FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE PLAY AN INVESTIGATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC UNIV. OF A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE PLAY AN INVESTIGATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION) BY LILLA ESTELLE APPLETON LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA CHICAGO THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 204465 COPYRIGHT 1910 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Published June, 1910 Composed and Printed By PREFACE Whoever has listened at educational gatherings to interminable discussions as to whether high-school courses should consist of four years' work or six; whether colleges should regulate the work of secondary schools, or secondary schools condition the work of colleges; whether promotions should be made once a year, or twice, or four times; where, in the curriculum, languages should be introduced; how much time should be given to purely "cultural studies," to manual training, and to arts; whether sciences should supersede the "disciplinary" studies, and so forth, and so forth, ad infinitum-whoever, we say, has listened to these endless disputations beginning nowhere and ending where they began, can hardly have failed to exclaim, "There must be some basis for the decision of all these points, which has never yet been reached, some ultimate controlling principle, to which all minor questions of form and content, of quantity and distribution, must be referred!" That such a principle is brought into clear and complete definition by the study here undertaken is not claimed by the author; but it is believed that it makes some real advance toward the discovery of such a principle. If the comparison of phylogenetic and ontogenetic play activities has taught us anything, it is that physical and mental life are so closely correlated that the type of the one cannot be dissociated from the type of the other in any individual. Hence any art of instruction, to be adequate to the situation, must likewise change in type from individual to individual, as well as from age to age. This statement of the principle, as a mere statement, is, perhaps, not startlingly original; but it would be startling indeed to find a school curriculum conforming to it. The difficulty in the way of such detailed adaptation is not so much in the failure of educators to comprehend the need, as in ignorance of how to meet the situation. Recognizing the inadequacy of past methods of instruction, they have added subject after subject to the school curriculum, in the vain hope that each new addition would overcome the deficiencies of the past. The analysis of play activities into their elements, however, and a determination of what elements predominate at different ages suggest the hypothesis that adaptation of the curriculum to actual growth conditions consists, not so much in introducing new subjects or eliminating old ones, as in analyzing each lesson, in whatever book or subject it may chance to 294463 |