220 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cacy, every effort should be made to strengthen the body, and 

 definite teaching should begin later than with a robust child. It 

 is most foolish to cram the head of a backward child with phrases 

 it can not understand at most it can but learn parrot-fashion, 

 and such a proceeding is about as senseless as loading a delicate 

 stomach with indigestible food. If a child has an appetite for its 

 bodily food, it can digest, and the same rule holds good for men- 

 tal food. There is no use in cramming it down if the appetite for 

 knowledge be not there. 



All teaching should proceed from the concrete to the abstract, 

 though the reverse method is generally employed. Arithmetic, for 

 instance, should at first be taught from objects, and not by names 

 and figures which are mere symbols and abstractions, and most 

 difficult for the minds of children to grasp. The relative value of 

 different kinds of money may be easily learned by quite youiig 

 children, merely by letting them play at shop with real money. 

 At the same time they are unconsciously learning both addition 

 and subtraction. Weights and measures should be learned in the 

 same way, and they will be far better impressed on the memory 

 than by merely learning the tables of weights and measures in an 

 arithmetic book. 



Again, with languages rules of grammar should be learned last 

 of all ; a language is formed long before any rules for speaking it 

 are formulated. The rules of grammar are only the recorded ob- 

 servations of what I may call the habits of a language. Every 

 child should learn a new language as it learns its own, by talking 

 it, looking at picture books and learning nursery rhymes, and the 

 language will have some chance of developing naturally and 

 easily, and of being retained for use in after-life. As languages 

 are usually taught in schools, they are of no value beyond that of 

 mental gymnastics, and when the school life is over all the rules 

 and exercises, learned with so much weariness and disgust, slip 

 from the memory, from having made no impression on the mind. 



If the child has a natural bent in some particular direction, 

 this should be encouraged as early as possible. I think, as a rule, 

 children are taught far too many things. Who does not know of 

 girls who, with no ear for music, are forced daily to undergo the 

 drudgery of practicing, merely because it is the proper thing for 

 girls to play, at any rate a little ? Many persons will be terribly 

 alarmed at the suggestion that science is one of those things all 

 children should be taught. The word science suggests to them all 

 that is dry, cold, difficult, and unromantic why, I can not tell, for 

 the word itself only means knowledge, and children find anything 

 acceptable and interesting that will answer their numerous ques- 

 tions concerning all around them, and far from being dry and un- 

 romantic. " Science," to use the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer, 



