The Elementary School Record Volume 1 (Paperback)

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. 1900 Excerpt: ...as outlet of his energy, with leading up, in an orderly way, to a result ahead. It thus forms habits of working for ends and of controlling present occupation so as, by a sequence of steps, to accomplish something beyond. These habits may be gradually transferred to ends more consciously conceived and more remote. The eighth year seems to be markedly one of such transition; with the average nine-year-old there is evident dislike of attempting results to which the means at command are felt to be inadequate. The child, for example, objects to the kind of drawings formerly made with delight, because he sees them as results, and hence as crude and even absurd, instead of just feeling them as parts of his own present life. In the tenth year there is often a conscious demand for "something harr something which will test and call out power, efficiency in selc" and adaptation of means to ends. (See p. 9 of Elementary Sr Record No. I.) Hence this is the period, in increasing measure, of acquisition skill, of "technique"--something, of course, which applies tojgeog raphy as well as drawing, to cooking as well as music, to history as well as reading. Its psychological reality is the mental presentation of an end to be reached, making it necessary to select--to analyze--the required means (the elements, forms, symbols), and then to follow regular order, method, "rules," in using the means to get the result. But in recognizing that this is the period of technique, of getting facility, skill, in particular directions, we must keep in mind certain fundamental principles. First, as already intimated, the growth is gradual. It comes in reading before in writing; in both before in numbers (this does not mean, of course, that the child may not wi...