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CHAPTER III. THE CREATIVE IMPULSE. Some things children are taught for the sake of the children, some they are taught for the sake of the things themselves. Where Latin and French, History and Geography are taught, the child starts with a better equipment for dealing with events, problems, and his fellow creatures. Where crafts are taught, the crafts themselves are enriched. It is in this spirit that crafts are taught at the Caldecott Community. The children are first taught reverence for the craft, and then are led on to workmanship, which is worship. For this reason the materials provided for the children are the best. In spite of low funds it would he considered false economy to give them cheap pens and had paper for drawing and painting, poor wood in the carpenter’s shop, or shoddy thread for weaving. Because the craft is to be approached with reverence, the technique is not to he discarded as superfluous. The use of the tools in each case is the necessary apprenticeship to the art, liberating not hampering self -expression. The child is not taught to copy, nor is he given the tools and told to express himself. He is taught the use of the tools, of the pen and the brush, the saw and chisel, the loom and the shuttle, and just in so far as he has control of his instrument, he is free to express himself, to write or draw or paint, to make furniture or toys, to weave beautiful material. It is not an apprenticeship of drudgery, moreover, but an apprenticeship of graded progress. The children are learning by doing. TKe youngest child m the school makes real things. The quality of the material and a high standard of workmanship necessitates care and concentration from the first, so that the child himself is distressed if a piece of work is spoilt. Taking pains becomes a habit, and not a matter of special effort for a special occasion. If a child is to keep this high standard and yet not he discouraged by his failures, he must he allowed to discard had beginnings, and apparently waste material. To force a child to continue a piece of work which for him is dead, is to wound his desire to attain perfection as far as he conceives it. The adult must, of course, discriminate between wanton impulsive throwing away and the genuine desire to re-do. Penmanship is the most universal art, and as such is taught seriously. The Roman script is used, as being at once the most beautiful and the most practical. The children are encouraged to write in a large hand until they have acquired an accurate and almost automatic formation. Drawing, on the other hand, is hardly taught at all, for whereas penmanship is a formal art, drawing depends on seeing, and if a child is told what to see, it may dim his vision permanently. Jack sits looking at his tree or view for a long long time, and then draws it in a few strokes and as many minutes, or even goes away and draws it somewhere else.