CHAPTER I

TOY-MAKING AND ITS EDUCATIONAL POSSIBILITIES

One's main object in teaching children how to make toys should be "to teach them how to make toys." Through their efforts to make a beautiful toy they may become more patient, more accurate, more observant, and more nimble with their fingers, but these virtues will come more naturally and readily if the teacher has but one object in view; singleness of purpose is the secret of success.

Through classes in toy-making rightly conducted the children become more resourceful, more quick at finding the right thing for the right place, happier in some cases--that is to say, the so-called dull child, the child that has no gift for mathematics, no memory for languages, can often find in the handwork class the happiness of doing something well, of producing a praiseworthy and pleasure-giving piece of work.

It is very necessary to find occupation for backward children, who sometimes drift rather aimlessly through the school, occupation that will develop initiative and involve effort, occupation that will bring disappointments (so often one careless bit of work spoils an almost finished toy), but will also bring the joy of successful achievement.

The ordinary lessons--English, French, etc.--may be said also to bring their disappointments and joys, but not in the same tangible way as the handwork lesson. The table that will not stand steadily because all its legs have not been carefully cut the right length teaches to a certain type of mind a more forcible lesson than the incorrect sum or French exercise.

Again, it is very necessary that one lesson period a week should be devoted to an occupation which is of the nature of a hobby; the ordinary history and geography lessons do not often suggest voluntary work for the children's leisure. Indeed, in many cases it is easier to train children to become future clerks and teachers than to train them how to use their leisure. Now handwork classes suggest leisure occupations. The children who begin to make their own toys in the lower forms for themselves, when older will want to make them for other little children, when older, too, they will begin to ask how to make useful articles--writing-cases, medicine-chests, knife-boxes, soap-boxes--articles very frequently suggested by their parents and much valued by them when made.

One need scarcely fear for the future of the child, however dull and mechanical her daily work as a grown-up person may be, if she has abundant interests in life--if she can use and love to use in leisure moments hammer, saw, and file, or if she has some other healthy hobby. Still, for those who like the pleasant noise and pleasant mess caused by tools, it is hard to find a happier occupation than toy-making. A toy-maker becomes at once a collector of useful odds and ends, and a collector (that is, one who collects willingly the things he likes) is always a happy person; the toy-maker becomes, too, the contriver, one who can adapt materials to different purposes, and the giver--for the finished article must be disposed of.

The mere acquisition of knowledge forms the least important part of school work. A large number of facts in connexion with history, geography, French, etc., have rightly to be learnt by heart and are useful to the child in after life, but they do not bring with them necessarily wisdom, nor does the learning of them play such an important part in the child's development as the activity of the child in the handwork class does. Some one has wisely said, "If education at school means nothing more to the children than a respectable routine and a few examinations successfully circumvented, then education is a failure; if _besides that_, it has enlivened the years and counted for something in the general joy of growing, then it has a real value--a value which entitles it to a place among happy memories, perhaps even the highest place of all." Many of us perhaps feel in looking back on our schooldays how many good things we lost for the sake of learning some now forgotten facts; how many good things we lost to be first in class; we confused means with ends, we toiled over our history and learnt it to get full marks in the coming test (we should have toiled over our toy for love of making it and to produce as perfect a one as possible); in after life we would gladly tread some of the by-paths of knowledge, have some hobby, but our rigorous system of training left us no opportunity in young days, and sapped the energy that alone would make it possible in after years.

No scheme of work then for schooldays must be so rigorous that it leaves no leisure for 'feast days.' Some days, some hours must come back to memory, bringing not only their past happiness, but ideas for present occupation. The happiest days of youth are generally the busiest, days when one had something one really wanted to be busy about for its own sake, not for the sake of marks or for the sake of outstripping one's fellow-pupils, or for the sake of one's future. These busy, happy, idle days are the feast days of youth, days one thinks of as the poet thought when he wrote:

And none will know the gleam there used to be About the feast days freshly kept by me, But men will call the golden hour of bliss 'About this time,' or 'shortly after this.'

This book on toy-making is not written to advocate the so-called 'primrose path in education,' the 'turn-work-into-play theory,' though undoubtedly the first chapters at least of this book will be attacked by those who fear that education is yielding or is going to yield to a popular clamour for ease.

For these people, too, Masefield has a message:

Best trust the happy moments. What they gave Makes man less fearful of the certain grave, And gives his work compassion and new eyes; The days that make us happy make us wise.

Moreover, every teacher of handwork knows how little ease the busy children in her classes get--in these classes they are never passive listeners or passive learners by heart. They see the need of accuracy, the labour necessary to produce it, they suffer for every mistake they make, they realise some of the joy and pain of creating, and, best of all perhaps, they realise the joy of work--active, muscular work as distinguished from their ordinary scholarly work.

With regard to the question of work it has been ably said that "No one has yet preached in an adequate way the gospel of work--real hard work--as the most amusing of all occupations--not a noble duty."

It is somewhat unfortunate that directly one begins to like one's work one is accused of playing.

To return to toy-making (which is work or play, according to whether one dislikes or likes it)--whether toy-making be taken in the school or not, the teachers will find it a useful hobby. Through it they can amuse themselves and renew their youth; through it they will have an enduring bond of union with their children.

Our knowledge of history and geography often fails to impress our children; they probably think we are a little foolish to burden our heads with so many facts that seem to have no bearing on to-day; but when we can use our hands and make a toy they see us with other eyes, we are really clever people worth cultivating.

If toy-making be taken as a form of handwork in school, one enlists at once the interest of the parent--especially of the father--the mother sometimes, not often, objects to the mess. This interest of the parents is a great gain; the father delights in doing a bit of the work--sticking on the difficult funnel, sawing the hard piece of wood; child learns from parent, and parent from child, and in this way the father may again remember half-forgotten ambitions, half-neglected talents, and find in toy-making a profitable occupation, profitable mainly in the fact that any occupation which recalls to the grown-up person his youth, with its fresher outlook on life, must be wholesome.

Finally, if the handwork classes make the children more 'at home' with themselves and with life, they will have done something; if they help them toward self-realisation they will help them toward the joy the writer speaks of who says, "Joy of life seems to me to arise from a sense of being where one belongs, as I feel right here; of being four-square with the life we have chosen. All the discontented people I know are trying sedulously to be something they are not, to do something they cannot do.... It is curious, is it not, with what skill we will adapt our sandy land to potatoes and grow our beans with clay, and with how little wisdom we farm the soil of our own natures?"