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school was considered a form of free expression, and the
children were encouraged to make their own movements,
undirected. Different airs were played to which the child was
expected to react, and the little girl of my example found great
pleasure in this part of her school work and gave much of her
time to it, until she was considered to express herself more
freely than any of the other children in the form of art she had
chosen. I may point out that one of the essential principles
of these free-expression schools is to permit a child to choose
its own activity and to pursue it for practically as long as it
desires.
Her mother, however, became dissatisfied after a time with
her child's general condition. Curious and somewhat alarming
physical distortions were beginning to manifest themselves,
most noticeably a tendency to carry her head on one side, a
tendency she was unable to rectify. At last the mother brought
back the child to me for re-examination.
Now less than a year before I had passed this child as an
Race Culture and the Training of the Children 77
unusually fine example of correct physical co-ordination.
When she came back to me she was in little better condition
than a congenital degenerate. All that fluent co-ordination of
her muscular mechanisms had disappeared, and in place of it I
found rigid tendons, stiffened muscles, and, worst of all, faulty
habits of guidance and control, among them a habit of governing
the muscles of her body and legs by stiffening the unrelated
muscles of her neck. (Incidentally I may note in passing that
in the human being the neck is very often the indicator of
inadequate and false controls. There are good reasons why
this should be the case, a priori, but they are too technical for
this book.) A further particular defect was due to a tensing
and shortening of the upper muscles of the thighs where they
are attached to the torso, a defect that was tending to warp
and shorten the child's stature. Lastly the most significant
change of all the child who a year before had been outspoken
and fearless and clear of speech, was now timid and shy, and
mumbled her words so badly that I could with difficulty
understand her.
Here, then, is a case of a child, starting in the best physical
condition, who was placed in what was considered the right
environment and permitted the exercise of free activity. And
I claim that the harmful result was so inevitable that any one of
real experience might have anticipated it with almost absolute
certainty.
The second ominous " D " is drawing, and this comes into
another category of damnation, since mental rather than
physical effects are concerned, although the latter are involved
both in the harmful, uncorrected poses adopted by the children
when seated at the table, and in the false directions of the ideo-
motor centres of which only a few reach the essential fingers that
are holding, or more often grotesquely clutching, the pencil.
It may seem a small thing to the layman that a child should try
to guide a pencil by movements of its tongue, but to the expert
that confusion of functions is indicative of endless subconscious
troubles.
Let me describe the practical procedure of a certain type of
" free-drawing " lesson. Pencils, paper, and the usual para-
phernalia are placed on tables or desks in different parts of the
schoolroom, in the hope that the child may be tempted to use
them in drawing. Then, one day, a pupil takes up a pencil
78 Race Culture and the Training of the Children
and makes an attempt to draw, another follows his example
and so on, until all the pupils have made some kind of effort in
this direction.
Now the act of drawing is in the last analysis a mechanical
process that concerns the management of the fingers, and the
co-ordination of the muscles of the hand and forearm in re-
sponse to certain visual images conceived in the brain and
imaginatively projected on to the paper. And the standard
of functioning of the human fingers and hand in this connection
depends entirely on the degree of kinaesthetic development of
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