ed practice.
But no amount of drill can give the all-round experience necessary for
physical readiness for an emergency, physical and mental power to
endure, active co-operation, where self-control holds in check ambitious
personal impulses: and no drill seems to give grace and beauty of motion
that the natural activity of dancing can give. It is through the games
that British children inherit, and by means of which they have
unconsciously rehearsed many of the situations of life, that they have
been able to take their place readily in the life of the nation and even
to help to save it. Again, as in other directions, children must be made
to play the game in its thoroughness, for a well-played game gives the
right balance to the activities: drill is more specialised, and has
specialisation for its end: a game calls on the whole of an individual:
he must be alert mentally and physically; and at the same time the sense
of fairness cannot be too strongly insisted on; no game can be tolerated
as part of education where there is looseness in this direction, from
the skittles of the nursery class to the cricket and hockey of the
seventh standard, and nothing will so entirely outrage the children's
feelings as a teacher's careless arbitration. In physical games, too,
the social side is strongly developed: leadership, self-effacement and
co-operation are more valuable lessons of experience than fluent reading
or neat writing or accurate additions: but they have not counted as such
in our economic system of education; they have taken their chance: few
inspectors ask to see whether children know how to "play the game," and
yet they are so soon to play the independent game of life. But the
individual output of reading and sums of a sneaking and cowardly, or
assertive and selfish child, is as good probably as that of a child that
has the makings of a hero in him. And then we wonder at the propensities
of the "lower classes." It is because we have never made sure that they
can play the game.

To summarise: play in the Nursery School stage is unorganised, informal,
and pursued with no motive but pleasure in the activity itself; it is
mainly individual. Play in the Transition Class is more definitely in
the form of games, _i.e._ organised play, efforts of skill, mental or
physical; it becomes social. Play in the Junior School is almost an
occasional method, because the work motive is by this time getting
stronger.

CHAPTER XIX