36 THE NEW METHOD 



this natural education, by guiding, and controlling, 

 and using the same materials. 



" There is an intense and most easily awakened 

 curiosity in children, respecting the phenomena of 

 the outward world. — Every bird, beast and insect is 

 a marvel ; the clouds, the moon, the stars, the beau- 

 tiful forms and colors of flowers, the very stones under 

 their feet, all, to the mind of childhood are objects of 

 study, objects of wonder. But after a few years of 

 ordinary school-teaching, all this is found to have dis- 

 appeared, and too often no other curiosity, no other 

 interest, or worse still, some bad one, has arisen to 

 take its place, I think I am not too strong in my state- 

 ment ; but what a satire is this on what we call edu- 

 cation ! Or is the process of teaching first to kill as 

 a preliminary to artificially restoring them ? Alas ! 

 in too many cases they are never restored, and our 

 education consists only in a mental maiming. . . . 



' ' So entangled are our notions of education with 

 books and the art of reading — in reality only one of 

 the tools of education — that we too often virtually 

 use the tool, not to build, but to destroy our educa- 

 tion. . . . The substitution of true object-teaching 

 for an excess of book-learning in elementary educa- 

 tion seems to me the first step in a return to truth 

 and nature. 



" Do you want to destroy a child's interest in a 

 subject ? Compel him to learn lessons out of a dry 

 treatise upon it. Do you want to kindle his interest 

 into enthusiasm ? Give him oral lessons upon it — 

 always provided you know how — which is, I grant, a 



