98 THE NEW METHOD 



... I need hardly point out what a change in all 

 our methods this change in our philosophy implies ; 

 for it involves the doctrine that the true place to 

 begin the teaching of all art, all science, all knowl- 

 edge, is the primary school ; and I am not in the least 

 afraid of the seeming paradox. Rather I would earn- 

 estly maintain that, unless we treat the child in the 

 primary school as the germ and embryo of all he is 

 destined afterward to become, our education will be 

 doomed to ignominious failure. Whatever is to enter 

 into the higher stages of education is to have its seed 

 planted there, or it never will be planted." — William 

 P. Atkinson, Professor of Literature, Massachusetts In- 

 stitute of Technology . (From a lecture at the National 

 Teachers' Association at Elmira, N. Y., 1873.) 



The second fundamental law is, that education be- 

 gins with the concrete and not with the abstract. 

 The child, under nature's tuition, before entering 

 school observes this law, and hence the rapid prog- 

 ress he makes in the knowledge of his surroundings, 

 in language, and in intellectual quickness and clear- 

 ness ; but as soon as he enters school this law is 

 completely reversed ; the observing faculties, those 

 natural avenues of knowledge, without which all 

 education would be an impossibility, are suppressed 

 or practically ignored, and the child is treated as if 

 the only road to learning were through the arbitrary 

 signs of ideas. His wonderful intuitive attainments 

 are all overlooked or counted as nothing, and the 



