INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 81? 



j 



Grant, Colonel Parker, and others, that a great variety of objects 

 should be used in teaching number ; that change from one class of 

 objects to another sustains interest ; that seeing and handling many- 

 classes of objects train the observing powers to make distinctions and 

 classify things, are sound from the stand-points both of principle and 

 practice. The illustrations used are all good ; we only suggest what 

 seems to us an improvement and a great gain. 



During the last few years we have been experimenting with classes 

 of children in a variety of ways. One general conclusion from these 

 experiments is that number-lessons can be utilized in teaching children 

 to recognize a large variety of industrial materials, and this too with 

 a positive gain in interest and impressiveness to the work in number 

 itself. Children can be taught in this way to recognize the common 

 and useful trees by their leaves, fruit, wood, etc.; the common rocks, 

 minerals, ores ; the more important kinds of goods used in clothing. 



The fragments to be had at the shops of the tailor, milliner, dress- 

 maker, upholsterer, of any town, would supply, without cost, all the 

 materials desired in this direction. Samples of these materials could 

 be artistically arranged in numerical designs upon thin board or paste- 

 board and hung upon the walls for constant reference and review. 

 It is no more difficult to say " two elm-leaves and three elm-leaves 

 are five elm-leaves," " two sandstones and three sandstones are five 

 sandstones," " two broadcloths and three broadcloths are five broad- 

 cloths," etc., etc., than to say "two blocks and three blocks are five 

 blocks." 



A second conclusion from our experiments is, that measures, 

 weights, and moneys can be taught more efficiently than now, along 

 with the early teaching of the fundamental arithmetical processes. 



Number, the idea of the single and plural, enters into all our 

 knowledge both of the external and internal worlds, from the time 

 consciousness begins to act, until death. Our very first act of know- 

 ing is the recognition of a difference between two sensations. Dis- 

 tinguishing external objects into the single and plural the one and 

 the many, the little and the big is one of the earliest lines of investi- 

 gation for the infant and child. The work of the first few months 

 of school-life is to bring this unconscious mathematical experience out 

 into consciousness, and to give the child the beginning of the exact 

 and quantitative method of study. 



A child can very early learn to count twelve with the objects 

 before him ; can then learn to find the number of objects in a given 

 group by counting ; then by a single glance, when the groups do not 

 contain a larger number than he has learned to count. 



He can just as early and in the same connection learn to recognize 

 an inch, two inches, twelve inches ; can draw given numbers of lines 

 of these lengths ;^ can cut them out of paper, pasteboard, and wood. 

 Similar work can be done with the foot and yard. Corresponding 



