Games and Toys in Early Childhood Education -...
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Digest 25 Games and Toys in Early Childhood Education Contributions by M. Mauriras-Bousquet - J. Ratnaike N. van Oudenhbven - J.-P. Rossie A.W.P. Gurugé - A. Michelet unesco-unicef co-operative programme paris 1988
Transcript of Games and Toys in Early Childhood Education -...
Digest 25
Games and Toys in Early Childhood Education
Contributions by
M . Mauriras-Bousquet - J. Ratnaike N . van Oudenhbven - J.-P. Rossie
A . W . P . Gurugé - A . Michelet
unesco-unicef co-operative programme
paris 1988
CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE (i i i
The Role of Games in Education in the Developing Countries by Martine Mauri ras-Bousquet
Games Related to Home-Based Activities by Jayananda Ratnaike 21
I - Common "Street" Games by Nico van Oudenhoven 37
Games and Toys Among a Tunisian Sahara Population -An Example of the Contribution of Anthropological Research to Child Development by Jean-Pierre Rossie 53
Preschool Education by Correspondence: An Australian Programme to Serve Isolated Children by Ananda W.P. Gurugé 77
Shape-Matching Games and Puzzles by André Michelet 93
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88/WS-25
PREFACE
This Digest, Games and Toys in Early Childhood Education, presents six papers on games and toys as means for early childhood education. Each author deals with the subject in his own way either with reference to a particular location such as the street (Nico van Oudenhoven), the home (Jay Ratnaike and Ananda W.P. Gurugé) or the Third World as a whole (Martine Mauri ras-Bousquet) or else as an example of how certain educational methods originally meant for special education got applied to preschool education (André Michelet); finally Jean-Pierre Rossie examines games as the subject of ..anthropological research devoted to child development.
Although different from each other, these approaches have one thing in common: they advocate greater recognition of the role of games in the education of the young child at home as well as at school.
In this perspective, Martine Mauri ras-Bousquet, taking examples from various Asian and African countries in which she has worked, emphasizes the importance of free play amongst children in developing countries as a means of preserving cultural identity. Regarding school, she advocates -rather than relying only on educational games-that all school activities be infused with the spirit
of play. She also demonstrates how play can be combined with educational television, productive work and teaching based on observation of the environment.
In the same way, Jay Ratnaike deplores the fact that scholars are not sufficiently interested in ancestral traditions despite their pedagogical values. In many Asian countries, he points out, the education systems are based on the norms of the privil edged strata of society and propagate the concept of "cultural deficit" for preschool
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children. This suggests the need for using the strong points of ancestral traditions as a counterweight to the bias inherent in the existing education systems. He shows, giving interesting examples, that the best educators of the young children are their parents, and the best educational tools the parents can have are home-based activities.
Similarly, Ananda W.P. Gurugé presents a method of distance preschool education, launched by the Educational Department of Queensland, Australia, in 1974. The method consists of having educational programmes, with detailed instructions on how to use them, sent to families who have children of preschool age, and who live far from any formal, conventional preschool education centre. . Here again, although the programmes involve parents, children and professional educators, it is the family and the home that play the essential roles of education.
Conversely, and for pertinent reasons, Nico van Oudenhoven would rather see children playing freely in the streets. In line with Mrs. Bousquet's views, he draws attention to the fact that common street games which are educationally very effective, easy to understand and played by children all over the world, are disappearing, especially in the developed countries where the young child seems to have stopped freely creating games, and has adopted those produced by industry. Today, in the developing countries where educational resources are lacking, common street games can be useful for education in so far as they are cheap and respond to the physical and mental development needs of the child. The author recommends the drawing up of an inventory of these games so loved by children all over the world. While playing them, they learn cultural tolerance.
It is this kind of inventory, among other things, that Jean-Pierre Rossie undertook when he used the special anthropological method of "participation and observation" to study children's games in a tribal population of the Sahara in Tunisia. He provides in his paper interesting examples of games reflecting the structure and culture
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of the society concerned. His contribution strongly recommends the promotion of scientific research on games, and calls for their preservation.
Finally, André Michelet traces the history of the pedagogical usé of shape-matching games and puzzles, and presents a very fine logico-psychological analysis of these kinds of educational games which are obviously closely related but not identical. This detailed study of a specific category of educational games happily complements the diverse points of view on the young child's games and toys presented in this Digest.
Needless to say, the views and opinions expressed in this Digest are those of their authors and not necessarily those of Unesco.
The Unesco/UNICEF Co-operative Unit wishes to thank Mrs. Mauriras-Bousquet for her valuable contribution to the preparation of this issue.
Amewusika K .B . Tay Unit for Co-operation with UNICEF and WFP
Paris, February 1988
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I
THE ROLES OF GAMES IN EDUCATION IN THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
by
Martine Mauriras-Bousquetl/
Before they came into contact with the countries of the industrialized world, African, American and Asian societies had a complete range of education systems. Although these systems, whether formal or out-of-school, were of varying degrees of. sophistication and efficacity, they existed nevertheless and each of them was the product and reflection of society itself. This was true, for example, of the temple schools in the Buddhist countries whose peoples were followers of the 'Hinayana' or 'Lesser Vehicle' tradition, of the Koranic schools of the Muslim world, of the 'Poro' of the Senufo and of the initiation rites of the Kongo. It is remarkable that, when "modern" schooling was introduced into the Third World, no attempt was made to graft it on to the existing education systems, which it either confronted or ignored. Thus, today, the so-called "Developing Countries" are endowed with educational systems which, despite some adaptations of detail, are fundamentally foreign to them. At the beginning of the colonial era, even the teachers were foreigners. Since that time the teaching profession has been "nationalized", that is, indigenous men and women have been trained to take over the role of the foreign teachers and to propagate a form of teaching very largely conceived in a different socio-cultural context. In too many African, Asian or
y Martine Mauriras-Bousquet, docteur es lettres et sciences sociales, works in the Education Sector of Unesco. She is co-author of L'enfant et le jeu (Unesco, 1979) and author of Théorie et pratiques ludiques (Paris, 1984).
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America-Indi an schools the only truly "indigenous" element is the young pupil. Hence the importance of encouraging techniques of non-structured play as a counterweight to a form of teaching which, by the very nature of things, is still deeply marked by its foreign origins.
Preserving children's non-structured play in developing countries
In young people's out-of-school education, play still fulfills an appreciably greater role in the developing than in the industrialized countries. This is clearly the case for those children --still numerous-- who do not go to school, but it also remains true for those who attend school, at least in rural areas where out-of-school play compensates, in part, for the alienating effects of school and continues to be the main driving force of the process of socialization. There are many reasons for this state of affairs; on the one hand the influence of the age set is greater in this context, and on the other hand, the modern distinction between play and serious activities is much less clear-cut. Here I would like to quote at length from Pierre Erny:
"For an African child, play does not mean primarily relaxation, diversion, recreation or an aimless, boisterous expedition to work off high spirits, as it tends to become more and more for the child of the Vest, in traditional civilizations play behaviour can still be observed as it were in the pure state, typified by an active, creative, serious attitude, respect for precise rules, a taste for effort and the pleasure that it affords. Whilst learning to come to terms with reality, the child at play becomes aware of himself and of his power over things. Play draws its inspiration from the surrounding cultural setting, yet without ever getting bogged down in it and knowing how to use it with total freedom^aK
(a) P. Bel 1 in, "L'enfant saharien à travers ses jeux".
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In Black Africa, the world of play, as all the studies carried out on it show, is a world of extreme variety(°K Children often enjoy an astonishing degree of liberty, being free to leave the village or to stay out in the moonlight to play when their parents are already asleep. Imitation in all its forms of adult activities predominates: children play at mothers and children, getting married, holding palavers or trials, treating the sick, rites and sacrifices, initiations, funerals, work in the fields or the home, at being white men. They go on mini-hunting expeditions, build huts and miniature villages, play with dolls and at making tools and musical instruments. The children do not only imitate traditional activities, ' but also any novelty that comes their way... 'Games and play ', wrote Kenyatta, 'are often no more and no less than a rehearsal prior to a serious performance of the role that each member of the community has to play^aK . . This osmosis between play and work, this progressive transition and the relative blurring of the distinction between the two, have led many observers to maintain that African children scarcely played or did not know how to play^K However, E. Franke undoubtedly came closer to the truth when he wrote that play is the form of activity by means of which, in large measure, the young people of Africa educate themselves^)".2/
(b) M. Gn'aule, Jeux Dogons, M.T. Centner, L'enfant africain et ses .jeux dans le cadre de la vie traditionnelle au Katanga , C. Be'art, Jeux et jouets de 1 Ouest-Africain, S. Comhaire-Sylvain, Jeux congolais , Jeux des enfants noirs à Léopoldville , etc.
(c> J. Kenyatta, Au pied du Mont Kenya, p. 99
(d) cf. M.T. Knapen, L'enfant Mukango, p. 171
(e) Die Geistige Entwickkung der Negerkinder, p. 216
"LI Pierre Erny, L'enfant et son milieu en Afrique noire, Essai sur l'éducation traditionnelle, Payot, Paris, 1972, pp. 131-132.
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The case of Laos
I myself have had the opportunity of making similar observations in Asia!/. In a Laotian village, for example, children's games are barely distinguishable from ordinary practical activities!/. Little girls play at making and selling cakes made in a very realistic way of mud. Sometimes their mothers will give them a small quantity of real flour with which to make "pretend" cakes which will not be eaten; then, the following day, they will help with the cooking of real cakes. As for the boys, they arm themselves with bows and slings that they have made themselves and play at hunting, trapping rodents,, lizards and birds. Sometimes they organize proper mi ni-expeditions into the nearby forest. On other occasions they play at fishing in the paddy fields, but if they succeed in catching a catfish it will end up in the family pot. Where, then, does play end and work begin? Here we are concerned with a form of society which is more flexible that its European counterparts and in which life too is more flexible. There is no clear-cut demarcation between leisure and following a trade, between play and apprenticeship, between entertainment and work.
When they are asked about the period of the year or the time of the day when they play, the Laotians reply: "We play when there is a free moment", or, "We play when we feel like it".
It should also be noted that there is very little distinction between players and the public; everyone, whether adept or not, takes part in the games; nor is any very definite distinction made between adults and children. Young girls start to practise singing love songs
1 / M. Mauriras-Bousquet, "Les jeux lao et leur emploi possible en pédagogie", in: L'enfant et le jeu -Approches théoriques et pédagogiques, Unesco, 1979, Etudes et documents d'éducation, No. 34.
4 / These observations relate both to children of the suburbs of Vientiane and of villages in various provinces (Vientiane, Vang Vieng, Houa Sai, Savannakhet), during the period 1974 to 1976.
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at the age of six or seven, and the boys take part in the masques of the Boun Phavet!/ and the Festival of rockets. As recently as twenty years ago, nobody saw anything wrong in seeing young boys carrying around one of the enormous phallic objects that were the symbol of fecund rain and an amusing source of mock terror for the girls who hid themselves from it amidst peals of laughter.
Children's games are often an imitation of the more serious games of the adults. Thus, in the game of canoe racing, the children slide pieces of bamboo representing canoes along a flat surface --not on water; and in the mak ti-khi they imitate --fairly freely— the famous game of polo that takes place on the festival of That Luang. These are, as it were, games based on prestigious adult games.
In Laos there are no toys equivalent to those of Europe. The children make their toys themselves. The making of a toy is part of the game and the toy usually disappears when the game is over.
Over the past fifty years, while children were faced with an imported and alienating system of education -that was felt by both teachers and pupils to be a reality apart, with no close links with the realities of daily life--, play has been for them the well-spring of the national culture which the school could no longer provide.
Play is first of all an apparently very effective form of training in physical dexterity and adroitness. It offers an initial form of training for working life: an apprenticeship for the girls in household affairs and the market, in hunting and fishing for the boys, and also in manual work through the manufacture of toys. Above all, play is their schooling for life in society. In this context, it should be noted that play in Laos used to be deeply imbued with Buddhist culture, with the spirit of co-operation predominant over the spirit of competition!/,
£ / The great religious festival observed in Laotian villages in springtime.
§/ M. Mauri ras-Bousquet, "Les jeux lao et leur emploi possible en pédagogie", op. cit., p. 29.
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and with possession of a toy, being quite exceptional. Play therefore helped the young Laotian to become integrated into social groupings in which the main objective was to be at ease with others rather than to outdo them and to be at ease with oneself rather that to possess things. I imagine that this still applies in the young People's Democratic Republic and that co-operative play contributes to the socialist education of children.
In Laos, as in Africa, play remains of considerable importance in the general education of children. Before even thinking of introducing play into schools, it is important to protect it out of school. Practically speaking, protection means leaving the children the time to play and, in the suburbs of cities, leaving them space in which to play. In other words, this is a problem both of school timetables and of urban planning.
The need to enrich play without distorting it
Each society has its own specific repertoire of games which correspond to its own culture. The essential role of play in the Third World is to develop the basic personality which is under threat from all manner of alienating processes (scholastic, commercial, etc)Z/. However, looking at the problem from a different viewpoint, many authors have stressed the "poverty of intellectual stimuli"8/ of the environment in many societies in developing countries. A child in the bush, remarks R. Maistraux, is at a terrible disadvantage vis-à-vis a young European. He receives little stimulation from his surroundings and remains inactive for long hours at a time. As a result
V The industrial, imported toy, just like cosmopolitan programmes and methods, can be an instrument of cultural alienation; on this subject, see: Aida Reboredo, Jugar es un acto politico, Mexico-Caracas-Buenos Aires, Ed. Nueva Imagen, 1983.
y M . T . Knapen, L'enfant Mukongo, Louvain, 1962, p. 157, quoted by P. Erny, op. cit., p. 136.
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he suffers "a terrifying diminutio capitis from which he will never recover.. .", since "the neural centres of his cortex, which should normally be devoted to the exercise of discursive thinking, do not receive the stimulation essential to normal development"^/.
Observations such as these are certainly not valid for all the developing countries and, where they do apply, they need to be treated with circumspection. As Pierre Erny wrote, of Africa: "If it a question... of seeing how a young human being effects his entry into the culture to which he is destined by birth, one is struck by the coherence, suitability and abundance of the assistance given him by his surroundings". On the other hand, "If it is a question of seeing how a child is prepared to enter into the image-dominated, geometric and mechanical universe of modern civilization, then it becomes undeniably evident that the elements at his disposal are poor and inadequate"!0./. Generally speaking,, the rural areas of the Third World are poor in mathematical elements and distinct objects and geometric forms are relatively rare and of limited variety; as a consequence, there are. fewer opportunities for them to have a stimulating effect. In areas where stimuli of this kind are most scarce, should not an effort be made to enrich the child's environment by means of toys which encourage mathematical operations and logical thought? Moves in this direction have been made, for example, by the Centre of Educational Technology of the National Council for Educational Research and Training, in New Delhi. There can be no doubt that this is a question which calls for research, experiment and evaluation as a matter of priority.
Usually, children who educate themselves through play are not aware that they are doing so. There are, however, cases in which out-of-school play has a more or less openly admitted instructional purpose. Father Dominique Noye has made a study of the very sophisticated grammatical
£ / R. Maistriaux, L'intelligence noire et son destin, Brussels, 1957, p. 191, quoted by P. Erny, op. cit., p. 136.
1 2 / P. Erny, op. cit., p. 138.
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games played by the Ful am' of north Cameroon!! / . Many countries have pronunciation games based on tongue-twisters. Throughout Africa and in several South-East Asian countries, the game of the twelve huts (called awele by the Baule of the Côte d'Ivoire, wari or máncala in Sudan, papan dakon in Indonesia), perhaps derived from a form of abacus, has, since time immemorial, been the chief method of teaching calculation!?/. Even today, this game "constitutes an excellent transition between the concrete and the abstract, enabling players to grasp the notion of odd and even, to understand addition, substraction and, especially, division and multiplication"!?/. Above all, this mathematical instruction is acquired in a climate of human warmth and exchange that i-s„. it appears, particularly important for African children—•
The aim should be to breathe a spirit of play into school life rather than to introduce pedagogical games into teaching
Many Third World countries have thought of using games to revitalize teaching in schools. In 1974, for example, after a period of experiment and evaluation in several provinces, the Indian Department of Primary and Pre-primary Teaching, of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (New Delhi), selected and introduced into schools fifty-four pedagogical games for use during the first two school yearsJü/. " In 1975/1976, the Lesotho
! ! / Father Dominique Noyé, "La grammaire par le jeu chez les Peuls du Nord-Cameroun", Recherche, Pédagogie et Culture, No. 43, Sept/Oct. 1979 (Audecam, Paris).
! ? / Charles Béart, "Histoire des Jeux, in Jeux et sports, Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, pp. 237-240.
11/ J. Raabe, in L'enfant et le jeu, op. cit., p. 62.
Jd/ A. Deledicq, A . Poposa, "Wari et Solo; le jeu de calcul africain", Supplement to Bulletin de liaison des professeurs de mathématiques, No. 14, December 1977, p. 158 (Ministry of Co-operation, Paris).
