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Chevin Golf Club has conferred the highest possible honour they can by making their professional Willie Bird Captain for 2012. Willie started golf as a junior member at Coxmoor golf club. In 1970 he turned professional and went to work as Assistant Professional to Brian Waites at Notts Golf Club Hollinwell. In 1976 to become Professional at the newly formed Shirland Golf Club near Alfreton - the year he and wife Mary got married. Willie came to Chevin in May 1980 and has lived in the village for 29 years.

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• Publié par: orzi
• Nombre de lectures: 83
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE SELF RESPECTING CHILD
ALISON STALLIBRASS
Acknowledgments
My heartfelt thanks are due to the many kind friends who encouraged
and criticized, and helped me to present my material in a readable form.
The genesis of the matter of the book was the Pioneer Health Centre
in Peckham, London. This family-club-cum-research-station was famous all
over the world in the years immediately before and after the 1939-45 war.
The aim of its director, Dr G. Scott Williamson, was to discover the nature
and quality of the activity of healthy human beings and the environment
created by them, and the kind of facilities it is necessary to provide in
order that ordinary people living in ordinary urban areas may cultivate health
and wholeness in themselves, their families and society.
I had the good fortune to be for three years a junior assistant to the
small but talented and enthusiastic team of research-workers led by Scott
Williamson. I was able not only to sit at their feet but, as I went about my job
of making available to the children of the member-families of the Centre’ the
space and equipment that they needed for their chosen activities, I was
able to watch whole families growing in health and happiness and
effectiveness.
It was the best possible way in which to obtain an understanding of the
process of healthy physical, emotional and mental growth in children,
and of the importance to growth of play. I am particularly grateful to Dr
Innes H. Pearse who offered me the position of student-assistant, and to
Lucy Crocker who was my patient mentor, and also to my parents who
encouraged me to do this training.
I am also very grateful to my husband for being consistently indulgent
of my enthusiasm and preoccupation, and for willingly sharing his home
with a pre-school playgroup for many years.
Running my own playgroup and research among the relevant literature
have clarified and developed in me the ideas encountered and absorbed
at the Pioneer Health Centre.Introduction
The purpose of this book is to deepen our understanding of the spontaneous
and voluntary activity of normal healthy children. It is written for parents and
for all those people who are interested in the possibility of increasing the
happiness and wisdom of future generations.
It does not contain a comprehensive list of all the games that children play,
or of all the skills or kinds of knowledge that they acquire through their
activity. But it does try to get to the bottom of play - to discover the basic needs
that children satisfy through play, and to answer such fundamental questions
as:
Why do children need to play and what sort of play do they choose?
Do children learn through their self-chosen play, and if so — what?
Is this learning necessary for their full and healthy development, and why?
Does the present-day environment of a child allow him to develop the
basic human faculties and a healthy, integrated personality and, if not, what
can be done about it?
We live increasingly in surroundings that are almost entirely man-made.
Knowing this, we may try to plan the environment for the good of all; but
we are working in the dark as far as children are concerned if we do not know
the answers to these questions. I believe that the present state of our knowledge
enables us to answer them. Lifelong students of various branches of human
and animal biology in different parts of the world have independently come
to very similar conclusions concerning the process of growth and the
developmental needs of young creatures. Together they provide the theory;
others have done practical work, trying out various play and learning
environments and observing the results, and these can be seen to provide
confirmation of the scientists hypotheses. There is no need to call for further
research. We can act now. Governments, planning authorities and groups
of families can all help to create an environment in which children may,
through their activity, realize their potential powers individuality and
integrity.It may be doubted if one can provide - or even conceive of - an environment
that suits ail children, for we know that every child has a unique genetic
make-up and therefore unique potential powers. Indeed, not only does
one child have a potentially quicker intelligence, a potentially stronger
emotional power, or a potenially finer sensibility than another, but each has
a different physique, a different metabolism, a different temperament
and different tastes from every other. Mothers of large families know that
from birth each child looks at the world and responds to it in a different
manner. This being the case, one child’s meat may be another child’s poison,
and one could maintain that it is impossible to find an environment that suits
all children.
