Sunday, August 2, 2009

Janusz Korczak The Children's Republic

http://korczak.com/Biography/kap-9.htm

The child's disguises are like no other of a professional actor and can beguile the most astute of observers who are thrown off guard by the masks the child wears.The children were in temporary quarters until October 1912 and were in the countryside where their lively imagination of wild animals was given full reign. Children's' imaginations are much more supple and fertile than ours grown frigid and partially sterile with age and insensitivity. The description of the Krochmalna street orphanage widely contrasts with the rat infested environment of these children of the slums.Korczak and Stefa went from bed to bed comforting the children and all that mattered in the world is that this experiment not fail. Never ending were the surprises from the children and they resisted the advantages of the orphanage ,the orphanage itself ,with "absolute resistance and resentment."




  • they were dwarfed by routine and impersonal necessity.


  • they were unmoved by Korczak's ' dignity of work'


  • His restraint paid off and the children eventually flocked around him.






The Children´s Republic The child-a skilled actor with a hundred masks: a
different one for his mother, father, grandmother or grandfather, for a stern or
lenient teacher, for the cook or maid, for his own friends, for the rich and
poor. Naive and cunning, humble and haughty, gentle and vengeful, well behaved
and willful, he disguises himself so well that he can lead us by the nose.-
How
to love a Child




Because the orphanage wasn´t completed on schedule, the children were unable to move in until October of 1912. They had already vacated their former shelter and were forced to wait in temporary quarters in the countryside long after it had been deserted by summer vacationers. Used to the bustle of the crowded city slums, they were filled with anxiety, imagining the surrounding woods to be full of cannibals and wild animals. When "those noisy, frozen, excited, impudent" boys and girls finally arrived at 92 Krochmalna one rainy afternoon, they were still carrying sticks and clubs from their woodland games and looked a little wild themselves.
The four-storied white house, one of the first in Warsaw to have central heating and electricity, loomed before the orphans like something out of a fairy tale. They wandered breathlessly through the huge first floor room, with its tall windows and two-story cathedral ceiling, that was to serve as a dining hall, study, and play area, and stared in disbelief at the tiled bathrooms with toilets that flushed, and with gleaming porcelain sinks equipped with both hot and cold running water, all so unlike the foul, rat-infested outhouses they had known. Everything, even the tiled kitchen, was clean and beautiful, as if designed for very important people. After dinner, the children were bathed in the large porcelain tubs.
Then, dressed in warm nightclothes, they were shown to their assigned beds in the boys´ and girls´ dormitories, which were separated by a small glassed-in room from which Korczak planned to observe and reassure them.
The smallest children were given iron cots separated by wooden partitions, which Korczak had designed with a wide hole in the middle in case they woke in the night and needed to reach out for someone. But still they were scared, large and small alike. One of the girls, who had never slept without her two sisters huddled against her on their dirty straw pallet, burst into tears. And a boy who had never seen a bed with white sheets before crawled under it. Korczak and Stefa went from cot to cot, touching the children, kissing them, comforting them, until everyone was asleep. Setting up their little republic was to prove a sixteen-hour-a-day job-without breaks, holidays, or weekends, Korczak would say. And Stefa would recall that for the first few years she was so busy she couldn´t take part in the real life of Warsaw. she might as well have been living, in a provincial town. But for both of them all that mattered was that this shared experiment not fail.
As it turned out, Korczak would refer to that first year of the Orphans Home as the worst year of his life. He had believed that after his camp experiences he could never again be taken by surprise, but he was wrong. Rather than appreciating their new accommodations and accepting the rules of communal life, the children had "declared war" even before he realized what was going on. For the second time he was confronted by a menacing community before whom he stood helpless. Overwhelmed by all his regulations, the children adopted a position ofabsolute resistance that no cajoling could overcome. Coercion produced resentment. The new home they had been waiting for so eagerly had become hateful.
Only later did Korczak realize how difficult it was for the children to give up their old way of life. Shabby and imperfect as their former shelter had been, lacking light and adequate furnishings, they actually missed it. They were "dwarfed by the magnificence´' of this new setting. The "impersonal necessity" of a regular routine seemed to "erase" them. Those children who had been leaders wilted and failed; those who had been cooperative now balked at every turn. They were unmoved by Korczak's lofty sentiments about the dignity of work. (" A clean polished table is as important as a neatly written page.") They watched skeptically as he placed the mop and broom, which he proclaimed noble works of art, in a place of honor by the dormitory door.
Refusing to bow down to a mop and a broom, they rebelled, became conspiratorial. They put pebbles down the washbasins, disconnected the bell, scribbled on the walls. They spread rumors at lunch that a worm had been found in the soup, and refused to eat. They took bread from the table, which was forbidden, and hid it under their pillows and mattresses. Things would get irretrievably lost or misplaced. Who did it? No one knew. Who spilled it? Who broke it? Silence.
Sometimes, when Korczak was shouting-"Stealing again! I´m not going to waste my energy on the education of crooks!"-he found his voice breaking and his eyes smarting with tears offrustration. He consoled himself that every new teacher must experience this difficult testing hour. But he knew that, no matter how harassed he felt, he had to give the impression that he was in control of the community. He learned not to "fly off the handle, " even when one of the biggest rascals broke an expensive china urinal while cleaning it, and not long after a jar containing more than a gallon of cod-liver oil. His restraint paid off; it won him "an ally " Slowly the "collective conscience" was aroused. Day by day a few more children came over to his side.
After six months, when everyone was finally beginning to settle in, fifty new children were admitted. Once again the little community was in turmoil as the newcomers rebelled and defied authority. The new staff also caused problems. A school had been organized in the home by the philanthropists, but the teachers they hired walked about like "aristocrats, " creating an "abyss" between themselves and the cook, janitor, and washerwoman, to whom they felt superior. Hating pedantry of any kind (he often said he would rather leave a child in the care of an old woman who had bred chickens for five years than with a newly graduated nurse), Korczak dismissed the teachers, who he truly did believe were less essential than the menial workers who kept the orphanage functioning. He sent the children off to schools in the area, retaining only one instructor to help with homework.

