OBJECT LESSONS.
I NOW come to Object Lessons, which should begin simultaneously with all
the above exercises; for mental exercises are not only compatible with
physical health, but necessary to it. The brain is not to be
overstrained in childhood, but it is to be used. Where it is left to
itself, and remains uncultivated, it shrinks, and that is disease. A
child is not able to direct its own attention; it needs the help of the
adult in the unfolding of the mind, no less than in the care of its
body. Lower orders of animals can educate themselves, that is, develop
in themselves their one power. As the animals rise in the scale of
being, they are related more or less to their progenitors and posterity,
and require social aid. But the human being, whose beatitude is "the
communion of the just," is so universally related, that he cannot go
alone at all. He is entirely dependent at first, and never becomes
independent of those around him, any further than he has been so
educated and trained by his relations with them, as to rise into union
with God. And this restores him again to communion with his
fellow-beings, as a beneficent Power among its peers.
The new method of education gives a gradual series of exercises,
continuing the method of Nature. It cultivates the senses, by giving
them the work of discriminating colors, sounds, &c.; sharpens perception
by leading children to describe accurately the objects immediately
around them.
Objects themselves, rather than the verbal descriptions of objects, are
presented to them. The only way to make words expressive and
intelligible, is to associate them sensibly with the objects to which
they relate. Children must be taught to translate things into words,
before they can translate words into things. Words are secondary in
nature; yet much teaching seems to proceed on the principle that these
are primary, and so they become mere counters, and children are brought
to hating study, and the discourse of teachers, instead of thirsting for
them. To look at objects of nature and art, and state their colors,
forms, and properties of various kinds, is no painful strain upon the
mind. It is just what children spontaneously do when they are first
learning to talk. It is a continuation of learning to talk. The
object-teacher confines the child's attention to one thing, till all
that is obvious about it is described; and then asks questions, bringing
out much that children, left to themselves, would overlook, suggesting
words when necessary, to enable them to give an account of what they
see. It is the action of the mind upon real things, together with
clothing perceptions in words, which really cultivates; while it is not
the painful strain upon the brain which the study of a book is. To
translate things into words, is a more agreeable and a very different
process from translating words into things, and the former exercise
should precede the latter. If the mind is thoroughly exercised in
wording its perceptions, words will in their turn suggest the things,
without painful effort, and memory have the clearness and accuracy of
perception. On the other hand words will never be used without feeling
and intelligence. Then, to read a book will be to know all of reality
that is in it.
I am desirous to make a strong impression on this point, because, to
many persons, I find object-teaching seems the opposite of teaching!
They say that to play with things, does not give habits of study. They
think that to commit to memory a page of description about a wild duck,
for instance, is better than to have the wild duck to look at, leading
the child to talk about it, describe it, and inquire into its ways and
haunts! They do not see that this study of the things themselves
exercises the perception, and picturesque memory, which is probably
immortal, certainly perennial, while the written description only
exercises the verbal memory. Verbal memory is not to be despised; but it
is a consequence, and should never be the substitute for picturesque
memory. It is the picturesque memory only which is creative.
There is another and profound reason why words should follow, and not
precede things, in a child's memory. It will have a tendency to preclude
the unconscious sophistry which takes the place of real logic in so many
minds; and at all events will give the power to detect sophistry; for it
necessitates the mind to demand an image, or an idea, for every word. It
gives the habit of thinking things and principles, instead of thinking
words merely;--of looking through rhetoric after truth and reality.
There is nothing perhaps which would conduce more to sound morality and
earnestness of character, in this country, than that object-teaching, as
proposed in Mr. Sheldon's "ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION," should pervade the
primary schools. It would require a volume to go into object-teaching,
in such detail as to serve as a manual for teachers; and happily the
work of Mr. Sheldon's, just named, precludes the necessity of my doing
so. It is published broadcast over our northern States; and every
teacher, especially every Kindergarten teacher, should procure it, and
give days and nights to the study of it, until its methods and matter
are completely mastered. I have one or two exceptions to take, in
respect to it myself, as will be seen in the sequel; yet I consider it
not only an invaluable manual, but that it goes far to supply the place
of the training school for teachers on the Pestalozzian plan, "for whose
use I believe it was primarily intended."
Object-teaching should precede as well as accompany the process of
learning to read. In Germany, even outside of Kindergarten, _thinking
schools_ have long preceded _reading schools_, and yet learning to read
German, in which every sound is represented by a different letter, and
every letter has one sound, cultivates the classifying powers, as
learning to read English cannot. With children whose vernacular is
English, it is absolutely injurious to the mind to be taught to read the
first thing. I must speak of the reasons of this in another place, my
purpose here being to show that object-teaching is necessary, in order
to make word-teaching, whether by teacher's discourse, or by the reading
of books, a means of culture at any period.
Every child should have the object to examine, and in turn each should
say what is spontaneous. Out of their answers series of questions will
be suggested to the teacher, who should also be prepared with her own
series of questions,--questions full of answers.