11/ L'enfant et le jeu, op. cit., pp. 32-34.
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Distance Teaching Centre conducted a pilot project on the use of games in the teaching of reading and arithmetic in rural schoolsl°/. At this time also, the author of this article attempted to adapt certain traditional Laotian games (the picture game "makhoup", the game of rising to the heavens "kheun savanh", the sandal game "mak ti pèk") as a means of learning the alphabet, addition and substraction. These experiments, like similar experiments carried out in Europe over three-quarters of a century, seem to work so long as there is a teacher capable of getting the children to play. Otherwise, the "games" become school exercises just like any other, and perhaps even more frustrating since they claim to be something which they are not. Here we come back to the proposition that figures at the start of all reflections on play: no play activity or thing (game or toy) exists as such; play is an attitude, a behavioural form. It might almost be said that the expression "pedagogical game" is a contradiction in terms. As an African educator rightly remarked: "There is a snare waiting for the pedagogue who knows that play has an educative function, but who cannot make use of it as he would like"!Z/.
The educational game is most meaningful in the preschool situation and, in fact, it is there that it is developing. It is vitally important that, in the preschool situation, the developing countries make use primarily of traditional games which will enable the child to develop his basic personal i t y W . From the Primary school onwards,
16/ Lesotho Distance Teaching Centre, Learning Games, A Report on the Trial of Games to Help Rural Children, Maseru, Lesotho, 1977.
IZ/ Comoe Krou, "La fonction éducative du jeu", in: Dossiers pédagogiques, No.8, Nov.-Dec. 1973, Vol.II, L'enfant en Afrique et ses jeux, p. 9.
!§/ This is a point stressed by Professor B. Comoe Krou; a laboratory for the study of play theory has been established with this objective at the University of Abidjan (B. Comoe Krou, "Les potentialités éducatives de la conception africaine du jeu", Prospects, No. 60, Unesco, 1986, p. 552.
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however, that is to say, in classes in which the play atmosphere no longer dominates, the occasional introduction of an "educational" game is likely to be both an artificial and a difficult operation.
Rather than introduce games singly into the classroom, what should be done is to make school one big game and breathe the spirit of play into all school activities. At first glance, this might seem a totally utopie ambition, in practice, however, it is less unattainable that it would at first seem. In fact, in the effort to create an education system adapted to its needs and its resources, the Third World is at present trying out all kinds of innovations, notable among which are: educational television, integrated programmes centred on the environment, linking instruction with productive work, and peer teaching. None of these innovations, taken in isolation, has yet proved entirely satisfactory. It might be asked whether these semi-failures are not due to the fact that each of the innovations is tackling only one aspect of the problem, and whether, to achieve success, it might not be necessary to combine them both with each other and with play.
The television/game combination
Educational television, and this is true for the majority of the mass media, runs a serious risk of inculcating a passive attitude towards information in pupils and, indeed, in teachers. All educational television systems come up against the problem of the proper exploitation of their programmes. Everyone feels, some more definitely than others, that in a system where the televisual message is being received collectively its purpose should be to spark off discussion and work in groups... In other words it must be the catalyst of peer teaching. Yet it is one thing to talk about peer teaching and quite another to achieve it. Tools are needed to facilitate peer teaching, and this is where simulation games and all the techniques of play in education in general come in, particularly in the situation of collective reception of distance teaching. A simulation game is a system of interactions. It encourages
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the pupils to participate without reserve and it obliges each participant to teach the others by explaining and defending his decisions and by refuting the decisions taken by the others.
In practice, a certain number of television programmes may present group games. They will probably give the rules of the game, both orally and, if necessary, with the help of diagrams, and, finally, they may perhaps show the initial stages of the game being played by pupils in a class. Some games may take up just one broadcast, others (especially role-playing games) may consist of a series of broadcasts. Many of them (calculation and literacy games, for example) are likely to be repeated frequently.
At the outset, the games must aim to be entertaining. Their prime objective is not, in fact, to instruct but to help with the setting up within the class of peer teaching groups. They must, therefore, be less concerned with the acquisition of knowledge than with instilling the habit of seeking and finding the solution to a problem together. People play in groups, and so the class must become a play community, divided into play groups and working groups. Indeed, for children, playing and forming a group are practically synonymous, once the group is formed the game has already begun. The televised game can thus, in large part, form the very basis of the organization of the school community discussion and elaboration of the "rules" of the group, the planning and evaluation of activities, election of various officials, management reports, etc. These activities provide a host of opportunities for learning at almost all levels. Methods such as these have been employed in "élite" scholastic establishments (Jesuit colleges for example). The difficulty remains of bringing them into general operation in the schools of the Third World, and this is where television comes in as a means of presenting ideas and guidelines as well as providing lively examples. They also make possible interaction between different schools in the form of competitions and tournaments. After a certain period of time the pupils can take part in the preparation of broadcast programmes in a manner similar to that adopted in C. Frei net's school printing press initiative. The community spirit is generally much stronger in the Third World than in the industrialized countries and education built around a vast communal game
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should, therefore, have every chance of success. In Africa, for example, the school community has only to build on the traditional organization of friend groups and age setsl^/. Experiments with mutual linkages between television and teaching carried out within the framework of the Tele-Niger project and the smaller . projects conducted by the Bouaké National Centre for Lifelong Education, in the Côte d'Ivoire, appear to be wery promisingle/.
Television, peer teaching and play are thus mutually supportive, bringing together a means of conveying information at a distance (television), a communication area (a class community or a tool for provoking interaction and learning (games). However, although television is a very powerful medium for conveying information at a distance, it is not the only one. It can be replaced by radio (cheaper and less complicated as regards equipment and the preparation of broadcast programmes), the press, correspondence courses, or, better still, a combination of all these methods.
The media for conveying information at a distance -especially television and radio which are wery widespread-
have the advantage of being able to give effective support to play and the class community (or to play within the class community). Television and radio can inspire a class of children at a distance, instigating them to form themselves into a school community, explaining to them how to do this and encouraging them --by means of
1 2 / P. Erny, op. cit., p. 84.
Z P / M. Kouyaté, Comment 1'enseignement mutuel pourrait-il aider à résoudre les problèmes d'éducation de T^frique, Memorandum prepared for a post-master degree, Paris VIII, June 1977 (duplicated), chapter 4 , "Les possibilités de l'enseignement mutuel dans le projet d'éducation télévisuelle de la Côte d'Ivoire", pp. 26-32; M. Mauriras-Bousquet, "La télévision scolaire, les jeux de simulation et l'enseignement mutuel", in L'école permanente, No. 90 "Spécial enseignement mutuel", Abidjan, June 1977, pp. 8-9.
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competitions, tournaments and exchanges of every kind-to take part in the great national scholastic game. Although at the outset the teachers may not be very interested or enthusiastic, they will soon be caught up in the movement and will follow it. Television and radio cannot replace a good teacher, but they can complement the efforts of those that are less good.
The media for conveying information at a distance do, however, suffer from certain disadvantages. They cannot see those whom they are addressing and, above all, their message is standardized and does not take varying social specifics into account. Excellent as a means of engendering the overall spirit of play in the scholastic setting (and all the games that this gives rises to), they are not so well suited to teaching based upon the local environment.
Combining play with the "centre of interest" approach
Another possible approach is to combine play with teaching based on observation of the environment. Here stimulation is provided not by an information input system (e.g. television) but by the environment in which the school is situatedli/.
In 1974, I had the opportunity of taking part in an assessment of a ten-year experiment of this kind. In 1961, the Government of Laos, anxious to find a simple, inexpensive method of providing schooling for the largest possible number of children, had encouraged the creation of Rural Community Education Centres, which operated alongside the normal primary education system and which largely took the place of the old temple schools. These Centres gave three years of instruction which was equivalent, as far
11/ This does not mean that television cannot be combined with play and the centre of interest approach, see, for example, J. Bisiliat, "Ecologie et enseignement: l'étude du milieu à Télé-Niger", Recherche, pédagogie et culture, No. 15, January-February 1975, Audecam, Paris, pp. 20-32.
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as subsequent schooling was concerned, to the first cycle of primary education. "The study programme of a Centre is the village itself, the essential objective being to teach the children to understand the world around them, to help them grasp, in concrete terms, the simple improvements required in their village and to encourage them to take these improvements in hand themselves"^/.
Each month of the school year was devoted to one aspect of village life: the school, the temple, the family and family life, the crops grown by the villagers, the countryside around the village, village handicrafts, roads and other means of communications, and so on. "Thus it is through the problems of the village, taken as the 'centre of interest', that the child will learn to read, write and count and acquire his first notions of history, geography, the natural sciences, technology and practical economy"££/. At the Rural community Education Centre the young Laotian learned about his environment and how to use it. He learned nothing that he could later forget --everything was familiar to him. Five years after the movement was launched, 1,222 Centres had been established in the rural areas of the country, but it was, unfortunately, brought to a halt by the recurrence of hostilities in Laos"24/.
The school community is an essential element of the "centre of interest" approach. A Rural Community Education Centre was a school with a three year cycle under the direction of a single teacher. During each of these three years the pupils followed the same course of study but
22/ Khamphao Phonekeo, "Le défi laotien: une éducation non polluante", Prospects, Vol. V, No. 1, Unesco, 1975, p. 97.
23/ ibid.
24/ Id., pp. 97-98. Since the establishment of the Lao People's Democratic Republic, a system of village schools, whose methods appear to incorporate some of the ideas of the Rural Community Education Centres, has been introduced.
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at different levels and each year they played different roles. In the first year the new pupils worked as apprentices under the guidance of the older children and in the second year they progressed to what might be termed the status of artisans. In the third year they acted as coaches to the youngest pupils.
Many basic elements of play are to be seen in the yearly rhythm of graduation from one group to another, the monthly cycle of the centre of interest and the breathing in of the atmosphere of life in small age sets and in the school community. Another link with play is the mirror effect. With the centre of interest method, the school reflects the village. Just as children sometimes play shops, so pupils can play a kind of simulation game based on the life of their village.
The simulation game effect can be enhanced by the introduction of a large toy in the form of a model. If a large enough space is available (an empty classroom, a barn, an attic), it can be very useful, to give the centre of interest a more concrete form, to make a model of the village or locality which will become the focus of the school's entire activity.
First of all, the children will have to make a map of the village and its immediate surroundings, restricting themselves to drawing in the roads and highways, any ponds, rivers or canals and the positions of the principal landmarks. The making of such a map involves several interesting activities such as drawing, pacing out distances and the use of simple, practical geometry for the recognition of shapes. Each of the pupils involved will make one or more maps on his own. Then the results will be compared, the pupils will correct each other's maps and then work together in drawing up the final map.
The next step is to work out the relief of the model, a difficult task which will be entrusted to the older pupils. The map will be drawn out on as large a surface as possible -a table or some planks on trestles on which the model will be built- and the relief of the neighbourhood will be indicated by means of strips of wood or strong cardboard cut to scale and fixed vertically to the map.
- 15 -
At this point trial models are fashioned in sand. A permanent model is then made of clay or of plaster to which a five per cent dose of marsh-mallow powder has been added (this makes the plaster dry very slowly, rendering it as workable as clay and having the added advantage of being easy to paint).
When the model technique is adopted, the pupils work in teams of specialists (geographers/geologists, agriculturists, artisans, tradesmen, administrators, etc.) and each team includes children of varying ages. This relatively sophisticated technique is suitable for children in the second primary cycle (9-11 years old) and for countries that have reached a certain stage of development. The model technique has been experimented with notably in Belgium, France and Spain, but, as far as I know, has not yet been brought into general use anywhere.
Combining play with productive work
Commenting on the English Factory Act of 1865 concerning the education of adolescent factory workers, Karl Marx wrote that "the education of the future (...) for all children of a certain age, will combine productive work with instruction and gymnastics, not only as a means of increasing production, but also as the one and only method of turning out complete men"15/. Indeed, on the 16th of October 1918, the Soviet Union decreed that "the life of the school must be based on productive work, conceived neither as a means of covering maintenance costs nor simply as a teaching method, but as an organic part of teaching, shedding light on life around it..."2V. In other words, productive work becomes an active centre of interest. This idea was central to the radical and very sophisticated method of the so-called "complexes" set up throughout the
25/ Das Kapital, Part 4, "Heavy Industry", XV.
.?J?/ R. Labry, "L'enseignement en Union Soviétique", Encyclopédie française, Vol. XV, 15.18.11.
- 16 -
Soviet Union under the plan of 1922 and, despite a partial return to traditional education effected in 1927, it still dominates the "polytechnical schools" of today2.?/.
Since 1950, the education/productive work combination has been adopted successively by several developing countries including China, Ecuador, .Tanzania and Benin. Since the Lagos Conference of 1976, it has become one of the major themes of the Regional Conferences of Education Ministers.?!/ and one of Unesco's prime concerns^/ .
Attractive as the idea is, it has, nevertheless, proved difficult to apply. Even the Soviet Union found itself obliged, in 1927, to return largely to a sequential system of teaching by disciplines, and most of the developing countries that have experimented with the method have encountered and are still encountering the greatest difficulty in reconciling productive work with the acquisition of knowledge.
It is in this context that play can, perhaps, take its part as a framework for and a motive force of both productive work and study. As C . Freinet so aptly remarked, children play at imitating adults at work because they have no adult work of their own to fulfill. Provided, of course, that the tasks involved are never too crushing and, above all, that they remain strictly voluntary, productive work is, for children, the most typical form of play --participation in -the great human advanture of changing the world.
27/ Id., 15.18.13.
22/ Abu Dhabi, 1977; Mexico, 1979, Harare, 1982; Bangkok, 1985; Bogota, 1987.
.22/ See A . Pain, L'interaction entre l'éducation et le travail productif, Geneva, Unesco/BIE, 1982. This discusses, in particular, Recommendation No. 73 on the link between education and productive work voted by the International Conference on Education at its 38th session, in 1981.
- 17 -
The teacher/play leader
We have seen above how play can be harmoniously linked with certain innovative pedagogical methods. It should not be thought, however, that play necessarily requires the use of television or computers or such methods as the centre of interest or the combination of study with productive work. Play is not bound to any one particular formula. Play can be a feature of any programme and any level of class... provided that there is a desire to play. The most valuable contribution the school can make in this direction is to supply the children with teachers who understand about play.
Some teachers are born play leaders. Some ten years ago I had occasion to visit a single-teacher school in the province of Man in the Côte d'Ivoire. The school was rather remote and had not yet been linked into the television education network. However, the young, provisional teacher was worth more than all the televisions in the world. He led his class as a conductor leads his musicians or as a ballet master directs his dancers. Indeed, his class was a veritable "dance" --there is no other word to describe the global communication he inspired in which words and body were equally engaged.
Fascinated, carried away by the rhythm he created, the pupils participated with all their being in the lesson which became a kind of sung liturgy or psalmodie ballet. Yet, free and spontaneous as it was, this "happening" was far from being disorderly. The teacher had managed to get his little community to "sing" as one, in unison, and the learning process could in no way be distinguished from the excitement of play.
Unquestionably, this teacher was exceptionaly gifted and not all kindergarten or primary school teachers can be expected to put on a performance like that off the cuff. But there is nothing to prevent teachers from making a conscious effort to become more play-minded. We all have within us a profound play instinct which has, too often, been repressed. We would often like to play but feel ourselves inhibited, not daring to throw ourselves wholeheartedly into the game. In order to get children to play the adult must first of all himself learn again
- 18 -
how to play. If children are to accept the transformation of lessons into a form of unstructured play to which they can give themselves up, the teacher must be prepared "to play with them as equal to equal" and to be "simultaneously an actor and a teacher"!!}/.
In the developing countries, as indeed elsewhere, the future of play as an element of primary and elementary education will depend on the selection and training of adults who enjoy playing and know how to playll/.
This is not just a pious hope; there already exist techniques which could make it possible, both in the ordinary teacher-training schools and within the framework of lifelong training, to help the adult to lose his inhibitions and re-learn how to play so that, in turn, his teaching will become play for his pupilsi?/.
1 2 / C A . Amonachvili, "Le jeu dans l'activité' d'apprentissage des jeunes écoliers", Prospects, Vol. XVI, No. 1, 1986, Unesco.
1 1 / H. Pütt, "Da Lehrer als Spielleiter und Animateur", in K.J. Kreutzer (Ed.) , Handbuch der Spielpädagogik. Düsseldorf, Scham, Vol. 2 , pp. 471-487.
1 ? / M. Mauri ras-Bousquet, "L'apprentissage du maître-meneur de jeu", L'éducation par le jeu et 1'environnement, Paris, No. 21, 1st quarter, 1986.
