 CHAPTER 14 General Notes on the Education of the Senses I do not claim to have brought to perfection the method of sense training as applied to young children. I do believe, however, that it opens a new field for psychological research, promising rich and valuable results. Experimental psychology has so far devoted its attention to perfecting the instruments by which the sensations are measured. No one has attempted the methodical preparation of the individual for the sensations. It is my belief that the development of psychometry will owe more to the attention given to the preparation of the individual than to the perfecting of the instrument. But putting aside this purely scientific side of the question, the education of the senses must be of the greatest pedagogical interest. Our aim in education in general is twofold, biological and social. From the biological side we wish to help the natural development of the individual. From the social standpoint it is our aim to prepare the individual for the environment. Under this last head technical education may be considered as having a place since it teaches the individual to make use of his surroundings. The education of the senses is most important from both these points of view. The development of the senses indeed proceeds that of superior intellectual activity and the child between three and seven years is in the period of formation. We can then help the development of the senses while they are in this period. We may graduate and adapt the stimuli just as, for example, it is necessary to help the formation of language before it shall be completely developed. All education of little children must be governed by this principle to help the natural psychic and physical development of the child. The other aim of education that of adapting the individual to the environment should be given more attention later on when the period of intense development is passed. These two phases of education are always interlaced, but one or the other has prevalence according to the age of the child. Now the period of life between the ages of three and seven years covers a period of rapid physical development. It is the time for the formation of the sense activities as related to the intellect. The child in this age develops his senses. His attention is further attracted to the environment under the form of passive curiosity. The stimuli and not yet the reasons for things attract his attention. This is therefore the time when we should methodically direct the sense stimuli in such a way that the sensations which he receives shall develop in a rational way. This sense training will prepare the ordered foundation upon which he may build up a clear and strong mentality. It is, besides all this, possible with the education of the senses to discover and eventually to correct defects, which today pass unobserved in the school. Now the time comes when the defect manifests itself in an evident and irreparable inability to make use of the forces of life about him. Such defects is deafness and nearsightedness. This education, therefore, is physiological and prepares directly for intellectual education, perfecting the organs of sense and the nerve paths of projection and association. But the other part of education, the adaptation of the individual to his environment, is indirectly touched. We prepare with our method the infancy of the humanity of our time. The men of the present civilization are preeminently observers of their environment, because they must utilize to the greatest possible extent all the riches of this environment. The art of today bases itself, as in the days of the Greeks, upon observation of the truth. The progress of positive science is based upon its observations and all its discoveries and their applications, which in the last century have so transformed our civic environment, were made by following the same line, that is, they have come through observation. We must therefore prepare the new generation for this attitude, which has become necessary in our modern civilized life. It is an indispensable means, man must be so armed if he is to continue efficaciously the work of our progress. We have seen the discovery of the rent can raise born of observation. To the same methods are due the discovery of Hertzian waves and vibrations of radium, and we await wonderful things from the Marconi Telegraph. While there has been no period in which thought has gained so much from positive study as the present century, and this same century promises new light in the field of speculative philosophy, and upon spiritual questions the theories upon the matter have themselves led to most interesting metaphysical concepts. We may say that in preparing the method of observation, we have also prepared the way leading to spiritual discovery. The education of the senses makes men observers, and not only accomplishes the general work of adaptation to the present epic of civilization, but also prepares them directly for practical life. We have had up to the present time, I believe, a most imperfect idea of what is necessary in the practical living of life. We have always started from ideas, and have proceeded thence to motor activities. Thus, for example, the method of education has always been to teach intellectually, and then to have the child follow the principles he has been taught. In general, when we are teaching, we talk about the object which interests us, and then we try to lead the scholar when he has understood to perform some kind of work with the object itself. But often the scholar who has understood the idea finds great difficulty in the execution of the work which we give him because we have left out of his education a factor of the utmost importance, namely the perfecting of the senses. I may perhaps illustrate this statement with a few examples. We ask the cook to buy only fresh fish. She understands the idea and tries to follow it in her marketing, but if the cook has not been trained to recognize through sight and smell the signs which indicate freshness in the fish, she will not know how to follow the order we have given her. Such a lack will show itself much more plainly in culinary operations. A cook may be trained in book matters and may know exactly the recipes and the length of time