A group of such children, five-year-olds, who had remarked proudly that they could count, were asked to count an adult's fingers as she held up one hand and pointed in turn at the five fingers with the other. The children recited their rigmarole of "one, two, three," etc. clear up through twelve before the lady had finished pointing at the fourth finger. Other trials made with these children showed they had no number ideas at all connected with most of these number names. The latter were for the children merely a meaningless jingle like "eenie, meenie, minie, mo." They had never had real experiences in counting objects, but had merely learned the jingle of number names through hearing other children or adults say them.

Lack of real experiences illustrated by slum children's ideas. The contrast between the real experiences of country children and city children furnishes many illustrations of the dependence of a pupil's responses upon his previous experiences and the necessity of the teacher's taking careful account of the lack of adequate previous experience. This lack of experience is often made the subject of humorous incidents from school life. One of these from the experiences of the fictitious Miss Bailey with a slum class of Jewish children in New York is described by Myra Kelly in her fascinating story of school life entitled "Little Citizens." Miss Bailey, the teacher, had tried unsuccessfully to move her first-grade pupils with poems about nature, but they merely listened "in courteous but puzzled silence." Finally, after reading a poem about a lark and making vain efforts to get from the children some real ideas of this bird the story proceeds as follows:

"Well," Morris began with renewed confidence, "I know what is a bird. My auntie she had one from long. She says like that, she should give it to me, but my mamma she says, 'No, birds is foolishness.' But I know what is a bird. He scups on a stick in a cage."

"So he does," agreed Miss Bailey, rightly inferring from Morris's expressive pantomime that to "scup" was to swing. But sometimes he flies up into the sky in the country, as I was reading to you. Were you ever in the country?”

१९

"What country?" asked Morris. "Russia? I comes out of Russia."

"No, not Russia. Not any particular country. Just the open country where the flowers grow."

९९

"No ma'an, I ain't seen it," said the child gently. But I was once to Tompkins Square. On'y it was winter und snow lays on it. I ain't seen no flowers."

"And do none of you know anything about the country?" asked Teacher sadly.

"Oh, yiss maʼan, I know," said Eva Gonorowsky. "The country is the Fresh Air Fund."

"Then you've been there,” cried Miss Bailey.. "Tell us about it, Eva."

"No ma'an, I ain't seen it," said Eva proudly. "I'm healthy. But a girl on my block she had a sickness und so she goes. She tells me all times how is the country. It's got grass stickin' right up out of it. Grass und flowers! No ma'an, I ain't never seen it: I don't know where is it even, but oh! it could to be awful pretty! "Yes, honey, it is," said Teacher. "Very, very pretty. When I was a little girl I lived in the country."

"Oh, poor Miss Bailey," crooned Eva. "It could to be a awful sickness what you had."

"No, I was very well. I lived in the country because my father had a house there, and I played all day in the garden."

९९

Were n't you scared of the lions?" asked Patrick in incredulous admiration.

"We had no lions," Miss Bailey explained apologetically. But we had rabbits and guinea pigs and a horse and a cow and chickens and ducks and — and — "

९९

Und eleflints," Morris suggested hopefully.

"No, we had no elephants," Teacher was forced to admit. we had a turtle and a monkey."

९९

"Did your papa have a organ?" asked Sadie Gonorowsky. Organs mit monkeys is stylish for mans.”

"Think shame how you says!" cried her cousin Eva reproachfully. "Teacher ain't no Ginney. Organs ain't for Sheenies. They ain't for Krishts even. They all, all for Ginneys."

So 's monkeys," said Sadie, unabashed. "Und organs mit monkeys is stylish."

The children's deep interest in the animal kingdom gave Miss Bailey the point of departure for which she had been seeking. She abandoned Wordsworth and Shelley, and she bought a rabbit and a pair of white mice. The First-Reader class was enchanted. A canary in a gilded cage soon hung before the window and scupped" most energetically while goldfish in their bowl swam lazily back and forth. From these living texts Miss Bailey easily preached care and kindness towards all creatures, and Room 18 came to be an energetic, though independent, branch of the S. P. C. A. (9: 324-331. Copyright by Doubleday, Page & Co.)

९९

The content of primary children's minds; ignorance of common objects. - Such examples of pupils' lack of real knowledge of common objects early led to careful investigations of the ignorance of primary children. One such study is entitled "The Contents of Children's Minds on Entering School," and was made by G. S. Hall, in Boston, in 1880. He had a number of trained kindergarten teachers take first-grade children individually and question them tactfully and skillfully to find out what were their ideas of certain common objects. One child, for example, said, "A cow is as big as your finger nail." Other examples from the investigation which illustrate the percentage of ignorance found in the children are presented in the table printed below. The items in the table should be read as follows:

Of ordinary Boston children entering the first grade, 80 per cent do not know what a beehive is;

77 per cent do not know what a crow is.

TABLE SHOWING PERCENTAGE OF BOSTON FIRST-GRADE CHILDREN WHO ARE IGNORANT OF EACH ITEM AS NOTED

Teachers often ignorant of reality; practice teacher and pine trees. The principle of apperception would require a teacher to canvass carefully the stock of ideas possessed by her pupils to determine such facts as were ascertained by Miss Bailey and Mr. Hall. Very often, however, teachers are not only content to teach mere words but are ignorant themselves of the real objects or ideas which the words represent. A striking example of the complacent acceptance by an adult of words without adequate meanings is found in the plans of a practice teacher who was preparing to teach fourth-grade children about pine trees. She read up on the subject, worked on her plans for several days, and brought them to the supervisor for approval. The latter asked her if she had ever seen a pine tree. The practice teacher replied, "Not to my knowledge," in spite of the fact that there were numerous pine trees in the vicinity. The supervisor sent the practice teacher to find and examine these, and directed her to include an excursion to the trees by the children as one of the first parts of her plan.

Children also misunderstand words expressing abstractions. If the ignorance of children and adults concerning common objects is impressive, even more so is their ignorance of words which express abstract ideas and relations between ideas. The failure to comprehend simple abstract

ideas was illustrated in the counting example given earlier in the chapter, in which children used number names merely as a jingle of sounds. The difficulties which children may have with such abstract ideas when encountered in their reading is illustrated in the following quotation :

The child who read that "the Pilgrims sought an asylum in Holland" and recited, "The Pilgrims went to an asylum in Holland," needed to have this idea investigated, and, as it turned out, corrected as well. . . . The author who writes for fifth-grade pupils that "the Norwegians are famous for their tenacity of will" writes over the heads of his readers. Even so simple a statement as the one that the mountains of Japan are too near the coast to admit of long rivers causes misunderstandings, since with school children admit means to allow to enter. (4: 102)

History of recognition of apperception. Rousseau's objection to mirror-like, parrot recitations.-The most important modern recognition of the futility of mere word teaching without adequate basis in real experience is found in Rousseau's proposals (1762) for a more intimate study of child experience. He used an interesting figure of speech in comparing a mirror with a child's recitation of mere words. He said the child reflects back the words which he learns "and those who hear these words understand them, but the child does not." In place of mirror-like, parrot recitations, Rousseau proposed giving real ideas through object study, nature study, home geography, excursions, manual training, observation of industries, measurement, etc.

Well-intentioned Pestalozzians went astray; memorizing definitions; Dickens's satire. As a result of Rousseau's appeal in his "Emile," Pestalozzi and his followers organized schemes of object teaching for the purpose of giving children real knowledge of the real things of nature and industry, from the most common to the most remote. Even this instruction, however, soon degenerated into learning from books mere descriptions of objects. In England the