19 -
I I
GAMES RELATED TO HOME-BASED ACTIVITIES
by
Jayananda Ratnaikel/
1. Why Adopt a New Approach?
The current position is that many of the early childhood education programmes (specially those meant for rural poor children), are unsuitable due to invalid designs. Intrinsic strengths arising from ancestral child rearing, that have pedagogical value, remain unresearched and unaccredited in school systems. (For a comparison of various strengths and weaknesses of the affluent home, a "good" pre-school and a disadvantaged rural home, see Chart I). Since the school system continues to demand norms arising out of the more affluent and privileged levels of society, programmes of early childhood education tend to adopt what can be called a "cultural deficit model"1/, awaiting a more radical approach to the using of the strengths available in the child rearing practices in the traditional homes.
Unfortunately financial and other considerations still make the feasibility of institutionalized or community semi-institutionalized delivery of early childhood education out of reach of many children in poverty-ridden areas. For example, the largest national programmes in the developing countries in the Asian Region reach, or are intended to reach, no more than 30% of this age group.
y Regional Education Adviser, Unesco Regional Office for Education in Asia and the Pacific (PROAP), Bangkok, Thailand.
y It is based on the assumption that disadvantaged children do not experience as many objects and situations as elite children do and, as such, the "pre-school" should compensate for this deficit by focusing upon toys, puzzles, games, field-trips and emphasizing cognitive operations.
- 21 -
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One alternative is to consider the feasibility of home-based activities that would attempt to develop the child through the parent, in particular the mother, by welding designed child development actions into existing home activities, or exploiting and mobilizing everyday home activities for designed child development.
Evidence exists that even by 3 or 4 years of age, the child is already conditioned substantially by the environment. Yet, for most institutionalized early childhood education programmes, there is a practical limit to the minimum age an infant can be withdrawn from the family to be exposed to institutionalized intervention. Even when withdrawn at the minimum age, the period of time spent in such institutions must necessarily be small compared to the time the child is at home.
2. A Suggested Framework for Home-Based Child Development Activities
The illustrative sequence!/ that follows attempts to provide a framework for home-based child development activities.
To the components indicated, language development and effective development must be added, but being highly culture specific, they are not included here.
1/ The illustrative sequence has been derived from empirical observations of the author of activities in rural homes in Thailand, and in the Khmer refugee homes in the Refugee Holding Centres in Thailand. At the moment, the sequence is being investigated as a component of parental education-cum-child development in the Holding Centres and already it is clear that a major difficulty is convincing mothers that they can contribute to the enhanced development of their children.
• 23 -
A. Perceptual Motor Learning
(Note: In all of these the parents verbalize actions whenever possible - "We are now doing...", "Now we are doing..." etc.)
a) Gross Motor Coordination
Lying on the ground/mat and rolling body in a controlled manner, done as game.
Crawling on hands and knees in normal (smooth) fashion and imitating animals, such as rabbit, elephant, crab, done as game.
Sitting in normal erect position; bending body forward/backward in sitting position; bending body sideways in sitting position; similar movements for hands and legs - made into a game for separate actions and built into house work such as picking up fruit, taking dry clothes off line, for integrated actions.
Similar actions for standing in normal erect position and movement in standing position (both games for separate actions and integrated into house work).
Similar actions for movement in erect walking positions (again as game for separate actions and integrated into house work).
Similar actions for movements in walking/running, including running on track or obstacle course without changing pace involving jumps of various heights (again as game for separate actions and integrated into house activities).
Throwing things with accuracy -at fruits to pluck them, rope over the branch, skipping stones on the surface of water in a pond (again as game for separate actions and integrated into house/garden activities).
- 24 -
Using muscular strength for carrying, stacking, etc. such as for firewood, pans, clothes, farm implements, water pots; mostly as house activities.
Dancing and rhythmic movement in standing, moving and sitting positions --integrated into house activities wherever possible-- such as when draining water from rice, rocking babies, cutting vegetables (i.e. all actions that have in them periodic rhythm and sequence).
Fine Motor Coordination
(Note: Mostly as part of home activities)
Folding and stacking clothes as part of house work.
Plucking (small) old leaves from vegetables, or sorting rice, before cooking, and other kinds of sorting in house activities related to size, colour, shape, etc.
Removing lice and lice eggs from hair.
Combing one's own and another's hair.
Stringing beads.
Tracing patterns on sand, moist earth, wet clay, trays of seeds or grain or flour, making patterns with ekel broom in garden while sweeping.
"Colouring" outside (mud) walls of hut with lime (calcium hydroxide) for protection against wash away, and if acceptable colouring with patterns, walls of hut, with ground charcoal, lime, latterite soil, crushed spinach leaves and cow dung, or jack root mixtures.
Playing marbles (with stones, seeds, etc.).
25 -
Assembly of various home items such as handles on knives, putting on clothes and buttoning, cleaning vessels and implements.
Simple sewing (with large bamboo needle), or lacing, or bamboo strip patterns.
c) Body Image
(Awareness of body and its capabilities --an important step in the development of self-worth-- basically what are the parts of the body, what do each do, how do we make them do it, where is the body and its parts in space while they are doing it). (Here several cultural "modesty" practices may be brought in).
Pointing to parts of the body and saying what each does and can do.
Drawing (on sand, wet clay or moist earth), if possible life size, others' bodies and one's own.
Completing partially completed drawings of parts of body.
While walking, running obstacle races, home activities verbalizing what they are doing and where hands, feet etc. are while they are doing the activities.
Imitating another's body movement and speaking about them.
d) Gestures
Last activity in (c) could lead to responding to others' gestures and demonstration and practice in this regard according to cultural idiom. As many as possible may be included, from simple gestures such as for moving towards or away, to cultural greetings and expressions of various emotions.
•• 26 -
e) Laterality and directionality
Left and right orientation from body middle line, colouring finger nails of left or right hand to help orientation, and referring to these during house activities.
Using traditional left/right practices --such as eating with right hand, giving with right hand, washing after toilet, with left hand.
Changing directionality say left/right while facing the shrine and when facing fire-place, or when facing house from outside and when facing the outside from inside the house --all the while keeping a person's midline as the standard for reference.
Using the pictures drawn in (c) for left/right orientation and for changing directionality.
f) Proximity perception
(Approximate distance from bodies of others while they are communicating with them - how people strucure micro-space, i.e. the distance between people in conduct of daily transactions, including organization of space in houses, and ultimately in the village community. This is highly culture specific).
Activities may be derived from recognition of culturally accepted (i) intimate zone, (ii) personal zone, (iii) social zone, (iv) public zone.
B. Visual Discrimination
a) Visual reception
(Ability to obtain meaning from visual symbols i.e. selecting essential visual cues, scanning the perceptual field in conscious search of information, organizing visual cues received into a recognizable whole, attaching meaning to visual symbols that are seen).
- 27 -
(Note (1): as for visual, equivalent components apply for reception through hearing, touching, tasting, smelling.
(Note (2): particularly visual reception, is integrated into activities in A. above - for perceptual motor coordination).
Identifying shapes, colours (letters, numbers later) of common home and garden objects, including seeing differences.
Tracing outlines of objects common in the home and garden (on sand or clay or moist earth etc.)
Matching pictures (drawn on sand or clay or moist earth etc.) to actual objects found in the home or garden.
Identifying objects' colours, shapes, in pictures, paintings etc. on temple walls or festival decorations or folk drama backdrops.
Identifying shapes in clouds.
Making shapes out of clay or moist earth.
Identifying missing parts in real objects (handle of knife or pot missing, etc.)
Identifying missing parts in pictures drawn on clay or sand or moist earth etc.
Matching words to objects in the home and garden.
Matching words and sentences to objects and events in real life (such as cow walking, leaves moving, priest preaching, etc.)
Matching words and sentences to objects and events in pictures such as on temple walls.
Various sorting exercises related to home activities as in A.
- 28 -
(These activities can lead to further "advance" aspects of visual discrimination, such as the following; but they would require contrived inputs from parents at a higher level of sophistication).
b) Figure - Ground discrimination
Finding hidden figures (numbers, letters, etc.) in pictures; "What is different" in two almost identical pictures or objects (say a few fence poles not vertical in one part of a fence); scanning for a particular object in a temple wall picture or in a tree; later isolating words that are run together in sentences; naming objects from their shadows.
c) Visual closures
Completing dot-to-dot (later number to number or letter to letter pictures); naming missing parts of objects/pictures; assembling partially disassembled objects; (later completing words with letters missing; completing sentences with words missing).
d) Visual association
Identifying opposites such as this will cut (knife), this will not cut (piece of cloth); matching pictures drawn on sand or moist earth or clay or people to their work, animals to their young; indicating verbally why objects are or are not included in a group in terms of shape or colour or size.
e) Visual memory (re-visualization/visual sequential memory)
Use auditory and kinesthetic modalities for prompting visual recall (in drawings) and gradually withdraw these; expose to visual image for a few seconds (closing eyes/opening eyes/closing eyes and recall visual immage with drawing; (repeat later with letters, numbers, words); verbalize series of sub-operations
- 29 -
of a given familiar operation such as feeding the calf, planting rice, cooking, washing; jumble sub-operations and ask for correct sequence.
f) Eye-hand/visual coordination
The exercises in 1. assist in this, and further activities as stacking, games for throwing and catching; eye tracking games such as for a baby buffalo running, or a fish swimming.
g) Visual form constancy (conservation of visual form)
Such as recognizing colour of cows not constant but form constant; cows at different distances having same form; (later letters with different type forms).
h) Visual position in space
Recognizing objects such as fruits, vegetables, stones, seeds, etc. inverted, reversed, rotated, etc.; locating direction of objects such as fire-place, toilet, door, water pot from oneself; locating household objects from verbal directions; imitating body positions.
i) Spatial relations
Judging distance between objects, say fire-place to mat and water pot to mat, i.e. more to walk or less to walk (and later village headman's house to one's house and temple to one's house, and still later market to temple and river to temple).
C) Auditory Discrimination
a) Auditory attention/discrimination
Drawing attention to sounds around the house and garden starting with amplifying sounds to
- 30 -
increase the difference between sound and "no sound", and using visible sound sources such as pots, coconut shells, coconut scraper while housework is being done. (At times the learner's head may need to be gently pointed towards the source of sound).
Games for recognizing various sounds and functional use of sound such as when rice is boiling, when the hen has laid an egg, when the pig is eating, when the cow needs to be milked.
Rhythmic patterns using lullabies, songs, festival drums, work sounds such as chopping wood, winnowing rice, milking cows, and nature sounds such as water in a stream and wind on grass and paddy, and bird songs.
Imitating rhythmic patterns with beats using, say, two bamboo sticks or coconut shells.
(As with B., these activities can lead to further "advanced" aspects of auditory discrimination, such as the following; but they would require contrived inputs from parents at a higher level of sophistication).
b) Single dimension auditory discrimination
Using discrimination among frequency (pitch), loudness, number, rate of presentation of sounds, duration, kind, location --and both speech and non-speech sounds may be used. Sounds of farm animals and birds in the garden may be used for this, as well as household sounds (including snoring). Seasonal or periodic sounds such as of rain, wind, can also be used for this purpose. Language sounds should be given special attention after experiencing nature sounds.
c) Multiple dimension auditory discrimination
In this combinations of the variables indicated under (b) are used for discrimination --again utilizing nature and speech sounds.
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d) Auditory figure-ground discrimination
Practice in separating stimuli from irrelevant stimuli may be woven into (b) and (c) with such injunctions as "listen to the pig grunt" in the midst of morning farm noises and then shifting to "listen to the chickens". Similar figure-background discrimination may also be practiced with home sounds --such as cry of a baby when hungry over the other home sounds or sound of boiling rice over other sounds).
(The following are to be taken up as essential to audio discrimination. They are usually practiced by the mother and peers as a child starts learning language at home. They form the basis of conscious development of adult models).
e) Speech articulation
Vocalizing individual speech sounds, in particular correcting pronunciation of individual speech sounds, sounds omitted when speaking, incorrect sounds substituted for correct ones, adding incorrect sounds to words, etc. These should generally be done as part of ordinary communication between the parent and child, during the course of house work.
f) Auditory reception and verbal comprehension
Following parental verbal directions for household work and verbalizing the work as it is done together by the parent and child; parent verbally describing and having the child describe actions, likenesses and differences between sounds (number, volume, pitch); parent asking and answering questions related to the home, farm, community, that require yes/no responses; parent repeating sentences (related to the home, farm, community), of increasing length and complexity and prompting and cueing child to do the same; child learning songs and chants from parents and parents disintegrating these into sentences and words and
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explaining the meanings while repeating the sentences (same for stories); word and sentence games such as "Who barks, a rabbit or a dog?", or "I am thinking of a word that tells us what we use to carry water from the well"; much folk knowledge such as regarding animal and plant behaviour, weather, local medicine, customs, may be woven into games or taught for verbal comprehension; sermons at the temple or talks or stories told by others outside the family may be analyzed and "gone over" with the child for increased verbal comprehension from auditory stimuli (voice forms) different from what the child has been used to.
g) Auditory association
Involves essentially verbal classification of objects and sounds, organizing words into categories, holding two or more concepts in mind and considering them in relationship to each other, explaining in own words. May be started with classifying household, farm and community objects after hearing their names, verbalizing opposites such as sit/stand, open/shut, in the context of doing one of these actions and later without actions; building concepts of likeness and difference by explaining how a group of objects taken from home, farm, community, are alike/different; identifying details and main characters of a story or real life episodes; predicting outcomes of incomplete sentences, then stories.
h) Auditory memory (reauditorization/auditory sequential memory)
See B (e) earlier and may be combined with visual, but with emphasis on auditory; word association games such as sarong, shirt; axe, wood; and later to longer chains; recalling sounds from the farm, home, temple; imitating speech patterns of others; "hearing sounds in the head" games after sounding them; listening to sound sequences (with visual) (say) chopping wood to stacking wood and then without visual, predicting
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which operation is taking place; memorizing songs, chants, jokes, riddles, etc. Sound blending (synthesizing and integrating isolated sounds) and sound closure completing word when part of it is sounded, may be woven into auditory memory.
(Note: Vocabulary development and verbal expression are already incorporated in especially Sections (B) and (C) ).
3. Advantages of home-based activities
The framework of home-based activities indicated above can lead to programmes that would make advances beyond the cultural deficit model, towards a model that is more convergent with social justice and egalitarian principles, in that it bases its design upon fundamental developmental dimensions of any child, irrespective of whether the child comes from an advantaged or disadvantaged home, and yet does not violate the child's culture, but mobilizes and utilizes the richness of activities, events, customs and materials in the disadvantaged home and environment to reinforce and extend the fundamental child development dimensions.
In addition, if_ infrastructures for . reaching parents are established through "parental orientation delivery systems", the feasibility of implementation may be predicted to be high, since costs, including the very valuable time costs, are negligibly low and parents have only to be oriented to "look upon" household activities they are already skilled in, and materials and events that are already thoroughly familiar to them, through "child development eyes". Such home-based early childhood development activities may well be, in the long run, the basis of "least cost solutions" to the production of cognitive
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and non-cognitive skills at school and in adult age. zJ
In the social context of the disadvantaged home (especially the rural disadvantaged home) in the developing countries of the Region, the term "parent" has to be extended to cover surrogate parents as well, and to include elder brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents --all illustrious members of the highly humane extended family, who all share the ancestral responsibilities for child rearing and education.
One of the major obstacles to social justice and the practice of egalitarian principles, as for as the disadvantaged learner is concerned, is the interpretation by decision makers of the meaning of "equal educational opportunity" as being congruent with merely providing the opportunity for access, i.e. making available schools etc., but leaving the making use of the opportunity, especially in disadvantaged environments, as the responsibility of the learner. In such a context, equal educational opportunity becomes meaningful if distributive justice is expanded to include actions in the educational domain wherever these actions can be made to manifest themselves (in the home, in formal and non-formal situations), so as to engender the conscious generation of the capacity of the disadvantaged learner to make use of the equal educational opportunities.
i/ Vide, for example, Psacharopoulos, G. (1980) The Economics of Early Childhood Services: a Conceptual Framework and Some Empirical Dimensions, Paris: OECD/CERI.
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I I I
COMMON "STREET" GAMES
by
Nico van Oudenhoveni/
1. Common Street Games: A Natural Resource
Common street games are well-known games, that are played by everybody, boys and girls, children and adults. They are played in fields, on the streets or at home, and have been known for generations in many cases. Common street games exist everywhere, in every country the games are so numerous, colourful and original that a description of them will please anyone who has an interest in childhood, games, or a concern for their impact on education and culture; Hundreds of games can usually be seen in any region or country, each game being an illustration in miniature of culture and civilization.
One of the aims in bringing these games together is to prevent their loss to posterity. In most industrialized countries, many genuine games have already disappeared without trace. Similar observations are being reported about developing countries where "western" education is widely adopted. In these countries children often seem to have stopped playing, as if they were trapped in a vacuum created by the disappearance of the old, traditional, mainly non-formal ways of education and the superceding of those by an alien and inappropriate system of education.
It is not only because of their beauty or their historical and cultural interest that these games should be compiled. Close study shows that they prove to be most powerful educational and teaching aids and can often stimulate intellectual and emotional development. This statement probably
I/ Deputy Executive Director, Operations. Bernard van Leer Foundation, The Hague, Netherlands.
