Concentration
Is it a habit that can be acquired?
“Concentrate” writes: “I have no particular trouble I’m pleased to say but would like advice on the following points:
(1) Concentration. A small girl friend of ours has just commenced school at our local High School. The teacher says she is a very bright child, but will not concentrate. Now, I’m wondering if this state of affairs is ‘quite the usual’ and with careful training the child will learn to concentrate when she is older. To me it seems such an important point in a child’s training. I have a small girl of three, who, like all healthy kiddies, is very busy and active. What I would like to know is ‘can I’ or ‘how can I’ train her to concentrate? Daddy says, leave her ‘quite free’, but is it best to leave matters to take their own course?
(2) Toys. Can a child have too many of the simple variety? We seem to have collected such a lot – a doll’s pram, dolls, tea set, iron, rolling-pin, etc., a really nice counting frame, balls, bricks, a lovely piece of old blanket, which is a work of art with its bright wool stitches, and so I seem to be able to go on and on. If I turn out the toy box I hardly know which to dispose of, as they are all loved. Usually the toys are brought out a few at a time, then the ‘stale’ ones go back and a few fresh ones come out. I’m quite certain I this particular case the apparently large number of toys is not destroying the creative impulse; rather than the reverse. Several of my friends allow their children ‘half a dozen toys and no more,’ but I think one can err in this direction. I think my question of concentration will be of general interest, and if you could answer through ‘The Nursery World’ columns I should be grateful.”
As you suggest, a great many people worry themselves about this question of teaching children to concentrate, but as a rule the whole problem tends to be wrongly conceived. We can’t teach concentration in the way we can teach reading and writing. Concentration means one of two things: either being so interested in what one is doing that one has no thought for anything else, or being able to go on doing something that is not in itself enthrallingly interesting, but is done for some further end which has a real value of its own. Now, the first form of concentration is undoubtedly the most valuable. All the great creative achievements of men and women in art and music and literature and science and sport are achieved because they are of absorbing and spontaneous delight. They have not sprung from a will or act of concentration, but from their inherent attraction. Now, the child, at any rate over five or six years, shows plenty of concentration of this kind. He can be completely absorbed in his building or modelling or games or make-believe, or in listening to story or to music. The other kind of situation in which one has to do dull or irksome or routine work that has no appeal of its own, but is part of a larger whole which has an intrinsic value, plays a very large part in the world too, of course. Every mother, every nurse, every business man, and even the artist and scientist, have plenty of drudgery as well as creative delight. But the drudgery and the ability to go on with the dull routine are only really possible for us when we have some further attractive purpose to serve. The mother slaves for her children’s welfare. The business man, the engineer, the scientist, know well that they cannot gain their greater ends without the dull routine. And yet none even of us grown-ups, unless we were stupid, or machine-like in our own natures, or except when driven by economic considerations, could carry out continuous drudgery that did not serve some greater end that we valued.
Of course, the child has to learn to be able to carry on routine activities that have no intrinsic appeal if he is to be able to achieve the greater ends and if he is to hold his place in the world. But it is useless to expect him to “concentrate” in a vacuum.
According to his age he will be able to go on with, for example, the drudgery of learning to spell, to write clearly and legibly, etc. if he has some vivid sense of the value of such things, if they have some meaning and purpose for him. The ordinary boy of ten or twelve years of age has a great capacity for sustained routine work, provided only that he sees the motives for carrying it out and has a lively sense of an intelligible end to be achieved. The younger child has less ability for concentration of this kind, even when he wants to gain something by it. The periods of effort must therefore be shorter, and the results more immediate. With the younger child still, say under five or six, concentration is hardly a normal possibility. With all his abundant interests in the world around him, and his great delight in the exercise of his sense and his muscles, the little child’s attention normally moves on from one thing to another. He may have short periods of complete absorption in some kind of play, but to expect him to stick to one thing for any length of time, or to demand that he should stick to something which has no appeal in itself, is simply to violate the normal laws of his growth. Only the dullest children will go on doing the same thing over and over again.
Concentration in the second sense, of sticking to a task, even when it does not hold one’s spontaneous interest, thus only comes to be possible as the child grows older, and is really only to be expected in the later years of childhood. The first task of a teacher who has a bright child and who will not concentrate is to inquire into her own methods of teaching. She should first make sure that she has found the right sort of appeal to the child’s interest before blaming the difficulty on the child. On the other hand, it is perfectly true that there are occasional children who don’t seem able to develop any steady interest in any occupation. This is not, however, a normal characteristic of children, and there is usually some conflict or inhibition behind it which should be inquired into.
(2) Toys. No, I don’t think that there is any harm in a child having plenty of toys of the simple variety that she can use either in make-believe play or in construction of some sort. Children can certainly have too many of the merely mechanical kind with which there is nothing much to be done, but I don’t see that there is any reason to be niggardly with the kind of toys that you mention. I don’t see any virtue in the “half a dozen toys and no more” theory.
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