Steinthal tells an apposite story of six German gentlemen riding socially in a coupé all day, and as they approached the station where they were to separate, one proposed to tell the vocation of each of the others, who were strangers to him, if they would write without hesitation an answer to the question, What destroys its own offspring? One wrote, Vital force. "You," said the questioner, "are a biologist." Another wrote, War. "You," he said, "are a soldier." Another wrote, Kronos, and was correctly pronounced a philologist; while the publicist revealed himself by writing, Revolution, and the farmer by writing, She bear. This fable teaches the law of apperception. As Don Quixote saw an army in a flock of sheep and a giant in a windmill, as some see all things in the light of politics, others in that of religion, education, etc., so the Aryan races apperceived the clouds as cows and the rain as their milk, the sun as a horse, the lightning as an arrow; and so the children apperceive rain as God pouring down water, thunder as barrels or boards falling, or cannon, heaven as a well-appointed nursery, etc. They bring more or less developed apperceiving organs with them into school, each older and more familiar concept gaining more apperceptive power over the newer concepts and percepts by use. The older impressions are on the lurch, as it were, for the new ones, and mental freedom and all-sidedness depend on the number and strength of these appropriating concepts. If these are very few, as with children, teaching is like pouring water from a big tub into a small, narrownecked bottle. A teacher who acts upon the now everywhere admitted fallacy that knowledge of the subject is all that is needed in teaching children, pours at random onto more than into the children, talking to rather than with them, and gauging what he gives rather than what they receive. All now agree that the mind can learn only what is related to other things learned before, and that we must start from the knowledge that the children really have and develop this as germs, otherwise we are showing objects that require close scrutiny only to indirect vision, or talking to the blind about color. Alas for the teacher who does not learn more from his children than he can ever hope to teach them! Just in proportion as teachers do this do they cease to be merely mechanical, and acquire interest, perhaps enthusiasm, and surely an all-compensating sense of growth in their work and life. From the above tables it seems not too much also to infer: (1) That there is next to nothing of pedagogic value, the knowledge of which it is safe to assume at the outset of school life. Hence the need of objects and the danger of books and word cram. Hence many of the best primary teachers in Germany spend from two to four or even six months in talking of objects and drawing them before any beginning of what we till lately have regarded as primaryschool work. (2) The best preparation parents can give their children for good school training is to make them acquainted with natural objects, especially with the sights and sounds of the country, and to send them to good and hygienic, as distinct from the most fashionable, kindergartens. (3) Every teacher on starting with a new class or in a new locality, to make sure that his efforts along some lines are not utterly lost, should undertake to explore carefully section by section children's minds with all the tact and ingenuity he can command and acquire, to determine exactly what is already shown; and every normal-school pupil should undertake work of the same kind as an essential part of his training. (4) The concepts which are most common in the children of a given locality are the earliest to be acquired, while the rarer ones are later. This order may in teaching generally be assumed as a natural one, e.g., apples (as appealing directly to the child without mediate process) first and wheat last. This order, in an upper class of a grammar school said Pfefferberg, the name of a beerhouse near by, and for all Berg was a place of amusement. This would cause an entire group of geographical ideas to miscarry. Others knowing the words pond or lake only from artificial ponds or lakes in the park, thought these words designated water holders, which might or might not have water in them. A preliminary survey showed that many children in each city school had never seen important monuments, squares, gardens, etc., near their own home and schoolhouse, and few knew the important features of their city at large. With the method of geographical instruction in vogue that begins with the most immediate surroundings and widens in concentric circles to city, country, fatherland, etc., these gaps in knowledge made havoc. School walks and excursions, object-lesson material, as well as the subject-matter of reading, writing, etc., should be regulated by the results of such inquiry. This circular, which was accompanied by a list of points for inquiry, ended by invoking general and hearty personal coöperation. It was not sufficient to have seen a hare, a squirrel, etc., but the hare must have been seen running wild, the squirrel in a tree, sheep grazing, the stork on its nest, the swan swimming, chickens with the hen, the lark must be singing, the butterfly, snail, lark, etc., must be in a natural environment. The returns for 13 of the 84 schools of Berlin were worthless. Other tests suggested but not reported on were colors, knowledge of money, weights, and measures; how many have seen a soldier, sailor, peasant, Jew, Moor, or a shoemaker, carpenter, plasterer, watchmaker, printer, painter, etc., at work; how many knew how bread was made out of grain; where stockings came from; how many could repeat correctly a spoken sentence, say a poem by heart, sing something, repeat a musical note, had attended à concert, have a cat, dog, or bird, etc. As an essential object of these inquiries was to distinguish the concepts which children brought to school from those acquired there, returns made some weeks or months after the children entered school had little value, yet were worked up with the rest. The very slight interest shown by teachers in making these inquiries was also remarked. As only about one third of a minute for each question to each child was the time taken, there could be no collateral questioning, so that confusion and misunderstanding no doubt invalidated many returns. The sources of error to be constantly guarded against are errors in counting, imagination, or embarrassment of the children. When the answers were taken in class nearly twice as many children asserted knowledge of the concept as when they were taken in groups of 8 to 10. Nearly half the boys and more than half the girls on entering school had never seen to know by name any one of the following conspicuous objects in Berlin: Lustgarten, Unter den Linden, Wilhelm Platz, Gensdarmenmarkt, or the Brandenburg Gate. From the large number of returns, those from 2238 children just entering school seem to have been pretty complete for 75 questions; but other returns were usable for a part of the questions, and some for other questions, so that in the tables the number of children is recorded on the uniform basis of 10,000. Arranged in the order of frequency the first Berlin table is as follows: |