EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME ELLA FRANCES LYNCH BOOKS FOR THE HOUSEHOLD THE YOUNG MOTHER'S HANDBOOK, by Maeianna Wheeler. 16mo . ... net $1.00 PRINCIPLES OF CORRECT DRESS, by Florence Hull Winterburn. 16mo . net 1.00 GOOD FORM FOR ALL OCCASIONS, by Florence Howe Hall net 1.00 NOVEL WAYS OF ENTERTAINING, by Florence Hull Winterburn. . 16mo net 1.00 COOK BOOK OF LEFT-OVERS, by Clark and RuLON. 16mo net 1.00 SOCIAL USAGES AT WASHINGTON, by Flor- ence Howe Hall. 16mo net 1.00 HOW TO KEEP HOUSEHOLD ACCOUNTS, by Charles Waldo Haskins. 16mo . net 1.00 THE EXPERT MAID SERVANT, by Christine Terhune Herrick. 16mo net 1.00 HYGIENE FOR MOTHER AND CHILD, by Dr. Francis H. MacCarthy. Post 8vo . net 1.25 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. lU'd. Post 8vo 1.25 THE EXPERT WAITRESS, by Anne Frances Springsteed. New Edition. 16mo. . net 1.00 THE BABY, HIS CARE AND TRAINING, by Marianna Wheeler. Revised edition 16mo net 1.00 HOW TO BE BEAUTIFUL, by Marie Mon- taigne. lU'd net 1.00 HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME PERSONAL TRAINING AND THE WORK HABIT BY ELLA FRANCES LYNCH FOUITOER OF THE SCHOOL OF INDIVIDUAL INSTRUCTION HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXIV /^\ in 1/2 of it 4/8; in 1/4, 2/8. Let him work this out. As a method to bring about familiarity with fractional relations the following is proposed. Start the child thus: HOW TO TEACH ARITHMETIC 121 1/2= = = — — = etc. 4 8 16 and so on across the page, he writing the equiva- lents. Next, tell him to work 1/4 in this way: 1/4= = = etc. 8 16 Then continue with 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4, unless the child understands so readily the purport that only 3/4 need be considered. Now let him work with 1/8 and all the eighths in the same manner. If the fourths have been reduced to 32ds, the 8ths may be reduced to 64ths, or to a still smaller unit. Any difficulty in the comprehension of the work, given here or ' farther on, can only arise from the fact that the pupil's mind is not yet ready for it. Tables may be constructed from time to time that give practical drill in fractions, using again and again the foot-rule: feet inches 1/2 1/4 2/4 3/4 = 4/4 1-1/4 = 1-3/4 = 2-1/4 = etc., the child carrying this table further by additional numbers in the first column. 122 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME Use also tables like this: yards inches I = 36 1/2 = 1/4 = 1-1/4 = 1-3/4 = 2-1/2 = et At this time the child is getting considerable prac- tice in actual measuring. With a foot-rule he finds the dimensions of tables, rugs, the porch, and yard. Problems such as the following may be assigned : find the length in inches or feet of the four sides of the tables; in feet, of a room; the house; the length of a rope reaching around the room; around the four sides of the yard or the house. Now has come the time to teach 1/3 by cutting a pie, by folding papers, by separating pebbles into three equal parts, always emphasizing the word ** equal.*' yards inches 1/3 2/3 3/3 1-1/3 == etc. Reverting again to the constant practice in counting, the child may learn to count by twos, beginning with i, thus 1-3-5, to 100, and down- ward; next by threes, beginning with i, as i~4-7» to about 100 and backward. Then begin with HOW TO TEACH ARITHMETIC 123 2, as 2-5-8, etc., to 100 or thereabouts. Some of this practice may be used every day, along with the concrete problems described; it is not essen- tial that this counting be written down, but if so, let it be kept in the book and dated. Thus the practice goes on: by 4's— I 2 3 5 6 7 9 10 II, etc. by s's— I 2 3 678 II 12 13 16 17 18 For weeks this kind of drill may be kept in sight, taking a fresh start each day. Being systematic, it gives the child opportunity to plan and think ahead for himself. He will know now that the sixes are to be learned, and that if he begins with one to-day he will begin with two to-morrow. The following is a good table in concrete work that may be used at this point: pounds ounces I = 16 1/2 = 1/4 = 1/8 = 2-1/2 = 3 = 4 = 5 = 1/16 = 124 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME This is another good table that he may have. rods feet 1 = 16-1/2 2 = 3 4 5 6 1/2 = 1/4 = 1/8 = This may be carried farther by combining the whole number and the fraction, as in the other tables, as far as the teacher sees fit to go. The work so far may have taken from one to two years, depending upon the child. He might well start in here to learn the meaning of a square — a square inch, a square foot. He will get these by actually marking out the spaces on paper and cutting out square inches and square feet. This is even better than his having ready- made squares and simply putting them together. He can cut several square inches and arrange them into squares and oblongs. When once he has learned by making it that a square inch is represented by an area one inch long and one inch wide he can place two such squares side by side and measure two square inches. He can cut out several of these inch squares so as to form ob- longs of the required number of inches, such as HOW TO TEACH ARITHMETIC 125 I X 3, 2 X 3, 3 X 3. In the latter he may notice that he has a square containing nine square inches. Then he may start with an oblong, i" x 4", 2" x 4", 3" X 4", imtil he has a 4-inch square and 16 square inches. He will not reach this point in one day, nor in two days. He will be set marking much good paper into squares and cutting these squares very accurately. Failing to do this, he will be directed to cut more. There is a purpose in this paper-cutting, too, for he is going to use the squares. He may get a sufficiently large nimiber to make 5 and 6 inch squares. He may find how many of these inch squares are necessary to cover one side of a book, a table, etc. Now with his ruler he may carefully construct a square, one foot on each side, and later cut out a sufficient number of inch squares to fill this space. In this way he discovers for himself that there are 144 square inches in a square foot. An acquaint- ance with the square foot brings the child good material for a series of valuable lessons. He knows by actual work and cotmt that one square foot contains 144 square inches. After the prac- tice he has had in constructing other tables it will be interesting to see to what extent he can construct this table based on the square foot, bringing in very many of the fractional parts, the fourths, eighths, sixteenths, thirds, ninths, sixths, twelfths. He will also begin the task of drawing a square foot and dividing it accurately into square inches. This is quite an undertaking, and 126 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME one would scarcely expect satisfactory results with the first attempt. Many attempts will qtiite likely be made before this square foot is divided into the 144 square inches with sufficient accu- racy to justify its acceptance as a piece of work. It is unnecessary to outline here all of the problems and all of the practices in ntunber work, especially in simple fractions, that can be based on this one lesson. There is good material in this for three or four weeks' work in arithmetic, and the planning of that work will not be the least enjoyable and profitable employment for teacher and pupil. The teacher should give di- rections only where they are needed. She may suggest a line of work which the child can profit- ably continue by himself for at least one day. For instance, *' What can you find out about one- third of that square foot?" This work will be the basis for surface measure- ment. With the foot square of paper as a unit, the pupil may measure table-tops, rugs, floors, either by repeating the one imit or cutting out many so as to cover the surface. Do not think that because the child has learned to measure lines he is ready for the measurement of surfaces, nor that cubic measure immediately follows on the heels of linear and square measure. The little child who can measure lines and sur- faces is no more ready for the measurement of solids than he is for the theory of limits. Let him alone imtil he grows up to this many-sided HOW TO TEACH ARITHMETIC 127 affair. And when his mind has reached that state of preparedness through physical and mental con- tact and the desire for understanding there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to the teaching of solid measure. In a day he grasps it. Your neighbor may tell you that her little girl is only nine, and has learned ''denominate numbers" in school. How has she learned them? Why, the teacher hammers in such facts as these: If you want to find area you multiply length by breadth ; if you want to find cubical contents you multiply length, breadth, and thickness together. And that is as much as it means to the youngster. Do not worry about long division. It is an abstract formula that has no active value in mind-training. It is one of the things the schools are always hoping to ** rationalize" — to make concrete, so that the immature mind may grasp the very reason you ** subtract, bring down the next figure, and divide again." They will never succeed. It remains an abstract formula even to the grown-ups, who find it a matter of habit- uation rather than of rationalization. Rarely should a child be taught long division before the tenth year. Why work hard to teach him at eight what he will learn easily in half the time at ten? One of the most prevalent pedagogical crimes in the teaching of arithmetic consists in the prac- tice of assigning work, conducting recitations, and planning courses without keeping in mind 128 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME the eventual freeing of the child from the necas- sity of having the teacher plan his work. In a plain and simple way arithmetic may be made the ready and attractive means of leading to in- dependence of thought and action. In the usual way of teaching it would be hopeless to ask of the child to consider and tell you what would be a reasonable assignment for the ensuing lesson, except as he might turn to the book and estimate the quantity of printed questions he could master, and then he would consider the space to be cov- ered. A child of eight, on the other hand, sen- sibly trained in oral arithmetic can work by itself and may be profitably and reasonably re- quired to prepare a daily lesson without depen- dence upon teacher, book, or specific instruction beyond a single suggestion. Even that need not be given more than once a week in order to provide adequate work and training for several lessons. The work of the teacher is chiefly to supervise and correct wrong tendencies of mental growth before they become fixed, just as you would watch the growing tree and help it to be- come straight. The great proportion of the arith- metic for these years at home will be mental, the kind that sharpened our grandfathers* wits, and the lack of which has hastened the downward tendency of modem schools. IX HOW TO TEACH WRITING AND DRAWING ART is the outward manifestation, by means I, of skill and taste, of alert observation and a highly imaginative life. This impHes the doing of things with ease and correctness, as it was understood by the great Italian painter Giotto, who was asked to send the Pope some proof of his art. The artist, who had given the world everlasting proofs of his art, first resented such a request. When pressed, he called for a piece of paper, took his pencil, and drew — a circle, with its center. The cotirtier refused to take this to his Holiness; the artist insisted. The Holy Father received the drawing, looked at it, smiled at the crestfallen courtier, and asked for a pair of compasses. **No artist ever produced, nor ever will produce, such a perfect work of art,'* said his Holiness, when, after applying the com- passes, he found the circle to be absolutely correct. **Go to the artist and thank him for the lesson he has taught me.*' How many weary hours, days, months, and years must the great artist have spent to acquire such wonderful skill and easy grace. I30 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME The term art, as applied to the pursuits recog- nized under that name, like other figurative terms, is not extremely accurate. The thing which we usually understand by art is far from the plain, unmistakable thing defined in terms of Webster. By the word art is meant no more primarily than the power of performing certain actions acquired by experience, study, and observation. So when we speak of a work of art we really mean a prod- uct of the skill existing in the trained mind and trained muscles of the artist. If then we think of art in terms of skill, of dexterity, of ingenuity, of the ability to adapt things in the natural world to our own uses, we are better prepared to seek the source of art in self-activity rather than in measured instruction. There is true art in an arithmetic lesson well done, in a reading-lesson well done, in planting a garden, hoeing the potatoes, in training a woodbine, in preparing a meal. Any lesson, any good piece of work, will serve to train mind and muscle to act in harmony. Therefore in this chapter on writing and drawing we shall consider even drawing as coming under the head of art only so far as the foregoing and kindred lessons and tasks merit being so classified. We shall consider drawing primarily as a further means of training the eye to see, the muscles to act. Can art, or, rather, can the rudiments of art be taught to a child under ten years of age? They can, and can be taught so simply and thoroughly WRITING AND DRAWING 131 that the normally developed child will take to them as the duckling will take to water. And if art is considered in terms of skill, of dexterity, of ingenuity, it may well take its beginning in writ- ing and drawing. Writing, as required of the child in the following lessons, represents a good piece of work every day, steady improvement in results, and gain in the power of co-ordination of hand and eye. Drawing, as the means of de- veloping human ingenuity, contrivance, and self- expression, begins in a different way, and is car- ried on quite differently, yet side by side with the work in writing. They balance each other — the strict discipline of wTiting and the freedom of drawing. A child may be drawing from the time he is able to hold a pencil. Writing, since it is training in precision, should not begin before six or seven, or as soon thereafter as the mother is prepared to devote ten or fifteen minutes every day to the child's work. The time to begin does not relate in any way to what is being done in other lessons, such as reading or arithmetic, any more than to garden work or swimming. In the teaching of writing and drawing we shall not discuss the forms of sense - training advocated by Montessori as leading to thes6 branches, since these and allied activities belong to the kindergarten period. Anything and every- thing advocated by this great teacher pertaining to the tactile and motor senses is good. Writing, as an imitative art, necessarily involves rules, 132 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME just as does any other occupation or business re- quiring skill, such as the art of building or engrav- ing, the art of navigation, of baseball, of cooking, and we shall begin with the rules. They need not be considered formidable in any way. They are merely organized modes of operation serving to facilitate the performance of certain actions. We live in a world where we are necessarily hedged in by rules and laws. He who learns to conform to rules gams freedom in the end through self- control. Nor need they have a deadening effect on the child's spirit. The rule that says to forty children, **You are to remain inactive in those patent seats for three or six hours a day," is an unjust rule. But the rule that says, **You are to follow these instructions implicitly for ten or fifteen minutes," is not unjust; it is an exercise in self-control. The writing-teacher must ever have in mind the object of teaching, which is not so much to im- part knowledge as mental and physical disci- pline, the training to act in accordance with well- established fundamental rules, the accustoming to systematic and regular action, the desire to do, the habit of order and self-control. She will, therefore, insist on strict observance of the fol- lowing rules, and will consider the mere form and shape of the letters of secondary impor- tance. (These instructions are addressed to the child through the teacher.) WRITING AND DRAWING 133 I. Sit squarely before your desk or table on a seat very slightly sloping back, and just high enough to place the slightly raised elbow on the table. II. Write with both elbows on the table, so that your body is evenly balanced and no curvature of the spine is possible. III. Do not lean against the desk with the chest. IV. Write from the very beginning with ink, so that you may learn to think and consider before you write. "What is written stands.'' V. Do not erase bad writing; keep it before your eyes as a deterring example, and try to write better and take pleasure in your daily progress and improve- ment. (There is nothing more pernicious to the right mental development of a child than the promiscuous use of rubbers for erasing. Rubber-tipped pencils in the hand of a little child are just as abominable as chew- ing-gum in its little mouth. Both tend to cripple self- control. The old abominable slate-pencil effectively combined both.) VI. Place your paper or book, well focused, exactly in front of you, slightly slanting to the left if you prefer slanting writing, perpendicularly to the edge of the desk if you prefer perpendicular writing. (Slanting and perpendicular here are a matter of taste. The author prefers slanting writing, basing this preference on results obtained.) VII. Rest your right arm on its elbow, using the latter as a pivot, and support it by the tip of the fourth finger. VIII. Hold your pen-holder between thumb and sec- ond finger, the first finger being used only to give pressure downward. IX. Let your pen-holder point toward your right shoulder. 