Today's Child

Today's child lives in a remarkable age of change. The technatomic period in which he finds himself began to show its impact upon our society after 1945, following close upon the heels of war. Since that time, advances in technology and new knowledge have far exceeded the entire accumulation of knowledge since the discovery of the wheel. Of every ten scientists who have ever contributed to man's reservoir of knowledge, seven are living at this moment, and 90 per cent of all scientific endeavor dates back only fifty years. Each new day finds scientific research scaling the wall of yesterday's ignorance, and revealing vistas and problems hitherto undreamed of. Human beings everywhere are subject to its impact.

The Ontario child is caught up in this challenging revolution, and he is daily barraged, enriched, and deeply affected by the wonders of the age. Yesterday's private vocabulary of the scientist is public domain today, and terms such as frequency modulation, computer, cybernetics, programming, and systems analysis find their way through press, radio and television into common usage. In the sophisticated society of today, the laws and language of the Industrial Revolution are as obsolete as Fulton's steam engine. The bounties and distractions of modern living have created new values and new ideas, new concepts of time and space, new freedoms and new constraints.

A world of skill and service is at the fingertips of the Ontario child. His breakfast orange juice comes fast frozen in a throw-away can. His milk is homogenized and his bread enriched. His fruit arrives fresh from Latin America, Mexico, Florida, California, Spain, or the Middle East, making every day a harvest day. His breakfast cereal is grown, prepared, and distributed by an army of specialists from the agronomist to the engineer, from the economist to the psychologist, from the advertising writer to the package designer. King Henry VIII, Cleopatra, and the Emperor Montezuma, in all their lives combined, were not served by such a collossal array of scientists, technicians and specialists. From air conditioning to daylight illumination, from satellites to pocket radios, this is the world of today's child, and he takes it all for granted.

His world borders on the extreme. From colors to clothing, from speed to spending, he moves in an environment of constant impact upon his senses. Astronomical figures are everyday statistics, and the dollar signs attached arouse little emotion in him.

Johnny has been personally present at many great historical events. He has seen the launching of astronauts, the funeral ceremonies of Kennedy and Churchill, battles in Vietnam, peace marches, and race riots. After all, through television and the press of a button, he can see the world from his own living room. He need not wait to learn about it from parents and teachers. In this age of mass media, the mountain comes to Mohammed.

When he was a preschooler, Ontario's child may have become actively involved with the TV set by trying to climb into the tube; but very quickly he has learned to watch passively scenes of violence and beauty, as well as commercials designed to mould his desires and excite his appetites. Subliminally or directly all kinds of messages get through to him. The extent to which he is affected by or prepared to act upon them is highly dependent upon his ability to evaluate, to discriminate, to be consciously aware of hidden or obvious persuaders.

With every season come revolutions in fashions, hair styles, jargon, dances, music, colors, and gadgets. Every day Johnny's attitudes and values undergo a shake-up. Faced with the presence of hallucinatory drugs, wars, violence, sex, and social pressures, he often finds himself on a turbulent sea of experience for which there are no charts.

The Children of Ontario

Ontario children are not a special, packaged, unique breed of human beings. Their first names and surnames hint at the origins of their parents and grandparents from all parts of the earth - beautiful names that range in tradition from John and Marie, Angela and Kiyask, Mei Ling and Helga, to Gustav and Rebecca - a diversity of ethnic, religious, historical, and racial origins that spells the children of Ontario.

As if not to be outdone by human diversity, the centres of settlement in Ontario offer their own patch work of colorful names as evidence of diverse roots. York and Baptiste, Tobermory and Bonheur share geography with native labels such as Wikwemikong and Wawa, Toronto and Kapuskasing. Less ethnic but equally descriptive are names like Crystal Falls, Driftwood, Night Hawk Centre, and Moonbeam. From Moose Factory to Point Pelee, from Gros Cap to Point Fortune, the place names of Ontario reflect the historic patchwork of the people.

From remote areas richly endowed with agricultural and mineral resources; from barren marginal regions starved by nature; from affluent suburbia; from pockets of poverty deeply embedded in urban and rural communities; from isolated, sparsely populated toeholds of humanity; from the crowded, sophisticated jungle of our cities- from all these the children of Ontario make their daily trek to school.

In most families of Ontario, we have children who enjoy security and parental support expressed in a great variety of ways. We also have children in this rich province who are starving for attention, receiving inadequate diets, living in filthy, crowded rooms, lacking privacy, and destined to be losers in our society from a very early age. Attacks on this problem are taking place in a handful of 'inner-city' schools serving socio economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. In such schools, one can see poorly-clad youngsters talking and moving about easily in colorful classrooms, stimulated and taught with the most technical and sensitive skills by dedicated and patient teachers who are guided and supported by crusading principals.

The spectrum of child experience in Ontario is wide indeed. Too often educators seem to assume that all children come from a middle-class, Anglo-Saxon back ground and that the English language as spoken by the teachers is familiar and meaningful to every child who enters a school. In point of fact, we also have Ontario children newly arrived from Hong Kong, from the Azores, and from many other corners of the earth, all speaking their mother tongue at home, and acquiring the predominant language of this province through a variety of difficult and sometimes painful experiences.

In addition to this, we have almost 100,000 children of French parentage, attending French-language schools, who are suddenly forced to make their way at English-language secondary schools, without adequate preparation to cope with the dramatic change encountered.

Many of our communities boast of attractive modern schools, good teachers, and imaginative programs for the children. However, affluence alone does not guarantee that all children in 'advantaged' neighborhoods will grow in an atmosphere both emotionally and intellectually strengthening. The attempt to climb the steep and narrow academic road to university diplomas has left many a young person a 'failure' in the eyes of his family and himself. Despite the fact that in such areas a higher proportion of children go on to university, it does not always follow that their schools are free from dull and outdated practices in education.

Ontario's special and rare resource lies in the diversity of its people, a mosaic of 81 language groups from 160 countries. Education, if it is to be rich and meaningful, should respect and make use of this diversity, and weave within its grand design those inspirations and procedures which will create a tapestry bright with a vibrance and potential hitherto unknown.

Rooms in the Mansion

Childhood and adolescence are not anterooms and vestibules through which human beings must pass before they enter the great hall of adulthood. Rather, they are significant rooms in the mansion of life. Yet the discovery of childhood as a distinct phase of life is a recent event. Until the end of the Middle Ages the child, almost as soon as he was weaned, was regarded as a small adult who mingled, competed, worked, and played with mature adults.

We have travelled a long way from the Middle Ages. However, many remnants of the past show up in adults who evaluate children's behavior by adult standards, or refer to undesirable aspects of behavior as 'childish.'

The definition of 'childhood' in Ontario is dependent upon the circumstances of law and life. A child is eligible for Family Allowance until age 18, if he attends school. By law, a child must remain at school until he is 16. However, he may be exempted in order to work, and thus given young adult status overnight. He is too young to vote or drink before he is 21 years of age, but he can be brought into Adult Court when he is 14. He can drive a car when he is 16 and get married without consent or go to war at 18. To further confuse the issue, girls can become capable of bearing children as early as age 11. Boys reach puberty one or two years later, lose their high-pitched voices and smooth skin, grow awkward for a time, and undergo the developmental growth which stamps them as men responsive to all the emotional stimulation of adulthood.

The clear-cut 'coming-of-age' rites of primitive societies are completely lacking in Ontario culture, so that the end of childhood is not easily discerned by the parents or by the child himself. Our modern society has placed increasing stress on the need for longer educational experience, and in this way has left numbers of young adults unproductive and financially dependent on their parents for many years. Further, such relation ships have often kept the adolescent in an early child parent relationship despite the fact that the threshold of adulthood has already been crossed.

We have children who are over-indulged and over protected in such a way that their development is impeded. Strange things are often done in the name of parental love. Some parents, disturbed within themselves, reflect their anxiety and lack of security in an unsteady, vacillating relationship with their children. Other parents, caught up in the treadmill demands of their jobs and social activities, too often salve their guilt feelings with impulsive payments of money, flashy toys, and superficial acts of 'palship,' rather than with gifts of love and understanding. In contrast, many parents carry the full responsibility of rearing and educating children successfully under very adverse conditions, and often these unsung heroes and heroines go unrecognized.

There is much to learn about our young people. Our headlines scream of discontent, of depressions leading to suicide, of the excitement induced by marijuana and LSD 'trips.' We must learn to understand what our children are seeking and missing, for we cannot afford to contribute by default an unhappy, alienated mass of sick citizens. No child is expendable, and even though most young people successfully achieve adulthood, special thought and attention must be given to those who fall by the wayside. Included among them are some of our most creative, imaginative, bright, and sensitive human beings.

