Talks to Teachers

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...by which the mind thinks. The abstract conceptions of physics and sociology may, it is true, be embodied in visual or other images of phenomena, but they need not be so; and the truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn. This is so even in the natural sciences, so far as these are causal and rational, and not merely confined to description. So I go back to what I said awhile ago apropos of verbal memorizing. The more accurately words are learned, the better, if only the teacher make sure that what they signify is also understood. It is the failure of this latter condition, in so much of the old-fashioned recitation, that has caused that reaction against ' parrot-like reproduction' that we are so familiar with to-day. A friend of mine, visiting a school, was asked to examine a young class in geography. Glancing at the book, she said: " Suppose you should dig a hole in the ground, hundreds of feet deep, how should you find it at the bottom,--warmer or colder than on top? " None of the class replying, the teacher said: " I'm sure they know, but I think you don't ask the question quite rightly. Let me try." So, taking the book, she asked: " In what condition is the interior of the globe?" and received the immediate answer from half the class at once: " The interior of the globe is in a condition of igneous fusion" Better exclusive object-teachEACH AGE CAN APPREHEND ABSTRACTIONS 151 ing than such verbal recitations as that; and yet verbal reproduction, intelligently connected with more objective work, must always play a leading, and surely the leading, part in education. Our modern reformers, in their...