A lady who had an unskillful teacher
in her first year in the high school now avers that he maimed her for
life in that particular study. Life is such a delicate affair that it
demands expert handling. If we hope to have the child attain his right
to be an intelligent cooeperating agent in promoting life in society,
then no price is too great to pay for the expert teaching which will
nurture the sort of life in him that will make him effective.
=The child's native tendencies.=--Then, again, the child has a right to
the exercise of the native tendencies with which he is endowed. In fact,
these tendencies should be the working capital of the teacher, the
starting points in her teaching. There was a time when the teacher
punished the child who was caught drawing pictures on his slate. Happily
that sort of barbarity disappeared, in the main, along with the slate.
The vitalized teacher rejoices in the pictures that the child draws and
turns this tendency to good account. Through this inclination to draw
she finds the real child and so, as the psychologists direct, she begins
where the child is and sets about attaching to this native tendency the
work in nature study, geography, or history. When she discovers a
constructive tendency in the child, she at once uses this in shifting
from analytic to synthetic exercises in the school order. If he enjoys
making things, he will be glad of an opportunity to make devices, or
problems, or maps.
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