advised in her cookbook. She may be able to perform all the manipulations necessary to give the desired appearance to the dishes, but when it is a question of deciding from the odor of the dish the exact moment of its being properly cooked, or with the eye, or the taste, the time at which she must put in some given condiment, then she will make a mistake if her senses have not been sufficiently prepared. She can only gain such ability through long practice, and such practice on the part of the cook is nothing else than a belated education of the senses, an education which often can never be properly attained by the adult. This is one reason why it is so difficult to find good cooks. Something of the same kind is true of the physician, the student of medicine who studies theoretically the character of the pulse, and sits down by the bed of the patient with the best will in the world to read the pulse. But if his fingers do not know how to read the sensations, his studies will have been in vain. Before he can become a doctor he must gain a capacity for discriminating between sense stimuli. The same may be said for the pulsations of the heart, which the student studies in theory, but which the ear can learn to distinguish only through practice. We may say the same for all the delicate vibrations and movements in the reading of which the hand of the physician is too often deficient. The thermometer is the more indispensable to the physician, the more his sense of touch is unadapted and untrained in the gathering of the thermic stimuli. It is well understood that the physician may be learned and most intelligent without being a good practitioner, and that to make a good practitioner long practice is necessary. In reality this long practice is nothing else than a tardy and often inefficient exercise of the senses. After he is assimilated the brilliant theories, the physician sees himself forced to the unpleasant labor of the semiography that is to making a record of the symptoms revealed by his observation of and experiments with the patients. He must do this if he is to receive from these theories any practical results. Here then we have the beginner proceeding in a stereotyped way to tests of palpation, percussion, and auscultation for the purpose of identifying the throbs, the resonance, the tones, the breathings, and the various sounds which alone can enable him to formulate a diagnosis. Hence the deep and unhappy discouragement of so many young physicians and above all the loss of time, for it is often a question of lost years. Then there is the immorality of allowing a man to follow a profession of so great responsibility when, as is often the case, he is so unskilled and inaccurate in the taking of symptoms. The whole art of medicine is based upon an education of the senses. The schools instead prepare physicians through a study of the classics, all very well and good, but the splendid intellectual development of the physician falls impotent before the insufficiency of his senses. One day I heard a surgeon giving to a number of poor mothers a lesson on the recognition of the first deformities noticeable in little children from the disease of rickets. It was his hope to lead these mothers to bring to him their children who were suffering from this disease while the disease was yet in the earliest stages and when medical help might still be efficacious. The mothers understood the idea, but they did not know how to recognize these first signs of deformity because they were lacking in the sensory education through which they might discriminate between signs deviating only slightly from the normal. Therefore those lessons were useless. If we think of it for a minute we will see that almost all the forms of adulteration in foodstuffs are rendered possible by the torpor of the senses which exists in the greater number of people. Fraudulent industry feeds upon the lack of sense education in the masses as any kind of fraud is based upon the ignorance of the victim. We often see the purchaser throwing himself upon the honesty of the merchant or putting his faith in the company or the label upon the box. This is because purchasers are lacking in the capacity of judging directly for themselves. They do not know how to distinguish with their senses the different qualities of various substances. In fact we may say that in many cases intelligence is rendered useless by lack of practice and this practice is almost always sense education. Everyone knows in practical life the fundamental necessity of judging with exactness between various stimuli. But very often sense education is most difficult for the adult just as it is difficult for him to educate his hand when he wishes to become a pianist. It is necessary to begin the education of the senses in the formative period if we wish to perfect this sense development with the education which is to follow. The education of the senses should be begun methodically in infancy and should continue during the entire period of instruction which is to prepare the individual for life in society. Aesthetic and moral education are closely related to this sensory education. Multiply the sensations and develop the capacity of appreciating fine differences in stimuli and we refine the sensibility and multiply man's pleasures. Beauty lies in harmony, not in contrast, and harmony is refinement. Therefore there must be a fineness of the senses if we are to appreciate harmony. The aesthetic harmony of nature is lost upon him who has coarse senses. The world to him is narrow and barren. In life about us there exist inexhaustible fonts of aesthetic enjoyment before which men pass as insensible as the brutes seeking their enjoyment in those sensations which are crude and showy since they are the only ones accessible to them. Now from the enjoyment of gross pleasures vicious habits very often spring strong stimuli indeed do not render acute but blunt the senses so that they require stimuli more and more accentuated and more and more gross. Onanism so often found among normal children of the lower classes alcoholism fondness for watching sensual acts of adults these things represent the enjoyment of those unfortunate ones whose intellectual pleasures are few and whose senses are blunted and dulled. Such pleasures