134 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME X. The pen-holder should be about six inches long, about 5/16 of an inch thick, and with a soft cover (cork or inflated rubber) at the lower end, slightly increasing in thickness to within about 1-1/ 2 inches from the lower end, and then gradually tapering to the upper end. XI. The tfps of the fingers should be from 1-1/2 inches to two inches from the point of the nib. XII. The nib should be soft, and neither too blunt nor too sharp. XIII. In writing both points of the nib should touch the paper, so the ink easily flows out of the nib with- out scratching or sputtering. XIV. The left hand, with fingers not too close to- gether, and nearer to the body than the right, should hold the paper or book firmly in place, changing its position to one farther from the body than the right hand when the writing approaches the lower edge of the paper. XV. Both feet, neither crossed nor far apart, should rest on some support. XVI. The head should not be turned and twisted. XVII. Now start the child writing the following copies on ruled paper, the lines being 2>/^ of 3,n inch apart from one another. Do not proceed to the follow- ing copy until the previous copy has been thoroughly mastered. XVIII. See that all down-strokes slant in the same direction and show pressure. XIX. See that all down-strokes belonging to the same letter are equally distant from one another. XX. See that all letters are separated from one an- other by a space about twice as large as that by which down-strokes belonging to the same letter are separated. z .JU^ ^ '"^//jy//i To be written without lifting pen from paper^ -S6r {Mothers may continue this series.^ WRITING AND DRAWING 135 XXI. See that words are separated from one another by a space three times as large. XXII. Carefully attend to such minor points as placing the i-dot exactly over the i. Drawing I seem to hear a good, faithful, hard-working mother exclaim: ** But I know nothing of art. I could not draw a straight line if I tried." Granted, but does art consist merely in being able to draw a straight line, or a curved one, for the matter of that? Or is the vivid coloring of school chil- dren's masterpieces proudly exhibited at the end of the year to be called **art" ? If so, truly there is no hope for the average mother to teach this to her children. Do you need such directions as this, quoted from the first book of a really excellent series on art? On moist paper paint the blue sky half-way down. Before it is dry dip your brush in blue and yellow, and paint the far-off trees. Then paint the grass. or this, which is infinitely worse, because it antici- pates the child's observation of natural objects and their color: Paint the shape of the pumpkin on dry paper with a yellow wash. While this color is still wet add curved strokes of red from top to bottom. Paint the stem in green. 10 136 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME We are so apt to associate the word art with the useless nice accomplishments, instead of with himian contrivance and skill. There is as much true art in setting a room in order as in sketching an apple-tree. There is even more, for the setting of a room in order is a piece of constructive work — ^making a dress or making a loaf of bread is constructive. But spreading the warm colors in irregular blotches over soft-toned paper according to directions for making sunsets is not art nor science, even though comparatively well done. All of this leads me to say that we wrongly associate the idea of training in art with the notion of voluminous instruction and practice in the use of water-colors, oil-paints, diluted inks, the production of marvelous sunsets, and im- pressionistic drawings. Much of what is called art instruction is but an anemic imitation, quali- fying the learner to pass judgment upon things that he could not do and would never undertake. The shoemaker who set the ancient painter right with regard to some mistakes he had made in the shoe of one of his figures was not criticizing art, but was making use of his perfect knowledge of shoemaking. Every child loves to draw, and should be per- mitted to do so, learning at the same time, how- ever, that there are certain things, as walls and furniture, upon which he may not use that pen- cil, for the teaching of proper relationships is a part of the training in art. Give him a thick pen- WRITING AND DRAWING 137 cil or crayon in order to avoid cramping of the fingers. His first drawings will be horizontal and vertical lines connected. To him they may repre- sent a whole menagerie. As a first exercise he may learn to print large letters like the alphabet on his blocks. Some may question the value of teaching a child to print; but viewed from the standpoint of future utility and of a child's eager- ness to do this, it hardly seems wasted time. Drawing to the child is good employment and recreation — a good time to let him alone and see what comes of his self-activity. Then give him simple tools — pencil, rounded scissors, and jack- knife. For the child to cut from printed paper models his toys, dolls, house-forms, etc., is fairly good, as it exercises the eye and the fingers; but how much better is it for him to outline the forms himself, and cut them, giving him the right to call them truly his own ! Far more freedom will be allotted the drawing, not only freedom of action, but freedom from di- rections at every step. The child's unhampered drawing leads him onward, outward, upward. It brings out the inward child as writing never can. The writing-lessons are set — there is little free- dom for originality — ^it is muscle-training, nerve- training. To be able to draw means to be able to express yourself clearly in the one universal language. As a form of self-expression drawing holds an important place in mental development. As a means of conveying ideas, if for no other 138 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME reason, it may well hold an honorable place in education. For a long time the child will represent objects by vertical and horizontal lines. Then he begins to observe a little the form which he represents by outlines. Within his reach is an inexhaustible supply of natural objects to examine as to form, color, and appearance, then to picture in his crude but satisfying fashion, a potato, an eggy a leaf, a cat-tail, a blade of grass, vegetable forms, a tree without foliage. He may outline the scissors, knife, fork, spoon. Then come such forms as a candlestick, tea-kettle, tea-pot, a carrot, rail fence, butterfly, a swallow in flight, or dozens of them; a rabbit, chair, and house represented by straight lines. He may trace the outline of a leaf, then fill in midrib and veins. He will re- joice in outlining a sail-boat, picket fence, kites, well-sweep, pimip, and gate. Rightly employed, drawing may be one of the most profitable adjuncts of education. It is most valuable when illustrative of other branches, and is a powerful aid in training the habit of observation. HOW TO TEACH OBSERVATION *' C YES have you, but you see not; ears have JL-^ you, but you hear not/' This kindly warn- ing of the Great Master is timely when applied to the present generation, as it was two thousand years ago. Most difficulties which crop up and grow in the school career of a child can be traced back to Not Seeing and Not Hearing, to the lack of Observation. Not long ago a normal-school instructor, him- self the author of one of the best text-books used in the public schools, visited an experimental school and was present at an arithmetic lesson. When he left he said: *' You certainly teach arith- metic as it ought to be taught. You insist first of all that your pupils clearly understand what they hear and read when a problem is given them to solve. And therefore they find no real diffi- culties. You are teaching them to see and hear. My pupils, young men and women, mostly high- school graduates, have never learned to use their eyes and ears. They cannot read. If you give I40 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME them fractions to add they will add the numera- tors; if you set them to multiply fractions they will multiply the nimierators; and so on with every simple arithmetical operation. It is almost impossible to teach them. And they are to be let loose as teachers of the coming generation." The readers of this book will therefore under- stand, and perhaps kindly appreciate, that the writer, considering the gravity of the subject, ap- plied to that well-known biologist, Prof. George H. Hudson, and asked him to help in writing this chapter to the book. He consented. What he wrote follows, and is acknowledged with many sincere thanks and the highest appreciation. *' Why do so many people characterize a child as * all ears and eyes ' ? Why do we so frequently utter the command, ' You must not touch that ' ? The psychologist answers these questions by call- ing our attention to the fact that the senses are the only avenues through which the mind can receive those stimuli which are essential to its development ; they are the tentacles, so to speak, and the only ones, with which the child can lay hold of and attend to the outside world. How important a part may be played by a single sense like that of touch is well shown by its use in awakening and developing the mind of Helen Keller. If the senses are the only gates to the mind it must follow that the clearness, accuracy, and fullness of our knowledge must depend HOW TO TEACH OBSERVATION 141 primarily upon the perfection of the receiving- avenues. The child's activity, then, is simply a manifestation of Nature's way of taking the first and fundamental steps in its education. ** Many parents are content to let Nature work unaided in this matter; but as certainly as we may assist her in securing a better muscular de- velopment through supervision and encourage- ment of proper exercise, just so certainly we may aid her in securing a higher and more perfect sense development. Well-directed sense-training for the first ten years of a child's life will then wonderfully enhance its power to discern and discriminate. The child possessing the keener and better-developed senses will, other things being equal, become the more intelligent, the hap- pier, and the better-equipped citizen. ** Intelligent sense-training is thus one of the most fundamental or basic problems in education. It deals particularly with what we may call the physical or animal aspect of development, and it may and should begin in earliest infancy. It is thus in its very nature the work of the home, and it should be continued through all the early years of school life. Its key-words are Observation, Comparison, and Discrimination. By observa- tion we do not mean simply seeing. We may ob- serve through taste, touch, smell, sound, tem- perature, or muscular tension. All these separate gates to the mind should receive proper and ade- quate attention, 142 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME '* As a matter of fact, our modern civilization has had a tendency to shut out the normal stimuli of sense development. First, our opening sentence is indicative of a tendency to repress Nature's efforts, and this for the purpose of personal com- fort, or because of fragile and costly material which the child might injure. Individual, wealth in unintelligent hands thus tends to lay the foun- dation for intellectual decay. Second, the four walls of a room exclude the varied songs of birds, the rustle of leaves, the music of brooks, and a thousand varied and delicate ways in which Nature appeals to the senses of higher animals. The same walls exclude the odor of balsam and pine, of ferns and flowers, and even of the fresh air itself. We may surround the child with colors, but we cannot offer the changes presented by trembling leaf, nodding flower, or moving bird — by cloud, sunset, or starlight. Uniform steam heat does not stimulate the skin as does the change from sunshine to shadow, and vice versa, or the kiss of a breeze on hands and face. Ab, on his bed of dry leaves in the open forest, was better circimistanced than our shut-in infants. We must add to the usable variety in the home, but we must not neglect ovir first mother — the beautiful and wonderful out of doors. To be shut off from these vast spaces and this benign influence for too many hours either in home or school is nothing less than a crime against health and future happiness. A little reflection con- HOW TO TEACH OBSERVATION 143 cerning these two modern tendencies should con- vince us that bur increasing interference wdth Nature's method of sense development is both real and vital. Here, too, we are introducing factors that, if allowed to remain, will most as- suredly lead to racial deterioration. It is not then simply a question as to whether we shall allow Nature to use her method alone or with intelligent aid; but it involves also the question as to whether or not we shall cease our uncon- scious but dangerous antagonism. " Let us look now within these gates. Through the senses the brain receives images that are stored in memory and recalled for comparison with other similar images. We thus form con- cepts and gain those very important groups known as apperceptive ideas. In other words, the mind is a castle of many rooms which may only be filled through experience, but the rooms them- selves and the avenues to them are determined by heredity. To give a better mental inheritance after birth is an impossibility. The factor of in- heritance is then fixed — ^its influence will persist through life — yet we should recognize it in all our efforts at education. Whether the house and its avenues be good or bad, we have control of the furnishing, for this must come through the en- vironment, and over this factor we have almost unlimited control. The awakening mind will en- deavor to select images for use in its thought- processes that its inheritance leads it to demand. 