In Russia, when a man was asked the question, "Do you have a privileged group here?", he quickly answered, "Yes - the children." We, in our society, owe to our children an equally privileged status. We owe all that we can give of our minds and our hearts, so that our children may be capable of coping with the in creasing complexities that are companions to our way of life. Sir Geoffrey Vickers summed it up at the 1960 Canadian Conference on Children: "We owe it to the children, to provide them . . . with the conditions which will most favour their development into fully human beings, excelling in the powers of coherent action, logical thought, and sensitive appreciation of all the values which human beings can learn to divine- this last being the most important dimension of their humanity. Our most notable lack today would seem to be not men of action with their hands on instruments of power; nor calculating geniuses, supported by giant computers; but men of sensibility, gifted to appreciate and value human life."
The early years of childhood

Every day and every stage of child development is important. The middle stages and adolescence are not forgotten years. However, in view of the most recent findings based upon research and clinical studies, special emphasis must be placed upon the early years. It is at this stage, when the child is most receptive, that the set and patterns for learning are established. It is at this stage that the foundations for positive mental, emotional, and social health are built. The later stages are built directly upon this foundation. If the initial plat form is weak, it becomes increasingly difficult to build with strength and confidence upon it. Thus the home is a base of exceeding importance, and it is for this reason that extra emphasis is given here to the early period of child growth.

Although children follow a sequential pattern of growth, they do so with overtones of unique tempo and style. Long before Johnny and Mary come to school, their approach to the world and the adventure of learning has become established. No child walks at birth, like a colt, and children cannot grow, learn, or develop without the influence of those who take care of them. From birth a baby is dependent on those around him for food, shelter, warmth, love, a smile, an approving hug. When Johnny cries he needs someone to mother him, to give him his food tenderly and gently, to hold him closely; he needs someone within crying distance, to respond to his plea for attention and recognition. It is by these means, through the manner in which the young child's needs are answered, ignored, or developed, that the human being unfolds, and his own unique temperament becomes a reality. Infants can display signs of pleasure, searching, seeking, and experimentation, or they can display mask-like, withdrawn, and haunting faces. The seeds of maturity are planted early; increasing evidence indicates that both sound cognitive thinking and emotional development may be traced to early infant experience.

Good food, toys, a warm bed, and companionship may not always be enough. Dr. Bruno Bettelheim, of the University of Chicago, feels strongly that if a normal child is to develop initiative, and have it take root, he must be given a chance to test out for himself that taking action really gets him what he wants. For this, there is a critical age. If an infant's cry or smile brings no results, he is discouraged from trying to refine his efforts at communicating his needs. Every adult who has told a joke that falls flat like a lead balloon must have some idea of what this means.

In his book The Empty Fortress, Bettelheim makes the point that, given enough time with those children who have been deprived of special experience with adults, emotional damage can be remedied; however, he goes so far as to suggest that it is not always possible to reverse the intellectual process if early harm has been done. For positive cognition to develop, he feels, as Piaget before him, that it is most important that the right things happen at the right time during the child's early preschool years.

Early School Years

After infancy, a child's most rapid growth in many stable characteristics occurs in the early years. B.S. Bloom's study on Stability and Change in Human Characteristics points out that 17 per cent of the growth in school achievement will occur between the ages of 4 and 6, with another 17 per cent taking place between 6 and 9. Thus, the most rapid period of growth in school achievement would appear to occur during the age span encompassed by nursery school, kindergarten, and the primary years.

It is during this period of growth that the environment in its broadest sense, including people, customs, values, physical surroundings, family attitudes toward learning, books, and so on, has its greatest effect. A recent study carried out by Dr. Walter H. Worth for the Alberta School Trustees' Association, demonstrates that children with scholastic difficulties in the early years of schooling tend to reach a plateau and that we may be reasonably pessimistic in expecting major changes at a later date.

In this developing country where our rich natural resources await imaginative technicians, scientists, planners, artists, and poets, we are probably suffering not only from the recognized 'brain-drain' but from an even greater and more serious 'brain waste.'

When young children are allowed to grow up unstimulated, ignored, and speech-impoverished in culturally deprived environments, a grave injustice is done to them. Such children are penalized for the present and future, both scholastically and vocationally, before they even enter the gates of a school yard.
The years of adolescence

Of all the ages of man, adolescence is one of the most critical. During this period, the child begins to explore himself seriously. He searches to find out what kind of person he is, how to relate to other people, and what to believe in. Patterns of behavior are solidified. Decisions have to be made about his education, his future life's work, about sex, courtship and, later, about marriage. Adolescents push out for discovery everywhere. They ask themselves searching questions, such as, "Who am I?", and "Why am I here?" Because of the complex, impersonal, and changing environment in which most of them function, it is little wonder that many young people lose their way.

The most visible and alarming symptom of youth in difficulty is the school drop-out. It is now generally recognized that most, although not all, drop-outs are alienated youth. It is necessary to pause and consider the plight of the drop-out because of its seriousness and its relevancy to our schools. As reported by the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, in a report entitled Consultation for Action on Unreached Youth, "A typical study shows that 96 out of 101 juvenile delinquents quit school at 16, most of them after an ignominious school career featured by conflicts, problems, and failures." The price of dropping out in our society is high. The drop-out pays in limited job opportunities, lower earnings, and lack of job security, often for life.

A profile of a drop-out, based on numerous studies, reads like this: In the early grades, he seems to be having difficulty mastering reading, which magnifies all his academic difficulties as time goes on; he fails one or more grades, in spite of the fact that it is probable that his IQ is in the normal range or higher; communication with his teacher is poor; relations with classmates may be strained and tense; he does not participate in extra curricular activities, and consequently strong ties with the school are missing; he resents school authority, and may express his resentment in open hostility; his attendance record leaves much to be desired; he reads less, hears less, and sees less than he is capable of.

Many of our schools have 'dumped' these young people; re-entry is almost impossible, and an army of unskilled human beings is forming on many an urban and rural corner. Some call them 'alienated youth.' Whatever the label, we must study in depth the reasons for young people leaving school before they are fully trained or educated. We must ask ourselves, "Who failed? The young people?" Or dare we ask, "Where did we fail them?" The adolescents of today range all the way from the confused withdrawal-from-life types to summer volunteers, dedicated young men and women giving of themselves selflessly to help others. Many young men and women protest against some thing in society which constricts them, and each of them in his own heart, wants to be a man or woman. Being treated as a child in a classroom is interpreted as an insult to one's personal dignity. For many, this breeds loneliness and despair, and leads, in the search for commitment, to a rebellion that seemingly has no cause.

We must listen to the young people and give them a chance to speak out. To protest is human, and no society is strong which does not acknowledge the protesting man. It is the exploitation of protest which is dangerous. Therefore, we must relate the learning experiences in our schools to the real needs of young people. History has demonstrated too clearly that the lonely ones can lose their weakness when joined together and that they have the potential to find courage and be strong in brutal acts and in mob action.

Work and Leisure

Today's child is facing a new world of work and leisure. Today's technology is rapidly invading the entire field, and many jobs are being redefined, or discarded as obsolete. Job descriptions unknown twenty years ago, appear in advertisements every day. Automation dictates an orchestration of new job requirements and a flexibility heretofore unrealized; added to this, leisure time is growing in importance. The question of whether we live to work, or work to live, becomes increasingly relevant, for the line of demarcation between vocation and avocation becomes more difficult to draw. We are also beginning to recognize that preparing oneself to cope with leisure time is as important as preparing oneself to cope with a job. The reward and worth of an activity becomes more important than worrying about the supposed sin of idleness or the righteousness of honest work. Money is not the only criterion of the value of any human activity. Not all forms of work are dignified - in fact some jobs, be they physical, intellectual, or creative, separately or together, may be pain fully unattractive, physically uncomfortable, and far from aesthetic. However, our respect and appreciation should go out to every person who performs a job well no matter how menial or dull. It is the men and women who carry out these jobs who make it possible for our super-mechanical world to articulate smoothly, harmoniously, and humanely. Somehow a way must be found to narrow the distances between people in society, and to find at each step some unit of respect, some recognition of place for each individual. In Bronowski's words, "Society is not a pyramid, but a body, and the cells must be neighborly."

