Normal Training; The Principles and Methods of Human Culture a Series of Lectures Addressed to Young Teachers

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 Excerpt: ...spirit of inquisition which is implanted in the mind, to secure its progressive development, renders the examination and inspection of objects, for the discovery of their internal structure and character, an exercise still more attractive and inviting to a child than that of the perception even of beauty in form or color; and the investigation of the connection and relations of phenomena and of facts, yields him a deeper gratification than the delight arising from the recognition of any merely exterior trait of character in outward objects. Here, then, is the proper place where to commence the training of the understanding to the exercise of true apprehension and full comprehension, in the acqusition of a thorough knowledge of the objects by which the child is naturally surrounded, and of their relations to one another, in mutual adaptation, or in cause and effect. Perception is thus transmuted into knowledge; without which transition there is no intellectual progress. The understanding of relations is the mediating process by which object is linked to object, fact to fact, and relation to relation; till knowledge, in its turn, becomes the completed chain of principle and truth," in the relations of system and science. Practical Exercises.--One of the most hopeful indications of the general progress of opinion on the subject of education, is afforded in the comparatively recent introduction into primary schools of lessons on objects, --not merely the productions of nature in animal and vegetable and mineral form, but the common objects of observation in the child's daily notice at home and in school, in the street, and in the workshop. The young mind is thus strengthened, while it is gratified, by the exercise of tracing design and adaptation in the var...