144 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME We have the power, however, to present it with images that will lead to a more agreeable furnish- ing. *What shall the furnishings be?' is then another fundamental question in education, and this furnishing also starts with the very first use of the developing senses. ** Again w^e must depend very largely on the home for this essential portion of a proper mental equipment. Again also the time spent indoors, and particularly in the school-room, involves a dis- tinct loss in percept-collecting, and without this we cannot acquire an individual, vivid, and varied imagery. I once visited a school whose walls were bare and whose windows had the lower panes painted to prevent the children from looking out of doors. A bright little girl had a single ques- tion asked her, and in a minute it was answered. For the rest of that period she heard answers, good, bad, or indifferent, and listened to words of condemnation or praise. There was an insuf- ferable lack of ventilation, a marked spirit of un- rest, and a desire on the part of some to enliven the proceedings a bit. The second period was like unto the first, and this * valuable discipline' was probably continued day after day, month after month, year after year. Thus this child served a prison sentence in a graded school. She * did time ' as certainly as any convicted criminal. The result was a deadened mind and early death by consumption. ** The school's greatest effort is to develop the HOW TO TEACH OBSERVATION 145 machinery of expression. A vast amount of time is spent on spelling, grammar, composition, rhetoric, literature, and on languages other than our own. The child's mind has been filled with choice examples of how to express himself, but he has no use for these examples, for he has no beautiful personal imagery to express. His train- ing in the use of tools was at the expense of a rich and varied individual experience — his material to work with is not his own and therefore not vital. Shakespeare was a devoted and accurate observer of Nature and of his fellow-men. He laid in a wonderful stock of vital, personal rec- ords, and then gave expression to his wealth of mental imagery. This vivid imagery was not the product of a school. On the other hand, our vast- ly more elaborate system of training for ability to express thought has been used on millions of individuals, but has not produced a Shakespeare. Perhaps that is not to be expected, but we might at least expect the development of equal mental power. It is just possible that Lincoln and Edison and others became really great because they did not have the disadvantage of a modern education. **To neglect to store the mind, through per- sonal experience, with varied and vital images of its own is a very serious defect in school education. Oiu* children may devour language, but they cannot digest it. One can neither impart nor comprehend anything but the commonplace un- 146 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME less he has a wealth of stored imagery. Every teacher of English gets enough incongruous an- swers to make a funny though really pathetic book. A child in an Adirondack school recently read, * It was a moment that a painter might have seized.' A visitor asked: *Did you ever see a painter?' 'Yes, sir,' replied the boy, *my father shot one last winter.' ** It should be the aim to get the foundation material for mind - furnishing through personal observation of natural objects or natural phenom- ena. If you cannot watch the opening of a real sea -anemone or the eruption of a volcano it will be wise to go to the moving-picture. Al- though not real, the close facsimile will give material to impart to a friend or to enable the child to understand the written description of another. We but express organic law when we say that the development of the mind is in DIRECT proportion TO THE VARIETY OF ITS REGIS- TERED AND CLASSIFIED PERCEPTS. The two great fundamentals of mind development, then, are educated senses and a furnishing of vivid, per- sonally acquired, true, and basal ideas concerning the environment. The only possible means of securing these things is through observation as herebefore defined. "What I may call the third fundamental in education consists in training the power to ex- press, and the cultivation of this power also be- gins with the home and the cradle. We cannot HOW TO TEACH OBSERVATION 147 here, nor need we, emphasize the various forms through which expression may be developed. A vocabulary is, however, one of the essentials, and we may briefly point out its use as an aid in ob- servation. If we desire a child to see more in a flower than mere surface, form, color, or odor we must reveal the pleasures of more careful or pur- poseful observation. Suppose we give the word * stamen* to use in the description of a part, and follow this after some days with 'anther' and 'pollen.* Some other day we may go out to see in how many places in garden or field we may find stamens. Lead to the child's discovery of stamens on the elms and maples in early spring and on the grasses and plantains in summer. In a class of high-school graduates I have some- times found that but one in thirty knew that pussy-willows were clusters of flowers possessing stamens. The words given are enough of the flower vocabulary to last for a year unless the child asks for other names. This same year we may plant seeds and watch their sprouting and growth. During the second year we could hunt for baby seeds. Where do you find them.? Always in an 'ovary.' This is a new word, and if desired the terms 'style' and 'stigma' may be added. Where in the flower is the ovary? Are those of all blossoms alike in form ? There is no need for hurry in this vocabtilary, but it will lead to more careful observation and discrimina- tion, and also allow the child to talk intelli- 148 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT PIOME gently about the flowers of the neighborhood. Go over the whole field of yotir environment. ** Let the child see something of the heavens on still, clear nights. Learn the names of a number of conspicuous constellations. Not ten per cent, of our recent high -school graduates over the whole land know even what the 'milky way' is. Let the child find out through observation if the Big Dipper shifts its position. A high-school graduate recently discovered it upside down, but insisted that at her home it was always right side up, and wrote to her father for proof. If one has never contemplated the starry heavens on a clear night how can he grasp the thought of the Psalmist in, ' When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man, that Thou art mindful of him?* See if the moon keeps the same star neighbors on successive days. What is the direction of her movement through the stars? Where is the sun when the moon is full, and where when she is new ? Do not answer the question for the child; train him to investi- gate and discover. " Our observational work must not neglect the sky by day. If a fixed vertical post is convenient- ly situated let the child measure, and record on a calendar, the length of its shadow about once in two weeks, and beginning some time in March or April. On the following March give him the problem of discovering the days of the year when HOW TO TEACH OBSERVATION 149 tliis shadow is longest and when shortest. After- ward consult an almanac with him and see how nearly correct was his determination. These are the tiiming-points in the sun's apparent north- ward or southward motion. At them the *sun stands/ hence 'solstice.' Give him the name when convenient or perhaps after he has found the summer solstice. If he is told his error, in days, at this time, he will try to make his deter- mination of the winter solstice more accurate. "What changes in the air are brought about by north or south winds? Personify the winds. How do their characters differ? When fairly well tmderstood read some of the personifications foimd in good literature. ** Take the whole field of nature. Visit an out- crop of rock and see if the discovery as to how soil is formed may be made. Can you find fossils in the neighborhood? What does running water do? Find miniature land forms, cations, and deltas in their making. Aim to know something of the herbs and trees, the birds and insects in- habiting the territory aroimd home. *' We may recapitulate the aims of this obser- vational work as follows: ** The development and training of the senses. ** The collection of a wealth of true and vivid imagery. "The acquisition of a vocabulary of use in learning about the things around us, and a de- velopment of the power to express our ideas. ISO EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME ** But this is not all that we have gained. In this work we have come to make a more intimate acquaintance with our environment; we have gained knowledge of great and lasting worth; we have been led to appreciate and love the com- munion with nature; we have secured a whole- some measure of contentment ; and we have done much toward developing a personality greatly to be desired." The wisdom of Dr. Hudson's remarks is man- ifest. Yet, the mother back in the country on a farm, in the woods, is prone to think : ** If we could only liv e in the city where my children could have the advantages of a good school!" Of her own re- flection she shotdd be able to discover how for- tunate are those who spend their childhood far from the big, highly organized school. Not only have they the negative advantage of safe distance from the rattle of school machinery, but the posi- tive blessing of opportunity to learn from Nature's self. If one would but attend the school of the woods, the college of field and orchard, the uni- versity of the farm — ^attend with the desire to extract therefrom the fullest lessons — he would know the beauty of intellectual health, he would gain therefrom the rugged virility and power, the originality and independence which are Natvire's own certificates of promotion, not to be acquired in any more conventional surroundings, and not to be counterfeited by any amount of so-called HOW TO TEACH OBSERVATION 151 *' nature study" carried on in crowded class-rooms under the direction of a teacher only one degree less ignorant of her subject than is her class. It is this sort of exotic training in our over- crowded schools which tends to produce the city child who does not know that there is a difference between a rock and a mountain ; whose knowledge of forestry is limited to the impression that all trees can be divided into two great classes — either they are Christmas trees or they are not Christ- mas trees; who will ask you whether rivers flow into the ocean or the ocean into the rivers; who thinks mountains resemble eyebrows, because they look that way on the map ; who would hesi- tate to say whether a partridge is a biped or an amphibian. Primitive men walk through a world with eyes trained to read the faintest signs and with ears attuned to the slightest sound. Children are very clovse to their savage ancestors. A child's senses are not dulled by disuse and misuse. Many parents are content to let Nature work unaided in this training instead of assisting her to secure a higher and more perfect sense development. Observation cultivates interest and alertness and brings about the ability to measure, to con- trast. It is the forerunner of reflection and judg- ment, the qualities of a mature mind. A child has an ardent curiosity and a love of experimental inquiry. Compare for a moment the knowledge and information that we can ob- 11 152 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME tain through observation, with the indispensable information that can be found only in books, and you get a better idea of the value of training the observational powers. Just think of all a baby has to achieve, and in so short a time ! The use of his limbs involves a vast and complicated series of mechanical prob- lems. He has to become acquainted with dan- gers and how to avoid them; with difficulties and how to overcome them. He reads faces long before he dreams of reading books. He rapidly acquires a new language, and with such subtle touches of idiom that he can never hope to learn another language quite so thoroughly. Then he has to make acquaintance with a world as new to him as it once was strange and new to Adam. He must become acquainted with the animals and give each a name. The sun, the moon, the stars, the green old hills — all different from one another — ^the trees, the flowers — all these are portrayed so accurately that when other later pictures have faded and vanished these first ones return with the early freshness still un- dimmed. How very few great men have spent their early boyhood in a city flat! To-day's men of achievement were fifty years ago boys on the farm, and in their declining days they go back to the ancient woods with rod and reel, pipe and book, to again taste the happiness of serene re- pose. Many of the lessons handed down from HOW TO TEACH OBSERVATION 153 the ancients, and vulgarly considered mere fables, are beautiful allegorical expressions of great and vital truths. Among them there is none more instructive than the legend of Antseus. Sprung from the earth, as we all are, he was invincible so long as he remained in contact with the Primal Mother; but being separated from the source of strength, he was subdued and slain. Now the Hercules that strangles us takes many names and forms; but the process is the same. He separates us from the earth; that is, he de- prives us of communion with nature, which com- mimion is of the utmost importance in building up a vigorous manhood and also gives us many of oiu* purest pleasures. The love of nature is deep and ineradicable in the normal htiman heart, and the child who has never known the ministering care of that great parent, is, in a measure, robbed of its birthright, which would have enabled it to build up a noble life. Much has been said and written of earthly changes, but these changes are only apparent or imaginary. Individuals change; but the race remains, and, above all, the laws of development are unchangeable. We do not grow oaks in hot- beds or flower-pots; nor need we expect to see the highest t3^es of manhood or womanhood produced in modem society. It was in the desert that the patriarch had the vision of angels keeping the communication be- 154 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME tween earth and heaven. In the wilderness may still be found the angels of health, peace, and contentment. The main cause of regret is not that the child's stock of information is so woefully limited. Lack of knowledge is less to be deplored than lack of feeling. We go to Nature less to learn than to absorb. We go for enjoyment and companion- ship. .Nature meets us half-way and takes a hold upon us that lightens the dull, dragging hours of later imprisonment within stupid walls. In speaking of his delightful essays Wake-Robin, John Burroughs says: **I wrote this book sitting at a desk in front of an iron wall. I was the keeper of a vault in which many millions of bank-notes were stored. During my long periods of leisure I took refuge in my pen. How my mind reacted from the iron wall in front of me and sought solace in memories of the birds and of the simmier fields and woods!'