Winter Meeting. 337 



We live in a world which can be known in one way only. That 

 way is through the senses ; but the typical school ignores sense training. 

 It sometimes does worst by inflicting irreparable damage to the senses 

 of its victims. 



School education should start right and keep right. The school- 

 master fails because he does not recognize the foundation on which ed- 

 ucation is based. We hear him harping on the "fundamentals." He 

 believes the three "r's" to be the "fundamentals." The truth is that 

 these supposed fundamentals are mere conventionalities. They are 

 necessary but they are not fundamental. They are both conventional 

 and changeable. Back of them the truly fundamental, the absolutely 

 preliminary, is the consciousness of visible and tangible realities brought 

 into the soul through the senses. No poet or scientist ever made great 

 contributions to human progress who had not large opportunities to 

 build up the truly fundamental conceptions in consciousness through the 

 use of the senses. Dr. Karl Lange says : The knowledge which a well 

 trained child of six has acquired surpasses in value the acquisitions of 

 any student during his university period." Dr. Krohn cites other author- 

 ities to the effect that the acquisitions of the first six years surpass in 

 value all later acquirements including those of the university period. 



The typical school ignores the motor activities and treats the child 

 as a bundle of receptive faculties. It crams him with verbal expressions 

 for things ; but the child wants to know things at -first hand and how to 

 do things. In doing he learns and thus increases his power. This is 

 nature's way. How long do the children retain the systematic and 

 cyclopedic knowledge which we gorge them with ? You know how long. 

 They retain it until the annual examinations are over. Then they unload 

 it from their memory as fast as they can and get back into their own 

 precious ways of living among their interests and among what they 

 can assimilate. 



The natural child lives in a world of sense and of imagery. All his 

 myth, making is related to the product of his sensations and built upon 

 them. Dr. Halleck, speaking of how Shakespeare's senses were trained, 

 says: "In his sensory experience is to be found the foundation of all 

 those imperishable structures given to humanity by his heaven-climbing 

 genius." Dr. Halleck further says : "On account of his father's pecu- 

 niary difficulties, Shakespeare probably left school shortly after passing 

 his fourteenth birthday. This was extremely fortunate. Had he not 

 left school at that age we might today be without the greatest dramas 

 of all time." In Williams' "Homes and Haunts of Shakespeare" we 

 find: "His mind became a vast reservoir of facts and fancies, but t\\K\ 

 H-2a 