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holds equally strongly for "developing" or "developed" nations. Each sort of nation may come forward with its own set of reasons depending on its own educational premises.
2. Special Relevance: Low Income Countries
Successful educational development in low income countries is often based on powerful educational strategies that can be effectively carried out by, for the most part, low-paid and "poorly educated and unqualified" teachers; and without great additional costs of buildings, stationery, books or other teaching aids.
It is quite common to think in terms of defects in one's approaches to problems of a developing nation. Most current concepts denote this attitude: underdeveloped, lack of infrastructure, uneducated, low standards of health, poor, undemocratic and so forth. A new movement is emerging, however, which shows that a "defectological" model cannot be successeful and that starting from assets within a certain situation may have a much greater chance of success. This approach seeks for strengths, availabilities, assets and constructive developments that can be found in the community.
A. Common Street Games: Cheap but Powerful Educational Tools
Common "street" games seem to suit well the two conditions mentioned above: (i) the need for cheap, easily established and effective teaching strategies, and (ii) focusing on available local resources. There are in the developing world hundreds and hundreds of common "street" games which are of a wide variety in nature, complexity and learning potential. Any nation-wide research will reveal an abundance of such games. An analysis of these games suggests strongly that they can be successful educational tools.
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Usually the "street" games have the following characteristics:
Very cheap. pebbles and available everywhere
The materials sticks and the
needed are often sand, like, which are freely
Highly loaded games!
by intrinsic motivation. They are
dealing motor;
with all cognitive;
aspects of emotional ;
human moral
Touching and development: and social behaviour.
Easy to learn and to teach. The teacher will not face any difficulties in dealing with these teaching aids.
The abundance of games guarantees a splendid gradation and diversification to suit different age groups --from kindergarten up to and including adults, for both sexes and for small and large groups.
The rules of the games are easy to modify and to adapt to different classroom situations.
Examples:
a) Katar
This game is found all over Asia and probably elsewhere. The following figure is drawn on the ground.
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Each of the two players has nine stones or nuts different in some way from his opponent's (e.g., one smooth and one rough). The players alternately place their markers on the "playing board" where two or more lines meet. When all the markers have been placed, the player who has the first turn moves one of his markers. A marker may move only to the next landing point and must move in a straight line. The object is to make a "katar" by getting three markers in a line (0-0-0). If she succeeds she may remove any one of her opponent's markers except one in a katar. She must also warn her opponent when she has a marker in position to make a katar on the next turn. She does so by saying "break". You may break your own katar and reform it on the next turn. You lose when you lose all your markers.
b) Playing Thief
This is an Afghan game which is based on role-playing. Four to six children take a matchbox and give names of public authorities and figures to each side of it. There are always a thief, a policeman and a judge or a commander or some other public person.
/ : Farmer
Minister// ~
V i •-.. Commander
*m~t\ '3°l''cenian
/ • / -K ing
/
^ Thief
One of the players takes the matchbox and tosses it up. While it is in the air he asks "Who am I?". He becomes which ever name is on top after the box lands,
this until everybody has a name, comes up, the player has to toss gets a name not yet taken. When
Each person does If the same name it again until he everyone has a name the play begins.
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The farmer goes to the commander and complains that his horse (or something else) was stolen by somebody. The commander sends the policeman to find the thief. The policeman brings the thief to the commander for questioning. The commander then sends the thief to the minister. The minister sends the thief to the king. Finally, the players hold a meeting to decide whether the thief was guilty or innocent. They may decide to punish him or free him.
c) Knucklebones
Many versions exist of this universal game. In one version each side of the knucklebone has a certain value, which determines which knucklebone may be hit by which other.
Some children draw a circle on the ground with a diameter of about 30 centimeters. Each player gives her knucklebone or knucklebones to one of the players. When she has all the knucklebones she tosses them in the air so they all land and remain inside the circle. If a knucklebone is outside the circle, its owner cannot play with it. The owner of the knucklebone nearest to the centre of the circle gets the first turn. She tries to knock the other knucklebones out of the circle by hitting them with hers. If she succeeds she wins that knucklebone and gets another turn. Her own must stay inside the circle after it hits the other one. If she is not successful, the owner of the knucklebone next nearest to the centre gets a turn.
The use of games undoubtedly contributes to an appreciation of indigenous modes of thinking and behaviour and adds to the enrichment of the cultural identity and heredity of a given society. It is a fact that in the industrialized countries many games have been forgotten and even completely lost. Even in many developing nations "educated" people hardly know any games any more. Obviously, formal education, in its present form, does not preserve common "street" games.
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Most scholars who have studied games have spelled out their possible functions:
- preadaptations,
- compensation,
- assimilation,
- regulation of energy; ~
and so on.
Probably all these functions may apply to games and even more may be found as there is such a great variety of games and as they reach the whole person.
Also it is certainly possible that games or playing may have functions which are still unknown. It would be a pity if those games were lost before their functions are properly understood. Even without knowing the functions of games, there seems no harm in starting to use them. In fact, they seem to be powerful multi-purpose tools because they have already been successfully used in many fields like recreation, the military, business, psycho-therapy, education, diagnosis, anthropological research and physical education.
It is often observed that one of the main causes which seem to hamper cognitive and emotional development of poor children is the LACK OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR THEM TO ABSTRACT THEMSELVES FROM THEIR IMMEDIATE SITUATION AND TO REARRANGE THEIR PERSPECTIVES ON THEIR OWN LIVES, MODES OF BEHAVIOUR, THINKING AND ATTITUDES. Studies of the daily lives of these children showed this very pertinently. Most children, even at a very young age, are most of the time involved in al1 kinds of concrete activities like taking care of younger children, doing errands, cleaning the house, tending goats or helping their parents in various ways. Most of their time passes by monotonously and seldom do they have time to play.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that an increase in the ability to abstract is a most needed condition for further growth. Development of
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the ability to work with symbols, fantasy and imagination or language and creativity are either related to or based upon the ability to abstract, which is the capacity to pull oneself apart from the situation which is immediately given. Games stimulate this process. By means of games children are able to escape from their immediate concrete environment. By. playing they become free, not only emotionally, but also morally or cognitively.
In games, children --and also adults-- manipulate their situation, which shows they are abstracting from it. Without this abstraction no manipulation or playing can take place. The game "Playing Thief" gives children the opportunity to take different roles, to become a king, a thief or commander. The game enables them to remove themselves from their actual roles, e.g. farmers' daughters, and to become more versatile. In the first game, "Katar", the children must abstract completely and need to visualize non-existent future situations.
A second important characteristic of games is that they appeal to the activity of the child. Children become the centres of the activities around them. They experience the consequences of their deeds and by doing so learn to control their environment as well. Passive children do not perceive the consequences of their actions and will develop an attitude which will make them believe that their behaviour is governed by agents outside themselves which will contribute to the well-known interpretation of life that everything is "God-given" or ruled by natural law or fate. In the first case, active children see themselves as persons who act upon their environment in a predictable way and by that understand they can control or modify their environment.
Although important, abstract thinking and manipulating one's environment re not the only aims of education. Character building, effective development, social behaviour are as important and, according to non-Western educators, even
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more valuable than many oognitively oriented educational aims. Common street games take these aspects of human development in account as well.
"Playing thief" is a good illustration of how agressive behaviour can be brought under control. Punishment of the thief will never be extreme because if one child decides to be very agressive, when he becomes the thief, he can expect revenge.
In the same way other games seem to take care of moral, emotional, effective (each country seems to have its own game of "Wedding") and physical development.
B. Games, cognitive growth and science education
In many low income countries, science education receives high priority. One of the major groups of problems the psychology of science education deals with are: "How does cognitive structure process scientific information?" or "What kind of cognitive structure processes specific types of information?".
It has been generally accepted that young children can process scientific principles and data pretty well, provided this information suits their specific cognitive styles. It is also understood that only persons who have reached the ability of abstract thinking are able to work optimally and at high speed with scientific information. Most researchers agree that the pattern and sequence of cognitive development in all children are roughly the same but only the speed of development and the richness or fullness of the different stages are variable and that this variation is caused by environmental conditions. This factor operates to such an extent that in some environments the stage of formal or abstract operations may probably never or only partially be reached. For these reasons, most educators have been very much involved in searching for that kind of environment which stimulates full cognitive development most.
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From their thinking, at least two distinct theories --roughly sketched here-- seem to emerge. One approach stresses the importance of an enriched environment, including such elements as a great variety of materials, intensive personal interaction, schools, elaborate language and opportunity for imagination and self-activity. Very simply said: in this kind of environment children will spontaneously reach optimal cognitive growth. The other view sees significant growth not so much as a product of "self-education" and rejects the former way of indirect education, but takes the development in children as a consequence of specific, directive sets of programmes. Both considerations can boast of impressive theoretical and practical experience, and in fact there is every reason to believe that both ways have the right of existence and certainly do not exclude each other. But both conclusions are not very encouraging for the educators of many poor countries. An enriched environment requires enormous amounts of money, while the "guided" education needs highly skilled teachers, who are also a scarce commodity.
The contribution of common "street" games may in this light seem very pretentious. On closer inspection, however, they may share a significant part of the characteristics which an enriched environment and direct instruction have. Their variety and diversification certainly encourage fantsay, self-activity or personal interaction and their direct influence on cognitive development is strong. Also it is quite conceivable that a selective use of certain games may have a strong effect on the development of a large variety of specific cognitive functions.
Functions like motor control, inhibition, delay of gratification, scanning, perception of position for attention, which are all essential for effective and cognitive development and are highly trainable, can be most likely covered by common "street" games. The last game "Knucklebones", is a good example of a natural programme for eye-hand coordination and perception of position.
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These are vital functions for learning to write and to read. Because the tempo of the game can be accelerated, and the number of knucklebones and players increased, the game forms by its gradation an excellent competitor for the many existing "official" perceptual/motor training programmes.
C. Games in school
The introduction of games into the schools need not be complicated. In some cases resistance on the side of the parents generally and even teachers may be experienced as some of them tend to believe that "games have nothing to do with education and school is not a place for play". The arguments in favour of games, so far presented, may be useful in meeting this resistance.
In introducing games to the teachers, a description of the games should be accompanied by a short instruction on how to use them to achieve specific educational objectives. The teachers should be given the freedom to modify the games to the situations of their students and classes. These are minor problems, but need some attention lest they evolve into major obstacles.
In this context, another argument may be heard which says "Why introduce games into the schools when they can play the same games outside in their leisure time?" If games have some value in strengthening development, they probably have already made their contribution and will not be of more effect in the school curriculum. This could have been the case provided all the children had the opportunity to play and were acquainted with the variety of all the games. This is --as has been discussed earlier-- in many societies not always so.
An outlook which deserves attention as well is that the school may be a bit more flexible with the games. Many games, for example, are only to be played by either girls or boys. Nevertheless, most games could be played by both sexes, except perhaps those like playing with dolls or imitating farmers and workers which reflect the traditional roles ascribed to sexes in a given community.
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3. Relevance for "Developed" Nations
There is reason to believe that common "street" games can enrich the culture and educational practices of the developed countries as well. In many such countries, education has reached a crisis point in its development. With massive student drop-outs, all kinds of articificial means and incentives are employed to keep students at school. Teachers and students alike doubt the. relevance of the subjects taught. The curricula seem only to touch upon very specific aspects of human development, largely ignoring other human qualities in favour of cognitive and intellectual growth.
Alienation, rebellion, disinterestedness, incomplete growth and passivity are becoming more and more common to this type of education.
Street games in these countries are becoming increasingly rare or, even worse, have been lost forever. Children in these economically prosperous countries play less, not only because the streets are no longer safe, but also because formal learning systems and the attraction of television and other approach-approach conflicts consume all their time, activity, fantasy and imagination. Common street games, by virtue of needing active participation encompassing the whole personality and their strong relationship to real life, may play a part in reversing the trend that education seems to be following.
Development Education: A Special Case
One of the major messages to be transmitted through "development education" is that other cultures are equivalent to the culture oneself is part of. The basic idea is that lifestyles may be different but that they are equally important, interesting, respectable, worthwhile and complex. The aim of development education is furthermore to point out that human beings, including children, can adapt to many different environments and that each situation entails different problems to be met by different strategies and solutions.
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These adaptations or cultures may be quite at variance with the ones the children of the rich, industrialized societies are accustomed to. Yet they express similar human decency, attractiveness and ingenuity, and cannot be compared in terms of "better or worse". Acceptance and deep understanding of these ideas may clear the way to a more symmetrical and factual dialogue between rich and poor nations, a dialogue that is so often obscured and blocked by strong ethnocentric feelings and disparaging overtones.
The more traditional development education approaches that aim at an increased solidarity with disadvantaged children usually show an abundance of misery, poverty, incompetence and other frightening conditions of how people live and one can only wonder at how this information cannot but embarrass the recipients.
By playing a game of foreign culture, children may, however, spontaneously develop a sense of genuine appreciation of these games and of the culture of their origin. They will realize that these cultures have something relevant to offer and that children in that particular culture have their own respectable, attractive pastimes and ways of living, and are able to cope with life in a different and yet recognizable manner.
Children in an American day camp who played some of these Afghan street games seemed to feel that way. For them, Afghanistan has become a country where children "know" something. Together with these feelings, it may be expected that children will develop an aroused interest in learning more about children who commonly play these games and about the countries they are from. Enjoying a game and knowing that it comes from a particular country will very likely increase the interest in knowing more about this land, or may at least function as a bridgehead on which new information can be based.
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4. Collecting and Grouping of Games
A. Collecting
The establishment of a bank of Common Street Games of a particular country can be a rewarding and relatively simple exercise.
The process consists basically of asking as many people as possible in the various parts of the country to write up or tell the games they know of and to motivate them to ask the same of their friends and acquaintances. The inclusion of people of various backgrounds and experiences increases the chances of a rich harvest: shop keepers, taxi drivers, farmers, mechanics or housewives are often more productive than students or teachers. It is obvious that a small rewards for each game delivered will increase the yield.
It is essential to insure the cooperation of people representing the different regions or subregions of the country as many games as are locally found. A rule of thum is to stop the search for games when only the known games are being brought in.
Collecting games could be a useful project for a group of student teachers.
B. Grouping
The educational value of games can be increased if they can be ordered according to age level and function. In this case a teacher can just look under a particular category, check the appropriate age level and make her choice. An easy way to do this is to have a group of experienced teachers and educators discuss the games and categorize them according to a previously agreed upon list of functions. Together with the age level, it is possible to make a matrix which may look like this (see page 51).
Depending on the particular interest, many other functions can be listed such as stimulation of arithmetic skills, writing, visual perception and the like.
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Since one game may carry more than one function, it is quite possible that the same game may be found under different categories: "Playing Thief" could thus be put under "Fantasy" and "Socialization".
Each game is given a number and the number placed in the appropriate box(es).
Once the matrix has been filled in, a teacher just has to select the particular function she wants to develop, knowing the age level of her students, and make her choice. It may be useful to write each game on a numbered index card, which in addition to age level and functions indicates whether they are played alone, in twosomes or in groups. It is thus an easy step from a series of index cards to the production of a simple booklet.
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10 years and over
9 years and over
8 years and over
7 years and over
6 years and over
5 years and over
4 years and over
Below 4 years
# Cooperation
Coordination
Imagination
Oral expression
Music and
rhythm Physical
flexibility Physical fitness
Probability accessing
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-
I V
GAMES AND TOYS AMONG A TUNISIAN SAHARA POPULATION -AN EXAMPLE OF THE CONTRIBUTION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL
RESEARCH TO CHILD DEVELOPMENT
by
Jean-Pierre Rossi el/
1. Introduction
The following study draws primarily on my own field-work on the socialization of the Ghrib children, and their games and toys (the field work was done from October to December 1975, and from March to May 1977). During this investigation I analyzed some 180 games (and toys used for them) as they are played among the Ghrib, a nomadic population sedenterizing in the oasis of El Faouar in the Northwestern Tunisian Sahara. Secondly, I have analyzed the collection of Saharan and North African toys of the "Departement d'Afrique Blanche et du Proche Orient" of the "Musée de l'Homme" in Paris. Finally, I scanned through the ethnographic and linguistic bibliography.
Play, a basic human activity, is not only based on toys and games, but also includes activities as riddle and story-telling, singing and music making, dancing and playing theatre, shaping artistry, etc. Moreover, one has to view play as a dynamic activity in which the most important factor is the activity of the child itself. Toys and games, therefore, have latent possibilities. They adapt to changing situations and directly reflect the evolution of families and societies as it is perceived by children and their "socializers".
y Social anthropologist, 'Direction des Affaires sociales', Municipality of Gend, Belgium.
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It is a idle task to distinguish between the universality and the local specificity of games and toys. Many of them go back to prehistoric times and are found, in varying forms, all over the world. However, each community has moulded them according to its spiritual, socio-cultural and environmental-economical specificity.
Play gives children the possibility of creating their own world, but also prepares them for integration into the adult world. Play thus has an inmense developmental and pedagogical value, not only as an instrument of informal socialization but also as a method of formal socialization or education.
