impulsive tendencies.
Experience has shown that when children have a chance at physical
activities which bring their natural impulses into play, going to
school is a joy, management is less of a burden, and learning is easier.
Sometimes, perhaps, plays, games, and constructive occupations are
resorted to only for these reasons, with emphasis upon relief from the
tedium and strain of "regular" school work. There is no reason, however,
for using them merely as agreeable diversions. Study of mental life has
made evident the fundamental worth of native tendencies to explore,
to manipulate tools and materials, to construct, to give expression
to joyous emotion, etc. When exercises which are prompted by these
instincts are a part of the regular school program, the whole pupil is
engaged, the artificial gap between life in school and out is reduced,
motives are afforded for attention to a large variety of materials and
processes distinctly educative in effect, and cooperative associations
which give information in a social setting are provided. In short, the
grounds for assigning to play and active work a definite place in
the curriculum are intellectual and social, not matters of temporary
expediency and momentary agreeableness. Without something of the kind,
it is not possible to secure the normal estate of effective learning;
namely, that knowledge-getting be an outgrowth of activities having
their own end, instead of a school task. More specifically, play and
work correspond, point for point, with the traits of the initial stage
of knowing, which consists, as we saw in the last chapter, in learning
how to do things and in acquaintance with things and processes gained
in the doing. It is suggestive that among the Greeks, till the rise
of conscious philosophy, the same word, techne, was used for art and
science. Plato gave his account of knowledge on the basis of an
analysis of the knowledge of cobblers, carpenters, players of musical
instruments, etc., pointing out that their art (so far as it was not
mere routine) involved an end, mastery of material or stuff worked upon,
control of appliances, and a definite order of procedure--all of which
had to be known in order that there be intelligent skill or art.

Doubtless the fact that children normally engage in play and work out
of school has seemed to many educators a reason why they should concern
themselves in school with things radically different. School time seemed
too p