kill the man within the individual and call to life the beast. Indeed from the physiological point of view the importance of the education of the senses is evident from an observation of the scheme of the diagrammatic arc which represents the functions of the nervous system. The external stimulus acts upon the organ of sense and the impression is transmitted along the centripetal way to the nerve center the corresponding motor impulse is elaborated and is transmitted along the centrifugal path to the organ of motion provoking a movement although the arc represents diagrammatically the mechanism of reflex spinal actions it may still be considered as a fundamental key explaining the phenomena of the more complex nervous mechanisms. Man with the peripheral sensory system gathers various stimuli from his environment he puts himself thus in direct communication with his surroundings the psychic life develops therefore in relation to the system of nerve centers and human activity which is imminently social activity manifests itself through acts of the individual manual work writing spoken language etc by means of the psychomotor organs education should guide and perfect the development of the three periods the two peripheral and the central or a better still since the process fundamentally reduces itself to the nerve centers education should give to psychosensory exercises the same importance which it gives to psychomotor exercises otherwise we isolate man from his environment indeed when with intellectual culture we believe ourselves to have completed education we have but made thinkers whose tendency will be to live without the world we have not made practical men if on the other hand wishing through education to prepare for practical life we limit ourselves to exercising the psychomotor phase we lose sight of the chief end of education which is to put man in direct communication with the external world since professional work almost always requires man to make use of his surroundings the technical schools are not forced to return to the very beginnings of education since exercises in order to supply the great and universal lack end of chapter 14 general notes on the education of the senses recording by carol stripling chapter 15 of the Montessori method this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Lenny the Montessori method by Maria Montessori translated by Anne E. George chapter 15 intellectual education to lead the child from the education of the senses to ideas Edouard Sega the sense exercises constitute a species of auto education which if these exercises be many times repeated leads to a perfecting of the child's psychosensory processes the directors must intervene to lead the child from sensations to ideas from the concrete to the abstract and to the association of ideas for this she should use a method tending to isolate the inner attention of the child and to fix it upon the perceptions as in the first lessons his objective attention was fixed through isolation upon single stimuli the teacher in other words when she gives a lesson must seek to limit the field of the child's consciousness to the object of the lesson as for example during the sense education she isolated the sense which she wished the child to exercise for this knowledge of a special technique is necessary the educator must to the greatest possible extent limit his intervention yet he must not allow the child to worry himself in an undue effort of auto education it is here that the factor of individual limitation and deferring degrees of perception are most keenly felt in the teacher in other words in the quality of this intervention lies the art which makes up the individuality of the teacher a definite and undoubted part of the teacher's work is that of teaching an exact nomenclature she should in most cases pronounce the necessary names and adjectives without adding anything further these words she should pronounce distinctly and in a clear strong voice so that the various sounds composing the word may be distinctly and plainly perceived by the child so for example touching the smooth and rough cards in the first tactile exercise she should say this is smooth this this is rough repeating the words with varying modulations of the voice always letting the tones be clear and the enunciation very distinct smooth smooth smooth rough rough rough in the same way when treating of the sensations of heat and cold she must say this is cold this is hot this is ice cold this is tepid she may then begin to use the generic terms heat more heat less heat etc first the lessons in nomenclature must consist simply in provoking the association of the name with the object or with the abstract idea which the name represents thus the object and the name must be united when they are received by the child's mind and this makes it most necessary that no other word besides the name be spoken second the teacher must always test whether or not her lesson has attained the end she had in view and her tests must be made to come within the restricted field of consciousness provoked by the lesson on nomenclature the first test will be to find whether the name is still associated in the child's mind with the object she must allow the necessary time to elapse letting a short period of silence intervene between the lesson and the test then she may ask the child pronouncing slowly and very clearly the name or the adjective she has taught which is smooth which is rough the child will point to the object with his finger and the teacher will know that he has made the desired association but if he has not done this that is if he makes a mistake she must not correct him but must suspend her lesson to take it up again another day indeed why correct him if the child has not succeeded in associating the name with the object the only way in which to succeed would be to repeat both the action of the sense stimuli and the name in other words to repeat the lesson but when the child has failed we should know that he was not at that instant ready for the psychic association which we wish to provoke in him and we must therefore choose another moment if we should say in correcting the child no you have made a mistake all these words which being in the form of a reproof would strike him more