Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-12-15
AIMS TO DEVELOP
BABES INITIATIVE
Dr.. Sherman Working for
Personality Rather Than
Mind Training.

school systems.
They are thinking of dolls, puppies
kiddy cars and Santa Claus, but the
learned psychologists who are watching
their spontaneous behavior. sometimes
from hidden points of vantage, are
thinking of some of the oldest and
deepest problems which have troubled
the human mind They want to know
why folks act as they do, and what can
be done about it.
Such is the explanation of DR.. Man
del Sherman, research center director
of the experimental program under
way which soon will make it necessary
to add groups of children of other
ages and to have an enlarged staff in
bigger quarters.
Minute Data Is Secured.
DR.. Sherman and his aides are pio-
neering in the more advanced fields
of character and personality education.
which they consider of equal impor-
lance with training the mind-or rather
having pupils accommodate a certain
mass of information. They are check
ing the slight week -to-Week changes
which take place in the behavior pat
terms of children against changes in
environment, incidents in play and
physical changes which may have gwen
rise to them.
Such Roadway already has been
made. DR.. Sherman says, that sooner
or later public education must be rad
ically changed to be efficient in pro-
ducing good citizens. From the begin
ming it has been concerned with giving
the child knowledge, teaching it to
read, write and do certain things con-
sidered desirable.
But it is obvious, the director says,
that the amount of this sort of educa-
ton, or even the intelligence which lies
behind it, is only one, and probably not
the most important factor in the sue
cess of the individual later in life. The
smart boy or girl struggles through life
on pittance while the dumb" kid be-
comes a millionaire or the star student
in medical school ends up as a second
rate country doctor while the fellow who
barely got through becomes famous
surgeon. Platitudes about the value of
hard work and honest endeavor don't
work, and the world can't understand
what is the matter.
Personality Development Important.
The trouble, says Dr. Sherman, lies in
the defects of the educational system
which goes on year after year stalking
everything on the mind alone without
paying attention to the more important
factor of personality, largely for the
reason that so little is generally known
about it. The work at the Child Re-
search Center is one of the first at
tempts to establish a school of per-
Sonality to which other educational
systems can turn as a model.
With what technique we have al
ready developed" DR.. Sherman said,
1--WE find that we can raise the intelli-
gence Slightly, but very slightly. in a
year The average intelligence quo
tient of children entering last year was
1l9, against 122 when they left. But
their increased ability to do things was
all out of proportion to this Slight in
crease in intelligence because so many
other factors besides intelligence, to
which schools pay no attention, are in
volved in actually doing things
THE education of the future must be
one not only of information but of per-
sonality development, not only in ad-
justment to new situations which is the
essential factor in intelligence but in
creative ability and intellectual curios-
ity."
Work TO Be Extended Later.
The research work now is confined to
children OF pre-kindergarten age. but
eventually it will be necessary DR..
Sherman says, to add groups through
all the age levels of the elementary
grades in order to follow through the
developing personality.
Children sent to the center are
frankly made the subjects of research,
but, says DR.. Sherman, this consists
largely in watching them. Any detri-
mental experimentation soon would ruin
the material by creating an abnormal
group. The children actually receive
such benefits from being the subjects of
experiments that several still unborn
are enrolled in advance for entrance
when they are years old, and there
Is a far larger list of applicants than
can be considered"
The work is financed by a national
foundation, with some of the newer ac-
tivlties financed by parents themselves
In addition to the work in checking
the factors influencing personality de-
Velopment, the center staff has made
some important contributions to the
physiology of childhood during the
year, which are calculated to upset
some popular notions.
"Air Doesn't Increase Appetite"
1t has been found that active play in
the open air does not really increase
children'S appetiteS Observations taken
every day for the past six months show
that moderate amount of play out
doors causes child to eat a very little
more than otherwise, but after very
active morning the food consumption
actually drops.
The same is true of sleep. There is
the striking correlation, says DR.. Sher-
man, of SO between excessive activity
in the morning and the afternoon nap.
The more active the child has been the
less likely that it will got sleep. This
is probably due to toxins stored in the
body by the excessive energy of the
muscles or to tenSeness of the muscles
which cannot be overcome quickly.
The experiments show. he says, that
the young child doesn't need so much
sleep as is generally supposed. Under
the system at the center sleep is clock
like in its regularity The children
crawl into bed IN the afternoon. go to
sleep almost immediat ely sleep almost
exactly the same time every day, wake
up very quickly and jump out of bed
And records of all the children for a
year show that the average period of
sleep, which is thus regulated entirely
by the needs of the body itself, is 80
minutes.
The two-hour nap, he says, seems
foolish after this test and some parents
probably insist upon it for their own
convenience. But the clock-like falling
to sleep ard waking up would be diff
cult to duplicate in the ordinary home,
whose routine cannot be arranged
entirely to suit the needs of the child,
Parents Organization Formed.
The children at the research center,
he says. go to sleep that way because
it is the socially approved thing to do
a compelling motive even with g.
year-olds. Once the habit has been
established in group all the other
children fall into it automatically If
they are left alone.
The fact that the children go to sleep
in this way, the organism acting
naturally. probably means that the