"First there appears keen appetite for a particular action; then, precipitately, comes the actual accomplishment; next the phase of tireless repetition for days or weeks; finally the discarding of the activity for a relatively long period during which all appetite for it seems to be gone. The action-pattern of the child is now conspicuously one of satisfaction and serenity."

Thus wrote Dr Innes Pearse (see founders) in her book 'The Quality of Life' (see publications) in which she has written about the findings (see findings) on child development. This may explain why a child, when given new toys, discards them in minutes, perhaps only concentrating on the one they specifically requested. It may also be the child's unspoken response to accusations of becoming quickly bored with a particular toy or activity.

The Peckham Experiment (see history of the Peckham Experiment) may only have had two short periods of four-and-a-half years, but even so, it yielded important information about child development not available elsewhere in continuity. Staff were able to find out "how children of all ages will choose to occupy themselves when they are quite free to choose from many alternatives - including doing nothing." The ticketing system, whereby a child was given a piece of paper on which was written their name, chosen activity, the date and a member of staff's initials, was the raw data from which the findings about child development were discovered. Whenever a child changed activity they simply requested another 'ticket'. (more about this ticketing system.)

"It seems that, if our children are to fulfil their potentiality for growth and development, we must find out what kind of things babies and children in general choose to do and give them the opportunity to so such things. We cannot know what a particular baby or child will choose at any particular moment: only he himself knows what he has an appetite for and what he is capable of digesting at that moment. But we must see that he is free to choose his experiences from among a variety of the kinds that are needed by babies and children to develop fully."

There is also a less scientific, though still relevant, way of judging the significance of the Pioneer Health Centre to child development - the importance that former members still attach to their days there. Even though it closed nearly 60 years ago and they have spread across the world, they still maintain friendships forged in their childhood, and they speak of pride and affection of being members of the Experiment.

"You got the power to take responsibility. I am sure I have done much more with my life."

"At the Centre you learned to do your own thing, and not to resent other people wanting to do their own thing'"

"My early and continuing personality development was enormously influenced for the good through my family membership…The results obtained in terms of personality development and improved 'health' were absolutely astounding." (John)

Choice and the freedom to choose were the foundation of development.

"I noticed the children seemed to set themselves goals. For instance one would dive and dive every day, getting more and more skilled and then suddenly give it up for a while and spend his time of something else, and then come back to it. The children had freedom to choose. It was interesting to see the pattern of activity of the children - when they joined, rushing about and trying everything and then settling into an individual pattern."

(From 'Being Me and Also Us' by Alison Stallibrass) see publications

"It was possible to observe the successive stages of development of the infant after birth in continuity. Before doing so we must digress to call attention to a natural phenomenon in the mode of development of some faculties in the young child described by Dr Maria Montessori. She recognised the emergence of critical phases at which capability to perform certain finer co-ordinations was acquired with unexpected suddenness and speed. Appropriate action at these times led to the child's fine discriminative co-ordination in the acquisition of some particular skill. This was accompanied by conspicuous concentration as well as manifest pleasure. These phases, at which the child clearly was biologically prepared for some particular new co-ordination, Dr Montessori called 'sensitive periods'. Impressed by the regularity of the phenomenon in the young child she devised some beautifully conceived and constructed apparatus to meet the child's needs at these critical junctures.

Lucy Crocker, working in the Centre with school children up to puberty, encountered a similar phenomenon associated with the development of grosser co-ordinations.

As an example, let us take the balance and control involved in roller-skating. Not knowing when a child would skate, much trouble had been taken by us to secure small size skates suitable for children of three upwards. These skates were housed in pigeon-holes in an open corridor where the child could take them when minded to do so. A child rising four playing on the forecourt, one day without warning of any previous interest in skates or skating, would go and choose a pair, and within half an hour skate! No 'teaching' or help was necessary; not period of trial and error; no holding on to a bigger child or helper, as did children coming to skate for the first time at a much later age.

The child discovering his achievement was almost ecstatic, spellbound by it and tireless in its pursuit. He became wholly absorbed by the new experience. Nor did this absorption cease at the end of the afternoon: it seemed rather to be enhanced as day followed day. Insisting that he should be brought to the Centre, he dragged his mother there by the hand almost before his dinner was over! This tireless, repetitive use of the skates would go on for some ten days to a fortnight. Then suddenly the spell broke: and from that day he would not go near the skates again - often for some months.

Note the complete absorption of the child when in the grip of this critical phase of new accomplishment. It is as though his whole attention being given to it, he had appetite for no other occupation. We noticed in older children, too, the absence of fatigue in connection with this unusually arduous concentration on one single activity; even of four h ours' duration.

The insistent repetition of the action following the accomplishment is an essential feature of this process. It is as though the capability already acquired had to be accepted by, registered and confirmed within the body. When this first degree of facultisation (the process of acquiring a faculty such as sight, reading, swimming) has been brought to a certain competence it passes into the realm of automatic performance where it can be carried on by the child without continual, attentive and discriminative action. It seems to us likely that the repetitive phase is associated with the laying down of new conformations in the brain. This subject invites further and full research of a collateral order.

To recapitulate the sequence of events: first there appears keen appetite for a particular action; then, precipitately, comes the actual accomplishment; next the phase of tireless repetition for days or weeks; finally the discarding of the activity for a relatively long period during which all appetite for it seems to be gone. The action-pattern of the child is now conspicuously one of satisfaction and serenity.

These features consistently accompany spontaneous facultisation of this distinctive type, whether the co-ordinations acquired by the finer type observed by Montessori or the grosser ones studied in the Centre children by the late Lucy Crocker.

But that is not all. Lucy Crocker found that the child, having reached the point of no longer exercising his new-found capability, does not pass into a negative developmental state as might be inferred. Greatly to our surprise, when after a lapse of some months that same activity was resumed, he showed a greater facility in its exercise than on relinquishing it earlier. It is as if some 'digestion' of experience follows acquisition; and that a lapse of time is necessary for the accomplishment of this inner and at present ill-understood process of 'digestion'.

This phenomenon was soon so often in the Centre children in skating, riding small bicycles, floating and dog-paddling spontaneously in the swimming pool, and in the control of billiard balls on the children's table, that we became convinced it was a significant pattern of action in the development of facultisation."

(Taken from 'The Quality of Life' by Innes H Pearse) see publications