forcibly than others such as smooth or rough would remain in the mind of the child retarding the learning of the names on the contrary the silence which follows the error leaves the field of consciousness clear and the next lesson may successfully follow the first in fact by revealing the error we may lead the child to make an undue effort to remember or we may discourage him and it is our duty to avoid as much as possible all unnatural effort and all depression third if the child has not committed any error the teacher may provoke the motor activity corresponding to the idea of the object that is to the pronunciation of the name she may ask him what is this and the child should respond smooth the teacher may then interrupt teaching him how to pronounce the word correctly and distinctly first drawing a deep breath and then saying in a rather loud voice smooth when he does this the teacher may note his particular speech defect or the special form of baby talk to which he may be addicted in regard to the generalization of the ideas received and by that I mean the application of these ideas to his environment I do not advise any lessons of this sort for a certain length of time even for a number of months there will be children who after having touched a few times the stuffs or merely the smooth and rough cards will quite spontaneously touch the various surfaces about them repeating smooth rough it is velvet etc in dealing with normal children we must await this spontaneous investigation of the surroundings or as I like to call it this voluntary explosion of the exploring spirit in such cases the children experience a joy at each fresh discovery they are conscious of a sense of dignity and satisfaction which encourages them to seek for new sensations from their environment and to make themselves spontaneous observers the teacher should watch with the most solicitous care to see when and how the child arrives at this generalization of ideas for example one of our little four-year-olds while running about in the court one day suddenly stood still and cried out oh the sky is blue and stood for some time looking up into the blue expense of the sky one day when I entered one of the children's houses five or six little ones gathered quietly about me and began caressing lightly my hands and my clothing saying it is smooth it is velvet this is rough a number of others came near and began with serious and intent faces to repeat the same words touching me as they did so the directress wished to enter fear to release me but I signed to her to be quiet and I myself did not move but remain silent admiring the spontaneous intellectual activity of my little ones the greatest triumph of our educational method should always be this to bring about the spontaneous progress of the child one day a little boy following one of our exercises and design had chosen to fill in with colored pencils the outline of a tree to color the trunk he laid hold upon a red crayon the teacher wished to interfere saying do you think trees have red trunks I held her back and allow the child to color the tree red this design was precious to us it showed that the child was not yet an observer of his surroundings my way of treating this was to encourage the child to make use of the games for the chromatic sense he went daily into the garden with the other children and could at any time see the tree trunks when the sense exercises should have succeeded in attracting the child's spontaneous attention to colors about him then in some happy moment he would become aware that the tree trunks were not red just as the other child during his play had become conscious of the fact that the sky was blue in fact the teacher continued to give the child outlines of trees to fill in he one day chose a brown pencil with which to color the trunk and made the branches and leaves green later he made the branches brown also using green only for the leaves thus we have the test of the child's intellectual progress we cannot create observers by saying observe but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses once we have aroused such activity auto education is assured for refined well-trained senses lead us to a closer observation of the environment and this with its infinite variety attracts the attention and continues the psychosensory education if on the other hand in this matter of sense education with single out definite concepts of the quality of certain objects these very objects become associated with or a part of the training which is in this way limited to those concepts taken and recorded so the sense training remains unfruitful when for example a teacher has given in the old way a lesson on the names of the colors she has imparted an idea concerning that particular quality but she has not educated the chromatic sense the child will know these colors in a superficial way forgetting them from time to time and at best his appreciation of them will lie within the limits prescribed by the teacher when therefore the teacher of the old methods shall have provoked the generalization of the idea saying for example what is the color of this flower of this ribbon the attention of the child will in all probability remain torpidly fixed upon the example suggested by her we may liken the child to a clock and may say that with the old time way it is very much as if we were to hold the wheels of the clock quiet and move the hands about the clock face with our fingers the hands will continue to circle the dial just so long as we apply through our fingers the necessary motor force even so is it with that sort of culture which is limited to the work which the teacher does with the child the new method instead may be compared to the process of winding which sets the entire mechanism in motion this motion is in direct relation with the machine and not with the work of winding so the spontaneous psychic development of the child continues indefinitely and is in direct relation to the psychic potentiality of the child himself and not with the work of the teacher the movement or the spontaneous psychic activity starts in our case from the education of the senses and is maintained by the observing intelligence thus for example the hunting dog receives his ability not from the education given by his