The first generalization to which children should be led is into the
animate and inanimate,--what lives and what exists without manifestation
of life. The next generalization will be into mineral, vegetable,
animal, and personal.
But you can begin with chairs, tables, paper, cloth, &c., coming as soon
as possible to natural objects. Mrs. Agassiz's "First Lesson in Natural
History" is an excellent hint. Sea anemones, star-fishes, clams, and
oysters are easily procured. If sea anemones, taken into a bottle of
salt water, clinging to stones, look like mere mosses at first, on the
second day it is pretty certain, that in their desire for food they will
spread themselves out, displaying their inward parts in the most
beautiful manner. Every child in the class should have his turn at the
object, if there are not objects enough for each,--should tell what he
sees, and be helped to words to express himself. This, I must repeat, is
the true way of learning the meaning of words; and leaves impressions,
which no dictionary, with its periphrases and mere approximations to
synonymes can give. Let a child himself hammer out some substance with a
mallet, and he will never forget the meaning of malleable; and so of
other words. As far as possible we should always use Saxon words, but it
is the words that come from the Latin and Greek, which it is most
necessary to teach the meaning of; and they should be taught by things
themselves, which have them for names or qualities.
A good linguist will have an advantage here, by being able to trace the
words through the original language up to nature; for every word is, in
the last analysis, either a picture, whose original in nature is its
definition, or a poem, which can be recognized by the general
imagination. A child whose vernacular is English will easily see that a
_bit_ is something bitten off, and so is smaller than the mouth; but
that _morsel_ means a bit is not so obvious to one who does not know
that _morsus_, also, is the perfect participle of the Latin verb for
bite. That _acute_ means _sharp_ is plainer to a child who knows that
_acu_ is the Latin for needle.
No time is lost which is given to this definition of words by the
objects of nature and art, from which, or from whose attributes, words
are derived. In words are fossilized the sciences, that is, the
knowledge mankind has already attained of nature; and he who understands
all the words in use, would know all that is known, nay, much that has
been once known and long forgotten. But the study of objects not only
gives significance to words, it educates the senses, and produces the
habit of original attention and investigation of nature. These do not
come of themselves, as we see in the instance of country children, who
are ignorant of what is around them, because left to grow up among the
objects of nature, without having their attention called to things in
their minutiæ, or their relations in extensu; nor led to clothe with
words their perceptions, impressions, and reasonings.
Besides Mr. Sheldon's "Elementary Instruction," there is the "Child's
Book of Nature," by Worthington Hooker, in three parts, which will be a
great help to an object-teacher. It is published by the Harpers, and is
the very best introduction of children to flowers.[D] Mrs. Mann's
"Flower People" is also full of facts, carefully studied out. This is a
charming book for children to read in, when they shall come to read. It
is a great pity that the latest edition, published by Ticknor and Fields
in 1862, is not illustrated by the flowers spoken of. But perhaps these
may be lithographed, and published in a card-case, to accompany it. Both
the science and cultivation of flowers comes very naturally into the
Kindergarten.
The greatest difficulty about object-teaching is, that it requires
personal training, and wide-awake attention in teachers, of a character
much more thorough than they commonly have. When it shall become
general, as it certainly must, it will no longer be supposed that any
ordinary person who can read and write, and is obliged to do something
for a living, will be thought fit to keep a school for small children!
The present order of things will be reversed. Ordinary persons, with
limited acquirements, will be obliged to confine themselves to older
pupils, who are able to study books and only need to have some one to
set their lessons and hear them recited; while persons of originality
and rich culture will be reserved to discover and bring out the various
genius and faculty which God has sown broadcast in the field of the
race, and which now so often runs into the rank vegetation of vice, or
wastes into deserts of concentrated mediocrity. Then this season of
education will command the largest remuneration, as it will secure the
finest powers to the work; and because such work cannot be pursued by
any one person for many years, nor even for a short time without
assistance, relieving from the ceaseless attention that a company of
small children requires, for little children cannot be wound up to go
like watches; but to keep them in order, the teacher must constantly
meet their outbursting life with her own magnetic forces; while their
employments must be continually interchanged, and mingled with their
recreations.
Children ought to continue these Kindergarten exercises from the age of
three to nine; and if faithfully taught, they could then go into what is
called scholastic training, in a state of mind to receive from it the
highest advantages it is capable of giving; free from the disadvantages
which are now so obvious as to have raised, in our practical country, a
party prejudiced against classical education altogether.
The preceding chapter and the one on Geometry, which
succeeds, are rather for the direction of children in
the last than the first years of the Kindergarten; for
they go over into the second stage of education.
Object-lessons, addressed more to the heart and
imagination, grow directly out of the plays, as we
have seen.
And, without any of the terms of Geometry, the
sticklaying and the folding of paper give the child
geometrical facts in a practical way; as well as
counting, and all of arithmetic that precedes
Colburn's "First Lessons," some of which can be taught
even before teaching to read.
FOOTNOTE:
[D] Gray's _How Plants Grow_, is invaluable for a teacher.