Psychology and parenthoodBruce, H. Addington (Henry Addington)
Science
Psychology and parenthood
Bruce, H. Addington (Henry Addington)
Child psychology
Whenever he went to Halle, Leipzig, or any other German city, he
took Karl with him, and together they visited art galleries, natural
history museums, zoölogical and botanical gardens, and manufacturing
establishments. Not for a moment, however, did he hint to the boy that
he was doing this for educational purposes. When, for example, they
visited a factory, he did not say, “I have brought you here to give
you a lesson in mechanics.” He allowed the boy to think that he simply
wished to entertain him; and in this way, without Karl’s suspecting it,
he was able to impart to him much elementary instruction in zoölogy,
botany, physics, chemistry, etc.
Similarly he taught Karl geography by the pleasing device of first
taking him, on a clear day, to the top of a high tower that happened
to be in Lochau, and asking him to mark on a piece of paper, brought
to the tower for that purpose, the position of the different villages
visible in the surrounding country. This first trip was followed by
others, in which the boy expanded and corrected the markings on his
paper, putting in rivers, lakes, and forests. Witte then bought for him
a set of maps showing, in succession, the part of Germany in which he
lived, all Germany, Europe, and the other continents. These father and
son studied together, not as a study, but as a game, in which the boy
took part with the greatest enthusiasm.
“I never acted,” Witte himself has declared, “as though he had to learn
these things. He would have been surprised if told that he had been
studying geography, physics, chemistry. I avoided the mention of such
terms, so as not to frighten him, and in order not to make him vain.”
Not to make him vain! Be sure, indeed, that Pastor Witte, while
promoting his son’s mental development, would not forget to ground him
in moral principles. He was not, let it be clearly understood, striving
to make an intellectual “prodigy” of his son; he was aiming only to
make him a man in the truest sense, strong physically and morally as
well as mentally. If he believed that the boy’s reasoning powers could
not be properly developed unless he were trained from infancy in the
principles of sound reasoning, he was quite as firmly convinced that
the process of moral education should likewise begin at the earliest
possible moment. To this end, believing as he did in the importance of
early environmental influences and of parental example, he endeavoured
to secure for his son wholly ennobling surroundings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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