master but from the special acuteness of his senses and as soon as his physiological quality is applied to the right environment the exercise of hunting the increasing refinement of the sense perceptions gives the dog the pleasure and then the passion for the chase the same is true of the pianist who refining at the same time his musical sense and the agility of his hand comes to love more and more to draw new harmonies from the instrument this double perfection proceeds until at last the pianist is launched upon a course which will be limited only by the personality which lies within him now a student of physics may know all the laws of harmony which form a part of his scientific culture and yet he may not know how to follow a most simple musical composition his culture however vast will be bound by the definite limits of his science our educational aim with very young children must be to aid the spontaneous development of the mental spiritual and physical personality and not to make of the child a cultured individual in the commonly accepted sense of the term so after we have offered to the child such didactic material as is adapted to provoke the development of his senses we must wait until the activity known as observation develops and herein lies the art of the educator in knowing how to measure the action by which we help the young child's personality to develop to one whose attitude is right little children soon reveal profound individual differences which call for very different kinds of help from the teacher some of them require almost no intervention on her part while others demand actual teaching it is necessary therefore that the teaching shall be rigorously guided by the principle of limiting to the greatest possible point the active intervention of the education here are a number of games and problems which we have used effectively in trying to follow this principle games of the blind the games of the blind are used for the most part as exercises in general sensibility as follows the stuffs we have in our didactic material a pretty little chest composed of drawers within which are arranged rectangular pieces of stuff in great variety there are velvet satin silk cotton linen etc we have the child touch each of these pieces teaching the appropriate nomenclature and adding something regarding the quality as coarse fine soft then we call the child and seat him at one of the tables where he can be seen by his companions blindfold him and offer him the stuffs one by one he touches them smooths them crushes them between his fingers and the sides it is velvet it is fine linen it is rough cloth etc this exercise provokes general interest when we offer the child some unexpected foreign object as for example a sheet of paper of veal the little assembly trembles as it awaits his response wait we place the child in the same position call his attention to the tablets used for the education of the sense of weight have him notice again the already well known differences of weight and then tell him to put all the dark tablets which are the heavier ones at the right and all the light ones which are the lighter to the left we then blindfold him and he proceeds to the game taking each time two tablets sometimes he takes two of the same color sometimes two of different colors but in a position opposite to that in which he must arrange them on his desk these exercises are most exciting when for example the child has in his hands two of the dark tablets and changes them from one hand to the other uncertain and finally places them together on the right the children watch in a state of intense eagerness and a great sigh often expresses their final relief the shouts of the audience when the entire game is followed without an error gives the impression that their little friend sees with his hands the colors of the tablets dimension and form we use games similar to the preceding one having the child distinguished between different coins the cubes and bricks of frible and dry seeds such as beans and peas but such games never awaken the intense interest aroused by the preceding ones they are however useful and serve to associate with the various objects those qualities peculiar to them and also to fix the nomenclature application of the education of the visual sense to the observation of the environment nomenclature this is one of the most important phases of education indeed nomenclature prepares for an exactness in the use of language which is not always met with in our schools many children for example use interchangeably the words thick and big long and high with the methods already described the teacher may easily establish by means of the didactic material ideas which are very exact and clear and may associate the proper word with these ideas method of using the didactic material dimensions the directress after the child has played for a long time with the three sets of solid insets and has acquired a security in the performance of the exercise takes out all the cylinders of equal height and places them in a horizontal position on the table one beside the other then she selects the two extremes saying this is the thickest this is the thinnest she places them side by side so that the comparison may be more marked and then taking them by the little button she compares the bases calling attention to the great difference she then places them again beside each other in a vertical position in order to show that they are equal in height and repeats several times thick thin having done this she should follow it with the she should follow it with the test asking give me the thickest give me the thinnest and finally she should proceed to the test of nomenclature asking what is this in the lessons which follow this the directors may take away the two extreme pieces and may repeat the lesson with the two pieces remaining at the extremities and so on until she has used all the pieces she may then take these up at random saying give me one a little thicker than this one or give me one a little thinner than this one with the second set of solid insets she proceeds in the same way here she stands the pieces upright as each one has a base sufficiently broad to maintain it in this position saying this is the highest and this is the lowest then placing