recitations based on these books were amusingly satirized by Charles Dickens in the following contrast between the recitations by Sissy Jupe, who knew horses from real experience, and Red-eyed Bitzer, who knew the prescribed definition contained in the textbook of the Home and Colonial Infant School Society. Sissy Jupe, Girl No. 20, the daughter of a strolling circus actor, whose life, no small share of it, has been passed under the canvas; whose knowledge of horse . . . extends back as far as memory reaches; familiar with the form and food, the powers and habits and everything relating to the horse; . . . Sissy Jupe has been asked to define horse. . . . Bewildered [however] by the striking want of resemblance between the horse of her own conceptions and the prescribed formula that represents the animal in the books of the Home and Colonial Society, she dares not trust herself with the confusing description, and shrinks from it in silence and alarm. ९९ Girl No. 20 unable to define a horse," said Mr. Gradgrind. Girl No. 20 is declared possessed of no facts in reference to one of the commonest of animals, and appeal is made to one Redeyed Bitzer, who knows horse practically only as he has seen a picture of a horse or as he has, perhaps, sometimes safely weathered the perils of a crowded street-crossing. Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind, " your definition of a horse!" 'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely: twentyfour grinders, four eye teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the Spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus [and much more] Bitzer. १९ Now Girl No. 20,” said Mr. Gradgrind, "you know what a horse is." (8: 363-364) Present-day examples of memorizing geography" stories." That such instruction has not entirely disappeared from our schools is easily ascertained by observing teachers who are having children memorize and recite "stories" of coal, iron, wheat, etc. found in their geographies. For example, the following paragraph about "what the cow furnishes us" parallels closely Red-eyed Bitzer's recitation. It is quoted from a "home" geography. Do you know how cheese is made? The milk is first curdled by putting into it some liquid rennet. Rennet is the name given to a preparation made from the inner coating of the calf's stomach. The curd is separated from the watery part of the milk, which is called whey, and then pressed into solid cakes. The curd is then called cheese. In commenting on this paragraph one writer says: To the few children who have seen cheese made in this way, or who have actually made it in this way, the foregoing paragraph is concrete, but to those who have not had this experience and to whom this experience is not supplied, this paragraph is about as meaningful as the rule for extracting cube root found in our older arithmetics. To take children under these conditions over page after page of such material is a waste of good time. (3: 534) Kindergartens ascribed to children impossible abstract ideas. As we noted in an earlier chapter, another direct outcome of Rousseau's demands to base teaching on a study of childhood was the organization of the kindergarten. As we have stated several times, the fundamental kindergarten idea was to give children experiences with community activities and natural objects through play. Even here, however, in the very center of the movement to base education on children's instincts and capacities, we find the most curious failure to appreciate the limitations of children's understandings. Froebel, the founder of the kindergarten, was a person of peculiarly mystical temperament. This temperament, coupled with the extreme religious atmosphere of his father's house, led him to write such foolish statements as those printed below concerning children's mental responses in playing in the kindergarten with the cube and ball and in such games as "Ring around a Rosy" and REALITIES REPLACE SYMBOLISM IN MODERN KINDERGARTEN As early as 1781 Pestalozzi suggested teaching little children in school to lace their shoes TOY COWS USED IN MODERN KINDERGARTEN A rich topic for training in expression, construction, problem solving, and knowledge of animal needs and uses 'The Farmer's in the Dell." In reading these statements do not struggle to understand them, because they are incomprehensible to most persons. The child... [says Froebel] perceives in the ball the general expression of each object as well as of itself [the child] as a selfdependent whole and unity . . . so the child likes to employ himself with the ball, even early in life, in order to cultivate and fashion himself, though unconsciously, through and by it, as that which is his opposite and yet resembles him. The cube is to the child the representative of each continually developing manifold body. The child has an intimation in it of the unity which lies at the foundation of all manifoldness and from which the latter proceeds. The pleasure with which the children play these games and others of a similar kind may therefore have its ground in a presentiment of what is symbolic and significant in them. May not their delight in these encircling movements, for example, spring from the longing and the effort to get an all-round or all-sided grasp of an object? . . . I am convinced that the exalted and often ecstatic delight of children in their simple movement plays is by no means to be explained through the exertion of mere physical force-mere bodily activity. The true source of their joy is the dim premonition which stirs their sensitive hearts that in their play there is hidden a deep significance; that it is, in fact, the husk within which is concealed the kernel of a living spiritual truth. (8: 440) Froebel's absurdities satirized by Thorndike. The absurdity of Froebel's misunderstanding of the responses of ordinary children to common playthings led Thorndike to write the following satire: And what shall I say of those who by a most extraordinary intellectual perversity attribute to children the habit of using common things as symbols of abstractions which have never in any way entered their heads; who tell us that the girl likes to play with her doll because the play symbolizes to her motherhood; that the boy likes to be out of doors because the sunlight symbolizes to him cheerfulness? . . . |