But all these things combined
do not reveal the child to us. We need to go beyond all these in order
to find him. We must know what he thinks, how he feels as to people and
things, what his aspirations are, what motives impel him to action, what
are his intuitions, what things he does involuntarily and what through
volition or compulsion. With such data clearly before us we can proceed
to attach school work to his native interests. We have been striving to
bend him to our preconceived notion instead of finding out who and what
he is as a condition precedent to intelligent teaching.
=Three types of teachers.=--The three types of teachers that have been
much exploited in the books are the teacher who conceives it to be her
work to teach the book, the one who teaches the subject, and the one who
teaches the child. The number of the first type is still very large in
spite of all the books that inveigh against this conception. It were
easy to find a teacher whose practice indicates that she thinks that all
the arithmetic there is or ought to be is to be found in the book that
lies on her desk. It seems not to occur to her that a score of books
might be written that would be equal in merit to the one she is using,
some of which might be far better adapted to the children in her
particular school. If she were asked to teach arithmetic without the aid
of a book, she would shed copious tears, if, indeed, she did not resign.
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