the two extreme pieces side by side she may take them out of the line and compare the bases showing that they are equal from the extremes she may proceed as before selecting each time the two remaining pieces most strongly contrasted with the third solid inset the directress when she has arranged the pieces in gradation calls the child's attention to the first one saying this is the largest and to the last one saying this is the smallest then she places them side by side and observes how they differ both in height and in base she then proceeds in the same way as in the other two exercises similar lessons may be given with the series of graduated prisms of rods and of cubes the prisms are thick and thin and of equal length the rods are long and short and of equal thickness the cubes are big and little and differ in size and in height the application of these ideas to environment will come most easily when we measure the children with the anthropometer they will begin among themselves to make comparisons saying i am taller you are thicker these comparisons are also made when the children hold out their little hands to show that they are clean and the directress stretches hers out also to show that she too has clean hands often the contrast between the dimensions of the hands calls forth laughter the children make a perfect game of measuring themselves they stand side by side they look at each other they decide often they place themselves beside grown persons and observe with curiosity and interest the greatest difference in height form and the child shows that he can with security distinguish the forms of the plain geometric insets the directress may begin the lessons in nomenclature she should begin with two strongly contrasted forms as the square and the circle and should follow the usual method using the three periods of sega we do not teach all the names relative to the geometric figures giving only those of the most familiar forms such as square circle rectangle triangle oval we now call attention to the fact that there are rectangles which are narrow and long and others which are broad and short while the squares are equal on all sides and can be only big and little these things are most easily shown with the insets for though we turn the square about it still enters its frame while the rectangle if placed across the opening will not enter the child is much interested in this exercise for which we arrange in the frame a square and a series of rectangles having the longest side equal to the side of the square the other side gradually decreasing in the five pieces in the same way we proceed to show the difference between the oval the ellipse and the circle the circle enters no matter how it is placed or turned about the ellipse does not enter when placed transversely but if placed lengthwise will enter even if turned upside down the oval however not only cannot enter the frame if placed transversely but not even when turned upside down it must be placed with the large curve toward the large part of the opening and with the narrow curve toward the narrow portion of the opening the circles big and little enter their frames no matter how they are turned about I do not reveal the difference between the oval and the ellipse until a very late stage of the child's education and then not to all children but only to those who show a special interest in the forms by choosing the game often or by asking about the differences I prefer that such differences should be recognized later by the child spontaneously perhaps in the elementary school it seems to many persons that in teaching these forms we are teaching geometry and that this is premature in schools for such young children others feel that if we wish to present geometric forms we should use the solids as being more concrete I feel that I should say a word here to combat such prejudices to observe a geometric form is not to analyze it and in the analysis geometry begins when for example we speak to the child of sides and angles and explain these to him even though with objective methods as frebble advocates for example the square has four sides and can be constructed with four sticks of equal length then indeed we do enter the field of geometry and I believe that little children are too immature for these steps but the observation of the form cannot be too advanced for a child at this age the plane of the table at which the child sits while eating his supper is probably a rectangle the plate which contains his food is a circle and we certainly do not consider that the child is too immature to be allowed to look at the table and the plate the insets which represent simply call the attention to a given form as to the name it is analogous to other names by which the child learns to call things why should we consider it premature to teach the child the words circle square oval when in his home he repeatedly hears the word round used in connection with plates etc he will hear his parents speak of the square table the oval table etc and these words in common use will remain for a long time confused in his mind and in his speech if we do not interpose such help as that we give in the teaching of forms we should reflect upon the fact that many times a child left himself makes an undo effort to comprehend the language of the adults and the meaning of the things about him opportunity rational instruction prevents such an effort and therefore does not worry but relieves the child and satisfies his desire for knowledge indeed he shows his contentment by various expressions of pleasure at the same time his attention is called to the word which if he is allowed to pronounce badly develops in him an imperfect use of language this often arises from an effort on his part to imitate the careless speech of persons about him while the teacher by pronouncing clearly the word referring to the object which arouses the child's curiosity prevents such effort and such imperfections here also we face a widespread prejudice namely the belief that the child left himself gives absolute repose to his mind if this were so he would remain a stranger to the world and instead we see him little by little spontaneously conquer various ideas and words he is a traveler through life who observes the new things among