* He took refuge from his long periods of leisure ! Not every child, indeed, can live among such scenes as Wake-Robin, but in this day of rapid and cheap transportation it is possible for nearly every child to be trained to see and to enjoy nature at first hand. First, there are the city parks. Again, the money thrown away on picture shows would take mother and children for an afternoon trip to the near-by country. Do you not sincerely pity the boy who has never cut his own fishing- rod, set a trap, or found a bird's nest? or who HOW TO TEACH OBSERVATION 155 needs to ask, What is a babbling brook? and who does not know of his own seeing of *'the nishing of great rivers"? There was culture before there were books, and education should first aim at culture. Mere book knowledge is not culture, nor will it produce cul- ture. Not only does home training prepare the child for useful life and good citizenship, but it gives it a working knowledge that opens the door of imderstanding to academic subjects. For in- stance, while the girl beats the eggs and you an- swer her questions she gets a practical chapter in organic chemistry. Washing dishes with her mother as a teacher she finds out the properties of water, the hardness and softness; the actions of acids and alkalis as combined in soap; the effect of heat and cold on certain bodies. Was there ever a better laboratory than the kitchen to teach a girl all she need know about chemistry? She learns about mould, mildew, rust, fermenta- tion, freezing mixtures, temperatures, salt, and baking-soda. She learns of what materials dif- ferent utensils are made, and how and why that material is used. Here are more of the things a child can learn from you or with your help in the kitchen: food-stuffs, their constituents and where they come from; the making and uses of glass, pottery, iron, steel, brass, nickel, silver. Using the garden hose teaches the pressure of water. The child learns as it helps at home about coal, metals, alloys, coins, clouds, rain, 156 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME snow, ice, springs, brooks, lakes, wells, canals, sea-water, salt, winds, storms, familiar animals and plants. A child who learns these and related things and uses his eyes may later on really get something worth while from a high-school course in chemistry and physics, because he knows what the book and the instructor are talking about, while the student without this home training does no more than get through the examination. The making of useful, thinking, worthy citizens de- pends upon the early teaching of the humble facts and duties of every-day life. The one great ques- tion in a child's mind is * * What ? ' ' The importance of "How?" and "Why?" should also be firmly impressed. The habit of finding the answers to these three questions constitutes the training in observation. Without a consistent preliminary training in observation, in the study of Nature, and the in- cidental learning of the facts met in every day's life, the beginners in laboratory or science classes find themselves embarrassed and confused before a striking array of information and detail, each part of which is simple enough in itself, but yet so interwoven with other information and related detail as to present a solid wall of complexity. The most necessary condition for the solution of a problem, the understanding of the data, is lacking. Let us take the study of botany as another example. Here is a class of high-school or col- HOW TO TEACH OBSERVATION 157 lege students, well advanced in their teens and passa.bly intelligent. If they are given to study a chapter on the parts of a plant, to many of them nearly every technical term used in the as- signment is new and strange. Nothing seems to have a bearing upon anything else. How do they study that lesson? By a muscular effort, repeat- ing over and over each definition and description, word for word, and holding the collection of facts securely in their memories until the desired op- portimity of committing what they have mem- orized to a test paper. Now consider the student who has learned to observe and trained himself to notice weeds and flowers. The assigned page is a delight to a student of this kind. The definitions are no longer meaningless, since in another style and phrasing they tell him what he has known and thought before. Does he passively set about committing to memory the words of the text? Never. He does more. He give their meaning, their relationships to other definitions; he puts interest and vitality into the work. He proves again and again that he who brings something to the book is the one who gets something out of it. He shows the maturity of mind that comes from long thinking. Because he has thought, he is able to face a complex assignment, whereas the beginner must deal with the single idea, which is the primitive basis. The boy or girl who has been taught to use eyes and ears 158 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME is admirably fitted for scientific studies. Sci- ence is based on facts. Research does no more than classify or arrange in an orderly manner certain facts so that conclusions may be drawn. These conclusions are again and again tested by facts until research becomes science. The boy whose early life has been observant has the basis of facts and the skill in drawing conclusions needed by science. Such a boy meets with no difficulty in studying mathematics, astronomy, physics, or chemistry. XI HOW TO EVOLVE THE WORK HABIT HAST thou seen a man diligent at his work? He shall stand before kings." Since Paradise was lost to man it has been his destiny on earth to work. Education, therefore, means preparation and training for work. With- out it man is not fit to live. All must needs be educated. All are to work. By exertion of brain or sweat of brow must every child of Adam gain his daily bread if he would have it palatable, digestible, and nourishing. In that edict even he who delves may read a bless- ing, though its utterance sounded like a curse. Work is the simplest solution of the problem of himian happiness. An all-wise Providence has ordered that otu: highest enjoyments spring from our greatest necessities; and all other joys pale before the invigorating glow of satisfaction re- sulting from the honest performance of otir duties. Long, laboriously compiled statistical tables pretend to show that only so many hours of work per day are necessary to support life. As if to LIVE meant merely to exist, and mere existence i6o EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME were the end of life! Why, the animals, the reptiles, the insects, all live. Shoiild we, the image of God, be satisfied with a life like theirs? We shoiild, indeed, without the chastening, en- nobling power of work. Toil and strife are the inalienable conditions of life on this earth; and any scheme based on elimination of these wotild terminate all manhood worthy of the name. Benjamin Franklin says that the man to be envied is he who rolls up his sleeves and goes singing to his work. To gain the full benefit of our labor we must work; not merely to earn a living, but in order that, living, we may accom- plish something, may become co-workers with the Creator instead of convicts carrying out our sentence. Even the panacea of four hours, two hours, or one hour a day would still be working under compulsion, and therefore slavery. The main object of life is not knowledge, but work; the use of knowledge is to enable us to work intelligently and without loss of time. Education, to be of use, should be based on the same plan as the student's future life must be — work, strive, and win. Without work there can be neither development nor progress. We do not sufficiently value work as a means of mental development. Its possibilities are inexhaustible. But instead of associating work and education we are apt to associate and consider inseparable books and education, so that unconsciously we define ignorance as a lack of knowledge of the HOW TO EVOLVE THE WORK HABIT i6i few things about which we ourselves happen to know something. Even though the poor grand- father has long practised the habits of right thinking on the elementary principles of human action, and right acting in the ordinary relations of himian society, yet if he cannot parse his way to salvation he is an ignoramus to the raw mind of youth. There were educated men, in the best sense of the word, before there were books. Between the mind that is merely a storehouse of facts and the mind well trained by hard work and hard think- ing there is all the vast difference that there is between a ramshackle furniture shop and a well- furnished home. Lack of the habit of work breeds dislike of work ; but work which at first seems a burdensome task in course of time becomes a pleasure. To make good citizens you must first and foremost instil in the young minds a respect for labor and create the habit of work, giving the work experience early enough for it to become a vital part of their lives. Then your children will not take their places in the ranks of the useless learned persons bringing reproach on the very name of educa- tion. Nor is it enough to teach a child how to perform certain tasks — ^that is a simple matter. He must be made to work. Instead of killing spontaneity compulsion prepares for spontaneity. What an effective lesson you have taught when once the learner grasps the meaning of the old, i62 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME old truth — that habit grows from repeated acts, character from habit, destiny from character; that the first step is a difficult one, that con- tinued effort brings attainment, and that every task well done is a stepping-stone to higher under- takings. These world-old truths cannot be taught by precept merely, but must be wrought into the fiber of each individual by the actual perform- ance of physical labor. Deplorable as are the evils of child labor, they are not as far-reaching and destructive as the evils of child idleness. To learn from books is all very well in its time and place, but that time comes after the period of learning from experience and example has well progressed. In dealing with young children it is natural and logical to form first the habit of practical work and, secondly, that of sustained mental exertion. Thus we are proceeding from the concrete to the abstract, from the known to the related unknown. All ordinary activities tend to improve the mind. Moreover, in this day of abundant literature almost any child's natural curiosity will lead him to learn to read by himself if only some one will answer his ques- tions as to letters, words, and the meaning of words. Two or three generations ago, when the home recognized its responsibilities and looked upon the school merely as a contributing factor in furnish- ing instruction, then the home and school to- gether really educated and produced men who HOW TO EVOLVE THE WORK HABIT 163 were types, with mind and muscle strengthened to undertake and to achieve. Where is the school that provides for boy or girl the educational ad- vantages of the full, rich individual daily pro- gram of home life on the farm? No university course can equal in value this early all-round education without vacation. When the boy worked side by side with his father in the field and the girl did her share of the housework the problem of education was solved thus far indi- vidually and as a matter of course, and did not come up for constant public discussion. The worker at home was rarely the shirk at school, as school was then, and the old-fashioned teacher did not use such phrases as **lack of concentration,'* ** eye-minded instead of ear-minded,** in place of the more direct, if less euphonious, *'The child is lazy,** or *'His shiftless parents have never taught him how to work.'* In regard to the value of work to the individual there can be no dispute. The question is, How form the habit of work.? First, we must take account of the child*s dor- mant sense of responsibility that may be awak- ened by the mere recognition of its presence, in order that the period of helplessness be not un- wisely prolonged. Secondly, we must give the small child daily regular tasks suited to his strength, increasing them with his ability to perform them. To be sure, there is nothing novel in this, but i64 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME there is not much novelty in a world as old as ours — not much that is both novel and useful. The most satisfactory pupils, taken all in all, come from homes where it is believed that every child from the age of three or four should have suitable daily tasks to perform regularly and well. The Httle child should dress himself, button or lace his shoes, hang up his clothing on the proper hooks, turn the covers of his bed to air, put away his playthings when through with them, run here and there to save his mother steps about the house. As the months go by the capacity for work increases and more may well be under- taken. The beginner's assignments should be simple, for failure results more often from a con- fused perception of the thing to be done than from inability to accomplish what is required. There is something gratifying to every one in the feeling that he is able to do each day something more difficult than the day before. To teach the child how to work and to rejoice in a good piece of work, to make every day a little fuller and richer than the day before, to develop the child in skill, in force, in self-control — these are among the best things the very best school could hope to give, yet these things are not beyond the ken of even the busiest mother, nor are they difficult, except in so far as patience and persistent judi- cious attention to the undertaking are difficult for the mother herself. The problem of to-day and to-morrow is the problem of the individual child. HOW TO EVOLVE THE WORK HABIT 165 Many a mother will feel that she is doing her full duty in the way of fostering the work habit, and will say, *'Now, what has that to do with the more complicated problem of teaching from books?" Everything. The most important out- growth of the work habit is the power of concen- tration, which is the great fundamental need of scholarship. The habit of self-enforced concen- tration may be developed in any healthy mind if an early beginning is made. In itself a mighty conquest, it is the essential basis of further con- quest. As the power of concentration is the first requisite of success, it is also the safest guarantee of success. The factors that produce and the circumstance that develop this power in the in- dividual render a school unnecessary to that in- dividual. Perhaps the greatest good that can be derived from a college training is the ability to intensify effort and prolong endeavor. But should not the cultivation of these valuable and all-important traits be begun before the period of college life? Not only is this accomplished with far more ease and certainty at the age of seven than at the age of twenty-one, but its early acquisition is the only assurance against waste of time and failure of achievement. The student who waits until he reaches college to learn how to work generally misses his aim. The right time to learn how to study is in the very beginning. The right way of doing so is to meet difficulties and conquer them by overcoming one at a time, i66 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME and the simplest at the outset. A college diploma is of less value than the habit, the knowledge, the power ' ' how to study. ' ' How often will a student in a preparatory or normal school take a text- book in mathematics or science or history and puzzle vainly over it by the hour, then, failing to get any sense out of it, simply labor to commit to memory the whole lesson, though not under- standing it. On the contrary, the student who has had the training that begins with the thought- fiil performance of simple duties, such as laying one stick square and true upon another until the wood-pile is in trim shape, making one stitch and then another until the wash-rag is knitted — all concrete tasks that can be measured and ap- praised with the child's singleness of vision — ^is enabled to take the same bothering text-book, settle himself down to it, and say to himself: **This book is written neither in Hebrew nor in Choctaw; these are English words, and any not familiar to me I shall look up in the glossary. First I shall master the first sentence ; that done, I shall get the second; then, as the entire topic is made up of so many sentences, it is only a mat- ter of perseverance for me to fit the sentences to- gether, understand the