This little book is designed to meet the child's natural desire to
learn or hear of other people than those living in the part of the
world about him.
It has been thoroughly proved in our newer pedagogical practice that
the child in the first school year is much interested in descriptions
of the Indian and the Eskimo. Whenever descriptions of the Indian and
the Eskimo have been given him, they have not only fulfilled their
purpose in furnishing material for reading and the interrelation of
several activities of expression, but they have revealed to him the
fact that there are other people in the world, who differ very much
from those he has seen.
His interest in different peoples at this time is in their physical
appearance, their dress, their ways of living, their customs, their
manners, and it arises chiefly from the contrast which descriptions of
these afford to familiar customs, conditions, and physical
characteristics.
The child is not interested, at that stage of his intellectual
development which falls in the first or the second school year, in the
situation of countries. It does not matter to him exactly where,
geographically, the people about whom he reads live. He is satisfied
if some general statement is made to the effect that they live far away
to the north, where the cold countries are, or in the south, where it
is warm and sometimes hot, or on the other side of the world.
His desire, at this period, for new impressions and ideas gained from
descriptions and accompanying pictures is as keen as his desire for
sense impressions gained from the world of nature and activity about
him. This wider range of information and ideas, it is believed, he may
in some measure gain from this little book.
DRESDEN, July 15, 1899.