However, this is only partly true because babies are all - or almost all
- alike in possessing the potentiality to become mature and complete human
beings; they contain within themselves at birth the seeds of the powers
that together constitute an effectively functioning member of the species
‘Mankind’ - but only the dormant seeds: all new-born babies are quite
ignorant and almost completely helpless; their physical, emotional and mental
powers must grow from nothing.
If this is to happen, the seedling powers must be exercised in an
appropriate manner, at the appropriate time, in appropriate surroundings.
Like all living things, powers grow by the digestion of nourishment from the
environment. How and why this happens - or does not happen - will be
explained in Part II, with particular reference to the work of Professor
Jean Piaget and of Dr Robert W. White.
The basic powers of a human being, the ability to see and recognize
objects, to move precisely when and where and how he will, to plan a course
of action, to put his thoughts and feelings into words or to respond to
events with spontaneity, integrity and realism, must be used if they are
to develop. If a young creature lacks nourishment for its body, its physical
growth will be stunted; similarly, if opportunities to exercise its powers
are lacking, its mental and emotional growth will be stunted.
I believe we should make it our business to find out what kind of food is
required by the basic powers that are common to all children, and to
provide it.
We must be quite sure what we are looking for. What exactly, for example,
is meant by the statement that a child’s faculties and his individuality develop
through the digestion of nourishment from the environment?In Walter de la Mare’s Peacock Pie there is a poem called ‘MissT:
It’s a very odd thing -
As odd as can be -
That whatever Miss T eats
Turns into Miss T;
Porridge and apples,
Mince, muffins and mutton,
Jam, junket, jumbles -
Not a rap, not a button
It matters: the moment
They’re out of her plate,
Though shared by Miss Butcher
And sour Mr. Bate;
Tiny and cheerful,
And neat as can be,
Whatever Miss T eats
Turns into Miss T
Exactly the same thing happens when experience is thoroughly digested; it
becomes part of a person; it nourishes his body-of-knowledge and his judgment,
but, at the same time, it is acted upon by his unique digestive juices, so to speak,
so that the resulting emotional and mental growth is peculiar to himself. Whatever
an individual does as a result of the digestion of experience is specific to himself
and therefore to some extent new and original.
A further point - not mentioned in the poem - was the fact that Miss T did not
digest all of what she ate. She assimilated only what was needed by her body at
the time for energy, growth and renewal. In the same way a wholly healthy child will
select from his environment the experiences that his powers need at the time for
growth. Just as the tissues of the body absorb what they currently need for growth
and renewal from the circulating blood, so the child takes the particular nourishment
needed by his basic human powers at any moment if it is present in his environment
and he is free to choose for himself. What is meant by freedom in, this context will
be made clear - I hope - later in the book.
The kind of knowledge and skill for which a small child has an appetite at any
moment may be entirely different from the kind that adults consider valuable.
But, in an environment that is appropriate to his needs, what a child wants to do
is what he needs to do in order to develop his potential wholeness as a human
being - if not to acquire the skills of the civilization into which he has been born.
That is why, in die sense of the word used in this book, play is as important as
schooling, or more so.Our task is to create an environment in which children may digest the
functional food they all need. Once we are agreed on the nature of this
environment, it should be possible - even now - to provide it.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In most cases
‘for he’ read ‘he or she’
‘for boy’ read ‘boy or girl’
for ‘man’ read ‘man or woman’
for ‘playgroup’ read ‘playgroup or nursery school’.
Toddler = a child between nine and thirty months who is learning to
walk and run efficiently.PART I
The Spontaneous Play of Healthy Children
CHAPTER ONE
What do we mean by Play?
I use the word ‘play’ in the sense in which it is commonly used when
children are the subje