context, and so conquer the whole." That stock phrase of the schools, **such and such a pupil cannot concentrate,*' when applied to a normal child, means one of two things: an indictment of the home that has failed to train HOW TO EVOLVE THE WORK HABIT 167 the child in habits of work, or an admission that the school work is either above or below the ca- pabilities of the child. He can concentrate and apply energy and zeal whenever it suits him to do so to further his own interests. He digs a cave in the sand or in the snow, or builds a snow man, or dissects a toy, or builds with his blocks, wholly absorbed in that particular endeavor and work- ing toward its completion. No dawdling over it, no half-doing, no display of weariness of soul. You watch him and say to yourself: '* If he would only work as hard as that at the things he is set to at school." Unfortunately for all concerned, he has not learned the greatest and most impor- tant lesson of all — to do exactly what he is told to do. If a boy knows that when he is told to fill the wood -box it means to fill the wood-box; if a girl knows that when she is told to pick a cupful of berries it means to pick a cupful, not a half a cupful, that boy or girl, when set a task with books, will take for granted that they are to do that task, not sit back and depend upon some one to help them. In the matter of the assignment of school work nearly all are working beneath their strength. Real work for a single hour accomplishes more for the student than the five or six hours of so-called study constituting a school-day. No one dis- putes that a small child can learn in an hour all that is worth while in the course that is now dis- tributed over five tiring consecutive hours. He 12 i68 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME spends an hour with a book open before him, and takes great credit to himself for studying a whole hour, when in truth he has given the greater part of the time to play, dawdling over his work, en- joying neither the work nor the play. An ambi- tion to make progress keep pace with the passing- days is more easily aroused in the beginner than after he has been a few years in the average school. In a certain experimental school the teacher was not satisfied with the work being done by a group of ten-year-old boys. They spent the en- tire day in preparing assignments that could be mastered, she believed, in half the time. One morning she told this class if they could get their work finished before the usual time, three o'clock, they would be dismissed. At half past two the boys applied for permission to go home with work completed. The next morning they asked if that day the same privilege held good, and on receiv- ing this assurance fell to work on the assign- ments, which were calculated to equal in diffi- culty the preceding day's lessons. On this second day all had finished the work by two o'clock, the time varying from ten to thirty minutes, according to the pupil. On the following morn- ing the boys propounded this question: **If we finish our work in the forenoon, may we stay away from school this afternoon?" and were as- sured that they might do so. Every boy finished his work before the noon intermission. Again on the fourth morning was the experiment re- HOW TO EVOLVE THE WORK HABIT 169 peated, with the result that the slowest of this group was enabled to make a triumphant de- parture by eleven o'clock. Then a strange thing happened. When school was resimied for the afternoon these boys pre- sented themselves, looking rather sheepish at being found around a school-house when not compelled to appear, and explained their pres- ence by saying, ** There was nothing doing around home." The teacher had discovered two things: first, these boys really could do well in two hours the work upon which they had been spending five hours; second, the day on which these chil- dren had learned what it meant to work to the very limit of their capacity was the day on which school possessed for them attractions to draw them back. XII HOW TO TEACH THE RETARDED CHILD IN countries where public instruction has been carried on for centuries, where mature experi- ence has made parents and teachers wiser, it has become a well-estabHshed and recognized fact that there must be a certain percentage of failures in the attempt to pass the growing generation successfully through a scholastic system. Such natural and irremediable failures we can only meet with the question: *'What can be done to enable the intellectually handicapped child to be- come a useful citizen, and what is the teachable maximum?" Very different, and sadly different, is it with the poor child that, though naturally well equipped for a successful school course, is not only retarded, but dulled and stunted by avoidable hindrances and checks due to blighting and blasting in- fluences of home and school. Here the only effi- cient help can come from the mother, who, realiz- ing her grave responsibility and bounden duty, resolutely takes matters into her own hands and remedies what has been spoiled by her own THE RETARDED CHILD 171 negligence and the culpable inefficiency of teacher and school. The following instances, taken from Swift's Mind in the Making, will prove to her that she need not be dismayed in facing what may have seemed to her a hopeless task, and give her hope, courage, patience, and strength to accomplish it successfully. The great Swedish botanist, Carl Linnaeus, who invented that wonderful system of classifying plants, so impressed the directors and teachers of the ** gymnasium" with his worthlessness and backwardness that his father '*was advised to make a cobbler of him, as he was quite unfit for any learned profession. Yet all the time the boy was lost in the undergrowth of thoughts which in their maturity were to revolutionize the study of botany." Charles Darwin **was considered a very ordi- nary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect." Sir Isaac Newton ** showed so little ability that at fifteen he was taken out of school and set at work upon a farm." '* Robert Fulton was a dullard because his mind was filled with thoughts about other things than his studies; but his teachers could not understand this, and so the birch-rod became a frequent per- suader." ** Alexander von Himiboldt said of himself ' that in the first years of childhood his tutors were 172 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME doubtftd whether even ordinary powers of intelli- gence would be developed in him, and that it was only later in boyhood that he began to show any evidence of mental vigor.'* **The hatred of Joseph Banks, the English nattiralist, for the monotony of school routine was so marked as to bring complaint from his teachers. Yet it was not dislike for work; he simply could not travel the road by which alone the educational doctors would permit him to reach the golden gate.'* **John Hunter, the celebrated anatomist and surgeon, is reported by one writer to have been unable to read or write at seventeen years of age, so great was his hatred for school. In his unappreciated condition of learned ignorance he just missed becoming a cabinet-maker through the fortimate failure of his brother-in-law, in whose carpenter shop he was working." ''Oliver Goldsmith's teacher, in his early child- hood, thought him one of the dullest boys she had ever tried to teach. She said he was * im- penetrably stupid'; she was afraid that nothing could be done for him. His indolence and dis- like for his university tutor, who called him igno- rant and stupid before his classmates, combined to make him hate mathematics, science, and philosophy." '* Henry Ward Beecher at ten years of age, ac- cording to his sister, Mrs. Stowe, *was a poor writer, a miserable speller, with a thick utterance, THE RETARDED CHILD 173 and a bashful reticence which seemed like stolid stupidity. He was not marked by the prophecies even of partial friends for any brilliant future. He had precisely the organization which often passes for dullness in early boyhood.*'* *' Spencer's native antagonism to the rote method was so intense that it prevented him from making any substantial progress during his school course in the grammar of his own or foreign languages. His mind was on the non-conforming sort, as indeed all superior minds are, and school organization has not yet been sufficiently per- fected to take them into accotmt." Did you ever meet the boy of ten, who has been in school the last four years, covering no more ground than he might have done in six months, who has been placed in the third grade when he really was fit only for the first, so far as the quality of his work was concerned? He has felt unhappy and wretched in school, and has acquired such a hatred of books and study and school and teachers that his case seems entirely hopeless. His temper is soured. He seems to feel that if he is only hateful enough, and can make himself disagreeable enough, the teacher will give up in despair. He kicks the chairs, smashes his pencil in bits, hides his book so as to necessitate loss of time in recovering it. Under a special plan of instruction the first six months' work seems productive of no results ex- 174 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME " cept to convince him that the prescribed hour's work has to be attained before he will be dis- missed, even if it takes four hours, as it frequently does. The latter part of the year he commences to work, makes such advancement that you dare not trust your senses, qualifies for the examina- tion, and passes the public-school test admitting him to the sixth grade the coming year. His former teachers are astounded as well as disdain- ful, but take him into the grade, prophesying, however, that he will only be demoted at the end of the month, as he will never be able to keep up. However, his work is never quite poor enough to warrant his demotion, although at the end of the year he is retained in the grade. Now, the boy who does not go forward is un- questionably going backward, and after such an experience it takes a long time to enliven any ambition. One drawback is sometimes a limited vocabu- lary. Sometimes its range is confined to sporting terms, the jargon of athletics, and the slang of the street. His imagination may be weak. Geography and history, then, are only a matter of words. But intellect and mental capacity are not gaged by school standards, just as school stand- ards do not insure a standard of efficiency. In the Dishwashers' Union of San Francisco one member out of every seven is said to be a college graduate. Most of these men attribute their THE RETARDED CHILD 175 present lowly position to the fact that their school and college training was not adequate to their requirements. But as one of them shrewdly observed: ''Our early training was at the root of it. The child properly trained during the years when parental control can most powerfully as- sert itself will not go through college and become a dishwasher." Before suggesting how to treat and teach the backward or retrograded child we ought to an- alyze the causes of such backwardness or retro- gression. These are of three kinds: Physical, mental, and local — i. e., caused by unfavorable environment. The physical causes, as adenoids, defective eye- sight and hearing, anemia, malnutrition, and such like, can only be dealt with by a physician, to whose attention they must be brought by the watchful mother or teacher. The mental causes are principally: Lack of self-control, lack of memory, an abnormally slow process of mind-maturing, complete absorption in some line of thought entirely outside of the school curricultim. Self-control, the principal aim, and — ^when achieved — the triimiph of education, includes the habits of regular, patient, persevering work and of concentration at will. The immature mind can hold itself to the one thought but a few minutes. Then it gradually learns to control thought as it controls muscles, and so to hold the mind for a 176 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME longer and longer period to the one set task as the powers of the mind unfold. By false mental training this power, or as much of it as the child has acquired at play, is impaired. Many grown people can concentrate only at play. They re- tain the child mind. With many a new pupil the teacher's work for weeks and months is undoing what has been done in the wrong way — going back to the very be- ginning and disentangling the confused threads of an encumbering weave, combating a dislike and dread of what should have been a delight. No matter how stupid a child has come to be- lieve himself to be, you can persuade him that there is some work meant for him which he can do better than any one else in the world — ^that he has some gift whose development will lead to a happy, useful existence. Train him to see that: " I am only one. But still I am one. I cannot do everything. But still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do." There must be no quitting work when the whistle blows. Insist that a good piece of work be accomplished each day before the quitting- time can be considered. The first requisite in this training of the dis- couraged child is to give him faith in his own THE RETARDED CHILD 177 possibilities. Give tasks suited to his strength. Mastering one thing is better than attempting many things and mastering none. Let the pupil have the sense of victory over one subject, and he will attack others with a confidence that assures another conquest. It is this sense of achieve- ment that makes the boy, or for all that the man, feel that he is somebody, and that his life is after all worth while. Make use of homely examples, as the Tortoise and the Hare. Tell him of the spider that spun his web seven times as it was successively de- stroyed. Show him that the noblest undertakings in all history have been completed only by hard labor, under adverse conditions, that ultimate triumph is ours only through the effort to make each day a round in the ladder of success. On the whole, and with tactful modifications, the method and plan, as given in the chapters relat- ing to reading, spelling, and arithmetic, should be followed; but we shall give here some con- crete examples of how to teach these to the back- ward child. The boy who comes from school laden with home work in arithmetic might be given one of the exercises each evening for five minutes. A single month^s training will make him a quicker worker. The mother may discover that her child of ten years or more, after spending several years in school, is a failure so far as arithmetic is con- cerned. He does not know the multiplication 178 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME tables, he cannot solve mentally the simplest problems. Confused by the teaching received, he has great difficulty in applying his mind to an assigned task; he does not give attention, he can- not concentrate. Now it is not an easy matter to take in hand a pupil who has reached the point of hating study, of despairing of his own power of accomplishment. He must first learn that steady work will overcome difficulties and increase his power to work. No other subject seems quite so available for this purpose as arithmetic. The plan for nimiber work outlined for be- ginners may well be followed with the twelve- year-old backward child, the material difference being in the teacher's attitude. It is now a dif- ferent mind with which she must deal, and the task is complicated by the confused mass of un- digested information and notions in the pupiFs brain. But, while the task is difficult, it is by no means hopeless, and, since it cannot be done in school, it must be done by the mother or a special instructor. We shall use objects here, as for the younger pupils, yet their use need not be so long continued. Also we shall use a scheme that is out of place with the little child, because of the danger of over-stimulation. This is the practice of timing the pupil, marking in his book the length of time