An example of a wide ranging discussion of this kind is that between G. H. Bantock and Boris Ford in successive issues of the literary and critical quarterly, Scrutiny, during 1948. Bantock has elaborated his strictures on “progressive” untraditional educational techniques in later publications and Ford has expressed his appreciation of the “creative” elements of education in The Journal of Education (England) and elsewhere.
2.
But Bush reports detailed systematic observations that suggest that the American school indeed seems to be an “affectional desert”. (BushR. N.The Pupil-Teacher Relationship. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954, 81.) Bush has made later surveys of the roles of Australian teachers and secondary pupils. (Aust. J. Education, April, 1958, 41).
3.
BourneGeorge. Change in the Village; Sturt. The Wheelwright's Shop, and a number of other texts describe the traditional, pre-Industrial-Revolution society in England.
A study group held first in 1953 in Geneva and consisting of Piaget, Inhelder, Lorenz, Grey Walter, Margaret Mead and a number of other prominent medical scientists and psychologists—discussions reported in TannerJ. M.InhelderB.Discussions on Child Development. London: Tavistock, 1956.
6.
TannerInhelder, op. cit., 186.
7.
Many other examples might be cited. The two tramps in Beckett's passionate and desperate play, “Waiting for Godot”, who snarl at and depend on each other, illustrate both the necessity and the pathology of object relations. Wordsworth shows clear insight into the sensory and other physical interchange involved as well as the comprehensive significance of the mother-child object-relation in “The Prelude”: … Blest the Babe Nursed in his Mother's arms who sinks to sleep Rocked on his Mother's breast who with his soul Drinks in the feelings of his Mother's eye. A virtue which irradiates and exalts Objects through widest intercourse of sense No Outcast he—such unity is the first Poetic Spirit of our human life. (For contrast see Lorenz's description of children—and animals—who have had their emotional and social reactions “knocked out of them”: Tanner and Inhelder, op. cit., 153).
8.
It is of interest to note the similarities (in stages and in successive ranges achieved) of this account to Malinowski's picture of widening kinship relations in primitive societies. Malinowski, of course, explicitly claimed that the dynamics of his model was quite other than these suggested here.
9.
In a more extended treatment, a finer classification of educational situations would be used at this point and finer distinctions made between the types of interaction possible between intrinsic development and school relations. This unavoidable lack of sophistication will in some cases blur contrasts that should be clear: the same analyses do not, it must be reiterated, apply to children at all stages of development.
10.
Identifications are not limited to “heroes” and “heroines”; they may be with a general practical way of life; identification with apparently “unworthy” figures will not necessarily be unproductive. The process of identification needs careful educational investigation; opportunities for identification, for instance, in rural and in urban education seem very different.
11.
Cf. Burt's “‘Dark Ages’ of Childhood”. Report of Consultative Committee on the Primary School, 1931, 254. Within this sketch of theory it is not possible to develop an analysis of the games of primary children nor of their fictional identifications, but it is possible that theory in this area would suggest a main point d'appui for the primary curriculum after the first acquisition of basic skills loses its compelling interest.
12.
Bantock emphasizes this valuably, if too frequently—the importance of traditions of intellectual effort; and finds himself in what must seem rather strange company, that of Anna Freud. (The Ego and its Mechanisms of Defence. London: Hogarth, 1937, 161–165).
13.
If one seeks for appropriate analogies for the function of the School as an institution, one is drawn to the mediæval guilds and craft mysteries which provided rudimentary training and social experience, recognition of outstanding adult merit, dramatic and other aesthetic expression, political experience and opportunities, endowment of education, and the comforts and glories of religion.
14.
The first use of this term in somewhat the sense intended (although of adult prisoners-of-war being resettled in civilian life) seems to have been in “Transitional Communities and Social Reconstruction”, Adam Curie, Human Relations, I, 2, and a sequel (I, 240, with E. L. Trist).
