Evening star., 1928-11-08
The why" Stage.

have a typical why boy. now nearly
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Seeanses anSssS' of rs NINE tSst satsty him and
rs tns to pSt STa doWn what aRe is.
I'm stuck. Has this been investigatsd2 s,s1
Reply.
It has long been noted by child-psy-
biologists that a keen test Of child's
mind is his skill in handling why's"
and "becauses" What reasons satisfy
indicate the kind Of reasoning OF which
YOU are capable. It's just as true Of
the adult mind. Until recently, how
ever, there was no special investtga-
ton of children's "becauSes;" now
there's a whole book about 1t and an
institute in Geneva, Switzerland, for
the special study of the child's mind.
One of their methods of collecting
specimens of children'S reasoning Is to
have a stenographer follow a child for
several hours each day and take down
everything the child says, both IN play
ing and talking to itself and other
by its elders. That's not an easy job;
and only by patient examination OF
these shorthand notebooks can one get
a motion picture Of a child's growing
mind.
Intelligent mothers with a fair for
psychology are really interested in the
details Of how the child grows; others
are content to say, Johnny Is getting
smarter and smarter every day."
hope you can get up a special interest
long enough to be interested in the
answer to this rather special question,
becaus it may help you to a little In
sight into your own mind.
Prof. Piaget, who made these in
vestigations, found that little children
are interested only in themselves. Each
has a little circle of interest. and he
stands in the center of It, When chill
dren at the age Of 3 or 4 are play
ing in the same room, they don't play
together; each just plays by himself
in the company of another. From that
age on they begin to play one with
the other, and converse; for what one
saws the other now replies to. Yet
still one mostly tells the other what
he himself is doing. Do you recognize
that trait in their elders? Do you know
people who want to talk more than
they want to listen?
! The first type of because" comes out
of that personal relation. It's per-
sonal ''because"-a motive; it tells
why you do things. why did you
come home?" Because I was angry
at Johnny" why" Because ne
The early stage of reasoning operates
almost wholly In this field OF per-
sonal interest. And so when 1t thun-
ders, God is angry!" All this is
precisely what occurs nj the childhood
of the race. Primitive peoples ex-
planation Of the wind and weather is
all personal, and they invent gods and
demons who act from motives like
their own. Myth and fairy-tale pro-
coed on this plan.
This shows a little Of the second
stage of why" and because" which
marks the really active why stage,
when the boy becomes a walking and
talking question-mark and tires out his
elders because every because" leads to
a new why" He Is now no longer SO
He is interested in many
other things, mainly things that he
still plays with and controls, but many
that represent his broadening world.
So when he asks, why do boats float
on the water?" he may be prompted to
this why" by his own experience with
things that float and things that sink.
He doesn't just accept the fact that
in his bath the soap floats but the
soap-dish sinks; he wants to know why.
He knows that soap doesn't do that
because it feels gay: there's reason.
The child has discovered q real cause,