needed for a piece of work, dating it, and day after day testing to note the gain in speed. For example, ask him to count to loo by twos, timing him. The first count may, in some cases. THE RETARDED CHILD 179 require three to five minutes. Note this, explain- ing to the pupil that each time he does this he may expect the task to become easier. Again he tries, and perhaps reaches 100 in half the pre- vious time. Now his interest is aroused; he is learning to work. He gives attention to this as he would to a game of marbles. The record in his book might appear thus: UNT ING TO 100 BY Twos September 5th, ist time 2d " 3d " 3 min. I " 40 s I " September 6th, ist time 2d " 3d " 50 40 35 sec. « « The counting backward by twos from 100 may be taken in the same way; and so may the suc- ceeding addition tables be treated. This is main- ly for the purpose of pinning his attention to his work. This plan has value because the pupil is striving to improve his own record. But rapid- ity is not the main object. Accuracy comes first. The pupil is first to be sure, then quick. If he makes a single mistake the exercise is a failure. Let him at once stop there and begin all over again. i8o EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME Most teachers have noticed how difficult it seems to teach a child the multiplication table as he gets older. It is one of the things learned far more easily at nine than at twelve. For this rea- son we shall change somewhat the order of work outlined, and instead of learning the multiplica- tion tables immediately after addition the pupil will work steadily at measuring numbers, as I8-^3 = I8-^4= etc. going as rapidly as his ability seems to justify. From one half -hour to an hour a day may well be spent at this. Then after a few weeks stress may be laid upon the multiplication tables. So much for arithmetic. The child of ten or thereabouts who hitherto has not made satisfactory progress in learning to spell and read may start afresh, beginning with the first of the following lessons. In spell- ing, however, as in arithmetic, the plan of dealing with a six-year-old can rarely be successfully fol- lowed with one several years older, especially if the latter has been gorged with lessons. While this older child is learning words, according to the lists given, the following plan should be pur- sued. If judiciously carried out it will tend to improve his spelling and English and to promote habits of concentration. THE RETARDED CHILD i8i Take Longfellow's poem, *'The Builders," which begins: All are architects of fate, Working in these walls of time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. Tell the child to study the first line until he can write it correctly from memory. At the out- set this will not be easy, although there is but one hard word. Let the pupil at first take his own time to study the words before attempting to reproduce them. If a single error is made he must study the line again and write it anew. A single line may be sufficient for the first lesson, especially if real difficulty is experienced by the novice. The next day he will study the second line in the same way. As this will be mastered with more ease, the pleased child will welcome the opportunity to try another. After a few weeks of this training the pupil is usually able to learn and reproduce a whole stanza in the time at first required for a single line. The lessons, as mentioned before, should always be dated and measured in order to have a record of progress. Increased ability to memo- rize may easily enable the same pupil after a few months to reproduce correctly a considerable number of stanzas, such as that given, in the time at first required for one. What has been said of training the backward i82 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME child individually may apply to a great extent to the teaching of a class which has been poorly grounded. The main idea is to attempt but little at first, but to require such plain and defi- nite results that even the child can notice them and must be impressed by them. To give an il- lustration: A teacher took up her duties in a re- mote country school of a single room, and there faced a disheartening state of affairs. The chil- dren, large and small, had been so wretchedly trained that there was no foundation of knowl- edge whatsoever, and no starting-point, but a new start had to be made by each and all. To teach reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic all in one year and bring the pupils forward in accord- ance with their ages reminded her of Caesar, who had to do so many things at the same time. The undertaking was so formidable that the teacher decided to start by teaching but one thing, in the belief that this would be better than attempting all and getting nowhere. She chose writing. The children wrote copies all day long, with fre- quent intermissions, and were delighted to find at the close of the first day that they could do better than in the morning. Some had learned to write but a single letter, others merely noted the improvement on the first copy. They wrote steadily for three weeks. In that time they made greater improvement than would ordinarily have been made in two years of slipshod practice. Furthermore, the children beheld with delight THE RETARDED CHILD 183 the marvelous gain, and for the first time knew the fruits of sustained endeavor. Because the progress was easily marked writing in itself was a fortunate choice for a beginning. The next subject taken up in practically the same way was arithmetic. This, alternating with penmanship, was continued until a safe and profitable beginning had been made. Long les- sons on the one subject, merely stopping for fre- quent outdoor intermissions, were not tiring to the children. After all, the wisdom of the say- ing, ** Change of occupation is rest," is as ques- tionable as that of so many catchy phrases. It becomes foolish if carried to extremes. Then came the spelling, on which now the stress of work was placed, while writing and arithmetic occupied shorter periods. The children came to learn half a dozen spelling-lessons in a day; in- terest was at high tide. Every child worked as hard and fast as he could. At the close of the year such progress had been attained that the usual year's work in the regulation school could not be compared to it. The once-awakened and ever-increasing inter- est which each child felt in his own manifest progress successfully combated the previously uncontrollable and obstinate absorption in some injurious line of thought of his own choosing, quickened the process of mind-maturing, and provided the much-wanted stimulus to mental growth. 13 i84 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME S3mipathetic understanding of the backward children's needs and an utter absence of hurtful environment had done the rest. **The stone that the builders rejected, the same is become the headstone of the corner." XIII AIDS FOR HOME TEACHING Note-Books THE child should have a composition -book for all written work. Although a comparatively short time will be given daily to written lessons, yet the way in which these are planned and exe- cuted will have an important bearing upon mind- training and the formation of good habits. A few rules may be of service in the beginning: 1. Do not hurry the child in his writing. A single line representing his very best effort is worth some- thing. It represents creative power. A whole page embodying carelessness or indifference would better not have been written. 2. No written work should be thrown away. No lessons should be prepared on loose paper that will shortly reach the waste-basket. The destination of the work is too apt to influence its character. 3. Each day's work should be an improvement over that of the preceding day. Make this fact impressive. Teach him in this book the truth of the old saying that repeated acts form habit, habits make character, and character determines destiny. i86 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME If each day's work is better than the last the child will see that a week represents notable improvement, and that a month's work some- times produces a transformation. Previous work with its mistakes and imperfections is before his eyes as a reminder to eliminate these im- perfections. Little by little the young child will learn to regard as important the appear- ance of his book — he will keep margins, attend to the size and uniformity of the letters, and avoid blots. Since erasures are not tolerated, he must take increasing pains. There are few more pernicious habits than that of prepar- ing written lessons in a slovenly manner — the sure result when no special value is attached to the written page. The cost of neat composition- books may possibly amount to something more than would the reams of cheap paper, yet they acquire a value that makes them worth keeping permanently and worth putting one's best efforts upon. Thus the child is early trained in valuable habits. He takes pride in the work of his hand. He compares his work at different periods with his own earlier work and with models, and judges as to the gain. More than all else he strives to improve upon his own record, a higher incentive than merely trying to get ahead of somebody else. For the beginner a single note -book of the ten -cent kind is sufficient. In this he will keep AIDS FOR HOME TEACHING 187 all his written lessons of each day, somewhat after this fashion. To-day's lesson may be to write a few lines from ** Hiawatha*': By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea- Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis. The child intends to illustrate this lesson, and so practises the drawing of the wigwam until at least it will not be mistaken for something else. In the drawing we must deviate from the rule just given. He will practise many times on bits of paper, since this is an undertaking in which he is eager to excel. Then in his book he draws the wigwam, and underneath in his best writing he copies the two or three appropriate lines. Now the book has become a thing of wondrous beauty to the small beginner. Never fear but that he will try to make the next lesson and the next one still more beautiful. In another part of his book he may keep what- ever written spelling you give him, where he will occasionally compare the assignments as to length and difficulty, and so measure his growing powers. In still another section he writes the arithmetic tables as he works them out with the pebbles. He is learning not to crowd his work in an un- sightly manner. For the child who can already read and write there may be several note-books. One may be devoted wholly to penmanship, one to arith- i88 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME metic, and one to whatever poetry and stories are written. While every book will be artistic because it represents good work according to one's gifts, yet a fourth book for the child of eight or nine may become a treasury of beauty and art. By the time the pupil is ready for this book he keeps an attractive page and has a liking for good literature. So this note-book may well be of a better quality than the others, preferably a loose-leaf book with a stiff black cover. Book and paper sufficient for a year will cost about seventy cents. While individual taste will largely decide the matter and manner of this book, one mode of arrangement, the work of a girl of eight, is here described. It is kept for the real gems of litera- ture that the child loves and learns. This book has on the fly-leaf, written by a teacher, the child's name and address and the date when the book was started. On the first page is pasted an American flag in colors, care- fully cut from a July magazine, and underneath begins the song ** America," continuing on the reverse side. On the next page, in the center, appears a picture in sepia of a bust of Christopher Colimibus, and the announcement, *' Notes on American History." On the reverse page are two more small pictures, showing the departure of Columbus on his western voyage, and on the next page begins the splendid poem of Joaquin Miller's, * * Columbus. ' ' A space of fully two inches AIDS FOR HOME TEACHING 189 IS left at the top of the page for the title of this poem, and with it the illustration — an ink sketch of a gallant vessel in full sail, which, simple as it is, seems to call aloud to one, **Sail on, sail on, and on !" On succeeding pages are more pictures, about two by two and a half inches, illustrating scenes in the subsequent career of the great ex- plorer, with a few explanatory notes written by the child, facts gleaned from the teacher or the book. Not for a moment should this be called history. It is merely part of the poem's great lesson. Farther on the child has written Tennyson's ** Bugle Song," illustrating it herself by copying in ink a stately castle. Then for some time ap- pear the poems that the child liked well enough to voluntarily memorize — Longfellow's *'The Arrow and the Song," Tennyson's *'The Shell," and at the beginning of the latter an excellent drawing of a spiral shell. Then, seemingly in the mood for shells, she has written Holmes's *' Cham- bered Nautilus." Then comes *'The Skeleton in Armor," which it seems had fascinated the child, and Tennyson's ** Charge of the Light Brigade." Fine pictures in beautiful tones on almost any subject may be obtained from different com- panies (especially the Perry Picture Co., Boston, or the Geo. P. Brown Co., Beverly, Mass.). The mother should write these companies for cata- logues. The range and number of the pictures, I90 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME as well as their low price (from one-half to two cents a piece) may well be termed marvelous. Even the successful pasting of these pictures, placing them accurately on the page, judging of effectiveness of position, and using the paste without smearing, requires considerable skill for a child. He must also paste the little paper rings (which may be purchased at a stationery store) around the apertures in the page, to prevent the leaf tearing from the steel fasteners. A child takes pride in the neat appearance, or- derly arrangement, and valuable contents of this book. Certain principles of art are also inocu- lated. The child learns that there is beauty in the severe straight line, and that cheap things are overdone, overcurved, and overgilded. Anagrams For a small sum you can purchase boxes con- taining several sets of the alphabet printed on one side of cardboard squares. With them are directions for playing games of word-building. These letters are neater in appearance than the home-made ones, yet the making of the latter possesses the great advantage of giving the child something profitable to do. He may hunt out large letters in old magazines, carefully cut them out and paste them on the inch squares of card- board that he has marked off and cut out with your assistance. AIDS FOR HOME TEACHING 191 Poetry No other single volume of the mother-teacher's Hbrary can quite take the place of Longfellow's poems. This book is indispensable to the Ameri- can child. Indeed, if his whole literature until the age of ten were drawn from this book, not only would he be far from intellectually poor, but he would also have an indisputably good foundation for future literary studies, far better, indeed, than if he were supplied with dozens of the modern books written expressly to fit the child's understanding. Longfellow is unquestionably the children's poet, the poet of the home and the heart. Not a line has he written that, dying, he could wish to blot. To know well a single great writer is to acquire a feeling of kinship for all great writers, and this feeling is greatly fostered in the child by giving him for his very own this book. Note the remarkable range of material, be- ginning with the epic ** Hiawatha," which in it- self varies from the reach of comprehension of the five-year-old to fit the taste of the mature student. Then you may