Let us keep pace with our civilization, with its recognition of skill at many levels and through many forms of expression - from plumbing to cooking; from operating a switchboard to driving a truck; from playing hockey to folk singing. By recognizing the dignity of work at all levels, and respecting all people who carry out this work, be it physical or intellectual, by realizing the necessity of diversified occupations, we must build a genuine acceptance and appreciation of the various training centres at the secondary and post secondary levels which complement the education and training offered at the traditional universities. Moreover, respect for every child, and the adult he is to become - respect for his mind, his feelings, his idiosyncrasies, his special interests, his right to be himself - is an essential component in helping a child see himself as master rather than slave of the electronic colossus. Appreciation of the human being's potential for compassion and creativeness, and his right to freedom from exploitation, presents a tremendous challenge for us all.

A Sensitivity to Life

In the future, knowledge will not be enough. Merely developing cool, objective young men and women with fingertip control of information, will not necessarily produce educated people. The heart must be involved as well as the head.

Blinded Gloucester in Shakespeare's King Lear says, "I see it feelingly," and it is this experience that children need if they are to relate in depth to the world of learning. Grass takes on a new dimension for a barefoot boy, and as he seeks a way to give expression to his feelings he knocks on the door of life itself.

To find and appreciate beauty in the ordinary and the extraordinary is the right of every child, for aesthetic experience is a basic need of all men in their universal struggle to add meaning to life.

We owe to children the freedom to explore the full range of their senses; to appreciate subtle differences; to be aware of beauty wherever it is to be found; to see, to touch, to smell, to hear, to taste, so that each in his own way will strive to find and express the meaning of man and human destiny. Perhaps, through aesthetic experience, he will find the virtue of harmony, of silence, of solitude, of quiet contemplation-the oasis in a world that makes man weary of noisy progress.

Wise is the teacher who "walks in beauty like the night," for he knows that intellect compounded with feeling moves toward the highest form of learning. Such a teacher communicates his sensitivity and enthusiasm to those around him, and thus provides the experience through which the soul of man is nurtured and cherished.
Wisdom with a smile

Our children need to acquire perspective with a sense of humor and humility. Laughter is the safety valve of most human beings. Because we are capable of laughter, we see ourselves in perspective to others and to unattainable ideals, and we appreciate the variety of routes by which we seek our goals and develop compassion for others. By learning to laugh at ourselves, to laugh at our failings and our idiosyncrasies, we learn to understand frailties and shortcomings in others. All of us fail in some way, and it is through an appreciation and respect for differences in aspiration and achievement that we make it possible for persons of divergent abilities, interests, tempos, and drives to live harmoniously together.

The ability to share amusing experiences and to communicate non-verbalized signs of understanding is an important tool to acquire. The sparkle in the eye, the wink, the giggle, the deep-throated laugh, are tools o£ the entire human family. Such spontaneous gestures of understanding can do more to break down barriers than long dissertations on friendship and love.

Those who stand back from life as spectators, exposing themselves to a series of contrived, unrelated happenings, waiting for great moments and sensational thrills to come their way, may discover that life is a hollow experience, joyless and disappointing. The gift of life with all its bounties and painful crises demands personal commitment and involvement, and those who seek truth and wisdom with a smile will find that its re wards are felt not only by the traveller but all mankind.

As Bruce West, the columnist of the Toronto Globe and Mail, so aptly put it, "It may not be long before everyone is a specialist of some sort, with each person speaking what is actually a different language, and each with his eyes focussed on his own technical field of endeavor as being the only one that really matters. Who will then be left to listen to the little voices of the soul, which warm the heart and inspire the mind, but can never really be equated with cold logic?"

More than organization and technical skill, we need sensitive human beings. We owe to our children the vision of a world better than that of today, where many of our present-day problems could be overcome. They must be exposed to inspiration in every form-from the contents of galleries and museums to the performances in theatres and concert halls. They should be in contact with living 'heroes' in all walks of life. They should be inspired by stories of the Vaniers, Banting, Best, Penfield, and Osler, to name a few of our Canadian heroes, along with all the men and women of the world today and yesterday who helped men walk with greater dignity.

Education should inspire in children a love of man everywhere. As pointed out earlier, pride in Canada does not have to be a limiting nationalism. Appreciation of the English, the French, of all the people who make up this land, inspires loyalty and dedication. Understanding is indivisible, and should serve to break down the barriers of ignorance and blind intolerance. Such barriers are also broken by communication with the immediate world, the world of people, and the universe of old and new ideas. Young people must be helped to break through the barriers of scientific and pseudo-scientific jargon, multimedia 'fall-out,' and commercial slogans. Our goal should be to make all persons consciously aware of the world around them, and of all those things happening to them.

The late J. Robert Oppenheimer, a man of rare scientific background and commitment, stated shortly before his death that "In the great succession of deep discoveries, we have become removed from one another in tradition, and in a certain measure, even in language. Our specialized traditions flourish; our private beauties thrive; but in those high understandings where man derives strength and insight into public excellence, we have been impoverished. We hunger for nobility, the rare words and acts that harmonize simplicity and truth; simple words like survival, liberty and fraternity can reflect a person's total education." Educators should arouse the hunger for truth and wisdom, accompanied by a courageous 'divine discontent.' With all our fragmented accomplishments, much lies silently waiting for those who dare to seek coherent doctrines which will define a better world for all mankind.

The needs of the child are simply stated. Each and every one has the right to learn, to play, to laugh, to dream, to love, to dissent, to reach upward, and to be himself. Our children need to be treated as human beings - exquisite, complex, and elegant in their diversity. They must be made to feel that the world is waiting for their sunrise, and that their education heralds the rebirth of an 'Age of Wonder.' Then, surely, the children of tomorrow will be more flexible, more adventurous, more daring and courageous than we are, and better equipped to search for truth, each in his own way. Each will have learned, with Don Quixote, in Man of La Mancha:

To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bend with unbearable sorrow,
To run where the brave dare not go.
To right the unrightable wrong,
To love, pure and chaste from afar
To try when one's arms are too weary,
To reach the unreachable star.

The Learning Experience

At the present time, psychological, biological, and educational knowledge is giving us increasing glimpses into a child's mind. Daily we learn how complex each child is, and how far we are from understanding his secrets. The lesson of this immense complexity is that blanket statements, old judgments, and off-hand treatments of the learning process are not satisfactory and should be viewed with caution. No one factor, no one method, no one endearing human characteristic, can be seized as a magic wand which will transform children into life-long learners and adventurers. Nevertheless, one condition becomes increasingly apparent in the learning process, and that is the shift in emphasis from content to experience.


Some General Characteristics of Learning

Learning involves many processes-from learning to recognize an aardvark to an understanding of the philosophy of Zen; from learning how to blow one's nose to learning the precise co-ordination of eye surgery; learning to drive a car to respecting the consequences of mindless driving; from learning to bake a cake, read a map, tie a shoelace, to learning to appreciate a work of art, and to being a good parent.

Learning by its very nature is a personal matter. There is virtually a metabolism of learning which is as unique to the individual as the metabolism of digestion. Parents and teachers may create conditions for learning, and may provide stimulating experiences with learning in mind, but the actual learning experience is intimate and subjective, for each human being reaches out to the world in his own idiosyncratic way.

Learning limits are not rigidly established at birth. Most learning specialists think of the intellect as having a potential from birth, which can be nurtured or starved depending upon the living-learning experiences into which a child is born and develops. This faith in the potency of environmental influences is the basic fact that justifies and gives meaningful purpose to education.

Learning is continuous throughout the life of an individual, although the flow may proceed in spurts and plateaus of varying durations. Stimulation, motivation, and persistent efforts to overcome obstacles in reaching goals will all affect the nature of those things which will be learned by an individual.

Learning can take place in a crude tree hut, on a raft, while walking through a puddle, strolling through an art gallery, or watching television. It begins with childhood, but does not end there. However, the accumulation of years does not of necessity ensure the acquisition of wisdom or continuous learning, if the joy of the experience was not acquired when young. In this age, adding years to one's life has become simpler than knowing how to add life to one's years.

Learning is not always visible to an observer. Solid programming for every moment of time may not of necessity create a positive learning experience. For the mind, unlike a machine, may make its leaps in moments of serenity and solitude.

Learning does not follow a set daily timetable. Any time of day or night, any day of the week, or any season may herald a new idea.

The road to learning takes personal effort, and no human being can jump the hurdles for another.

