HITHERTO the only aim of the educator, the aim towards which all his efforts were directed, was that of preparing the pupil for that social life in which he would later on be forced to live. Therefore, as what was aimed at principally was that he should know how to imitate the adult, he was forced to suffocate the creative forces of the spirit under he cloak of the instinct of imitation. Preferably he was taught that which was considered indispensable to known in order to be able to live in a civilized community. This forced an absolute assimilation of a form of social life which is not natural to children, and should become natural to them only when they would be adults. In such conditions the real nature of the children could not be appreciated either in the old type of school or in the form of old-fashioned family education. The child was only "a future being". He was not envisaged except as one "who is to be become", and therefore he was of no account until he had reached the stage in which he had become a man.

Yet the child, like all other human beings, has a personality of his own. He carries within him the beauty and the dignity of the creative spirit, and these can never be erased, so that his soul which is pure and very sensitive requires our most delicate care. We must not only preoccupy ourselves with his body which is so tiny and so fragile. We must not think only of nourishing and washing and dressing him with great care. Man does not live by bread alone even in his infancy. Material needs are on a step which is lower and can be degrading at any age. Slavery fosters in children, as well as in adults, inferior sentiments and generates an absolute lack of dignity.

The social environment which we have created for ourselves is not suited to the child. He does not understand it and therefore he is kept busy away from it, and as he cannot adapt himself to our society he is excluded from it, and is given into the care of the school which often becomes his prison. Today we can at last see very clearly how fatal are the consequences of a school where the children are taught by old methods. They suffer on this account not only organically but also morally. It is this fundamental problem of education,the education of character, that has been up to now neglected by the school. Also in the family circle there is the same error of principle. There, also, it is always the tomorrow of the child, his future existence, which is the constant preoccupation. The present is never taken seriously into account. By the present I mean what the child needs in order to be able to live fully according to the psychic needs of his age. At the most, when things have been going well in families which have more modern ideas it is the physical life of the child that has begun to be taken into account in these last years. Rational alimentation, hygienic dressing, life in the open air constitute the latest progress that science has brought, during this century, into the life of the child.

But the most human of all the needs of the child is neglected- the exigencies of his spirit, of his soul. The human being who lives within the child remains stifled therein. To us are known only the efforts and the energy that are necessary for the child to defend itself against us. What we know is the weeping, the shouting,the tantrums, the timidity, the possessiveness, the fibs, the selfishness and spirit of destruction. We commit an error which is even more serious and has more serious consequences. That is, to consider these means of defense as if they were the essential traits of the infant character, and to subdue them, as we consider is our strict duty, to try and eliminate them with the greatest severity, with a sternness which carries us even to the extremes of corporal punishment. These reactions of the child are often the symptoms of a moral illness, and very frequently they precede a real nervous disease which makes its consequences felt for the rest of the individual's life.

We all know that the age of development is the most important period of the whole life. Moral malnutrition and intoxication of the spirit are as fatal for the soul of man as physical malnutrition is for the health of his body. Therefore child-education is the most important problem of humanity.

THE REMEDY

It is for us a question of conscience to try to understand even the faintest shades of the soul of the child, and to take extreme care in our relations with the world of the small ones. Previously we were almost complacent in performing the part of pitiless judges in front of the children. They appeared to us full of defects when compared with adults, and we set ourselves in front of them as examples of beings overflowing with every virtue. We must now be content with a much more modest role, that required by the interpretation that Emerson gave of the message of Jesus Christ:

Infancy is he eternal Messiah,
which continuously comes back to the arms
of degraded humanity
in order to entice it back to heaven

If we consider the child in this light, we shall be forced to recognize, as an absolute and urgent necessity, that care must be given to childhood,creating for it a suitable world and a suitable environment. We shall have accomplished a great task in favour of man by doing this. The child cannot lead a natural life in the complicated world of adults; also it is clear that the adult by his continuous supervision, by his uninterrupted advice, by his dictatorial attitude, disturbs and thwarts the development of the child. All the good forces which are sprouting in its soul are suffocated in this fashion, and nothing is left in the child but a subconscious impulse to free himself as soon as possible form everything and every one.

Let us therefore discard our role of prison warden, and let instead preoccupy ourselves with preparing an environment in which as far as possible we shall try not to harass him by our supervision and by our teaching. We must become persuaded that the more the environment corresponds to the needs of the child, the more limited becomes the activity of the teacher. But here a very important principle must not be forgotten- giving freedom to the child does not mean to abandon him to his own resources and perhaps to neglect him. The help that we give to the soul of the child must not be passive indifference to all the difficulties of its development. Rather we must second it with prudence and affectionate care. However, even by merely preparing with great care the environment of the children, we shall have already done a great task, because the creation of a new world, a world of the children, is no easy accomplishment. As soon as small furniture is prepared, of which children stand in as much need as adult people (perhaps even more, for to them it is not merely a piece of furniture but a means of development) we see that their movement and activity become incredibly ordered. Before, their limbs seemed to be without any master to direct them; they ran about knowing everything down, jumping here, crashing there. Now their movements seem to be directed by a conscious will They can be left alone without any danger because they know what they want.

