The Education of the Ordinary Child
- Type:
Reviews
- Author:
John Duncan-
Thos. Nelson & Sons Ltd. 1942. 15s.
Mr. John Duncan has built the Lankhills system upon the principle that any sound structure needs a firm base* as essential to the higher as to the lower courses. For this reason he calls his book The Education of the Ordinary Child.
It describes how, at Lankhills, a residential special school in Hampshire, teaching methods are selected according to the principle that mental activity should result in further activity both abstract and applied- The schemes of work not only carry into practice Spearman’s principle of ” noegenesis but any work is rejected if, in spite of superficially satisfactory results, it fails to satisfy the principle.
The account of how these methods have been evolved provides not only a testimony to the work and research of the whole staff, but to their intelligent clarification of the reciprocal roles of teaching and learning. Mr- Duncan does not claim the exclusive possession of a unique staff, but he emphasizes that while other schools may have equally conscientious teachers, his colleagueS really understand the difference between instruction and education.
At Lankhills the inculcation of good mental habits ensures that each child shall attain his maximum potential intellectual efficiency, the attainment of which carries with it increased social development, which, in turn, results in a degree of happiness and personal stability unlikely to be gained where, from the child’s point of view, ” school learning ” has little apparent connection with practical life.
Continuity of purpose is obviously a strong feature of life at Lankhills, and its achievement is the more remark- able since, among the majority of duller children, persistence of effort, as distinct from mere purpose- less perseveration, is usually conspicuous by its absence.
Lankhills methods are essentially eclectic. For some years Mr. Duncan and his staff have been winnowing the wheat from the chaff of many other methods. They have chosen and modified those which encourage a child to use his practical intelligence and which develop his ability to plan and work in correct sequence, and therefore most economically. This partly explains why at his school the children, though mentally limited, get through a surprising amount of work, and further, learn to criticize their efforts.
Throughout the book there is frequent reiteration of the fact that it is a grasp of relationships in concrete and practical situations which largely determines our social efficiency, and is usually one of the weakest factors in the mental make-up of subnormal persons- Lankhills training is deliberately planned to develop this factor.
This admirable book provides a healthy antidote to much loose thinking about ” equality of opportunity, which so often is in danger of being misinterpreted as ” identical opportunity “, and as such, proves to anything but ” equal”. Mr. Duncan could hardly have chosen a better time to have given us the benefit of his experience and research and to have presented us with the results of the sound thinking that has informed his work. M.I.D.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.