Learning and Early Childhood

There is increasing evidence that the infant years are exceedingly important for establishing the foundation for future emotional, social, and intellectual growth. Bowlby, in his monumental Infant Care and Maternal Deprivation, and René Spitz's work on grief in infants, followed by more than two decades of additional re search, have demonstrated the intimate relationship between the growing infant and those who provide the world of early learning experience for him.

From the beginning, the range and variety of learning opportunities, the recognition of the child reaching for a new experience, the subtle balance between the emotional support for exploration and the tempered protections designed to lessen frustration and learning disasters, are all important components of the adult's role in the learning experience of a child. It is in the early years that so much of the foundation for the widening world of knowledge is built for a child. In contrast, it is in the early years that protective shells can also be gradually created around the mind of a child so that learning, exploring, and discovering become too painful to attempt.

Piaget's work in Geneva has added great strength to the theory that the intellect develops in stages, and in a definite, invariable sequence in all children. Within each of four major stages, Piaget has identified several sub-stages which also occur in fixed order. These are:

• The acquisition of perceptual invariants (up to about two years of age).
• Pre-operational intuitive thinking (about two to seven years of age).
• Concrete operational thinking (about seven to eleven years of age).
• Formal propositional thinking (about eleven years onward).

The implications of Piaget's theory, and those of other investigators who have been influenced by him, are stated by E. Burgess in Values in Early Childhood Education, a recent publication of the National Education Association of the USA, as follows:

1. The importance of sensorimotor experience is underlined.
2. Language, especially that which relates to labelling, categorizing, and expressing, is intimately tied to developing greater facility in thinking.
3. New experiences are more readily assimilated when built on the familiar.
4. Repeated exposure to a thing or an idea in different contexts contributes to the clarity and flexibility of a growing concept of the thing or idea.
5. Accelerated learning of abstract concepts without sufficient related direct experience, may result in symbols without meaning.

Talking with children, playing games with children, providing stimulating and diversified learning experiences in the home- all of these are important platforms for learning. Teaching children simple numbers, counting, helping them become aware of time, naming parts of the body, concepts of color and direction; these are some of the countless words and games that most middle- class parents take for granted and teach almost unconsciously. Feeling objects, finding words for experiences, talking about events and things out of sight, or from yesterday, anticipating the future, are the subtle ways in which a child in a loving-caring atmosphere acquires the foundation upon which a school can build.

The more a child becomes aware of the world around him, the more he seeks to learn. The enquiring young mind, sparked by the desire to seek answers, is well set on the pathway to truth and knowledge. In contrast, children who are brought up in a home background where the forms of speech are restricted, are at a considerable disadvantage when they go to school. The average child's active vocabulary increases at a dramatic rate between two and five years of age, reaching an average of over two thousand words. It has been estimated that a child needs to understand about three thousand words to begin reading. By four or five years of age, children should be articulating sounds about 90 per cent correctly. Most children can make sentences by the time they go to school and are able to understand simple instructions given by unfamiliar people. Unfortunately, there will be a proportion who, because of difficulties in development or unfavorable backgrounds, are likely to lack fluency or have difficulty making themselves understood. The psychological trauma caused by placing a child without adequate powers of communication in a strange social situation can be serious and very painful to the child involved.

Psychologists have learned that the greater the variety of situations to which a child must accommodate his behavior, the more differentiated and mobile he becomes. Lack of variety and quality of stimulation rather than quantity can spell deprivation for any child. In disadvantaged areas, the segments of the spectrum of stimulation potentially available are often poor. In deprived conditions adults may speak to children, and the children may play on the street with old tin cans and tires, but the limitation of the quality, variety, and sequential presentation of ideas impoverishes the child's vocabulary and comprehension from a very early age.

Many deprived children show a retardation in speech development, a paucity of words, impoverished play and game knowledge, poor motor behavior, a 'devil may care' attitude toward discipline, and a negative image of themselves when they come to school. Often they have had little acquaintance with books, tend to reverse letters, and are pegged as failures early in their school experience. Children lacking language and symbol experience do not participate in learning situations, lack interest, are apathetic, and are hampered in the development of their cognitive process.

Many of the stimulating experiences for such children have failed to take place at the strategic critical points in their development, and although some of these sequences may be irreversible in their entirety, a thorough understanding of child development from infancy may point the way to reversing a sequence under artificially controlled conditions, so that the earlier stage of development may be simulated, and more complex cognitive patterns linked to it. Such is the basis of much remedial work.

What happens to a young child is of primary importance, because learning does not begin in school. Learning and the approach to the world of learning begin in the crib. Special efforts to prepare 'disadvantaged' children for learning in school should begin before the child enters the primary grades. It is in the early years that the child is receptive, his self-image is emerging, and his attitude toward learning not too deeply embedded in his total set or approach to the world.

We are only in the pioneering stages of understanding the learning process itself. Although we have increasing evidence that the child who is deprived of the stimulation of pictures, books, and spoken words is deeply affected, we know much less about what happens to a child who is exposed to stimuli which are perceptually, intellectually, or emotionally inappropriate to his age, his state of development or his individuality. We are still unable to detect the first flicker of emotional or intellectual awareness, the first readiness to embrace new sets of concepts or to enter into new relations. Until researchers can pinpoint such learning invitations, educators will have to make the intuitive judgments which many have made so successfully in the past.

Learning Theory

Too often the gap between learning theories and class room experience has been incredibly wide. Scientists have attempted to study the process of learning from several points of view, and this Committee in no way aspires to present a critique or all-embracing dissertation on the subject. For our purpose, it is helpful to recognize that the theoretical approaches to the learning process seem to fall primarily into two frames of reference:

• Those approaching learning as observers of behavior, in the traditional Behavioristic, Stimulus-Response, or modified Pavlovian conditioning tradition; and
• Those approaching learning from the learner's point of view, giving emphasis to the holistic, Gestalt, perceptual activity of the mind, and particularly recognizing that the total response of the child to a barrage of stimuli is more than the mathematical reactive sum of its parts.

For practical purposes, the findings of the two seemingly conflicting points of view may be beneficial to children in schools, as long as the educators are consciously aware of the hypothesis or frame of reference used before drawing conclusions. Each school of thought has its own language, advantages, and limitations in different learning situations.

Our present emphasis is toward a theory of dynamic learning. However, we do recognize that the conditioning theory, when understood with its total implications, is helpful in providing techniques where rote memory experience is required as a base for further learning: the pianist, the dancer, the actor, the chemist, the future surgeon, cannot become a master of his skill until he learns the techniques of practice. He must develop habits of concentration, repetitive effort, and persistence. He must learn to appreciate the characteristics of the learning curve of performance: the initial rise or spurt of success, the slowing down, the ups and downs, the plateaus, and the need for frequent repetition for retention.

No one learns how to figureskate as a spectator. However, a good instructor can provide short cuts based upon experience to those things worth memorizing or practising. Facts, formulae, definitions, songs, poems, medical terms, names, vocabulary, and so on are all conducive to such memory skill and practice. Our quarrel is not with the fact that some things should be committed to memory, but that too often in the past such practices were meaningless and out of context, and were considered as the foundation of education. Data to be memorized or skills to be acquired should be evaluated in a total context in relationship to the needs of a child and the task at hand.

It is presently possible and already demonstrable that children can be totally immersed in learning situations where a variety of facts can be crammed or programmed into their heads in a short period of time. Such a procedure has been advocated by some experts for rapidly upgrading disadvantaged children. We must ask our selves before rushing into such dramatic approaches, at what price to the child such methods are justified, and whether there are other methods more sensitive to a broader spectrum of a child's needs which could accomplish the same purpose.

The mixed media approach, so well demonstrated at Expo 67 in the imaginative use of film techniques, raises many old and new questions for learning theorists. The simple Pavlovian Stimulus-Response formula is often found wanting as an explanatory frame of reference. In behavioristic tradition, one picture image, seen by itself, impresses one fact on the mind. But two or three picture images seen simultaneously, and often with continuously changing juxtaposition, conjure up a complexity of ideas and relations in which the whole is clearly more than the sum of the parts. Much more of learning is subliminal than we ever guessed, and such multiple images seem to stimulate ideas in the mind. Later, these ideas can be recognized and retained in varying ways, dependent upon the recipient. The real question of how to evaluate the residue of such experiences has not as yet been answered. It has been suggested that it is primarily a sensory emotional experience, and not intellectual, which brings about changes in attitude rather than changes in philosophies. Such guesses, though fascinating, are open to further study, experimentation, and analysis.