which he journeys and who tries to understand the unknown tongue spoken by those about him indeed he makes a great and voluntary effort to understand and to imitate the instruction given to little children should be so directed as to lessen this expenditure of poorly directed effort converting it instead into the enjoyment of conquest made easy and infinitely broadened we are the guides of these travelers just entering the great world of human thought we should see to it that we are intelligent and cultured guides not losing ourselves in vain discourse but illustrating briefly and concisely the work of art in which the traveler shows himself interested and we should then respectfully allow him to observe it as long as he wishes to it is our privilege to lead him to observe the most important and the most beautiful things of life in such a way that he does not lose energy and time in useless things but shall find pleasure and satisfaction throughout his pilgrimage i have already referred to the prejudice that it is more suitable to present the geometric forms to the child in the solid rather than in the plane giving him for example the cube the sphere the prism let us put aside the physiological side of the question showing that the visual recognition of the solid figure is more complex than that of the plane and let us view the question only from the more purely pedagogical standpoint of practical life the greater number of objects which we look upon every day present more nearly the aspect of our plane geometric insets in fact doors window frames framed pictures the wooden or marble top of a table are indeed solid objects but with one of the dimensions greatly reduced and with the two dimensions determining the form of the plane surface made most evident when the plane form prevails we say that the window is rectangular the picture frame oval the stable square etc solids having a determined form prevailing in the plane surface are almost the only ones which come to our notice and such solids are clearly represented by our plane geometric insets the child will very often recognize in his environment forms which he has learned in this way but he will rarely recognize the solid geometric forms that the table leg is a prism or a truncated cone or an elongated cylinder will come to his knowledge long after he has observed that the top of the table upon which he places things is rectangular we do not therefore speak of the fact of recognizing that a house is a prism or a cube indeed the pure solid geometric forms never exist in the ordinary objects about us these present instead a combination of forms so putting aside the difficulty of taking in at a glance the complex form of a house the child recognizes in it not an identity of form but an analogy he will however see the plane geometric forms perfectly represented in windows and doors and in the faces of many solid objects in use at home thus the knowledge of the forms given him in the plane geometric insets will be for him a species of magic key opening the external world and making him feel that he knows its secrets i was walking one day upon the pension hill with a boy from the elementary school he had studied geometric design and understood the analysis of plane geometric figures as we reach the highest terrace from which we could see the piazza del popolo with the city stretching away behind it i stretched out my hand saying look all the works of men are a great mass of geometric figures and indeed rectangles ovals triangles and semicircles perforated or ornamented in a hundred different ways the gray rectangular facades of the various buildings such uniformity in such an expanse of buildings seem to prove the limitation of human intelligence while in a joining garden plot the shrubs and flowers spoke eloquently of the infinite variety of forms in nature the boy had never made these observations he had studied the angles the sides and the construction of outlined geometric figures but without thinking beyond this and feeling only annoyance at this arid work at first he laughed at the idea of men's messing geometric figures together then he became interested looked long at the buildings before him and an expression of lively and thoughtful interest came into his face to the right of the ponte margarita was a factory building in the process of construction and its steel framework delineated the series of rectangles what tedious work said the boy alluding to the workmen and then as we drew near the garden and stood for a moment in silence admiring the grass and the flowers which sprang so freely from the earth it is beautiful he said but that word beautiful referred to the inner awakening of his own soul this experience made me think that in the observation of the plain geometric forms and in that of the plants which they saw growing in their own little gardens they are existed for the children precious sources of spiritual as well as intellectual education for this reason i have wished to make my work broad leading the child not only to observe the forms about him but to distinguish the work of men from that of nature and to appreciate the fruits of human labor a free design i give the child a sheet of white paper and a pencil telling him that he may draw whatever he wishes to such drawings have long been of interest to experimental psychologists their importance lies in the fact that they reveal the capacity of the child for observing and also show his individual tendencies generally the first drawings are unformed and confused and the teacher should ask the child what he wished to draw and should write it underneath the design that it may be a record little by little the drawings become more intelligible and verily reveal the progress which the child makes in the observation of the forms about him often the most minute details of an object have been observed and recorded in the crude sketch and since the child draws what he wishes he reveals to us which are the objects that most strongly attract his attention be design consisting of the filling in of outline figures these designs are most important as they constitute the preparation for writing they do for the color sense what free design does for the sense of form in other words they reveal the capacity of the child in