39Q POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that in a general way the development of the child, both physical and 

 mental, is an epitome of the development of the race. If we com- 

 pare the physical and mental activities of the modern civilized man 

 with those of the more primitive member of the race, we may learn 

 what forms of physical and mental activity are natural in the dif- 

 ferent periods of child life. Some of the things which are character- 

 istic of the modern as contrasted with the primitive man are sedentary 

 habits, manual dexterities requiring finely co-ordinated movements 

 both of the eyes and fingers, increasing devotion to written language 

 and books as contrasted with spoken language, the lessened depend- 

 ence upon the memory, the increasing subjectivity of mental life as 

 contrasted with the purely objective life of the savage, and the in- 

 creased importance of reflection, deliberation, and reasoning, with 

 decrease of impulsive and habitual action. These things, then, we 

 should expect to belong to the later period of child life, and studied 

 which involve these activities will not be economically pursued in the 

 elementary school grades. These laws are wholly overlooked in our 

 traditional school curriculum. In practice we are saying to the 

 young child : " Man is a sedentary, reading, writing, thinking, reason- 

 ing being, possessing the power of voluntary attention. I am to edu- 

 cate you to be a man. Therefore you must learn to sit still, to read, 

 write, think, reason, and give attention to your work." The child 

 of six or eight years is therefore given a book or pen, and put into 

 a closely fitting seat and left to give attention to his work. This is 

 precisely as if the mother should say to the infant at the beginning 

 of the period of creeping : " You are a man, not a brute. Men go up- 

 right, not on all fours. You must walk, not creep." 



I wish to call especial attention to the fact that it is only late 

 in the history of the race that language has passed to its written form. 

 Man is indeed now a reading and writing animal, but only recently 

 has he become so. It is only since the invention of printing and the 

 wide dissemination of books, magazines, and newspapers that reading 

 has become a real determining factor in the life of the people. Even 

 now the human organism is engaged in adapting itself to the new 

 strain brought upon the eyes and fingers in reading and writing. "We 

 can understand, therefore, that it will demand a considerable maturity 

 in the child before he is ready for that which has developed so late in 

 the history of the race. The language of the child, like that of the 

 primitive man, is the language of the ear and tongue. The child is a 

 talking and hearing animal. He is ear-minded. There has been in 



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the history of civilization a steady development toward the prepon- 

 derating use of the higher senses, culminating with the eye. The 

 average adult civilized man is now strongly eye-minded, but it is 

 necessary to go back only to the time of the ancient Greeks to find 