We must remain vigilantly aware of this 'blitzing of the mind' approach. If not in schools, our children are certainly going to be exposed to this phenomenon elsewhere. Some theorists suggest that the approach is a softening-up operation, a rigidity breaker, which could become a significant and basic part of the learning experience if we become concerned with speeding up attitude changes.

Father John M. Culkin, Director of the Center for Communications at Fordham University, believes that a mind blitzed is a mind burst open and alert for intellectual combat. Both he and Marshall McLuhan claim that apathy, not stupidity, has been the enemy of intellect in our time, which has led to the posture of detachment and non-involvement which modern education must overcome. If this is true, educators should certainly take heed of such findings.

Learning and the School

In contrast to the free experiences of the child outside school, the classroom presents a very special experience in learning. At the present time, in most schools many rigidly controlled stipulations must be accepted by everyone who enters their portals. Basically, the school's learning experiences are imposed, involuntary, and structured. The pupil becomes a captive audience from the day of entry. His hours are regulated; his movements in the building and within the classroom are controlled; his right to speak out freely is curtailed. He is subject to countless restrictions about the days to attend, hours to fill, when to talk, where to sit, length of teaching periods, and countless other rules. Often the rules of the game can be just as mystifying to the child and his family as the English language to a newly arrived immigrant.

In a real sense, the basic school stage for learning is set long before any child makes his entrance. In some instances, curriculum content dates back more than fifty years, with fragmentary changes made from time to time in answer to the pressures of local boards, parents, principals, and teachers. Less frequently are the changes related to the needs of children. Too often in the past, we have ignored the children who have been inadequately fed, are heavy with fatigue, mentally stunted, socially alienated, emotionally warped, economically deprived, slightly deaf, or partly blind. Too often, when recognized too late, these children have been segregated with labels, splintered into special groups or classes, or dropped by the wayside. The child arriving on the school scene in too many instances has been treated not as a major actor, but as an intruding spectator at a command performance. In many situations the child has been expected to learn, memorize, mimic, regurgitate, and duplicate the pearls of wisdom to which he is exposed. He is expected to be stuffed or programmed like a computer at any hour of the school day, and to be filled with enthusiasm for every golden nugget cast in his direction. If the child fails to benefit from the curriculum provided, the assumption often made is that the fault lies with him, and that he is a misfit.

On the other hand, many schools are finding their way out of the maze of regulations and traditions of the past and are entering a new era of child-centred education.

In England, the Plowden Report on Children and their Primary Schools gives main emphasis to the individual child as the core of the educational program. Good rapport and easy human relationships between the staff and the children are valued. An awareness of current thinking on children's educational needs is considered as a basic requisite for the desirable dynamic leadership, the quality, range, and depth of learning experiences provided, and the signs of growth and achievement in the children. In the schools which the Plowden Committee considered among the best, learning went on all the time, in unusual places, and at unconventional times. Flexibility permeated the schools and there was little evidence of direct teaching. These were the criteria for appraising school excellence. On the negative side, the most deplored situations were those where the students appeared lazy, disinterested, indifferent, and apathetic. The teachers in such schools were out of touch with current thinking, were inept as teachers, and in many instances unkind to the children. Such schools carried the greatest number of discipline problems, in contrast to the best schools, some of which were located in deprived areas but which had few if any discipline problems. Experience has shown that children involved in exciting learning experiences do not have the time or inclination to get into trouble. It is the bored, disinterested, and uninvolved in learning whose minds and energies wander to the forbidden, the exciting, the challenging wherever they can find it.

Areas of Emphasis for the Learning Experience

The structure of this Report reveals several major areas of emphasis related to education in Ontario. They include the characteristics of childhood, our cultural environment, the learning program, the learning environment, the teacher, and organization for education; and while these areas are discussed specifically in other sections of the Report, they deserve comment here as the principal agents in the learning experience.

The sequence of learning experiences is a special concern for teachers working to meet the learning needs of each child. Every effort must be made to fit the learning opportunity to the potential, tempo, and level of understanding of each child. Only in this way can learning be treated as a continuous stream, multi-dimensional and diffuse in purpose in the early school stages. Teachers must be cognizant of the general critical sequential growth paths of children, and attempt to fit the learning experiences to their needs. Children do not learn how to hop before they can crawl. The same is equally true when children are expected to comprehend abstractions before they have intuitively or functionally grasped the specifics underlying the abstractions. Mouthing undigested, uncomprehended words can be as disagreeable as the forced eating of a lumpy pudding. Neither approach leads the child to the art of dining or the enrichment of living.

At the present time there is evidence that an interesting factor is at work in our schools. Girls in the early years are far more successful in our present graded system than boys-in fact, one or two years ahead of boys of the same age. Recent studies by Mary Salter Ainsworth, at Johns Hopkins University, point out that not only do young girls mature earlier and differently from boys, but their very refinements such as finger dexterity and refined muscular control make it possible for them to achieve success in the traditional education system which values their talents in neatness, hand writing, paper-cutting, and so on, and penalizes boys for their natural, less refined, slower development. Helping each child develop at his own tempo and point of readiness should avoid such unnecessary failures or determined. It is for this reason that a broad spectrum of opportunities must be provided from which children, of both sexes, can make their choice.

As children grow older, interest areas usually become more specialized, increase in depth, and either fan out to other interests or are abandoned as unsuitable, uninteresting, or as finished with. It may sometimes be necessary to provide program aids for interests explored by different individuals or clusters of children at varying depths and intensities. There should be room both for the dilettante passing through and for the more involved participant.

In too many instances traditional thinking has labelled too many interest areas and subjects as 'strictly for adults,' 'for high school students only,' 'for girls,' 'for boys,' or 'taboo.' There is increasing evidence that many of these ghettos for learning exist behind high walls of ignorance. It is wise to let the child be one's guide in opening the doors to learning. Learning pro grams of the future will, without doubt, develop many young women, far more interested than were their mothers in mathematics and sciences and other interests erroneously stereotyped as masculine; many young men, also, will find pleasure in the broad range of creative arts (including the culinary art) presently labelled as effeminate and unmasculine in our culture.

Each child's development in the full sense should be appreciated and given consideration in an ideal school learning situation. Such opportunities should make it possible for every child who enters the halls of formal learning to grow physically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially. The core of the learning situation does not lie in the dollars used to pay for hardware, the amount of shiny chromium in the rooms, or the acres of glass or concrete blocks used in the architecture; it lies within each child's mind and heart. If each child is learning, if each child's day leads to new learning challenges, if each child is eager to learn, has a sparkle in his eye, enthusiasm in his voice, talks comfortably with his teachers, chats over a problem with a young friend, behaves with poise and assurance when visitors arrive without showing off, and goes happily about his work, these are the signs that his school is a good place for learning. When schools exhibit a small selected honor roll of students, a price is paid by those who did not make it. Concern should always be felt for the non-team members, the unhonored, the absentees, and the corridor wanderers. A school should serve all its children comfortably and humanely in its on-going, child-centred programs and a learning experience should be found to meet the needs of each.

At school, the teacher is primarily responsible for the atmosphere of learning. For a teacher to express love to every child is a very complex demand and probably an unrealistic objective. However, all children will respond to a teacher who is genuinely interested, well-informed, kind, patient, and dependable. One of the children in Bruno Bettelheim's book, Love is Not Enough, implied that she wanted to be 'becared': to be loved was not enough.

Children respond to inquiring, imaginative people. They enjoy adults who attempt to match their mental vitality, adults who are discovering, trying out new ideas, and demonstrating their joy in using their imagination. What could be more delightful as a teacher, or teammate, than a mind that is playful, fanciful, and original in the relationships it perceives, that connects things as they are with things as they might be, that pokes into nooks and crannies and comes up with refreshing ideas which excite laughter and wonder. Such human beings are in tune with the minds and hearts of children. In an age when so many are seeking a reason for being, what better cause could an imaginative adult espouse? Such people have a sense of worth and style, and recognize and contribute it to all those who come in contact with them. Imaginative people are exciting, enthusiastic, vital people-they are contagious and can infect a child with their characteristics by loving demonstration.

Children should be helped to cope with their every day problems. Every life brings with it crises, shattered dreams, and frustrating moments - unexpected illness, death in a family, a missing parent, a sudden shift in job status, a move from one town to another, the unsettled conditions of political situations, all the large and small frustrations of life. Being sensitive to a child's stress situations, recognizing the individual differences of thresholds for stress within human beings is a very subtle business. It requires, not 'nosey-parkers' intruding on privacy, but sensitive teachers ready to give emotional support, an encouraging word, a touch of a hand, or a smile of understanding. This does not mean that teachers should attempt to be amateur psychiatrists or substitute parents. However, there is an important task for a teacher, as an understanding and empathic human being, to know when to try to decrease a child's internal burden by lightening his workload, or when to recognize disturbing behavior on his part which may be his way of crying out for help.

