The Philosophy of Teaching: The Teacher, The Pupil, The SchoolSands, Nathaniel
Philosophy
The Philosophy of Teaching: The Teacher, The Pupil, The School
Sands, Nathaniel
Teaching
So soon as the child will look at and become interested in pictures and
toys, and will listen to tales and little stories, it can profitably be
introduced in the school, the first department of which should be the
Infant-school, or, as the Germans so aptly term it, the children's garden,
or Kinder Garten.
Here plaiting, modelling, and building, with simple object lessons for the
older infants, develop their powers of observation, and give employment
and impart skill to little fingers which might else be engaged in
destroying furniture or clothes, or in pilfering from the sugar-bowl.
Practical familiarity with the properties of lines, angles, circles,
spheres, cylinders, cubes, cones, and the conic sections will be acquired,
which will give a life and reality to the geometrical studies which will
occupy them in their school career. Dancing and singing will relieve the
tedium of sitting, shake off the surplus energy, give rest to the body,
and power, time, and tune to the voice. Models of houses, stores,
workshops, kitchens, farms, and factories, which later on they will assist
in making, will be a source alike of amusement and instruction.
In the children's garden no teacher should have charge of more than about
twelve children, who should regard her as their mother-teacher, while she
should seek to win the love and confidence of the little ones as the
beginning of her work.
Each class of twelve should have their own special room, while for general
purposes, such as music, drilling, gymnastic exercises, games, tableaux,
and exhibitions of the magic lantern, the oxyhydrogen microscope, the
stereopticon, and the like, they should assemble in a large hall. The
details of arrangements will readily suggest themselves. The main feature
is to have all things natural, free, pleasant, cheerful, bright, refined,
and unrestrained by external forms or rigid rules, at the same time that
order is secured by an easy discipline.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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