Then the carbon dioxide and water united and formed a solution,
and, as it ran, it _tore_ out the calcium and carried it on to the sea,
where there were little animals who took it out of solution.” The use
of such words as “pulled” and “tore” in connection with the process of
chemical combination evidences a personal realization which compels its
own appropriate expression.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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