Schools cannot make a child learn. They can only help him. And a child will not learn unless he wants to. That is why it is so important for parents to help children want to learn before the child comes to school.

If parents view learning as exciting, adventurous, and challenging, the children will usually acquire an enthusiastic attitude to learning. But if a parent is a dropout of yesterday, or comes from a background which has negative feelings toward schooling, such children carry strong psychological deterrents to learning from an early age.

We know a number of things about how children learn. Dean Neville Scarfe in an address "The Aims of Education in a Free Society" said, "We know that they become diligently thoughtful when they are actively investigating real and concrete problems that seem worthwhile solving to them. We know that they learn most effectively if they can persist with concentrated effort for a considerable length of time. We know that this can happen and does happen when the problem or topic of investigation retains their interest, cashes in on their curiosity, and develops their enthusiasm. We know too, that children are different-that different things interest different children. We realize, therefore, that it is the business of the school to make sure that every child devotes concentrated attention and thought to important and challenging problems bearing in mind that not all worthwhile problems or useful ideas are interesting to begin with. It is the teacher's job to make them interesting, attractive, and valuable educationally."

Children need to feel that they are accepted, and that their efforts are appreciated. Failure in our society too often takes on the form of a public stigma and unfortunately the 'loser' in the early years of school acquires an image of himself as a failure, which becomes deeply ingrained in his psyche. Children can be helped to cope with the stress of real failure if their differences are understood, if they are loved despite their inabilities, and if they are given the courage to try again. Every child can be given a feeling of success at something if the choices are broad, the requirements feasible for him, and if all learning for each child is viewed positively and in terms of his individual development.

Physical discomforts in the form of deprivation or punishment do not make a positive contribution toward learning. Children who come to school hungry and tired because of poor home conditions are not highly motivated for learning. Such deprivations leave them exhausted, fatigued, prone to chronic illness and disease, and far from physically set for learning. Unfortunately, such children carry many other burdens on their shoulders, such as poor attendance records, and an inability to be alert.

To quote again from the address by Dean Scarfe noted above: "It does not do people good to be compelled to suffer hardship, deprivation or indignity. To have come up the hard way is not necessarily beneficial to the character or the soul. These old fallacies die hard. There is no educational advantage in pain, failure, threats of punishment, or appeals to fear, Spartan austerity, and toughening up tactics are simply illogical relics of a barbaric age. The Christian ethic of forgiving one another, of turning the other cheek, of love, of kindliness to little children is totally opposed to such brutality."

The use of physical punishment as a motivating factor in learning is highly questionable. External incentives such as marks and stars and other awards influence children's learning mainly by evoking or representing parents' or teachers' approval. Although children vary temperamentally in their response to re wards and punishments, positive incentives are generally more effective than punishment, and neither is as damaging as neglect. Unfortunately, the children who most need the incentive of good marks are least likely to get them, even when given for effort rather than achievement. In any case, one of the main educational tasks, particularly in the early years at school, should be to build upon an intrinsic interest in learning and lead children to learn for themselves rather than from fear of disapproval or desire for praise.

Professor Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University recently reported in the New York Times on a study which clearly indicated that the expectations of teachers in many instances affected the achievement level of children. In this study, the teachers were falsely told that a test would select those children who were expected to spurt ahead academically. They were given the names of 20 per cent of the student body, randomly selected from all grades, and were told that every student listed would improve dramatically within a year. A year later, when all the children still in school were re-tested, the spurters showed an average gain of 12.22 points, compared with 8.42 for a control group representing the rest of the student body. But the dramatic gains came only in Grades 1 and 2-increases of 27.4 in Grade 1, and 16.5 in Grade 2 for spurters. The control group rose only 12 points in Grade 1 and seven in Grade 2. One cannot help but suspect that some children are victims of self-fulfilling prophecies made by teachers prejudiced by their stereotyped judgments of children.

We know that we do not make a dog happy by wagging his tail. To make a child learn or be ignited by an inspirational spark or become an integrated human being reaching out and upward is not done by the use of superficial gimmicks or gadgets. Leaps of the mind cannot be programmed, manipulated, or conditioned, by the most modern intensive immersion efforts. In almost a mysterious fashion, as expressed in Michelangelo's painting in the Sistine Chapel, the finger of God touches the finger of Adam at strange moments. How to inspire is not easily answered. Most of the frontiers of the mind are still unexplored; however, from empirical observation, from the history of the past, and from evidence of creative thinkers we know that the human atmosphere in which a child grows and learns, still symbolizes the greatest teaching aid since a Neanderthal father chipped a stone and showed his son how to do it.

The teacher, as a professional, should be aware of the instruments and means at his disposal to whet intellectual appetites. His personality, skills, and special experience may suit one method more readily than another. Furthermore, different methods may be required at different times with the same child in the same day; and similar methods may be found to be very effective with two children of contrasting abilities, backgrounds, and ages.

In too many schools, one sees teachers doing most of the talking. This has been the traditional method employed at schools and teachers' colleges. It was assumed that a special package of knowledge was presented at intervals by the teacher, ritualistically pumped into the children, drilled, and then tested to see whether the content had taken like a vaccination. The constant buzz of a teacher's voice to a tongue-tied captive audience was accepted as desirable practice. However, in the light of present-day experience, the lecture method, used alone to transmit the overwhelming amount of knowledge pouring out every day, is far too restricting.

Children need to play. Despite the belief held by many adults that learning must be painful and serious, it is the joy and pleasure of play which often sets the stage for learning. Play provides a psychological safety zone in which children can test their competence with out fear of failure. It is out of play that children develop rules of a game and a sense of order. Work and play areas are so closely interwoven in learning situations that it is often impossible to separate one from the other, and teachers aware of the learning process should not feel guilty about the fun and noisy atmosphere that may be engendered. There is nothing sinful about laughter, and serious, silent rooms are not necessarily working chambers for teaching.

Children need to be free to ask questions about the world and about themselves. Establishing 'out of bounds' areas for questioning can only lead to misconception, superstition, distorted information, and ignorance. Children's earlier questions are for the simple purpose of learning facts and the names of things ("What is it?" "What's it for?"). Then come questions about their own bodies, followed swiftly by questions growing out of their observation of many different levels of explanation.

Not only do they ask "Where do babies come from?" but "Where did I come from?" Answers should be given at the time questions are asked, in relationship to the level of questioning, in their natural setting. Children's concepts grow slowly and unevenly. Sometimes they understand certain things far better than adults would expect, and sometimes less well. Questions are a child's way of organizing the world and sorting out what fits into what. If adults listened to the questions children ask, they could be provided with clues as to the points where they need straightening out and when they are ready to move on to higher levels of understanding.

Imagination is specifically a human gift. To imagine is the characteristic act, not of the poet's mind, or the painter's, or the scientist's, but of the mind of man. There is a striking and basic difference between man's ability to imagine something that he saw or experienced and an animal's failure to do so. Animals make up for the differences with an instinct or by learning which reproduces by rote a train of known responses. They do not depend, as human memory does, on calling to mind the recollection of absent things.

To imagine means to make images, to move them about inside one's being in new arrangements. Images may in the word sense be unrelated to sensory quality, and in this sense be called 'signs.' For human beings words which are abstract symbols rank among our most important images. Images play out for us events which are not present to our senses, and thereby guard the past and create the future.

When a child begins to play games with things that stand for other things, he enters the gateway to reason and imagination. For the human reason discovers new relations between things not by deduction, but by that unpredictable blend of speculation and insight that scientists call induction, which, like other forms of imagination, cannot be formalized.

The popular and industrially efficient piecework approach to data and problem-solving today presents many new challenges to our age, and to our children particularly. Armed with an appreciation and experience of applying scientific method, human beings should be able to differentiate between 'small' and 'big' problems to be solved. The ease with which computerized answers can be drawn upon could easily cloud the complexity and elegance of the cognitive process which underlies the answers presented. Problem-solving steps in the process, rather than the end products, will have to be understood and respected, and with this emphasis in the learning experience, we can nurture children who will become captains of their own souls in a sphere of technological advances today and tomorrow. If the learning process itself is abandoned, or given small importance, the adults of tomorrow could become bored and enslaved by the encapsulated fragments of knowledge stored for lost reasons by former thinkers who did the original programming. We can either set our goals toward making use of the science of cybernetics to enhance an increasingly human age, or we can set the stage for human beings of diminishing significance overshadowed in a technological age.