The Gold Bug Reexamination of the drawing the Death's Head


Jupiter states that his master was bitten by the gold beetle which occasioned his "eccentric illness" and he visited the narrator for a purpose ,the import of which will shortly become known.

He dreamed of gold (Le Grand) after being bitten the very night of the narrator's visit.




"Well, well," I said, "perhaps you have — still I don't see them;" and I handed
him the paper without additional remark, not wishing to ruffle his temper; but I
was much surprised at the turn affairs had taken; his ill humor puzzled me —
and, as for the drawing of the beetle, there were positively no antennæ visible,
and the whole did bear a very close resemblance to the ordinary cuts of a
death's-head.
He received the paper very peevishly, and was
about to crumple it, apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at
the design seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face grew
violently red — in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he continued to
scrutinize the drawing minutely where he sat. At length he arose, took a candle
from the table, and proceeded to seat himself upon a sea-chest in the farthest
corner of the room. Here again he made an anxious examination of the paper;
turning it in all directions. He said nothing, however, and his conduct greatly
astonished me; yet I thought it prudent not to exacerbate the growing moodiness
of his temper by any comment. Presently he took from his coat-pocket a wallet,
placed the paper carefully in it, and deposited both in a writing-desk, which he
locked. He now grew more composed in his demeanor; but his original air of
enthusiasm had quite disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted.
As the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from which
no sallies of mine could arouse him.
It had been my intention to pass the night
at the hut, as I had frequently done before, but, seeing my host in this mood, I
deemed it proper to take leave. He did not press me to remain, but, as I
departed, he shook my hand with even more than his usual cordiality.
It was about a month after this (and during the interval I
had seen nothing of Legrand) when I received a visit, at Charleston, from his
man, Jupiter
. I had never seen the good old negro look so dispirited, and I
feared that some serious disaster had befallen my friend.
"Well, Jup," said I, "what is the matter now? — how is your master?"
"Why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as
mought be." "Not well! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does
he complain of?" "Dar! dat's it! — him neber plain ob notin —
but him berry sick for all dat." "Very sick, Jupiter! — why
didn't you say so at once? Is he confined to bed?" "No, dat
he aint! — he aint find nowhar — dat's just whar de shoe pinch — my mind is got
to be berry hebby bout poor Massa Will." "Jupiter, I should
like to understand what it is you are talking about. You say your master is
sick. Hasn't he told you what ails him?" "Why, massa, taint
worf while for to git mad about de matter — Massa Will say noffin at all aint de
matter wid him — but den what make him go bout looking dis here way, wid he head
down and he soldiers up, and as white as a gose? And den he keep a syphon all de
time" — "Keeps a what, Jupiter?" "Keeps a
syphon wid de figgurs on de slate — de queerest figures I ebber did see. Ise
gittin to be skeered, I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty tight eye pon him
noovers. Todder day he gib me slip fore de sun up and was gone de whole ob de
blessed day. I had a big stick ready cut for to gib him d—n good beatin when he
did come — but Ise sich a fool dat I had n't de heart arter all — he look so
berry poorly." "Eh? — what? — ah yes! — upon the whole I
think you had better not be too severe with the poor fellow — do n't flog him,
Jupiter — he can't very well stand it — but can you form no idea of what has
occasioned this illness, or rather this change of conduct? Has any thing
unpleasant happened since I saw you?" "No, massa, dey aint
bin noffin onpleasant since den — 'twas fore den I'm feared — 'twas the berry
day you was dare." "How? what do you mean?"
"Why, massa, I mean de bug — dare now."
"The what?" "De bug — I'm berry sartain dat Massa Will bin
bit somewhere bout the head by dat d—n goole-bug." "And what
cause have you, Jupiter, for such a supposition?" "Claws
enuff, massa, and mouff too. I nebber did see sich a d—n bug — he kick and he
bite ebery ting what cum near him. Massa Will cotch him fuss, but had for to let
him go gin mighty quick, I tell you — den was de time he must ha got de bite. I
did n't like de look ob de bug mouff, myself, no how, so I would n't take hold
ob him wid my finger, but cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat I found. I rap him
up in de [column 3:] paper and stuff piece ob it in he mouff — dat was de way."
"And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by
the beetle, and that the bite made him sick?" "I do n't tink
noffin bout it — I nose it. What make him dream bout de goole so much, if taint
cause he bit by de goole-bug? Ise heerd bout dem goole-bugs fore dis."
"But how do you know he dreams about gold?"
"How I know? — why cause he talk about it in he sleep — dat's
how I nose." "Well, Jup, perhaps you are right; but to what
fortunate circumstance am I to attribute the honor of a visit from you, to-day?"