2. Survey of Some Saharan and North African Gamesl/
In this section I shall introduce to the reader some Saharan and North African games and toys, especially those that are widespread in these regions.
1. Imitative games
A) Imitative girl games
1. Spinning and weavingj_/
In an article, I discuss the imitation of a women's life in the play activity of the Ghrib girls. Through
y I shall mention some pictures and drawings of games and toys from other regions, which are analogous with those of the Ghribs, and published in UNICEF and Unesco publications, in Klepzig's book on Bantu games and in Beart's study on West African games. This way, I hope to broaden the references in a more cross-cultural manner. THE FOLLOWING SEVEN PUBLICATIONS ARE INDICATED BY A CAPITAL LETTER (see bibliography) FOLLOWED BY THE NUMBER OF THE PAGE OR THE PICTURE.
3/ Weaving: C13, E93, 173, 363.
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their games they initiate themselves in the spinning of wool or camel hair with a miniature spindle, from the age of four years onwards, in setting up the hand-loom and in weaving from eight years onwards!'.
The Ghrib girls make themselves the necessary toyst from eight years old in the case of the spindle or ten years old in the case of the loom. Before a girl could start weaving, her mother would verify the position of the warp-threads and adjust some of them. This proves that at this age the game of weaving can be viewed as a real training course in one of the fundamental tasks of a Ghrib woman. Both games can be played alone or with some onlookers discussing the progress of the work.
2. Playing household
Another play activity of these Ghrib girls from six years onwards is the making of tents and dolls!/. However little girls of three years already play with a female doll.
Normally the construction of a toy tent is part of collective playing. Around such a tent different play activities are organized, such as the weaving or the celebration of the marriage ceremonies with a bride doll and only occasionally a bridegroom doll.
i/ ROSSIE, Jean-Pierre and CLAUS, Gilbert, "Imitation de la vie feminine dans les jeux des filles Ghrib", 1983.
5/ Dolls: B235; Cil, 19, 28; D24, 25; E271-273, 283, 285, 287; G84-120; F12-14, 198-202, 453-454. For some information on the role of dolls in the process of identification, and for a picture of an Afghan doll, a Congolese doll and dolls from the Ivory Coast, see "The Child and Play", p. 9, 17-18.
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The female as well as the male dolls are dressed for the marriage ceremony. The bride wears all her jewelry, but traditionally there are no indications of the face parts. Nevertheless, I have seen that some boys, influenced by their schooling!/, designed the eyes, nose and mouth on the bride doll of their sister. At the wedding ceremonies or other social events of their dolls, the girls sing and dance as their mothers would do in reality.
Ghrib boys do not make dolls. However, in North Africa and the Sahara the making of dolls by boys has been attested for the nomadic Touareq. These Touareg boys make male as well as female dollsZ'. The male dolls represent a Touareg warrior or man in full ornament. Children of the Moors in Mauritania also make earthen camels and horses mounted by a man and the collection of the Musée de l'Homme contains a man mounted on a camel made by a child from the Saoura Valley (North West Sahara) in plastified electric wire. Chaamba girls (North West Sahara) also make a male doll called the bridegroom, just as Ghrib girls do.
Child dolls are extremely rare in the Sahara and in North Africa. A doll in these regions is almost always an adult, not a baby doll like the one european children play with. In the collection of the Musée de l'Homme, I have found some dolls representing a mother with a child in her arms made by Chaouia girls from the Berber communities of the Aures in Algeria. There are a few dolls representing Touareg boys or girls and girls of the Moors.
In some regions of North Africa and the Sahara, the making of and the playing with dolls is related to raining,
Ü/ In 1961 a primary school was established in the oasis of El Faouar. The majority of the pupils are Sabria, a sedentarized population. Ghrib boys are attending more or less regularly this primary school, but almost no Ghrib girls are doing it; see Claus Gilbert, J.M., 1983, p. 137-138.
U Bel lin, P., "L'enfant saharien à travers ses jeux", in Journal de la Société des Africanistes, Paris, 1963, tome XXXIII, fase. 1, p. 47-103; p. 99, jeu No. 70.
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however this is not the case among the Ghribü/.
As stated Ghrib girls make miniature tents. In other parts of North Africa and the Sahara, children do not live in tents but in houses and thus they build miniature houses. A very elaborate example is made by female servents of the Moors from Oualata in Mauritania. The Oualata girls also play with miniature furniture and "ustensiles", made by the same servants, that can be put into the little houses. The Ghrib girls have their own household "ustensiles" to play with, but they are made by themselvesl/.
B) Imitative boy games
Young Ghrib boys do play together with their sisters or other female relatives at making houses and/or tents. However, they prefer to play -as other Saharan boys do- at pastoral activities.
1. Playing at pastoral activities
All over the world children make or play with toy animals and have a lot of fun with living animal si®./. However, it is not surprising that the children of pastoral, hunting and agricultural communities pay special attention to the animals on which their subsistence sometimes rests.
8/ Champault, Francine Dominique, Une oasis du Sahara nord-occidental : Tabelbala, Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, 1969, 486 p.; p. 345.
!_/ Huts and houses: F205-206, 455; G97, 143. "Ustensiles": C5-6, 11, 23, 28, 46-51; E280-282, 350-351; G123-129.
W Toy animals: CI, 6, 15-16, 18, 36, 46-47, 49, 52; D24-26; E30, 139, 144, 274, 302, 346, 353, 406-428, 436; F207, 320, 421, 450; G136-142, 596-604.
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So the nomad children of the Sahara, and especially the boys, represent camels in many different materials such as dried excrements, stones, mandibules of sheep and goats, wrinkled leaves, plaited palm leaves, twigs, wood, mushrooms, pottery, plastified electric wire and white iron.
In the Sahara and in North Africa also other animals are represented such as horses, goats, cows, zebus, gazelles, donkeys, dogs, birds, etc. The important think here is that children through their games referring to the animal world, learn a lot on the characteristics of their zoological and socio-economic environment!!/.
Among herding populations like the Ghrib, boys have a lot of fun in playing at pastoral activities. At the same time, however, they practise different aspects of herding as they prepare themselves mentally and socially for their forthcoming role of guardians of and providers for their herds.
In the game of cattle stealing, the Ghrib boys give us a pertinent example of social izationll/. After the "policemen" did set free the "cattle stealers", these thieves run to the herdsman and mock him by saying: "The herdsman, oh, what an unpleasant life he lives! His bed is only a date tree off-shoot bearing a cluster of dates, and his pillow is his knapsack". The herdsman however replies: "The herdsman, he is an apple between the little apple-blossoms; staying at home never brings out something good".
1 1 / Two pedagogical experiments in Jamaica show the importance of toy animals (see "The Child and Play", Educational Studies & documents No. 34, Unesco, Paris 1980, p. 20, 39).
i2./ See, in this Digest 25, van Oudenhoven, Nico, "Common Street Games", for an Afghan game of "Playing thief" also based on role-playing.
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2. Playing at agricultural activities
The same remarks made on children playing at pastoral activities can be said of children in agricultural communities who prepare themselves to become peasants. So in the collection of toys of the Musée de l'Homme one finds imitations of ploughs of different types made by Chaouia boys from the Aures region in Algeria. Other children, as for example among the Tedda of Tibesti in Tchad, have made imitations of local wells.
3. Playing at hunting and warfare
Another group of favourite boy games are those imitating hunting and warfare.- Toy weapons are abundant in the Sahara and North Africall/. Among them there are imitations of the traditional ones, such as catapults, bows, cross-bows, throw-sticks, swords, daggers, and imitations of more modern weapons such as fire-arms. With some of these toy firearms boys like to imitate the gun-cracks typical for weddings and circumcisions.
C. Imitative games referring to recent socio-economic changes
1. Games referring to sedentarization
In the spring of 1977 a Ghrib boy playing together with his friends in the humid sand at the natural source of El-Faouar (Tunisian Sahara), made a nice miniature oasis garden. He enclosed and divided his garden into equal parts with dams, used wild roses as crops and then started to irrigate his garden.
This play activity shows the impact on this nomad population of recent sedentarization, which started only some twenty years ago. The importance of
13/ Toy weapons: C22; F55-57; G171-176, 336, 341-342.
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this event is stressed when one knows that the pastoral Ghrib strongly dislike manual agricultural labour and that they did not care much for their oasis gardens up to now.
A comparable game of oasis garden irrigation has been described for the negro children of the Ahaggar-Tidikelt region in the Algerian Sahara, although in this case the water remained an imaginary one!!/.
Playing with a miniature cart with a mule as the draughtanimal or at being a village merchant is another example of acculturation among nomad children. The Ghrib boys do it in a wery realistic way by using imitation money and a balance of their own making.
2. Games referring to modern transport and technology
As all children, North African and Saharan children, especially boys, are fascinated by bicycles, cars, trucks and aeroplanesl^/. The car can be a boy, driven by his shoulders all over the plain by another boy, or a miniature car made of earth, wood, wire, tin cans, etc. The Ghrib boys even pass the examination for a driving licence by running an empty barrel over a winding path. The same boys play telephone and one of them imitated on a matchbox my tape recorder!!/.
All those toys referring to modern transport and technology, and the games in which they are used, prove that children's play activities are an important vehicle of socio-cultural and economic transformations. Is it not through computer
li_/ Bell in, P., idem note 10, p. 77.
11/ Modern transport: A16, 26; C2-5, 33, 50-51; D23-26; E288-289, 303, 307, 315; F228-230; G137-138, 178-188.
11/ Modern technology: C21, 32, 40; E185; G124-127.
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games that children of technologically developed societies are nowadays prepared for a computerized society? However, such modern games can as well prepare children to meet the challenge of modernization as impress on them an aversion for the way of living of the family in which they are raised.
Games of skill
A) Games of manual dexterity!!/
Different little games are used by parents or older siblings to develop the dexterity of small children. Sometimes nothing is needed except one's own hands.
So the Ghrib girl or boy amuses the toddlers put under their care with a finger game. In this finger exercise one has to put the fingers of each hand one above the other starting with the ring-finger on the little finger, followed by the middle finger on the ring-finger and the fore-finger on the middle finger. During this finger exercise a little finger rhyme is recited and on the last word both hands open suddenly making the little ones laugh exuberantly. Then they also want to try this out.
This game develops at the same time the manual dexterity and the verbal skills of the toddlers as well as creates an affectionate relationship.
R/ Illustrations: A5.35; B158, 162, 171, 175, 247, 250, 262; CIO, 17, 41; F61, 86, 254, 348, 353, 464; G345-364, 382-389, 404-412. See also van Oudenhoven, Nico, 1983, p. 4 .
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In this context it is a pity that I have to notice among North African and Turkish migrants living in industrialized cities like Ghent (Belgium), that the parents, the siblings and other adults rarely play such little games with the children. They neither seem to transmit to the so-called second generation of migrant children (especially the boys), and this for a lot of reasons, their songs, riddles, proverbs, stories, etc. This wa not only an invaluable socio-cultural and pedagogical treasure is lost --not replaced by anything equivalent from the new environment-- but also the way is left open for exaggerated television watching.
Through the following Ghrib game a very fundamental differential attitude towards boys and girls is being impressed upon children. It is an example of firm social learning in a game used to amuse toddlers.
The game consists in stretching out the fingers and thus making them crack. When the finger does not crack, one says "bint" a girl or "hashi" a male camel, but when a finger cracks, one says "uled" a boy or "bagara" a female camel. If one knows that there are festivities for the birth of a son but none for the birth of a daughter and that a female camel is much more valued than a male one, the profound meaning of this little game becomes immediately apparent.
In the region other widespread games of manual dexterity are spinning a top, holding in equilibrium on the open hand a long stick, different games of throwing and aiming, playing at knuckle-bones, string figures and marbles (replaced among Ghrib children by little stones).
Those skill-games, when played with rules and verbal expressions, are of great importance for the overall development of a child's personality. One only has to remember the important study of Jean Piaget on the development of morality
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among Swiss children in which he analyzed their attitudes towards the rules •prevalent in playing at marble sl§/.
B) Games of suppleness and equilibrium!!/
An original game of the Ghrib combining equilibrium with suppleness could be called dune-skiing. To play it the children use something like a surf-board, the date tree offshoot bearing a cluster of dates, some twenty centimeters large. The boy squats on his board pressing with one foot the date twigs pointing forward. Dune-skiing is a lot of fun after a rain shower, because sliding on moist sand goes faster.
Just as other children all over the world do, Saharan and North African children run on a barrel, roll down from dunes, walk on stilts, turn under their own arms while holding with both hands the top of a stick.
Two more acrobatic exercises for Ghrib children are standing up on one leg after having put the other leg on the back of the neck or picking up with the mouth a little object from the floor while remaining in a squatting position.
C) Games of strength2^/
Some games typically develop children's strength. An example of a spontaneous game of this sort, which almost equals working, is one where a three-year old Ghrib boy brings to his mother's kitchen a bundle of dead wood.
M / Piaget, Jean, "Le jugement moral chez l'enfant", Paris, 1932.
1Î/ Illustrations: A7, 2; B173, 177, 179, 184, 197, 233, 243; C34; E290-291, 293, 331; F273, 376, 393; G244-245, 257-262, 265, 277.
20/ Illustrations: A15; B206, 208; E3Û9; F373-374; G280-285.
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Among the same population different kinds of games strengthen the muscles of legs and arms, such as lifting up little children and heavy objects, or balancing on branches of a tree.
3. Action games
A) Motion gamesü/
Some of these games are based on rotative movements of the body. In other games of this kind, children have to jump or hop. Still other games necessitate hiding, seeking, escaping and pursuing.
Most of these games are combined with story telling or singing, and sometimes refer to specific social situations, attitudes and roles. This is especially the case in games of hide-and-seek, during which Ghrib children make reference to the particular role of the maternal uncles (where one is going to hide), the punishment of misdeeds by Allah (if the one who has to close the eyes cheats), the protection by a circle of goods left behind (the camp one needs to attain and where he cannot be touched).
B) Ball garnet/
The famous ball game of Northern Africa is the one played by striking a wooden, leather, hair or rag ball with a crooked stick. The ball is thrown from one camp to another camp, not necessarily into a goal, by two opposing play groups of adolescents or adults, male or female but not mixed. This game is the national sport of the Moors from Mauritania.
21/ Illustrations: A56; B164, 180, 184, 217, 244-245; C14; E292, 319; F60-119, 126, 134, 139, 379-381, 391, 494-495; G177, 249, 269.
22/ Illustrations: B200, 204, 215; E311-312; G376.
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Among some populations, like the Chaouia Berbers from the Aures in Algeria, this game is a ceremony related to spring and the demand for rain£?/. Among the Ghrib however it is only a rarely played game without any ritual or magical reference. In the whole Northern African region, football is replacing the traditional ball game.
C) Fighting gamesli/
Among the games, that human ethologists also call agressive games, fighting games, such as wrestling, are very widespread. Along with this category of games, toy weapons are often used. With these toy weapons boys imitate fighting and warfare, but they can also be used in mock hunting or even real hunting.
A typical fighting game of Ghrib boys is called "the buried one". A boy has his legs up to his knees fixed into the dune sand. Some other boys are running around him and try to hit him while he is defending himself by waving his arms about.
4. Games of wit
A) Gaines of learning one's body
Nefissa Zerdoumi gives some examples of learning games through which small children learn in a wery amusing way to know the different parts of their body. Such enumerations of parts of the body are played by touching or pinching the part named!-?/.
.23/ Gaudry, Mathéa, La femme chaouia de 1'Aurès : Etude de sociologie berbère, Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, Paris, 1929, 316 p . ; p. 59-262.
24/ Illustrations: E309; F31, 396-400, 508-511, 515; G284, 290, 298-304.
.25/ Zerdoumi Nefissa, Enfants d'hier. L'éducation de l'enfant en milieu traditionnel algérieTT EcT François Maspero, Paris, 1982, p. 144.
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Another little game, known all over the world, teaches toddlers the names and peculiarities of their fingersl§/. Through such play some very important cognitive, social or religious information and indoctrination is passed over, as the typical Ghrib finger game shows:
- the smallest one;
- the one wearing the ring;
- the biggest one;
- taking Allah as witness (it is the forefinger which one moves when saying during prayer "la illah i la Allah" (there is no God but Allah);
- crushes the lice (the thumb must be used to crush lice)."
B) Games of self-control^Z./
A widespread game of self-control is keeping a straight face. Some other games which I prefer to call teasing games are also common.
In my collection of Ghrib games, some ten games are within this category. They vary from a game to provoke someone to a fight, over a small pit into which one's foot should get in, to games of ridicule. Some of these games are based on the well-known counting-rhymesl^/. Another example is the mocking dialogue between two Ghrib youngsters surrounded by an enthusiastic audience.
.26/ Zerdoumi Nefissa gives an example p. 114-115. For another example, see International Federation for Parent Education, p. 39-40.
HI Illustrations: A10; F263; G558-560, 638.
