Janusz Korczak_The Child's Right to Respect_En

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The Child’s Right to Respect
being able to present a synthesis of all contemporary knowledge about children.
During the 25 years when he worked in children’s homes he measured and
weighed all the children regularly, noting the results systematically together with
other observations. This eventually became an enormous corpus of data which he
never had the chance to process scientifically and which was later destroyed in the
near-obliteration of Warsaw in the final phase of the Second World War.
Korczak himself considered that he improved – rather than the opposite – his
qualifications for paediatric research when he left hospital work to pursue his
activity in children’s homes. He wrote: “Most things about children demand years
of clinical studies before one gains full insight. Studies must not only be undertaken
when disease is raging and devastating, they must also consider the humdrum,
with its periods of happiness and well being.” Korczak did indeed encounter such
periods among his orphans.
As a doctor I note symptoms: I see skin flares, I listen to coughs, I feel the rise in
temperature, my sense of smell detects the odour of acetone on the child’s breath.
Some symptoms I notice at once; and I seek those that are hidden.
As an educationalist, I also have symptoms to observe: smiles, laughter, blushes,
cries, yawns, a cry, a sigh. A cough can be dry, hacking or choking; in the same
way crying can be tearful or almost without tears.
I note the symptoms without anger. One child develops a temperature, another
becomes erratic. I lower the temperature by removing its cause if possible; and
I moderate the erratic period as much as possible without the child experiencing
spiritual harm.
The parts of his research that still hold good today are probably his observations
of children, particularly his way of reporting what he had noted. Here his
interdisciplinary perspective and his literary talent come into their own. He gives
the results of careful and patient observations of children in a language not normally
associated with science and research reports. In an almost impressionistic literary
style he conveys exact and sensitive pictures of children’s situations and their way
of being.
Play in the park could be used as an educationalist’s exercise in child observation.
There is so much of interest to note … play is initiated, is born, gathers pace,
stops. Who starts it? Who organises it, who leads and whose disappearance leads
to the group dispersing? Who are the children who choose their playmates and
who are those who grab whoever is nearest? Who is it that freely makes room for
the newcomer and who protests? … Who stands still and who impatiently stands
on one leg and then the other, swings their arms and laughs out loud? Who yawns
but goes on playing and who stops because they’ve lost interest in the game or
because they have been wronged?