the matter of observation of colors as the free design showed us the extent to which he was an observer of form in the object surrounding him i shall speak more fully of this work in the chapter on writing the exercises consist in filling in with colored pencil certain outlines drawn in black these outlines present the simple geometric figures and various objects with which the child is familiar in the schoolroom the home and the garden the child must select his color and in doing so he shows us whether he has observed the colors of the things surrounding him free plastic work these exercises are analogous to those in free design and in the filling in of figures with colored pencils here the child makes whatever he wishes with clay that is he models those objects which he remembers most distinctly and which have impressed him most deeply we give the child a wooden tray containing a piece of clay and then we await his work we will ask some very remarkable pieces of clay work done by our little ones some of them reproduce with surprising minuteness of detail objects which they have seen and what is most surprising these models often record not only the form but even the dimensions of the objects which the child handled in school many little ones model the objects which they have seen at home especially kitchen furniture water jugs pots and pans sometimes we are shown a simple cradle containing a baby brother or sister at first it is necessary to place written descriptions upon these objects as it is necessary to do with the free design later on however the models are easily recognizable and the children learn to reproduce the geometric solids these clay models are undoubtedly very valuable material for the teacher and make clear many individual differences thus helping her to understand her children more fully in our method they are also valuable as psychological manifestations of development according to age such designs are precious guides also for the teacher in the matter of her intervention in the child's education the children who in this work reveal themselves as observers will probably become spontaneous observers of all the world about them and maybe led towards such a goal by the indirect help of exercises tending to fix and to make more exact the various sensations and ideas these children will also be those who arrive most quickly at the act of spontaneous writing those whose clay work remains unformed and indefinite will probably need a direct revelation of the directors who will need to call their attention in some material manner to the objects around them geometric analysis of figures sides angles center base the geometric analysis of figures is not adapted to very young children i have tried a means for the introduction of such analysis limiting this work to the rectangle and making use of a game which includes the analysis without fixing the attention of the child upon it this game presents the concept most clearly the rectangle of which i make use is the plane of one of the children's tables and the game consists in laying the table for a meal i have in each of the children's houses a collection of toy table furnishings such as maybe found in any toy store among these are dinner plates soup plates soup terrain salt sellers glasses decanters little knives forks spoons etc i have them lay the table for six putting two places on each of the longer sides and one place on each of the shorter sides one of the children takes the objects and places them as i indicate i tell him to place the soup terrain in the center of the table the snapping in a corner place displayed in the center of the short side then i have the child look at the table and i say something is lacking in this corner we want another glass on this side now let us see if we have everything properly placed on the two longer sides is everything ready on the two shorter sides is there anything lacking in the four corners i do not believe that we may proceed to any more complex analysis than this before the age of six years for i believe that the child should one day take up one of the plane insets and spontaneously begin to count the sides and the angles certainly if we taught them such ideas they would be able to learn but it would be a mere learning of formulae and not applied experience exercises in the chromatic sense i have already indicated what color exercises we follow here i wish to indicate more definitely the succession of these exercises and to describe them more fully designs and pictures we have prepared a number of outlined drawings which the children are to fill in with colored pencil and later on with a brush preparing for themselves the watercolor tints which they will use the first designs are flowers butterflies trees and animals and we then pass to simple landscapes containing grass sky houses and human figures these designs help us in our study of the natural development of the child as an observer of his surroundings that is in regard to color the children select the colors and are left entirely free in their work if for example they color a chicken red or a cow green this shows that they have not yet become observers but i have already spoken of this in the general discussion of the method these designs also reveal the effect of the education of the chromatic sense as the child selects delicate and harmonious tints or strong and contrasting ones we can judge of the progress he has made in the refinement of his color sense the fact that the child must remember the color of the objects represented in the design encourages him to observe those things which are about him and then too he wishes to be able to fill in more difficult designs only those children who know how to keep the color within the outline and to reproduce the right colors may proceed to more ambitious work these designs are very easy and often very effective sometimes displaying real artistic work the directors of the school in mexico who studied for a long time with me sent me two designs one representing a cliff in which the stones were colored most harmoniously in light violet and shades of brown trees in two shades of green and the sky a soft blue the other represented a horse with a chestnut coat and black mane and tail end of chapter 15 intellectual education