! § / The children sit on their knees in a circle and put their two hands on the ground in front of them. The game leader says a counting rhyme while passing over each hand. The hand he touches when finishing the counting rhyme must be put under the arm-pit of the (see continuation page 67).
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Such play teaches ahilaren to improve self-control and not be quickly irritated and angry. They also create a possibility to ritualize the expression of aggressive feelings between children through socially acceptable means.
C) Games of concentration and insight^/
Children play different games in which one has to react in a stereotyped way to verbal or visual information.
A Ghrib variant of such a game is played sitting in a circle. The game leader gives one after the other a statement that can be right or wrong (e.g. the man walks, che door eats). If. the statement is right, the children have to raise their hands. The game leader tries to mislead the players by lifting up his hand in an incorrect way. If a child reacts wrongly he must lie down on his belly in the middle of the circle. Then the players put their hands one above the other on his back. The game leader asks whose hand is above. If the stretched out child guesses right he may stand up, but if he guesses wrong the children hit him, and sometimes a bit too strongly.
Another series of important intellectual games among the Ghrib is based on drawings in the sand. Some of them are well-known elsewhere, as for example the drawing done during story telling about someone working at home and
28/ (Ct'd from page 66) relevant child. The game leader proceeds in this way until all hands have been put under the arm-pit. He then asks for each hand in turn and controls one after the other if they feel warm or cold by putting the hand to his cheek. If a child's hand feels warm he is blessed by the game leader with the appropriate formula: baraka Allah fik - Allah's blessings on you". However if the hand feels cold, the game leader spits on it.
29/ Illustrations: C38; F81, 234; G308 311, 413-418, 743-744.
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going to the toilet (1), cleaning the house (2), then leaving after closing the door, and taking the road (3) to the oasis (4).
When the work in the oasis is finished, the person goes back home, but what a surpirse: the key is lost. The story teller asks: "where is the key?". And the little onlookers have to find the key which is depicted in the sand. The same game is played along other themes, such as a man travelling to a far-away country, indicated by the drawing of an aeroplane.
Two other examples, which I think are of a very important pedagogical value, are based on a story in which a. child has to escape from danger. The first one is based on an ecological situation and the second one on a social situation.
A child has to find its way out from a very dangerous situation by escaping through one of the four obstructed roads. Two wild animals will kill him or he will meet death by burning or drowning. The solution of the problem lies however in taking some of the water to kill the fire and then running away along this path.
The child must escape, after having done something really bad, by passing along one of four adults armed with a stick. The four adults are the father, the grandfather, the maternal uncle and the paternal uncle. The only way out is by running to the maternal uncle. The Ghrib children who transmitted to me this game said that the word "khali", meaning maternal uncle, also means "nothing". So one has to react to the second meaning of the word "khali" and thus he can escape that way. Another explanation I think to be relevant here is that the maternal uncle or family is, within the patrilineal Ghrib society, the natural ally where adolescents and adults can find refuge when in conflict with their own kin. Allusion to this situation is clearly stated in the already described Ghrib action game of hiding and seeking.
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As a last example of games of concentration and insight, I have to pay attention to the treasure of riddles conveying a tremendous amount of knowledge, attitudes, values, emotions, etc.
D) Games of logic, strategy and mathematical games3.0/
Some games have a direct influence on the development of logical, strategical and arithmetical reasoning.
In this sphere I saw among the Ghrib two little games played with three-year old children in order to teach them counting!!/.
30/ Illustrations: A60-62, B263-275. See also van Oudenhoven, Nico. 1983, p. 3.
11/ They are games played for a little child by an older one, a mother or some other adult. For the first game one makes with two fingers of the same hand, four rows of two little holes in the sand, while saying:
- I have a young camel who feels very hot; - she did eat the getanya plant; - count oh counter; - and you'll find eight.
For the second game one makes with two fingers of the same hand a row of two little holes, and then with three fingers six rows of three little holes, while saying:
- the she-wolf and the wolf; - who is saying "the wolf"? - I say "the wolf"; - the wolf has two paws; - he has a nose and two eyes; - count oh counter; - and you will find twenty.
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As stated in "The Child and Play" different kinds of games of draughts have a great pedagogical valued/. In Northern Africa a well-known game of draughts is the "Kharbga", played by adolescents and adults and equivalent to chess in difficulty!!/.
What is less known about the games of draughts in this region is the fact that, as it is clearly the case among the Ghrib, there exists a whole series of games of draughts of increasing difficulty, so smoothly preparing the children for the very- complex strategical insights necessary for playing Kharbga. These Ghrib games of draughts range from the "three in a row"~type (+ 6 years), over the "eight and thirteen cases"-types (+ 10 years)èîj', the "little khittawa" (3x3 cases, + 6 years), the "Khittawa" (5x5 cases, + 10 years), and the "Khittawa of intelligence" (5 x 5 cases, + 12 years), up to the "Kharbga" (7 x 7 cases, 4- 16 years).
Anyone will recognize the very interesting pedagogical value of such a series of games constantly expanding the possibilities of strategical and logical reasoning among children growing up outside a formal school system.
I2./ Games of draughts: A13, 17, 60; B20-33, 38-99, 150; F183, 187-191, 308-310, 406, 519; G429, 455-516.
11/ Quemeneur, "Le jeu de la Kharbga", in Revue de l'Institut des Belles Lettres Arabes, Tunis, 1944, No. 28, p. 463-471.
34/ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0
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5. Games of artistry
Under this category I have grouped different games in which children show their creativity in the fields of visual, musical and dramatic expression.
A) Games of plastic expression!-?/
Sometimes the making of dolls, miniature animals, houses, "ustensiles", cars or other toys show real artistry among children.
The making of sand-castles is a much loved creative play on beaches. The Ghrib children however make them after one of the rare Saharan rains or at the natural source of El-Faouar.
B) Games of word-painting
Everywhere girls and boys like storytelling games based on riddles, rhymes, and proverbs. One guesses the socializing importance of this kind of playing for societies based on oral transmission and proud of their original oral literature.
C) Games of musical expression^/
Children of a certain age like to play musical instruments in imitation of adult musicians.
Ghrib boys do have their own bamboo flute quite difficult to play, composed of a whistle and a tube. The same type of flute has been played by Chaouia boys of the Aurès Berbers in Algeria.
35/ Illustrations: D23-26; E139, 142, 147-148, 171.
36/ Illustrations: D24; E169, 170, 174-176; F54, 277, 388; G232, 666, 681.
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Ghrib boys also play on self-made or real drums.
Children like singing and thus accompany many of their games with songs.
D) Games of dramatical expression!/./
Games of dancing, acting games and ritual games are, as they are in every region, widely distributed in North Africa and the Sahara.
The Ghrib children exercise themselves in dancing. For example, two boys would dance the typical herdsmen dance and they would be accompanied by a flute player and hand-clapping children.
As acting games the Ghrib children play the already mentioned mocking dialogue and a kind of theatrical performance for which they may use special attributes such as goat hair for a moustache or silver-paper for golden teeth.
As an example of ritual games I already mentioned a ball-game, but also the game of swinging had a ritual significance in certain parts of North Africa.
Ghrib children play at divination and perform as a game a ritual in which a little child is carried from one homestead to another one, imitating the real ritual performed in an analogous way for a child waiting to walk.
3. Conclusions
1. Now and then one can hear or read some negative statements on the existence or the value of toys and
37/ Illustrations: E172, 278, 284-286, 320-322; F323, 325, 329, 331, 341, 384-385, 440-441; G568.
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games in low-income countries. This paper, I hope, has proven that such statements are based on superficial and hasty observations. However, it is true that in those countries local games and toys are threatened by an intrusive modernistic way of life.
Such an evolution has to be prevented, as there are many reasons to appreciate, respect, valorize and use this cultural treasure. This certainly is not to say that games and toys must be petrified in their traditional form. On the contrary, their normal evolution according to changing psychological, pedagogical, sociological and technological demands should not be hampered by a folkloristic nostalgia.
The "Subregional Seminar on the Use of the Cultural Heritage in Education" stressed that"... in the selection of cultural themes and works in education, care should be taken to apply the well-known criteria of availability; excellence; the use of local, community and national materials in ever widening horizons; and choice according to the age and maturity level of those being educated" (1980, p. 8, No. 16). Well, local games and toys fit very well to all these criteria.
If the integration of children's play activities based on culture-bound games and toys is a must, it will not be enough to preach the good word, but concrete actions should be taken in the sphere of child welfare and education.
To prepare these actions more interdisciplinary research on play behaviour, games and toys among the Third World population and in a cross-cultural way, will be needed.
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By promoting such action directed research and experimentation, one will safeguard and realize THE RIGHT OF CHILDREN TO PLAY, as stated in the seventh principle of the United Nations' Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. "L'enfant et le jeu - Approche théorique et applications pédagogiques"; 1980, Unesco, Etudes et documents d'éducation, No. 34, Paris, bibl., ill.
B. GRUNFELD, Frédéric V., e.a., Jeux du monde. Leur histoire, comment y jouer, comment les construire; UNICEF, Editions Lied, Genève, 1979, 280 p., bibl., ill.
C. "Jeux et jouets des enfants du monde. Catalogue d'exposition Novembre 1978"; 1978, Unesco, Paris, s.p., ill.
D. "Construire un jouet, c'est un jeu d'enfant"; The Unesco Courrier, Janvier 1979, pp. il!.
E. "De Wereldtentoonstelling van de Fotografie. De kinderen van deze wereld. 515 foto's uit 94 landen van 238 fotografen"; UNICEF, Grüner + Jahr AG & Co Druck-und Verlagshaus, Hamburg, 1977, s.p., ill.
F. FLEPZIG Frits, Kinderspiele der Bantu, Verlag Anton Hain, Meisenheim am Glan, 1972, 608 p., bibl., ill.
G. BEART Ch., "Jeux et jouets de l'Ouest africain", Mémoires de l'Institut français d'Afrique noire, No. 42, Dakar, 1955, 888 p., bibl., ill.
* These seven works are singled out for special designation by letters A to G as references are made in the footnotes to the pages where illustrations can be found for the points made in the paper. See footnote 2 on page 50. Thus the references C3, E93, 173, 363 in footnote 3 on page 50 indicate that further illustrations on weaving can be found on page 3 of the work listed as C above and on pages 93, 173 and 363 of the work listed as E.
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V
PRESCHOOL EDUCATION BY CORRESPONDENCE: AN AUSTRALIAN PROGRAMME TO SERVE ISOLATED CHILDREN
by
Ananda W.P. GurugéJ/
1. Introduction
In 1978, the Australian country report to the Fourth Regional Conference of Ministers of Education and those Responsible for Economic Development of Asia and Oceania (Colombo, Sri Lanka) referred to an innovative approach in early childhood education.
In 1974, the Queensland Education Department began a Preschool Correspondence Programme, the first of its type in Australia. The programme is aimed at providing a form of home-based, parent-taught preschool education for 4-5 year old children whose families live in remote and isolated parts of the State and who do not have the opportunity to attend regular sessional preschools. Materials consist of a printed programme with suggested activities for parents to use in conjunction with recorded material on cassette tapes, library resources and a kit of equipment. In 1975, in order to provide for some socializing experiences for these children and parents, the Department of Education instigated the establishment of SPAN Playgroups. These playgroups, while open to families with young children living in local communities, are directly linked with the home based facet of the Preschool Correspondence Programme. Essentially, the SPAN Playgroup Programme is a 'self-help' scheme in
I/ Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Unesco
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which parents with preschool aged children from neighbouring areas come together perhaps once a week (or as seldom as once a month) to provide opportunities for their children to play with their peers. Play sessions may last from two hours to a whole day.
In 1985, the Programme entered the tenth year of its operation. That it has been singularly" successful in achieving its objectives is widely recognized. The Programme in all its components -concept, process, materials- deserves to receive the attention of workers in the field of Early Childhood Care and Education.
"This programme, which involves children, parents and teachers, is based on the belief that parents are the first and in many ways the most effective educators of their children. A home-based early childhood programme provides opportunity for parents to extend this natural role with the support of their child's preschool teacher."
SPAN Playgroups form part of the extended services of the Preschool Correspondence School. These small informal playgroups are designed to meet some of the social needs of parents and children living in isolated areas of the State.
They are seen as a happy relaxed way for children and their parents to share ideas and experiences as well as the pleasure and demands of being part of a group.
SPAN Playgroups are self-help groups formed and organized by parents. Each parent group makes decisions about where to meet, how often, and • how to plan their playgroup sessions. Teachers at the Preschool Correspondence School support parents in the functioning of their playgroup and where possible advisory teachers in the Regional Education Areas offer help to SPAN Playgroups also.
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The programme is offered to children of families living more than 3 k.m. from the nearest State Preschool or Early Education Centre, who do not attend either of these facilities on a regular basis. It is also extended to children of Queensland families travelling interstate or living temporarily overseas. An attractive folder addressed to parents describes the programme as follows:
PRESCHOOL CORRESPONDENCE
offers your child:
- opportunity to learn through everyday play situations;
- opportunity to develop skills for further learnings
- opportunity to work and play with other children;
- assistance in the transition from Home to School.
Offers you:
- support in your role as parents;
- help in understanding how young children learn and develop;
- practical guidance in working the program.
Being involved means:
- working the programme with your child in an informal and flexible way according to your home commitments;
- keeping in regular contact with your child's teacher through exchange of letters, audio cassettes and samples of your child's work;
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your choice of participation in a SPAN Playgroup.
2. The Programme theme and supporting facilities
The Child and his World is the theme of the Preschool Correspondence Programme. It is presented in multi-media format. Materials are forwarded to families at regular intervals throughout the year. They consist of
an Introductory package and four Theme packages: All about me, My family, People and places, Here, There and Everywhere.
Each Theme package contains a storybook, a programme book of ideas and activities, an audio cassette of songs, jingles, stories and rhymes, games and puzzles.
In addition, extra activities, tapes and games will be selected for your child by his teacher.
Children enrolled in the Preschool Correspondence Programme are eligible for a Commonwealth Department of Education allowance of $120.00 per annum, payable in 4 instalments. This allowance is to' assist parents in the purchase of educational materials such as cassette recorder and/or an instant camera. Continuing payments of the Commonwealth allowance will depend upon regular and effective communication between parent and teacher throughout the year.
The Library of the Preschool Correspondence School provides a service for children, parents and teachers working with the Preschool Correspondence School. A large collection of children's books, both fiction and non-fiction, is held in the Children's Library section. The Parent Library contains books and leaflets relating to aspects of parenting, child growth and behaviour, health and early education.
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Parents receive a catalogue listing a selection of books they may borrow from the parent library section. A limited number of toys, games and tapes is also available. Children enrolled on the Programme, and their parents automatically become members of the lending library and are entitled to receive a regular dispatch of materials chosen by their teachers.
An Equipment Kit is supplied to all children enrolled in the Preschool Correspondence Programme. This kit is despatched by the Supply and Stores Section, Department of Education, from January onwards. The materials supplied in this kit include: large sheets of white papers, powder paint (red, yellow, blue), magnifying glass, crayons (chublets), coloured pencils, aquadhere (for glueing), paint brushes, paste.brushes, water paint brush.
Scissors are not supplied. However, your child will need a small sturdy pair. Surgical scissors or good quality children's scissors are ideal.
This supply of material is intended to last for the period of the year your child is enrolled in the programme.
Please note: the Preschool Correspondence School should be notified immediately if any materials arrive in a damaged condition.
3. How to get started
Another attractively produced brochure informs the parents how to get started.
LOOK IN THE POCKET OF YOUR FOLDER, YOU WILL FIND:
1. The Equipment Kit List. Read the information on this sheet. These materials are provided for your child to use throughout the year. You should receive your Equipment Kit within the next few weeks.
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2. The Commonwealth Government Grant for Isolated Children. This grant is available to all families who enrol their children on the programme. Remember! Continuing payments of the grant will depend upon regular communication with your child's preschool teacher --approximately once every three weeks.
3. The Family Information Booklet. Look through the contents of this booklet. Please answer the questions as fully as you can and return promptly to the Preschool Correspondence School in the enclosed envelope. This information will help your child's teacher to learn more about your child in his home environment.
4. The Audio Cassette: Talking with Parents. In this cassette Margaret Harley, Supervisor of the Preschool Correspondence School, shares some thoughts with you about parenting and about how young children learn.
5. Turn to Everyday Play (Part One of the Ideas Book).
6. Read through the introduction to Everyday Play, which talks about how young children learn through their play experiences.
7. Read through each of the ten broad areas of play in Everyday Play. The green band at the end of each section gives ideas for getting started.
8. Try to make each of these play experiences available to your child a number of times during your first two weeks on the programme.
9. At the end of this two week period, please answer the question About Everyday Play and return to the Preschool Correspondence School in the envelope provided. (You will find this sheet at the end of Part One of the Ideas Book).
10. Remember! Your teacher will be contacting you within the first two weeks of your commencing the programme.
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The Family Information Booklet consists of a series of questions relating to: (a) general information on the child and the family; (b) communication facilities available to the family; (c) health under such headings as family health, child's health, eating and sleeping patterns and vaccinations and immunizations; (d) social experiences; and (e) general comments.