The curriculum of the future must be child-oriented and must provide opportunities for choice within broadly defined limits. Teachers at every level, supported by qualified counsellors, will be required to guide each child along his own critically determined path, far more flexible than a computer guide, but critical in the sense that the learning programs initiated and developed will best meet the needs of each child at the time best suited to his development. Teachers will have to rely upon both their general knowledge of child development and on detailed observation of individuals to match teaching to the demands of children's various stages of development. The signs of readiness will have to be discovered and learned for all aspects of learning, so that each child's progress will be observed, recognized, stimulated, and assisted in the next stage of learning.

At every stage of learning, children will need rich and varied materials and solutions, though the pace at which they should be introduced may vary according to the children. If children are limited in materials, they may tend to solve problems in isolation and fail to see their relevance to other solutions. If teachers or parents are inconsistent in their attitudes or contradict by behavior what they teach, it may become difficult for children to develop stable and mature concepts. Verbal explanation, and long orations from teachers and adults in advance of understanding based on experience, may become obstacles to learning, and children's mouthing of the right words may conceal from teachers their lack of understanding. Discussion with other children and with adults is one of the principal ways in which children check their concepts against those of others.

One of the most important responsibilities of teachers is to help children to see order and pattern in experience. Rigid division of the curriculum into subjects tends to interrupt children's trains of thought and of interest and to hinder them from realizing the common elements in problem-solving. These are among the many reasons why most learning experiences, particularly in the early school years, should cut across the traditional subject divisions.

Activity and experience, both physical and mental, are often the best means of gaining knowledge and acquiring facts, but these facts are best retained when they are used and understood. When children are learning new patterns of behavior or new concepts, they tend both to practise them spontaneously and to seek out relevant experiences. It takes much longer than teachers have previously realized for children to master through experience new concepts or new levels of complex concepts. Only when understanding has been achieved, does consolidation follow through further learning experiences.

It is these factors which curriculum designers must keep in mind. A child-centred emphasis heralds a demand for imaginative, resourceful, and qualified teachers to create a curriculum of learning experiences on the spot. Remote curriculum constructors should wither away as anachronisms, and qualified consultants on child development, methodology, program aids, field experiences, and special learning problems should take their place as supporters and stimulators of teachers in their daily work.

Learning opportunities and program aids should be integrated so that children will not have to flit from activity to activity in their anxiety to make use of materials not available at other times of the day. As children mature, they should be capable of planning when to do work assigned to them and also have time in which to follow personal or group interests of their own choice.

Any policy which predetermines the total structure of a curriculum and attempts to impose it upon all, should be condemned. Such an approach is in complete anti thesis to a learning program which seeks to develop the potential of every child.

The great architects of our day have been joining with social scientists to draw attention to the impact of the living physical environment on our inner human environment, and much has been written about the loss of identity in our egg-crate glass apartments and office buildings. Much has been suggested about the effect of space, patches of blue sky, trees, flowers, asphalt pavements, ugliness, pollution, and the loneliness in crowded surroundings. In essence, they tell us we cannot ignore the physical environment of our schools if we are to be concerned with them as places in which children will want to learn.

The school environment sends messages to all children. The space that invites, the color that warms, the parkland that lures, the human accents of the planning of the school and its surroundings are intuitively grasped by every child. Children thrive when they can touch, breathe, see, hear, and feel beauty. Early sensory awareness can mark significant first steps in the never ending joy of discovery and appreciation of the aesthetic. Works of visual art, sculpture gardens, fountains, and trees should be part of the integral planning of every school, for the bricks and mortar of the schools are themselves the 'silent teachers.' Through the personal experience of beauty one of the most significant dimensions of humanity is added to a child. He who has known beauty as a growing child is never again complacent about the ugly and he becomes a lifelong devotee and advocate of the aesthetic wherever he finds it.

Schools should not be created as appendages to be attached to efficient administrative facilities. Schools should be built for human beings interested in learning. With this in mind, the flexibility and expansiveness of space for human use and comfort, closely linked with aesthetic, intellectual, and social opportunities, should be given priority. Schools are not factories, not even learning factories. Schools should provide the 'living room' - space and place for minds to grow in. The efficient administrative philosophy demonstrated in so many antiseptic, cold, uniform, box-like schools surrounded by asphalt play yards, will have to be given supplementary, ancillary status in future school planning; in their place more imaginative, flexible, beautiful learning centres should rise as testimonials to the greatness of man.

The more qualified the teacher, the more ready he will be to make use of appropriate teaching aids at strategic moments. Modern technology makes it possible to bring into the classroom personalities and voices, scenes and places, the great and near great, and can enormously enrich the resources available to teachers and children. Intelligently selected and used, they cannot help but provide excellent supplementary materials.

Television, films, and radio are part of the everyday world of the children in Ontario. Children spend many hours watching television and film screens as a kind of rival system of education. Good teachers can take advantage of this, can build upon the children's viewing experiences, so that precision, associations, and meanings can be added to what is seen and heard on television.

Computerized, programmed learning is presently limited to learning tasks, such as teaching specific sets of information or skills that can be presented in sequence. Such skills must be capable of being systematically studied and described and then transmitted. The fact that a rigidity of structure exists, which seems to be inherent in programmed instruction, leads one to fear lest students feel that there is indeed only one approach and one right answer. What the student may find hard to learn is that some questions may have more than one answer-or no answer at all. Programmed instruction would appear to be antithetical to the 'discovery method,' as presently conceived and executed.

Nevertheless, the February 1967 White House Report on Computers in Higher Education, in a very convincing, clearly expressed document prepared by a panel of top ranking computer experts, pointed out that computing should be recognized as a new resource in learning. At the higher levels of education "it enables the student or the scholar to deal with realistic problems rather than oversimplified models. By lessening the time spent in the drudgery of problem-solving and in the analysis of data, it frees time for thought and insight. Partly, it enables the student to do old things more easily, but more important, it enables him to do things he other wise could not. Computing increases the quality and scope of education."

It may well be that our resistance to computer involvement is much the same as the resistance of some early scholars to Gutenberg's movable type. However, it is well to be aware of the pitfalls and hazards before plunging blindly into total acceptance of expensive hardware.

In the present massive explosion of knowledge with its continual fragmentation and stockpiling in computers, there may be a tendency for a student punching buttons at a school's computer to feel that the battle for truth has been won and that all the future has in store is at most to acquire the skill of asking questions already programmed for answers. Computers are man-made and man-programmed, and therefore not infallible. They are magnificent memory-storage bins capable of instant retrieval. They are magnificent accomplishments. Computers can carry out in a few minutes of calculations what would have taken a man centuries to perform, but even cybernetic experts working on heuristics admit that they lack the elegance of human minds; and for all their electronic facts they cannot emerge with new insights or new ideas. Computer experts still face major problems in creativity and pattern recognition in their programming. Only the human mind can make such leaps. Only the human mind can dream and think about the future. Only the human mind can outrace a computer in insights and new concepts and theories. Having grasped the essence of the use and limitations of the most complex computer, whether it guides an astronaut's capsule to a safe landing, diagnoses a medical case in Moscow from New York, or narrows human error in some biochemical therapies, we must recognize that all these advances should free the mind and the schools to truly think beyond present knowledge - to educate in the full sense.

The classroom has been accepted for many years as the only operational teaching unit in most of our schools. Children in most instances are granted entry to school on a chronological basis, arbitrarily crated into class units labelled kindergarten or Grade 1, with little previous knowledge, examination, diagnostic information, or concern about the individuals concerned. The class is then assigned to a solitary teacher, who is isolated in a room and expected behind closed doors to teach, to keep the children quiet, and to manage an incredible range of situations. At periodic intervals examinations are set and report cards sent home to inform parents of their child's achievements in comparison to the other children in school, and failure is accepted as a catch-all category of all those who do not fit the requirements.

Shifting to each child's learning experience as the basic nucleus of teaching makes it possible to dissolve the psychological and physical walls around children and the teacher himself. It makes it possible to remove the array of labels used to differentiate those children who are splintered off as misfits, failures, and successes. Children are not identified as class fragments, but rather as individuals, as whole people, to be respected, taught, lived with, and enjoyed.

