The Practical Teacher Volume 8 (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. 1886 Excerpt: ... TO GERMAN SCHOOLS. (Continued from January Number.) Notes of a professional tour to inspect some of the Kindergartens, Primary Schools, Public.Girls' Schools, and Schools for Technical Instruction in Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Weimar, Gotho, and Eisenach, in the Autumn of 1874, with critical discussions of the general principles and practice of Kindergarten and other schemes of elementary education. BY JOSEPH PAYNE, AUTHOR OF PAYNE'S LECTURES. In another kindergarten which I visited immediately after, I found in a large and handsome room thirty children, who formed one division of the whole number, making in all seventy-four. These were marching and singing very merrily. This exercise was succeeded by "network drawing" (Netzzeichneri). Each child had a slate marked with squares, corresponding to those on a large blackboard which stood in view. The A tables were also marked all over with squares. The teacher, calling attention to the blackboard, made a figure, or part of one, and she required the children to make the same on their slates, while she uttered continually (fifty times at least), "one--two," "one--two," etc., so that all the children simultaneously made the same strokes. The rigid mechanism (which also accompanies the teaching of writing, and often of reading, in all the common schools) may have advantages which I failed, on the whole, to appreciate. To me it seemed to have, at least, some disadvan, tages. It forced the slower children along at too rapid a pace, and gave them little or nx time to correct their errors themselves. In fact, the principle of calling on the children to gain conscious profit for the self-correcting of their blunders and mistakes, is scarcely recognized in any of the teaching that I saw in ...