The information included in the Family Information Booklet provides the teacher with a broad background of knowledge about each child/family situation.
The information received is treated as confidential by the Preschool Correspondence School.
THE IDEAS BOOK : PART ONE is a loose-leaf publication on the theme: EVERYDAY PLAY THE WAY THE YOUNG CHILD LEARNS. Its introduction tells the parents:
"We 're often told that play is the way the young child learns. We read about learning through play and play being the child's work, but what does it all mean? How do young children learn through play? What do they learn in play.
Children learn in so many ways. They're constantly on the go, always curious, asking questions, wanting to touch, to hold, to feel, to put things together and take them apart. Just like adults, they need to be able to handle materials so they can find out for themselves how things work. This is an important part of their everyday learning. Children learn by watching, listening and remembering. They learn to use new words by talking with others and they learn to share by playing with other children and adults. As children become involved in their play, they're thinking through their ideas, organizing their thoughts and gradually developing new skills.
Because much of the young child's learning occurs through his everyday play activity, we have
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selected ten broad areas of play that can be easily set up at home —Outdoor Play, Water, Sand, Mud, Painting and Drawing, Clay and Dough, Hallage and Construction, Blocks, Carpentry and Dressing Up. You will see the different ways these activities can be presented and. what each play experience can offer your child in terms of learning possibilities.
As parents, you can help your child through is everyday play by:
- taking time to watch how he uses the different materials;
listening to his ideas and talking with him about them,
- encouraging him to use materials in his own way;
- making an occasional suggestion to help him develop his ideas;
showing an interest in what he's doing and sometimes joining in yourself.
Most important of all, you can help your child by giving him the freedom to learn in his own way and in his own time, within the security and love of his family circle".
Each section is profusely illustrated with photographs of children in action. The text is lucidly written and provides the parents with concrete suggestions. Here, for example, is the page on MUD:
MUD. Have you ever noticed how a muddy puddle attracts children? Some stand on the edge and stir it round with their toes, others just plunge in regardless and as for us, well it usually means yet another pile of washing only this time dirtier than usual.
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But have you ever considered that mud can be a worthwhile play material for your child?
Mud can be stirred, splashed, squeezed and squelched through fingers and toes and gives your child a chance to be thoroughly messy and delight in the look, the smell and the feel of mud. Digging in a mud patch is hard work and the effort involved is especially good for developing the muscles of the arms and hands, as well as improving whole body development.
Building roads, damming streams, bulldozing mountains —all of this is possible in a mud patch, when a child's imagination is at work.
Your child may want to add planks, rocks, stones, toy cars and bulldozers and so on. As his play grows and develops and when other children participate too, there is opportunity for exchange of ideas, conversation and co-operation.
A place to dig, a hose and spade are all that are needed to make a mud patch.
Under each section is a page listing, with illustrations, extra materials that could be obtained from the environment. Reproduced below is one such page:
EXTRAS FOR COLLAGE AND CONSTRUCTION
Cardboard boxes, packets, cylinders from inside lunahwraps, egg cartons, cotton wool, raw wool, grasses, leaves, seeds, berries., bark, sand, soil, feathers, straw, gwrmuts, variety of paper and cloth, bottle tops, foil, egg shells, wood shavings, sawdust, stapler, rubber bands, woodwork glue, sticky tape.
Selection of materials is easier if they are sorted and stored in individual containers.
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TO GET STARTED WITH COLLAGE
Refer to Paste Recipes. Start with just a few materials at one time. Use thick paste with the paste brush from your Equipment Kit. Give your child scissors which are sharp and small enough for him to handle. Remember before your child has the control needed to cut out a shape or picture, he needs lots of practice at snipping
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thin card, (old Christmas and Birthday Cards) cutting it into two pieces, cutting along a thick straight line, then a curved line. If he finds it difficult to use scissors, he could begin by tearing rather than cutting.
AND CONSTRUCTION
Offer just a few materials to begin with. Your child may need some help in holding the pieces in place, cutting sticky tape and using a stapler.
At the end of two weeks, the parents answer the following questions:
- Which of the Everyday Play experiences were you able to offer your child?
- Please tell me about any he especially enjoyed.
- Are there any particular things you noticed about your child's play that you'd like to tell me about?
- Please tell me about any difficulty you had in making these play experiences available to your child.
- I would also like to know how your child usually spends his day.
- Does he have any special toys, games or places he likes to play?
- Could you tell me about any special interests your child has --e.g. animals, machinery, nature, dolls, music, books?
- To help me in choosing library books for your child, please tell me about the books he most enjoys --e.g. picture books, story books, books of nursery rhymes or poems, etc.
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Part two of the IDEAS BOOK is called PLAY IDEAS: RECIPES, PATTERNS, THINGS TO MAKE AND DO and contains eight sections as follows:
CONTENTS
33. Start collecting
Things to do with
34. Paint, chalk, crayons, pencils, felt pens
Things to do with
43. Paste, scissors, bits and pieces
Things to
46. Shape, mould, squeeze
Things to do with
49. Ropes, tyres, boxes, water, sand, mud
Things to
60. Weave, thread, wind, sew button, zip buckle
Thing s to do with
66. Puppets, disguises, mobiles
Things to
70. Tap, beat, shake
The following are five sample pages of the Ideas Book which describe, in the most interesting manner, over 150 things which parents could make or do with children.
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FUN WITH WOOL
YOU MED
a piece of coarse sand-paper
heavy cardboard
Aquadhere or any strong glue
several lengths of wool
WHAT DO DO
Glue the sandpaper to the cardboard
Your child can make patterns by pressing the wool pieces on to the rough surface of the sandpaper.
GEO BOARD
YOU NEED
30cm x 30cm sheet of plywood (12"xl2")
nails
hammer
rubber bands, wool or string
WHAT DO DO
Hammer the nails into the board approximately 4cm (là") apart.
Your child can stretch the rubber band, wool or string around the nails to make designs.
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3. MODELLING
Your child can mould any of these modelling materials into shapes. He can pound, pull, pat, roll, twist, squeeze, cut, scoop and poke.
He can also decorate them using matches, toothpiks, seeds, stones, buttons, bottle tops, pieces of fabric, corrugated cardboard and plastic mesh.
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KEEPING SHAPES
Dough
Bake shapes in a slow oven until hard.
Plaster mix
When dry, the shapes can be painted and varnished.
Soap flake squish
Place shapes in refrigerator for several hours until firm.
Papier maché
When dry, the shapes can be painted.
Sawdust clay
When dry, the shapes can be painted and varnished.
Salt goop
Place shapes on baking tray and bake for approximately 1 hour in a moderate over - thicker pieces may take longer. If your child is making beads for threading remember to poke a hole through each beed before baking.
MATERIAL PUPPET
YOU NEED
piece of material large enough to drape along the child's arm - a scarf is ideal
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WHAT TO DO
Drape the material along the child's arm.
Child clenches the material in fingers to make puppet's face and mouth.
Fluffy material makes a cuddly puppet.
The parents receive many more tips and suggestions in the form of imaginatively designed and colourfully illustrated folders and brochures. Developed by the Programme Development Team, these leaflets deal with such themes as
The Great Outdoors, Messing About with Paint, Paper, Paste and Dough, Exploring Mud, Exploring Sand, Exploring Water, Painting and Drawing, Let's Dress up and Pretend, Just Pretending and Photography and Your Child.
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V I
SHAPE-MATCHING GAMES AND PUZZLES
by
André Michelet 1/
Shape-matching games and puzzles, two categories of games, akin in form and conception, seem to be the very symbol of a class of educational materials that are highly thought of by some yet strongly disparaged by others.
"I do not want to see a single shape-matching game in my classroom", an experienced teacher told me the other day. Her judgement was both right and wrong. Right in her condemnation of the abusive manner in which these games have been employed. Sensorimotor skills, discrimination, spatial perception, classification and so-called logical seriation, are all, or almost all, exploited in these games in a stereotyped and often inadequate manner. Wrong, because shape-matching games, like puzzles, are not immutable, closely linked to the history of pre-school education, like which they have evolved, they are the classic example of a form of teaching material which can follow and adapt to the most modern pedagogical thought.
1. The origins
A. Shape-matching games
The rudiments of the very first educational materials, which forty years later were to become the shape-matching game, were described in 1801 by Jean ITARD in his "Mémoire sur les premiers développements de Victor de l'Aveyron". Faced with the problem of the difficulty experienced by
1 / President of the International Council for Children's Play.
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the "Wild boy of Aveyron", in shape recognition, ITARD devised the analytic method and had recourse to what today we call sensorimotor activity. He wrote: "On a two-foot-square wooden board I stuck three pieces of paper, distinct in shape and colour, one red circle, one blue triangle and one black square. Three pieces of cardboard, of similar shape and colour and each having a hole in the centre, were placed on the board on their respective models by means of nails fixed to the board to receive them."
Jean ITARD made many complex variants of this piece of equipment for distinguishing between shapes that were progressively more alike and for colour recognition, convinced that he was eliciting "new comparisons and new judgements" and that the effects of the exercises "were all felt in the mind."
In his book "Traitement moral, hygiène et éducation des idiots" (Mental Treatment, Hygiene, and Education of Idiots", 1846), Edouard SEGUIN explained how he had revised and adapted the material, developed by his mentor ITARD, in order to educate children far less capable than Victor of Aveyron. "Whether one shows him shapes that are painted or in relief, the idiot will almost always be unable to distinguish their respective attributes, if one does not take care to introduce into the exercise the elements of touch, prehension and imitation. To achieve this several boards are prepared in which hollows matching the shapes to be taught have been carved out. The child is given a free-standing shape, a circular object for example, which fits exactly into the circular hollow carved in the plank and not into any of the other hollows. If the hollow is not sufficiently attention-catching, it can be painted in a colour which will draw the eye."
SEGUIN had observed that sensorimotor skills, from which all learning stems, "can almost always be channelled by material means". Speaking of space-matching games he said: "I had to use means which might be called the delivery forceps of the intelligence. These are boards in which shapes have been hollowed out and exactly corresponding free-standing shapes each of which can only be fitted into its equivalent hollow. Push, fiddle search as he may,
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the child's efforts will be in vain until his hand, aided by the eye, succeeds in inserting the circle into the circular hollow or the triangle into the triangular hollow. Little by little recognition is established."
Thus it can be seen that shape-matching games originated as a wery specialized educational tool. Was there any justification for extending it to the many fields of educations for normal children? To SEGUIN's mind there was no such justification.
SEGUIN made a distinction between NOTIONS (what we call sensorimotor skills) and CONCEPTS, which are the relationships that can be established between notions. ITARD met with failure because of his belief that training in sensorimotor skills gave rise to concepts (he belonged to the sensationalist school which affirmed that concepts derived from the senses). SEGUIN showed that true education is education that leads to the formation of concepts. The teaching of sensorimotor skills is necessary only for mentally defective children who are unable spontaneously to build up a sense-based system of reference, distinction and denomination. SEGUIN never recommended the use of space-matching games with normal children. For them the only educative games he really urged were construction games, which exercise structuralizing ability and open the way to the free expression of creativity by the establishment of relationships between the various pieces.
In determining and isolating the position of the elements, the space-matching game is a form of conditioning very well suited to the training of sensorimotor skills; however, by immobilizing these elements in a matrix it eliminates any possibility of making combinations of them, an action which would involve a conceptual approach. Thus, the seriation of decreasing sizes cannot be learned by the matching of each size element with its matrix (each size element remains an isolated object which is related only to its own matrix), but by free manipulation of the elements which leads to a conscious act of seriation.
The principle of shape-matching has come down to us because it was taken up by two other famour educationalists. Both of them encountered the principle when they began
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their careers working with mentally defective children, for which they used SEGUIN's materials. Both of them, Maria MONTESSORI and, at almost the same time, Ovide DECR0LY, popularized the method but each with a different approach.
In "Pédagogie scientifique" (1921), Maria Montessori, who claimed to be a disciple of Edouard SEGUIN, retained the equipment he had invented but not the thought that lay behind it. In fact, she used the shape-matching principle with a totally opposite objective in mind. To the superficial observer, it seemed that she was making the same use of the same equipment, but the pedagogical activity involved was different.
For SEGUIN, his equipment was a tool by means of which the child could take hold of the elements of which his world consisted and, through his actions, build up his intelligence --an essentially modern approach similar to that of genetic psychology. For Maria MONTESSORI, however, the world and intelligence are taken as given, but the intelligence requires to be "set in order". For her, the child's mind is "a burdesome chaos" and he has to learn how to "sort out" the huge amount of accumulated knowledge. Shape-matching equipment is thus a demonstration tool by the manipulation of which the child will learn to analyse his perceptions. Veritable mathematical models, they are the concrete reflection of adult geometric thought transmitted to the child.
Thus, Maria MONTESSORI increased the number of shape-matching devices and used them at different levels. Two boxes of shape-matching equipment, each containing thirty-six elements and offering an infinite variety of combinations, offered geometric elements such as right-angled, equilateral and scalene triangles, etc., as well as decreasing size series and stylized botanical shapes. Some of these geometric shapes, in this case made of metal, were to be found set into the pupils' desks for use in drawing (for in Montessori's method drawing began with the reproduction of shapes).
Another piece of equipment consists of a stand with holes in it into which ten cylinders of different sizes have to be placed vertically. Whereas with shape-matching
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games in which the elements are placed in position flat no error is possible, with the cylinders it is possible to misplace a cylinder. In this case there will be at least one cylinder left over which will not fit in and the child is obliged to start all over again. This involves self-correction, which makes possible individual training. For in Montessori's view, this piece of equipment is by no means a toy, but an experimental tool which makes it possible clearly "to distinguish the object of the lesson".
The first space-matching game, by Edouard SEGUIN
For his part, DECROLY viewed education from the standpoint of "Gestalt" theory, which explains human behaviour in terms of a direct relationship of the individual with his environment. "In fact it is the individual as a totality that perceives, thinks and acts as a whole (...). Objects, facts and thoughts impose themselves holistically." Thus the child's perception and actions take on a "global" character, hence the name of the method. It is also known as the synthetic/analytic method, since, after the synthetic
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or global activity of the child, the aim of education of the intellect is to give him the means "of classifying his impressions so as to combine them with others".
The pedagogical implications are evident:
- Invoke the spontaneous activity of the child, in other words, play.
Do not separate the elements of play, of the environment.
- Prepare them so as to offer the child an analytical approach.
Among the many "educative games" invented by DECROLY, space-matching games, which he adopted but from a new viewpoint, seem ideally suited to meet his criteria -they can be used freely and sponteneously, and the children are motivated to play by the realistic illustrations employed and which often have an affective connotation. Instead of using abstract shapes they show objects or scenes from daily life and the pieces are cut out so as to correspond to the principal logical elements of the scenes illustrated.
This, is short, was how the multitude of space-matching games now on the market originated.
B. Puzzles
Unlike space-matching games, puzzles were not specifically designed for educational purposes. They were traditional games that go back to the time when games began to be produced commercially. Some collections have examples of games that date from the eighteenth century. Always complicated, these puzzles, like board games and the various forms of lotto, were often instructive, bringing into play elements of history, geography, good citizenship, etc.
It was DECROLY who, seeing in puzzles a good form of global activity, adapted them for use with young children, describing their applications in his series of visual-
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motor games. "We take two identical engravings one of which is left intact as a model whilst the other is cut up into two, four, six or eight pieces. The pieces may be rectangular, square, triangular or diamond-shaped. Sometimes the pieces have another picture on the reverse side, which makes the game more difficult. From there it is but a step to games using all six sides of a set of cubes. To vary the exercise and give training in mental representation, the model picture is eliminated.
DECROLY's collaborators and successors produced many kinds of puzzles which, like his space-matching games, bore illustrations based on the child's environment -games, country occupations, street scenes, etc.
2 . The pedagogical objectives
As the examples given above amply illustrate, educational materials are not haphazard, chance creations but the concrete manifestation of a conception of education, that is, of a certain view of human intelligence. Due to their varied origins, the improvements brought by the evolution of pedagogical theory, and the fancifulness of certain innovations or imitations that do not always respect educational norms, the educational materials to be found in our classrooms sometimes appear to be a jumble of disparate objects. This may well be the case in the field of the space-matching games and puzzles so widely availa^e on the market. Although there is no harm in an abundance of goods on offer, and although such a wide choice is a guarantee of the liberty of the child, we should, nevertheless, try to see what broad pedagogical principles should govern the rational use of these games.
A. From the space-matching game to the puzzle
Is there a kind of hierarchy, a progression of difficulty which exhausts what the space-matching games has to offer and leads on to accession to the puzzle? This
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is by no means certain. It is true that space-matching games were designed to guide the unskilled hand and to lead up to the recognition of shapes by "material guidance". The approach demanded by the puzzle is from the start more complicated, since its point of departure is cut out fragments of the picture it represents.