choose for the little one such poems as **The Wreck of the Hesperus,'^ "The Children's Hour," **Village Blacksmith," ''The Arrow and the Song," and ''The Rainy Day," suited extremely well to children of eight or thereabouts. Next we have "The Builders," "The Bridge," "Paul Revere's Ride," and "The 192 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME Day is Done." After these the child will be able to comprehend the *' Courtship of Miles Stan- dish," when read to him by the mother; and, last- ly, we have the creation that belongs at the very pinnacle of American literature, ** Evangeline." To so rear a child until he reads with pleasure the magnificent selections last named will school him to read intelligently other authors that without such preliminary training would be incompre- hensible. If there can be but one volume of the modern writers in the home school, let that one be Long- fellow: if two, add to it Tennyson's poems. For the small child there are two exquisite poems : '^ What Does Little Birdie Say?" and ''Sweet and Low." The nine-year-old will Hke ''The Brook," which gives him many new words, a widened physiographical vista, and something for con- templation in the refrain: For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever. Especially the girl of nine will learn **Blow, Bugle, Blow," and ''Break, Break, Break." Both boy and girl will learn "The Charge of the Light Brigade," with its striking illustration of un- swerving obedience. At the very close of his life, at the threshold of eternal childhood, Tennyson wrote his immortal poem, "Crossing the Bar." When this poem is properly read to children, AIDS FOR HOME TEACHING 193 they will seldom express a distaste for it or a lack of inclination to make it their own. In the ** Idylls of the King" we see the adven- tures of King Arthur's Knights told in the wonder- ful word-painting of a master mind. This is not easy or light reading, but it well repays the mother to study it closely that she may later give it to the children. You are always safe in choosing Tennyson for his poetry, sanity, morals, and scientific accuracy. Macaulay wrote few poems for children, but some are well worth while. ''Horatius at the Bridge" gives a taste for Roman history, and it gives the child an agreeable introduction to this great man. They come later to his essays as to the discourse of an old friend. Every child may learn **The Mountain and the Squirrel," by Emerson, and many of them will listen intelligently to the serious poem, "Good-By, Proud World." Browning did a kindness to childhood in writ- ing the '*Pied Piper of HameHn," and in connec- tion with this one may safely point the moral and illuminate it with examples of the every- day kind — if you dance you must pay the fiddler. Joaquin Miller has given us a lesson in *' Colum- bus." This may be memorized by the child of ten or younger. J. G. Holland's ''Gradatim'* may well be learned word for word: 194 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME Heaven is not reached at a single bound, But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to the summit round by round. Now and then a child of nine or ten will be interested in the forms of poetical composition. Such a one will gladly learn Milton^s wonderfiil *' Sonnet on His Blindness,'* and at the same time learn the structure of a sonnet — '*a little song, usually of fourteen lines." But few sonnets come within the range of young pupils. What ten-year-old country lad will fail to like and understand Whittier's *' Snowbound," *' Bare- foot Boy," and **In School Days"? Requiring perhaps a little finer comprehension, yet again not beyond the appreciation of country boy or girl, is Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal," and the passage **A Day in June" they should learn by heart. Even the little ones may learn Lowell's "First Snowfall." Another genial American poet in whom we may well strive to create a lively interest is Holmes. "Old Ironsides" goes in the list of stir- ring patriotic poems, while "The Chambered Nautilus" should not merely be saved for high- school classes. Instead of telling you at what age to give these fine things to the children let it be said once for all that the best way is to try them one and another on the child, giving him each unless he specifically rejects it. AIDS FOR HOME TEACHING 195 To stir patriotism read to the children, not once, but once in a while, E. E. Hale's **Man Without a Country." They may learn every word of Scott's Breathes there the man with soul so dead — Take the stirring verses of **The Flag Goes By." At this age every nerve will thrill in re- sponse to Blue and crimson and white it shines, Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines; Hats off! the colors before us fly. But more than the flag is passing by. Fairy Stories Fairy tales and twilight stories are among the inalienable rights of every child. That is not true education which neglects to train the feel- ings and imagination. Unfortunate is the child whose infancy has never known Cinderella, Jack and the Bean Stalk, Jack the Giant - Killer, Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Blue Beard, Sindbad the Sailor, Ugly Duckling, Three Bears, and Tom Thumb. These tales, beautifully illustrated by Peter Newell, are in Favorite Fairy Tales, a selection of the favorite stories of various distinguished men and women. There is a smaller book of selec- tions by Ada Van Stone Harris, Favorites from 196 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME Fairyland. Another book of selections, Famous Stories Every Child Should KnoWy gives us several masterpieces — Ruskin's "King of the Golden River," Hawthorne's ** Great Stone Face," Hale's **Man Without a Country," Ouida's **Nurn- berg Stove." If still more books are to be chosen, Alice in Wonderland is a perennial delight, and Through the Looking'Glass follows closely. There are editions of both illustrated by Peter Newell. Andersen and Grimm are familiar classics. Kings- ley's Water Babies is liked by most children. Books There are so many books that the mother will enjoy reading aloud to the children from time to time — not alone for the poetry or the story, but as a foundation for future intelHgent progress — that it is difficult to choose among them. There are too many books, and if driven to make a choice it would be better to read nothing than to attempt to read everything. However, we want every child to know the love of books. Then in later years, when the world's poetry turns to colorless prose, he can go to these silent friends and by their aid reconstruct in fair form the beauty and joys of vanished days and buried dreams. What better way to nourish this love of books than for the mother to gather the children about her in the long winter evenings and AIDS FOR HOME TEACHING 197 read to them and talk over with them the legacy of great minds? Take such stories as *'Rip Van Winkle/* and '^The Legend of Sleepy Hollow/' from Irving*s Sketch Book, written in the inimita- ble style of that great author. They breathe the very spirit of those far-off days of colonial life along the Hudson's banks; they could not pos- sibly have been written by any but one who had spent his childhood amid these very scenes. Quite different is such a book as Chapin's The Story of the Rkinegold, written for those who would know the legends on which are based the music dramas of Wagner's Nibelungenleid. Again we have The Prince and the Pauper, by Mark Twain, a story of the prince who became Edward VI. and a street waif who for a time change places. Two small books of selections from Mark Twain have been made for children — Travels at Home and Travels in History. A similar book of selections from the works of William Dean Howells is entitled Boy Life. Or we may take Hawthorne's Wonder Book, in which are elaborated the Greek m3^hs. Not a book to be hurried over, since the difficult wording here and there needs elucidation. One who reads this understandingly will want to know Greek his- tory, since the history of Greece has its very roots and part of the trunk embedded in mythology. As a reference book for literature, as well as for the fascinating contents of the book itself, the mother will find useful Bulfinch's Age of Fable, 198 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME The story of the Iliad and of the Odyssey may be found well written in cheap editions. If one would have books that will hold spell- bound the ten-year-old, we have Bold Robin Hood and His Outlaw Band and Robinson CrusoCy both illustrated by Louis Rhead, who has also illustrated beautiful editions of Swiss Family Robinson, Gulliver's Travels, and Tom Brown at Rugby. To complete the happiness of the young outlaw, give him Stevenson's Treasure Island, a pirate story without profanity. If with the foregoing in the home we place Tales of the Arabian Nights, and some of the works of Jules Verne, surely the youthful mind will not lack stimulus. Other classics that the mother would place within the child's reach are Shakespeare's Mer- chant of Venice and Julius Ccesar. In the Auto- biography of Benjamin Franklin we have the shrewd wisdom of the kindly philosopher and genius, whose maxims of practical economy should be instilled in every child: A small leak sinks a great ship. For want of a nail the shoe was lost; For want of a shoe the horse was lost; For want of a horse the rider was lost. Text-Books The best text-books for children under ten are the best child literature, like ** Hiawatha." There AIDS FOR HOME TEACHING 199 should be on hand a good dictionary, which the child should learn to use at an early age. There may well be readable histories of Greece, Rome, England, and America. The Children's Plu- tarch, by F. T. Gould, in two volumes — Tales of the Greeks and Tales of the Romans — is most valu- able in its ethical quality, as well as its story- telling interest. Among stories of primitive life are The Story of Ah, Kipling^s Jungle Books, and Du Chaillu*s The Country of the Dwarfs. A well- written geography, such as Tarr and McMurry's, can be included in the home library. Two valu- able little books which indicate the relation of geography to life and industry are Monroe and Buckbee's Our Country and Its People and Europe and Its People, Great care must be taken, however, in explaining maps. Children's minds become very much confused by wall-charts and maps in books. For nature study you will want to possess Hodge's Nature Study and Life for study and ref- erence; also Gibson's Sharp Eyes, which gives in winning fashion the procession of nature month by month, teaching us to see with loving eyes the many every - day things we have been passing by as commonplace. Gibson's Secrets Out of Doors is a small but delightful book of selections designed particularly for young children. Quite readable, too, and scientifically accurate, is Comstock's Ways of the Six-footed, describing 14 200 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME butterfly, bee, ant, wasp, caterpillar, caddis-fly, seventeen-year locust, and mosquito. But of good books on nature study there is an abundance. Upland and Meadow, by Abbot, is especially charming to the dweller in and near New Jersey, with its neighborly rambles. Inger- soll's Wild Life in Orchard and Field tells us not only of the birds, but also of such acquaintances as the woodchuck, squirrel, and weasel. Two charming nature studies for children are Little Busyhodies and A Holiday with the Birds, by Miss Jeannette Marks and Miss Moody. Harper's Guide to Wild Flowers, by Mrs. Caro- line A. Creevey, recently published, presents the latest scientific agreement upon names and classi- fication, and affords three methods of identifica- tion — by color, by habitat, and by seasons. All this is aided by many colored plates and drawings. While history and geography are constantly in the making, and while the truth of to-day is the superstition of to-morrow, it is a restful thought that we at least have constant friends in the stars and flowers. Above all the heavens should claim our study and understanding, since what- ever knowledge we may gain of them is with us and pulsating to the end of our days. Where is there a subject that will fill a child's soul as does astronomy? The humble shepherds of Chaldea, lying wakeful on the hillsides, watched the stars rise and set and knew astronomy as we do not. Little wonder they were thinkers AIDS FOR HOME TEACHING 201 and poets. Little wonder that we have impover- ished imaginations when not one person in a hun- dred can tell the hour by the sun, or knows that the stars hold a steady course across the sky. There is no greater reproach than this to modem methods of instruction. The little book by Martin, The Friendly Stars, is written within a child's comprehension and vocabulary, and will enable him to identify the chief stars and constellations. Through its use he may be led to the desire for more scientific lore. As a wholesome tonic, if you have been reading such animal traits as were never known, get Burroughs' sane and kindly Ways of Nature. In fact, you would be glad to own all this naturalist's series. Current Literature There are several magazines which will be help- ful. On the farm the children should have the Country Gentleman, which makes them feel the great worth, dignity, and opportunity of farm life and directs most practically the seasonal activities from week to week. The National Geographic Magazine is a monthly containing wonderful illustrations of the four comers of the globe. Thus one keeps in touch with recent dis- coveries, undertakings, and happenings of world- wide interest. It is not written in child language, but at the least the pictures are perfectly compre- 202 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME hensible to the very young. One may be sure of the Youth's Companion and St. Nicholas con- taining no objectionable features. Books for Mothers Among the well-known books on pedagogy are a few that will be valuable and interesting to every mother, written in the plain concrete style that we all like when looking for help and counsel. William Hawley Smith has given us two such human documents, The Evolution of Dodd, in which we see boys — real boys — depicted, and also teachers that are very genuine. A later book is All the Children of All the People, in which we are given sound educational doctrine, as in the say- ings of the old engineer: **No man is really well educated who is not *onto his job.*" In The Century of the Child, by Ellen Key, there is food for thought concerning the home and school. Especially good is much of the chapter on **The School of the Future.'* Another book that will help give mothers a clear idea of the pos- sibilities of home teaching is The School in the Home, by Berle, whose own children proved his theory correct by being fitted for college at the , age most students enter high school. Professor Swift gives us in the first chapter of Mind in the Making a remarkable summing-up of the lives of the men and women who had great influence during the past century, every one of the fifty AIDS FOR HOME TEACHING 203 having been a failure in childhood from the stand- point of the school. The book is an interesting study of the relation of the human individual to standardized education. Helping School Children, by Elsa Denison, shows how parents can aid from outside the school. As an introduction to the methods of Montes- sori, now commanding so much thoughtful in- terest, we have a readable little book by Dr. Theodate L. Smith, The Montessori System in Theory and Practice. For parents who have time and energy for deeper study of the science of education, in theory and practice, we have such literature as Spencer's Education, Rousseau's Emile, Huxley's Science and Education, Dr. Eliot's Educational Reform, Aspects of Child Life and Education, by G. Stanley Hall, Dr. Smith, and others, Dewey's How We Think, McMurry's How to Study and Standards of Elementary Education, and Neff 's Power Through Perfected Ideas. Another helpful volume is The Normal Child and Primary Education, by Gesell. We also hope that every modem mother reads Keeping Up with Lizzie, by Irving Bacheller; Emmy Lou, by G. M. Martin; and M5rra Kelly's Little Citizens. Dr. Woods Hutchinson writes authoritatively on the health of a child. Buy no book that claims to have no more than an ephemeral value; buy nothing that can yield its full cultural store at one harvesting. Dis- 204 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME tinguish between what is transitory and what is eternal. Primary text-books in most cases are an abomination. Ask yourself: ** Shall I be wilHng to give space to this book on my shelves for the next ten years — twenty years?" Mother Goose f Yes. Longfellow? Yes. Robinson Crusoe ? For a lifetime. The Jones -Mallory-Squibbs Arith- metic for Primary Grades? To the ash-barrel with it. Said Ruskin: ** No book is worth anything that is not worth much; nor is it serviceable until it has been read and reread, and loved and loved again, and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory, or a housewife can bring the spice she needs from her store." INDEX Abbot, Upland and Mead- ow^ 200. *'A Day in June," 194. Addition, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 114, 180. Adenoids, 175. iEsop's Fables, 77. Age of Fable f 197. Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, 195. AH Baba, 195. Alice in Wonderland , 196. All the Children of All the People y 202. Alphabet, learning, 73, 75, 90, 91, 190. Anagrams, 90, 93, 96, 190. Andersen's Fairy Tales, 196. Anemia, 175. Antaeus, legend of, 153. Anther, 147. Antony, Mark, speech, 63, 86. Arithmetic, mental, 18, 19, 114, 128; easily acquired , 28; how to teach, 100- 128; number sense, loi; early study, 10 1, 102; ad- dition, 103, 104, 106, 108, 109, 114, 180; multiplica- tion, 104, 105, 107, 109, 115, 116, 180; fundamen- tal processes, 105; concrete problems, 107, 123, 124; speed, 108, 179; division, 109-113, 115; symbols, 109 ; strict measures, 1 1 1 ; fractions, 111-113, 116, 119, 120, 121; measuring, 116, 117, 121, 122; fac- tors, 117, 118, 119; prime numbers, 118, 119; com- posite numbers, 118, 119; counting, 122, 123, 178, 179; concrete work, 123, 124; square measure, 124, 125, 126; surface meas- urement, 126; cubic meas- ure, 126, 127; long divi- sion, 127; for backward children, 179-180. "Arrow and the Song, The," 189, 191. Art, 129, 130, 131, 136. Aspects of Child Life and Education y 203. Astronomy, 200, 201. Athletics, 12. 2o6 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME B Bacheller, Irving, Keeping Up with Lizzie y 203. Backward children, 76, 170- '184; causes, 175; train- ing, 176-178; plan of work outlined, 178-181. Bad company, 57. Banks, Joseph, 172. ** Barefoot Boy," 194. Beecher, Henry Ward, 172. Berle, The School in the Homey 202. Bible as text-book, 46, 58, 59, 66. *'Blow, Bugle, Blow," 192. Blue Beard, 195. Bold Robin Hood and His Outlaw Band, 198. Books, first, 74, 75, 78; love of, 196-198; for mothers, 202-204. Botany, 156, 157. Boy Life, 197. ''Break, Break, Break," 192. *' Bridge, The," 191. *' Brook, The," 192. Brown Co., Geo. P., 189. Browning, Robert, **Pied Piper of Hamelin," 193. Bryant's * * Thanatopsis ' ' memorized, 79. *' Bugle Song," 189. "Builders, The," 181, 191. Bulfinch, Age of Fable, 197. Burroughs, John, quoted, 1 54 ; Ways of Nature, 20 1 . Capital letters, 82, 85. Century of the Child, The, 202. "Chambered Nautilus," 189, 194. Chapin, The Story of the Rhinegold, 197. "Charge of the Light Bri- gade, 189, 192. Chemistry, 155, 156, 158. Child, confidence in mother, 2. "Children's Hour, The," 191. Children's Plutarch, The, 199. Cinderella, 195. "Columbus," 188, 193. Comenius, 39. Composite numbers, 118, 119. Composition-book, 185, 186. Comstock's Ways of the Six- footed, 199. Concentration, 77, 81, 84, 113, 163, 165, 166, 167, 176, 178, 180. Concrete problems, 107, 123, 124. Control, parental, 175. Copying poetry and prose, 82. Counting, 122, 123, 178, 179. Country Gentleman, 201. Country of the Dwarfs, The, 199* INDEX 207 "Courtship of Miles Stan- dish/' 192. Creevey, Caroline A., Guide to Wild Flowers, 200. "Crossing the Bar," 192. Cubic measure, 126, 127. Culture, 155. Current literature, 201, 202. Darwin, Charles, 171. "Day is Done, The," 192. Defective eyesight, 12, 175. Denison, Elsa, Helping School Children, 203. Dewey, How We Think, 203. Dictionary, early use, 199. Dipper, Big, 148. Discrimination, 141. Division, 105, 109-113, 115; long, 127. Drawing, 76, 135-138, 187. Du Chaillu, The Country of the Dwarfs, 199. "Duel, The," 67. E Early instruction, 2, 31, 32, 50, 51, 53, 54. Ear-minded, 89, 163. Edison, Thomas A., 145. Education, begins, i ; moth- er's control, 2; funda- mental basis, 2; public- school system, 3, 4, 9-23; individual method, 3, 55; proper mental environ- ment, 4; home training, 4, 5, 39-58; reforms, 24-38; true aim, 51; re- ligious, 57, 58; poetry, a factor, 59-72; English, 73-87; spelling, 88-89 arithmetic, 100-128; writ- ing and drawing, 129-138; observation, 139-158; the work habit, 159-169; the retarded child, 170-184; aids for home teaching, 185-204. Educational Reform, 203. Elementary course, 28. Eliot, Educational Reform, 203. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, quoted, 82; "The Moun- tain and the Squirrel," 1 93 ; " Good-by , Proud World," 193. Emile, 203. Emmy Lou, 203. English work, 28; teaching, 73-87. Erasures, 186. Europe and Its People, 199. "Evangeline," 82, 192. Evolution of Dodd, The, 202. Eye-minded, 89, 163. Eyesight, defective, 12, 175. Factors, 117, 118, 119. Fairy stories, 195-196. 2o8 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME Famous Stories Every Child Should KnoWy 196. Farm life, 163. Favorite Fairy Tales j 195. Favorites from Fairyland^ 195, 196. Field, Eugene, 67. *' First Snowfall," 194. *'Flag Goes By, The," 195. Foreign languages, early- study, 31, 32. Forty Thieves, 195. Fox and the Grapes, 77. Fractions, 111-113, 116, 119, 120, 121. Franklin, Benjamin, 85, 160; autobiography, 198. Friendly Stars ^ The, 201. Froebel, 39, 41. Fulton, Robert, 171. Fundamental processes of arithmetic, 105. Geography, well - written, 199. Gesell, The Normal Child and Primary Education y 203. Gibson, Sharp Eyes^ 199; Secrets Out of Doors y 199. Giotto, Italian painter, 129. Goldsmith, Oliver, 172. "Good-by, Proud World," 193. Gould, F. J., 199. "Gradation," 193, 194. Grading system, 14, 17. Grammar-school course, 28. Grammar, study, 82. "Great Stone Face," 196. Greek history, 197. Greeley, Horace, 85. Grimm, Fairy Tales, 196. Gulliver's Travels y 198. H Hale, E. E., "Man Without a Country," 195, 196. Harper's Guide to Wild FlowerSy 200. Harris, Ada Van Stone, 195. Hawthorne, "Great Stone Face," 196; Wonder Booky 197. Hearing, defective, 175. Helping School Children y 203. "Hiawatha," 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 98, 187, 191, 198. History, 197, 199. Hodge, Nature Study and Lifey 199. Holiday with the Birds y Ay 200. Holland, J. G., "Grada- tion," 193, 194. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, ' * Chambered Nautilus, ' ' 189, 194; "Old Iron- sides," 194. Home instruction, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 39-58, 43, 44. "Horatius at the Bridge," 193. INDEX 209 Howells, William Dean, Boy Life, 197. How to Study, 203. How We Think, 203. Hudson, Prof. George H., on observation, 140-150. Hunter, John, 172. Humboldt, Alexander von, 171. Hutchinson, Dr. Woods, on health of a child, 203. Huxley, Science and Educa- tion, 203. "Idylls of the King," 193. "Iliad," the, 60, 66, 198. Individual instruction, 2, 3, 6, 18, 34, 37, 38, 55, 107. Ingersoll, Wild Life of Field and Orchard, 200. "In School Days," 194. Irving, Washington, Sketch Book, 197. Jack and the Bean Stalk, 195. Jack the Giant-Killer, 195. Jules Verne, 198. Jungle Books, 199. Keeping Up with Lizzie, 203. Kelly, Myra, Little Citizens^ 203. Kenelm Chillingly, 83, 85. Key, Ellen, The Century of the Child, 202. Kindergarten, 2, 20, 41, 42, 131. "King of the Golden River," 196. Kingsley, Water Babies, 196. Kipling, Jungle Books, 199. "Lay of the Last Minstrel, The," 195. "Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The," 82, 197. Letter- writing, 13, 82. Lincoln, Abraham, master of English, 46; education, 145. Linnaeus, Carl, Swedish bot- anist, 171. Little Busybodies, 200. Little Citizens, 203. Longfellow, Henry Wads- worth, "Courtship of Miles Standish," 79, 80, 81, 192; "Sands of the Desert in an Hour-Glass," 83; "The Arrow and the Shell," 189; "Hiawatha," 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 98, 187, 191, 198; children's poet, 191; "The Wreck of the Hesperus,'^ 191; "The Children's Hour," 191; *' Village Blacksmith," 191; "The 2IO EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME Rainy Day," 191; "The Arrow and the Song," 191; "The Builders," 181, 191; "The Bridge," 191; "Paul Revere's Ride," 191; "The Day is Done," 192; "Evangeline," 18, 192. Lowell, James Russell, "Vi- sion of Sir Launfal," 194; "A Day in June," 194; "First Snowfall," 194. Lytton, Kenelm Chillingly^ 83, 85. M Macaulay, "Horatius at the Bridge," 193. Malnutrition, 175. "Man Without a Country," 195, 196. Maps, explaining, 199. Mark Twain, Prince and the Pauper t 197; Travels at Home, 197; Travels in History y 197. Martin, G. M., Emmy Lou, 203. Martin, M., The Friendly Stars, 201. Mathematics, 4, 5, 21, 105. McMurry, Dr., investiga- tion, 30; How to Study, 203; Standards of Ele- mentary Education, 203. Measuring, 116, 117, 121, 122. Mental environment, 4; arithmetic, 18, 19, 114, 128; training, 31, 114; development, 76, 160. Memorizing, 66, 71, 72, 76, 79, 86. Memory, subjects, 31; neg- lected, 66; lack of, 175. "Milky Way," 148. Miller, Joaquin, "Colum- bus," 188, 193. Mind in the Making, 171, 202. Milton, "Sonnet on His Blindness," 194. Mind-maturing, slow, 175. Monroe and Buckbee, Our Country and Its People, 199; Europe and Its People, 199. Montessori system, 7, 131. Montessori System in The- ory and Practice, The, 7, 203. Mother Goose rhymes, 66, 67. Mother, natural teacher, i, 2, 5, 38, 39, 40, 41, 46, 47, 48, 170; distrust of teach- ing ability, 3, 45. Motor-minded, 89. "Mountain and the Squir- rel, The," 193. Mt. Lebanon, public schools, 38. Multiplication, 104, 105, 107, 109, 115, 116, 180. "My Shadow," 67. INDEX 211 N National Geographic Maga- zine ^ 201. National Playground Asso- ciation, 36. Nature study, 20, 21, 25, 142, 145, 150, i5i» 153, 154, 156, 199, 200. Nature Study and Life, 199. Neff, Power Through Perfect Ideas f 203. Neighborhood school, 55, 56, 57- Newell, Peter, 195, 196. Newton, Sir Isaac, 171. Normal Child and Primary Education f The, 203. Note-book, 109, 185-190; for written work, 185-188; loose-leaf, 188, 189; pic- tures in, 189, 190. Number sense, loi. **Nurnberg Stove," 196. Observation, how to teach, 139-158; lack of, 139. fundamental problem in education, 141, 146; cul- tivates interest, 151; pre- liminary training in, 156; "Odyssey," 60, 66, 198. "Old Ironsides," 194. Old King Cole, 67. Ouida, **Nurnberg Stove," 196. Our Country and Its People^ 199. *'Paul Revere's Ride," 191. Pebbles, counting with, 103, 104, 107, 108, 109, no, 119, 122, 187. Perry Picture Co., 189. Pictures, 188, 189, 190. "Pied Piper of Hamelin," 193. Playgrounds, 36. Playrooms, 36. Poetry, foundation of edu- cation, 5, 59-72, 188-196; modem, 59; language of childhood, 60-62; mem- orizing, 64, 66, 71, 72, 76, 79, 80, 86; copying, 82. Pollen, 147. Power through Perfect Ideas^ 203. Prime numbers, 118, 119. Prince and the Pauper, 197. Principals and clerical work, 15. Public-school system, 3-7, 9-23, 24-38, 39, 40, 56. Punctuation, 82, 85. R "Rainy Day, The," 191. Reading, 63, 74, 75, 76, 77, 86, 87, 88. Religious education, 57, 58. 212 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME Rhead, Louis, illustrator, 198. Rhetoric, 77. Richter, Jean Paul, 39. "Rip Van Winkle," 197. Robinson Crusoe^ 198. Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 39; Entile, 203. Ruskin, quoted, 14, 204; "King of the Golden River," 196. St. Nicholas, 202. "Sands of the Desert in an Hour-Glass," 83. School, neighborhood, 6, 56, 57; curriculum, 7, 14, 16, 18, 28, 33, 48, 49, 100, 175; unsanitary, 12; course of study, 12, 13, 18, 26, 31; overcrowded, 12, 25, 26, 40, 151; grad- ing system, 14, 17, 19; reconstruction, 11, 32, 33, 38, 40; supervision, 14, 15, 30; principals, 15, 30; tests, 16; country, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 25; elementary, 28, 30; secondary, 29; primary, 32, 40; religious education in, 57, 58; standards, 174. School in the Home, The, 202. "School of the Future, The," 202. Science and Education^ 203. Scott, Sir Walter, "Lay of the Last Minstrel," 195. Secrets Out of Doors, 199. Self-control, 175. Sense development, 141, 142, 143, 149. Senses, the, 140, 143. Sense-training, 131. "Shadow, My," 67. Shakespeare, 145; Merchant of Venice, 198; Julius CcBsar, 198. "Shell, The," 189. Short sessions advocated, 32-38. Sight method, 87, 88. Sindbad the Sailor, 195. "Skeleton in Armor, The," 189. Sketch Book, 197. Sleep, need of, 78. Small groups, advantages, 33, 34, 35. Smith, Dr. Theodate L., The Montessori System in Theory and Practice, 203. Smith, Professor, Mind in the Making, 202, 203. Smith, William Hawley, The Evolution of Dodd, 202; All the Children of All the People, 202. "Snowbound," 194. Solstice, 149. "Sonnet on His Blindness," 194. Special gift, encourage, 76. Speed, 108. INDEX 213 Spelling, 88-99, i8o» 181, 187; learning the alpha- bet, 90, 91; word lists, 91-98. Spencer, 39, 173; Educa- tion^ 203. Spinal curvature, 12. Square measure, 1 24, 1 25, 1 26. Stamen, 147. Standards of Elementary Education, 30, 203. Stevenson, 60, 67; Treasure I stand , 198. Stigma, 147. Stories, 77, 78, 188. Story 0} Ah, The, 199. Stowe, Mrs., 172. Subtraction, 105. Supervision, 14, 15, 30. Surface measurement, 126. ** Sweet and Low," 192. Swiss Family Robinson, 198. Symbols, 109. Tales of the Arabian Nights, 61, 198. Tales of the Greeks, 199. Tales of the Romans, 199. Tarr and McMurry's Geog- raphy, 199. Teacher, trust in, 2; less efficient, 15, 20; city, 22; women, 25; men, 25; supervision, 30; liberty of action, 30, 33; talkative, 102. Tennyson, Alfred, "Bugle Song," 189; "The Shell," 189; "Charge of the Light Brigade," 189, 192; "What Does Little Birdie Say?" 192; "Sweet and Low," 192; "The Brook," 192; "Blow, Bugle, Blow," 192; "Break, Break, Break," 192; "Crossing the Bar," 192; "Idylls of the King," 193, Text-books, 198-201, 204. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, 84. Thinking, independent, 115. Three Bears, 195. Through the Looking- Glass, 196. Tom Brown at Rugby, 198. Tom Thumb, 195. "Tortoise and the Hare," 177. Touch sense, 140. Treasure Island, 198. Tweedledum and Tweedle- dee, 67. U Ugly Duckling, 195. Unsanitary conditions in schools, 12. Upland and Meadow, 200. V Vanity Fair, 84. Ventilation, 34. 214 EDUCATING THE CHILD AT HOME ''Village Blacksmith/' 191. ''Vision of Sir Launfal," 194. Vocabulary, 82, 83, 93, 149, 174. W Wagner, Nibelungenleid,i97. Wake Robin, 154. Wall-charts, explaining, 199. Ways of Nature f 201. Ways of the Six- Footed, 199. Wesley, Susanna, 44. "What Does Little Birdie Say?" 192. Whittier, John Greenleaf, "Snowbound,*' 194; "Barefoot Boy," 194; "In School Days," 194. Wild Life of Field and Or- chard, 200. Wonder Book, 197. Work habit, 7, 8, 113, 159- 169. "Wreck of the Hesperus, The," 191. Writing, 129-135; rules, 185-188; note-books for, 185-190. Youth's Companion, 202. THE END UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOENIA LIBRARY BERKELEY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW Books not returned on time are subject to a fine of 50c per volume after the third day overdue, increasing to $1.00 per volume after the sixth day. Books not in demand may be renewed if application is made before expiration of loan period. 0CT28tffl8 DEC 24 1946 LIBRARY USE NAY 6 '654ii ;,,-5\tof«K6 '65.2PM ,^^s'b'^^^ .^QS4 uvi .zoi'iov'54D^ 41954 10 50m-7,'16 ■pfjtA- VB 05342 296680 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA lylBRARY