The need for activity is almost stronger than the need for food. This has not been recognized heretofore because a suitable field of activity was not there for the child to manifest his needs. If we give him this we shall see the small tormenters who could never be satisfied convert themselves into cheerful workers. The proverbial destroyer becomes the most zealous custodian of the objects that surround him. The noisy and boisterous child, disorderly in its movements and in its actions, is transformed into a being full of spiritual calm and very orderly. But if the child lacks suitable external means, he will never be able to make use of the great energies with which nature has endowed him. He will feel the instinctive impulse towards an activity such as may engage all his energy, because this is the way nature has given him of making perfect the acquisitions of his faculties. But if there is nothing there to satisfy this impulse, what can the child do but what he does - develop his activity without any aim in disorderly boisterousness?

In the preparation of an environment everything depends upon this.

THE HOUSE OF CHILDREN

By now almost every one knows of the House of Children. Small furniture and small simple objects whose aim is to serve the intellectual development of the child are being built in all civilized nations: small furniture brilliant in colour, and so light that when knocked against it falls easily, and that therefore the children can easily move about. The lightness of the colour places in evidence the spots and the dust, and in this fashion any disorder or lack of attention on the part of the child is revealed. But as it is revealed easily it can be as easily corrected with the aid of a little soap and a little water. In our House of Children the furniture is like that. Every child chooses the place which he likes best, and places everything to suit his taste, but he must beware of any disorderly action because, as the furniture is light, every disorderly movement is betrayed by the furniture that scrapes upon the floor. So the child is surrounded by admonishing friends whose voices are not the voices of the adults, and he learns to be careful,to be conscious and to direct the movements of his body. It is for this reason that we place in the environment of the child beautiful fragile little objects of glass or of china, because if the child lets them fall they will break, and he will lose forever those beloved little objects that gave him so much joy and that attracted his eyes and hands every time he came into the room. Gone,lost forever, just because he had not taken enough care in the way he held them, just because he let them slip between his fingers! They are now broken into pieces, dead, no longer there to call him and to smile at him. What greater punishment could the child have than that of losing his beloved objects, that nowhere else was he allowed to touch, except in the small house which had been built for him to suit his size, and his mental development! What stronger voice can there be than that which admonishes the child "Be careful of your movements! Every disorderly movement of yours is a danger of death for one of your beloved friends who surround you? "What great pain the loss of a dear object is for a child, we who have been with him know. And who would not feel the urge of consoling one of these tiny beings who, all red in the face, stands crying before a beautiful little porcelain vase that he has let fall? And if you could see him later! From that time on how concentrated his face is when he carries frail objects, how visible the effort of will to command all his movements in order to achieve their correctness.

So you see it is the environment itself which helps to make the children continuously better, because every error, no matter how small, becomes so evident that it is useless for the teacher to interfere. She can remain a quiet spectator of all the little mistakes that occur around her, and little by little it will seem as if the child heard the voices of the objects that, in their silent language, speak and admonish, revealing to him his small errors. "Be careful. Don't you see I am your beautiful little table? I am all shiny and polished and varnished. Don't scratch me. Don't spot me. Don't soil me!" The aesthetic quality in the objects and in the environment is a great spur to the activity of the child, so that it makes him redouble his efforts. That is why in our House of Children all the objects are attractive. The dusters are gaily coloured, the broom-handles are hand-painted in bright tints,and the small brushes are as attractive as the small pieces of soap which, round or rectangular, are there in pink and blue and yellow calling to the eyes of the child asking to be used. From all the objects that voice must spring forth which says to the child; "Come and touch me, make use of me. Don't you see me? I am the beautiful duster all pink and red. Come, let us go and take the dust off the top of the table." And from the other side: "Here I am, the small broom. Take me in your little hand and let us clean the floor." And still another voice calls to say: "Come, beautiful little hands. Dive into the water and take the soap." From everywhere the bright objects call to the child: they almost begin to form part of its mood, of its being, of its very nature, and there is no longer need for the teacher to say: "Charles clean the room;" and "John wash your hands."

Every child who has been freed, who knows how to care for himself, how to put his shoes on, to dress and undress without help,mirror in his joy, in his merriment, the reflection of human dignity; because human dignity is born of the sentiment of one's independence.

The joy that the small ones feel in their work makes them accomplish everything with an enthusiasm that is almost excessive. If they are shining the brass handle of a door they do it for such a long time that it becomes as shining as a mirror. Even the most simple things, such as dusting and sweeping, are done with an amount of exaggeration.

(Contd...to part 2) .........

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