If one wanted to define a space-matching game and a puzzle, this would be the distinguishing difference: in the former, complete, logical shapes are inserted in a stand, in the latter, the whole is arbitrarily fragmented. Even if it is only cut up into a few pieces and is bounded by a frame, a puzzle is based on the relationship of one piece to its neighbours, whether as a function of the drawing or of the way it was cut out, and sometimes of both. Yet, as far as overall difficulty is concerned, there are complicated space-matching games and elementary puzzles. There are also ways known to teachers (and which are sometimes used commercially) of making it easier to complete a puzzle by giving it some of the characteristics of a space-matching game --such as sticking the border of the puzzle or some key pieces to its support. Also with some puzzles the cut is not arbitrary but follows the outline of the elements of the drawing. Thus the boundary between space-matching games and puzzles, at first apparently quite distinct, at times becomes somewhat difficult to make out.
B. Topological space-matching games
Many teachers experience difficulty in selecting the right educational materials to offer very young children when they first enter nursery school. One teacher told me: I give them "Baby" space-matching games (made by Nathan). These have a large, steady base and elementary geometric shapes which are easy to handle, yet the children cannot manage them. Then they lose their tempers and hurl the game across the classroom. Yet there is nothing simpler to give them."
In her book "L'éducation des enfants arriérés", Alice DESCOEUDRES described the behaviour of children who have the added disadvantage of being mentally defective, when
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they are unable to cope with a space-matching game. "Nine-year-old Ems tried persistently to put a large box into a smaller box. Another boy aged seven, with Down's syndrome, struggled to place a circle into a smaller triangle and a star into a smaller oval". Alice DESCOEUDRES diagnosed these difficulties as being due to a perception failure and recommended a return to sensorimotor exercises.
Today we know that this behaviour pattern with regard to the perception, of shapes is not due to sensory malfunction, but is linked to a stage of development through which all children pass and which precedes the state at which understanding of such references pointers as the dimensions of angles, of sides, etc., is acquired. At this stage account is taken only of the position, the placement and the general aspect of the shape perceived through practical recognition but in non-geometric terms. This stage, which is known in genetic psychology (thanks in particular to the work of Jean Piaget) as the topological stage, corresponds to a perception from which is excluded all idea of size and of measurement and geometry. It is oriented towards other relationships: content/container, decanting of liquids, reciprocal positioning, upside-down/right-side-up, inside/outside, empty/full, etc., which control the way in which the young child explores the world and starts out on the road to deductive reasoning.
This explains the young child's interest in opening and closing a door, going in and out of a room and emptying and filling a toy chest. When faced with educative equipment available for pre-school education, up till now conceived in terms of geometric data, some young children behave like the mentally defective children described by Ali de DESCOEUDRES, but, no doubt having an intuition that a possible solution exists, do not show the same stereotypical patience. What attracts them, the kind of experience they are seeking, is putting an object in a hole, regardless of any precise correspondence between the two.
"At sixteen months Dan asked for 'a hole'. From the age of one year he had been using all the holes he came across in the house, placing within them anything that came to hand. Into the air vent went spoons, knives and bobbins; the keyhole of a drawer swallowed up pens and
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pencils; he filled milk bottles and the holes in cane chairs with pencils, sticks, crayons, etc. He laughed in delight when somebody found him a new 'hole1.
"The attraction of the hole underlies the search for phenomenological experiment (profundity, absorption) linked with topological experiment. It is an important motivation underlying the space-matching activity involved in "shape-boxes". Dan preferred the simple "letter-box" with a single opening which would swallow anything, regardless of shape, to the Kiddicraft-type barrel or other similar toys into which shapes disappear once they have been correctly placed. Here the need to make the necessary adjustment to the shape inhibits the satisfaction of the experiment of the hole"l/. In fact this game combines two different experimental levels.
The progression from topological to logical experiment may be encouraged by means of "pre- shape-matching games", in which precise correspondence between the shape and its lodging place is not necessary. This initial experiment makes possible the establishment of a topological type relationship, an action fundamental to shape-matching, to which may be added an initial problem of discernment --for example, having to distinguish between two widely different sizes.
It can be taken that the topological experiment is the source of the obvious attraction, evidenced by almost all children, of shape-matching games and is also the reason for their "adoption" in pre-school education. For if they were merely a method of guidance imposed on the hand and the eye, as SEGUIN maintained, this would not explain why children spontaneously seek them out. And if the only objective was to experience one of the first "intellectual" pleasures, i.e. the recognition of shapes, then superpositioning of a shape on its equivalent drawn on a board would seem preferable. But this is not the case --the real motivation lies elsewhere: in the actual act of insertion.
ZI Les outils de l'enfance. A. Michelet, Delachaux et Niestlé.
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C. Shape-matching at different levels
Shape-matching of objects
This is the initial stage of shape-matching, which consists of replacing a complete object in its lodging place. Geometric shapes, although rarely used, are still to be seen and, in fact, have even had a certain return to favour thanks to the manufacture of new, more attractive versions of the old, rigid boards. The themes covered by these shape-matching games are very varied: common objects, animals, vehicles, and- sometimes a mixture of subjects.
The integration of objects
The principle is the same, that is, to replace free-standing objects in their lodging place. But here the background is not just a piece of cardboard or a plain sheet of plywood. It involves a picture with which the free-standing shapes have a logical connexion. From the holistic point of view this is a more enriching type of game, since it calls for an effort of observation or can involve a story which links the object to be replaced with the overall scene into which it fits. This gives an additional dimension to shape-matching, which initially simply involved shape recognition.
The re-constitution of objects
This is a matter of re-assembling the various pieces which together make up a single object. The object must be cut up, not arbitrarily, but in conformity with the major elements of which it is composed. A truck, for example, should be cut up into its components of cabin, chassis and wheels. This type of shape-matching game corresponds very well with the notion of "learning about things", which shows us that everything around us, everything made by human ingenuity, is made up of major functional elements assembled in coherent fashion (here we come
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back to the concept of structure). We ourselves are also similarly constituted. Indeed, DECROLY himself recommended the use of a representation of a little boy and a little girl cut up into several pieces. Such models are rarely to be found on the market, not doubt because they would have shocked the sensibilities of customers. Such models, often lifesize, are, however, used in remedial education to help certain children to understand their own bodily structure.
The shape-matching game set.in its environment
The preceding application shows the pedagogical efficacity of the shape-matching game. It is linked to the evolution of the child and to the place he occupies in the world. Inversely, the principle of the shape-matching game cannot be grasped, and thus the game carried through, if the child is not mature enough to make a comparison between two shapes (recognition of their similarities and differences and, at another level, understanding of how the two come together to form a whole). The period during which he is absorbed by shape-matching games is also the time when he becomes able to dress himself, to identify the sleeve of his pullower and his arm and to establish a relationship between the two. In its turn, the shape-matching game can help him to achieve this stage. Also at this time children will spontaneously establish a number of new relationships. No longer satisfied with just cuddling a teddy bear or doll, they will want a bed or a pram to put it in or take it out of. Soon they will have established a multitude of links between themselves, their teddy bears or dolls and the rest of their environment, which will expand to become a little universe. The world of games itself will no longer be a world of imitations, but a world of relationships and creativity. Drawing, construction games and theme toys will bring structure to their world.
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All these methods are positive. Shape-matching games are remarkably effective means of initiation into shape recognition and the understanding of the relationships between things. A necessary tool in the education of children who have comprehension difficulties, they also provide useful experience for all children, very few of whom reject shape-matching games. But they cover only a brief stage in the child's development. As soon as possible the space-matching experience must open out to experimentation at a higher level of representation. The classic progression is to move on from space matching to the super-imposition of shapes, first on to complete drawings and then on to outline drawings; the next step is for the child himself to draw the outlines. As things fall into place, when . the children have mastered shape recognition, they must be freed from the constraints of the space-matching game so that they can progress to making combinations of the different shapes.
Logically, activities involving the use of space-matching games are suitable for the age at which the very action of placing a shape into its lodging place in itself offers the satisfaction that comes with the mastering of a sensorimotor skill. More complicated exercises can wery well be carried out using drawings on cardboard. At this stage shape insertion no longer serves any purpose and, having fulfilled its function as a motivating force, a guide and a means of self-correction, it must be rapidly abandoned.
Why, then, are complicated space-matching games to be seen which treat the child as though he were retarded in the acquisition of sensorimotor skills by offering him exercises which really call for another kind of educational equipment? In a catalogue dating a few years back one such game is described as follows: "A space-matching game with variants --each box includes four stands containing four subjects of the same size and colour, but with slight variations. Very distinctive, the subjects are cut up into from two to four pieces so as to give gradations of difficulty". It's all there --gradations of complexity, the re-constitution of shapes, the sorting of colours and the discernment of variations within each colour. A very luxurious piece of equipment which teaches... What?
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The two illustrations on this page and on page 106 show examples of other aberrant space-matching games. It should not be imagined that, with the recent wide extension of educational materials to the very youngest children, this type of game has disappeared. Look at current catalogues. You will find in them games involving shapes of decreasing size (we have seen above that seriation in the space-matching game context is a nonsense) and similar shapes that are only differentiated by a nuance of detail or position --for example the rotation of the sails of a windmill. All DECROLY's visual games on cardboard have thus been plagiarized and turned into space-matching games hollowed out in plywood.
Fortunately, thanks to the ingenuity of publishers and craftsmen, many varied versions of space-matching games have been devised, some of which link up felicitously with other activities.
Figure A
The object depicted is fixed (except for a few parts which are drawn on the movable pieces) and it is the background, consisting of twenty-four pieces which differ only in the very minute details in the way they have been cut out, which has to be painstakingly re-assembled. With regard to tactile or visual recognition, motivation to play or gestalt, this piece of equipment is the embodiment of nonsense as related to Decroly's theory from which it is (erroneously) derived.
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Figure B
Consists of shapes of decreasing size, each cut arbitrarily into four parts for a total of thirty-two pieces. Here the acquisition of the notion of decreasing size would first require very advanced judgement. These two models, distributed around 1930-1935, seem to bear witness to competition in the invention of educational equipment taken to absurd lengths.
D. Space-matching games in a new perspective
Communication
The space-matching game is above all a solitary activity in which the child becomes silently absorbed. It is a game played in isolation --the child places the shapes into their hollows, and that is that. This, at least, is the generally accepted view.
It is true that, as a nursery game, it could form the basis of a dialogue between child and mother; but this was far from being the case at school. Schools, however, have evolved --their ideal of the well-behaved, "good" child has been replaced by that of the active, co-operative, imaginative pupil. As a result, space-matching games have also evolved. The new versions of these games (and this is true also of puzzles) are seen as providing the background to a story inspired by the picture it shows, to which the movable shapes add a feeling of animation. The
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next step is a series of games each of which carries the story a stage further, providing each time a motive for tackling shapes, colours, sizes (in this context a good thing), comparisons and even construction. In this way, and this is a novelty in teaching, a complete teaching method is offered. A further notable fact is that the two teams that conceived these systems were made up of teachers, psychologists and remedial educationists. The space-matching game has re-discovered its traditional roots.
The logical approach
With the coming of logical/mathematical teaching methods, sensory games yielded ground to games involving "operational manipulations". This was a welcome development in so far as sensory games, whose conceptual basis was no different from that of sensorimotor games, strayed in all directions away from their function of training in basic skills (as we have seen with space-matching games) in an attempt to refine, prolong and complicate this function but succeeding merely in getting the child bogged down in a series of activities that led nowhere. The sensory games, it was claimed, gave rise to concepts, whereas all they did, often to no purpose, was to accumulate notions. SEGUIN had been right one hundred and forty years ago, when he taught that only combinatory activities bore any relationship to the development of intelligence, but the teaching profession remained deaf to his opinions and persisted in producing sensory games. It required PIAGET, with his operational manipulations, and DIENES, with his "ensemble" games, to open up a fruitful path. Their approach has often been arbitrarily and even wrongly applied, but it had the merit of showing that starting with a few elementary sensory notions such as shape, colour, thickness, it was possible to introduce an endless variety of games involving differentiations, separations, diagrams, etc., something which was quite impossible with space-matching games.
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Nevertheless, very little is needed to free space-matching games from their constraints and open them up to combinatory activities. Let us take, for example, one of the most elementary space-matching games, known in France as 'Baby-cherche', which is made up of a number of large geometrical shapes. If these shapes are divided in such a way that several pieces are needed to fill a matrix and that these pieces can be inserted into the matrix in a number of different ways, you will then have a "composed shapes" version of 'Baby-cherche' which calls for combinatory activity. The game retains its sensory aspect but introduces the combinatory element.
The basic approach in modern teaching, whilst not neglecting the necessary basic sensory notions, is to bring these acquired sensorimotor skills into play in operations involving concepts as soon as possible. Space-matching games have much to contribute to this.
E. The principle of the puzzle
We have seen above that there is no hierarchical difference between space-matching games and puzzles; the simplest puzzles involve a task very similar to that set by space-matching games. Nevertheless, since in puzzles the shapes are cut out in an arbitrary fashion, the significance of the task may be less evident to the child. In space-matching games the child's actions are directed towards the integration of pieces guided by the matching hollows. With puzzles the task is more complex, more disparate and involves identification of factors external to the intrinsic meaning of the object depicted.
Generally speaking, it is desirable to begin with space-matching games or the intermediate versions of them on offer today. But puzzles, because of their increasing difficulty, go much further and last much longer than space-matching games. Are they wearisome? Their popularity with children would seem to deny this charge. Almost all children seem to like to do the same kind of puzzle over and over again with inexhaustible patience, each re-constitution of _the puzzle being viewed as a different
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undertaking. However, puzzles should be available with a variety of themes, so as to add each time to their pleasure, and be graded in difficulty, so that the children's progress can be followed.
The traditional puzzle was always cut out in the sinuous pattern with which we are familiar. Since DECROLY's time, there have been elementary puzzles cut out in geometrical shapes, but this does not seem to have made re-constitution of the puzzle any easier, as far as perception of the picture is concerned, and the elimination of even very simple interlocking of the pieces makes it difficult for unskilled hands to keep the whole puzzle together. For this reason this type of puzzle is often placed in a frame. A range of puzzles exists that are stamped out of wood or strong cardboard, and with these puzzles the mark of the stamp can be clearly seen on the base of the frame. Curiously enough, when this is the case, it has been noted that young children put the puzzle together by reference to the outline of the cut and comparison of the contours visible on the base with the contours of the pieces. The geometric shape, or part of a shape, portrayed is not taken into account (no doubt because this is still somewhat meaningless to them), and at this level the technique of solving a puzzle is closer to that used with space-matching games.
For certain children, and this is especially true of mentally defective children, even when there are no contour markings on the base of the frame, a lot of time is spent and priority given to seeking to re-assemble the puzzle by comparison of shapes, which is only possible where few, very large pieces are involved and where the cut is very simple.
It is now common practice to supply puzzles with a drawing to be placed underneath it or to be used for reference. For larger puzzles a poster is often supplied of the size of the completed puzzle. This practice helps to reinforce the interest of using the illustration depicted by the puzzle as a means of re-assembling it. With these initial precautions taken, progression is but a matter of the number of pieces and sometimes also of the colours and the presentation of the image. But this is a matter which does not concern us here.
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The approach to puzzles, the one question which concerns us from the educational point of view, was examined by Hildegard HETZER in "L'analyse des apprentissages requis par le puzzle".
Among the prerequisites for the handling of puzzles, three points have to be singled out. The child must be:
- mature enough to undertake this activity, that is to say, to understand that one can construct something by the modifications one makes with things or to things; to understand that each element of the puzzle is part of a whole and must find its place in the puzzle;
- able to understand the tasks involved and be ready to carry them out; these tasks relate to the specific nature of the equipment and the rules to be obeyed; the task with a puzzle is to reassemble a whole from its component elements, to achieve this the child must grasp that it is possible and be able to make the necessary movements;
- prepared to make the effort necessary to achieve the objective (perseverance, concentration); the child must be able to summon up his reserves to complete the game.
Puzzles make specific demands upon the performer. He must:
- be able to face up to the tasks involved, have a clearly defined objective and already have enough structured activity behind him to be able to tackle a game of re-assembly;
- understand the picture, that is to say, understand in his mind the meaning (sense, content) of what is portrayed in the picture; in order to recognize this content, he must already have a certain knowledge and experience of the objects depicted --things that performers have no knowledge of cannot be recognized in the pictures;
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- be able to combine and bring together the various parts of the picture by comparing the shape of the pieces, the colours and the contours as he completes each part of the picture which figures in the content portrayed; this calls for perception, comparison of sense-data and painstaking examination of the pieces;
- remember the pieces that have earlier been put aside as not immediately placeable when the moment comes when they can be inserted (recall of colours, shapes, the content of the picture);
- be able to reflect critically on a course of action --determine what fits and what does not fit before actually trying physically to fit the pieces together;
- have sufficient manual dexterity to be able to fit the pieces together accurately;
- be able to learn through experience of the game how to set about it and ways of solving problems (begin the puzzle from the edges, assemble pieces together when it can be seen that they fit together, group pieces together in relation to their dominant colour, etc.).
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