A child who is learning cannot fail. The chastisement of pupils for not meeting set, rigid requirements, is almost a form of barbarism in our day. Failure can be demoralizing, particularly to small children. The disgrace of repeating a year, and the attendant upheaval of friendships is painful. It has been found that children repeating the same classroom routine a second time rarely advance their knowledge more than two or three months in the ten months of exposure. John I. Goodlad and Robert H. Anderson in their book The Non-Graded Elementary School, pointed out that those repeating a year in school sometimes performed more poorly the second time around. Slow achievers, it had been found, accomplished more if they were promoted with their age group.

Too often in the past rigid bureaucratic walls have been built between the teacher, other teachers, the principal, and helpful school and community resources.

Too often, because of the fear of personal failure, attention to problems of minor importance is delayed and outside help sought only when the situation assumes disaster proportions. The shifting of blame and responsibility to the next level of the hierarchy, always with the idea that to seek help is a sign of weakness and failure, may delay treatment to a point where problems may become irreversible and beyond remedy.

There is increasing evidence that children are often better taught in groups centred around interests, and as individuals, than in classes consisting of 30 or 40 pupils. Group teaching and individual learning programs break down the old formal class organization. But despite advocacy of clustering children around interests, supported by appropriate resource teachers, children, particularly young children, seem more relaxed and at ease when identified with at least one home teacher. Such a teacher should spend a greater proportion of her time with a particular child, supervising him, counselling him, talking and listening to him, so that she may be aware of the child's changing moods and responses.

Organizational structures too often become vested interests within themselves and long after the reason for creating them has been forgotten the hollow shell of their former existence lingers on. If we are to concern ourselves with a genuine commitment to children's learning in our schools, it may be necessary to discard much that is obsolete, to develop new organizational structures with built-in, short-term appraisal of their value. In helping a child learn, teachers and personnel should enjoy teaching, growing, and maturing along with the children. Schools should become more human and more flexible. The child rather than rules should be given primary consideration.

Isolated organizational gimmicks should not be embraced for the sake of novelty. Too often such words as 'ungrading' have been treated as magic formulae to solve all the problems of education. As pointed out previously, the total underlying philosophy of a child centred emphasis in education must be appreciated before disparate, fragmented changes are implemented. 'Ungrading' could be quite disappointing if year-end examinations and competitive report cards were not abolished at the same time.

Education represents one of the largest industries in Canada, and this is particularly true in Ontario. In 1967, about 1,800,000 Ontario children attended over 5,700 schools, totalling more than 65,000 classrooms, taught by about 75,000 teachers (including roughly 10,000 persons performing administrative and supervisory jobs in education), in 400 million pupil-days. In the same year the primary-secondary school enrolment represented 26.1 per cent, or over one-quarter of our population, in contrast to 16.3 per cent, or less than one-sixth, in 1948.

In 1967,1,600 school boards still reported directly to the Department of Education, which was a reduction from 5,600 in 1945. Classroom teachers' salaries ranged from less than $3,000 to over $14,000 per year.

In 1967, 9,000 new teachers began their careers in the teaching profession. Thirteen thousand teachers were enrolled in the department summer courses, and over 15,000 special certificates were granted.

One hundred and seventy thousand pupils attended school for the first time, and 500,000 transferred from one school to another. Thirty-seven thousand pupils moved from outside the province into Ontario schools; of these approximately 15,000 were school-age immigrants to Canada. Twenty-two thousand children attended auxiliary classes.

In cost, the operating budget was over a billion dollars; general legislative grants were $443 million; cost of books over $12 million per year; approximately two billion sheets of paper were used.

For such a colossal machine to be administered efficiently, humanely, and with flexibility is a mammoth task, particularly when one recognizes the rigidities which can develop in any bureaucratic system with a very long history of traditions, practices, Parkinsonian growth, and a network of protocol.

For children to be treated with ease in their learning situations, their teachers have to be treated as professionals in a flexible, decentralized atmosphere which breaks down centralized authority and shifts responsibility and freedom to every principal and his staff as a co-ordinated team, to be respected and treated as worthy of teaching the children entrusted to their care.

In a hospital where good bedside care is considered of primary importance, the process begins with a board of directors and administrative staff which strives for excellence and qualified personnel. Once such goals are accepted, the staff are entrusted with confidence in their maturity and wisdom with the day-to-day implementation of the aims set, and given the freedom and authority to carry out their respective jobs.

Good deskside care in a school deserves the same respect, freedom, and delegation of authority. Too often in the past highly qualified persons have been kept from classrooms due to the narrow interpretations of certification. The principle of accommodation, of looking at human beings as people with something to give and share with children, has been lost in a wilderness of rules and procedures. Too often in the bureaucratic jungle, teachers have been discouraged and have found it difficult to exhibit initiative, to use new ideas and fresh practices proven by research, or to develop independently. As stated earlier in the prologue to this Report, the atmosphere within the classroom must be positive and encouraging. Teachers must be free to be themselves, rather than be forced to resort to preconceived stereotyped patterns of behavior.

Administrators should work toward the same human relationships as we seek to engender between teacher and pupils. Administrators should be the leaders in the field of education: audacious, imaginative, flexible, and ahead of what occurs. Administration should seek to understand itself, its role, its purpose, its changing needs, and the new network of interwoven skills it will be called upon to use. Administrators should not be come victims of their own sophistication or be bewildered or overawed by the technology of the age. Our vision of education for tomorrow cannot be guided by programmed leaders, but by human administrators, consultants, and specialists prepared for their jobs in a variety of ways. They must be men and women to whom the task of educating children at any level will rank in importance with all the great searches for truth, beauty, and wisdom since the history of man began.

We must recognize the fact that between 1970 and 1980 many of our present young people will be called upon to shoulder a great proportion of the financial burden of being their brother's keeper. Broad, sweeping health, welfare, and educational programs have come into existence in Canada over the past fifty years. In that time they have grown tremendously and will require great understanding to be maintained and developed. Learning experiences for children should include field visits to government departments, community agencies, hospitals, homes for the aged, and develop awareness of community organization and its continuing problems. City children and teachers should learn first-hand about life in the rural areas, and rural children and teachers should have personal experiences of life in urban areas. In time, perhaps the field experiences can be extended to the rest of Canada and other countries.

Our children will be called upon to make important decisions in which personal commitment and involvement may be of vital importance. Knowledge in depth of the peoples and countries of the world, their way of life, their history, their social philosophies, their problems and attempted solutions should be encouraged and be well-travelled learning routes for discovery. In today's society, every child will have to become aware of his role in the family of man.

The late Dag Hammarskjold of the United Nations, in his book, Markings, said, "The 'great' commitment all too easily obscures the 'little' one. But without the humility and warmth which you have to develop in your relations to the few with whom you are personally involved, you will never be able to do anything for the many." In a sense, high-sounding phrases such as commitment, involvement, and freedom take on personal meaning only when experienced in one's own backyard, in one's own school, or with one's own friends. Our children's learning experiences in school today should, for the sake of humanity's existence tomorrow, provide the fertile ground in which such seeds could be planted. Our children, by learning in an atmosphere where freedom of the spirit and respect for others are an integral part of their everyday lives, will know what it means to cherish and protect such privileges.

Up to Ryerson's time, school was looked upon as a place of awe - a place for the selected few. The man who could read, write, and do arithmetic was an educated man - far beyond the man or woman who was limited to signing an 'x' for his or her name. Today illiteracy in Ontario is virtually conquered, so that schools competing with the 24-hour rival learning academies of mass media find their image somewhat tarnished and too often lacking excitement, timeliness, and relevancy.

The school will be called upon to provide learning experiences which are vital, and different from those of yesterday. The challenge to it is even greater than the threat of illiteracy of former days. Today's challenge is to teach our children to be humanely literate, so that they may, with clarity and a sense of commitment, read, understand, and communicate the new words, signs, symbols, values, and knowledge bombarding them.

The human learning experience itself will probably be increasingly important in tomorrow's sophisticated concepts, research, and technical skills. We must be prepared to incorporate attitudes and opportunities for broadening, deepening, and redefining our approaches. Today's grand design and implementation for learning must remain fluid and dynamic so that it can keep pace with man as long as he extends his reach to outer space and to the hidden truths as yet to be probed within himself.

If the child, the individual child, must indeed come first, it will require patience, toil, flexibility, and sympathy from parents, teachers, administrators, politicians, and the public in concert. For every child a richer, more rewarding learning experience can be developed which would give him a better chance to reach his potential; surely only such commitment can fulfill the half of the bargain which our society can strike with every child in this rich land.

Connect with Connexions

Newsletter     Facebook   Twitter