Any plan of education that ignores
these home-bred ideas, these events, memories, and sympathies of home
and neighborhood life, will make a vital mistake. A concentration that
keeps in mind only the school studies and disregards the rich funds of
ideas that every child brings from his home, must be a failure, because
it only includes the weaker half of his experience. Home knowledge
itself does not need to be made a concentrating center, but all its
best materials must be drawn into the concentrating center of the
school. But children bring many faulty, mistaken, and even vicious
ideas from their homes. It is well to know the actual situation. It
is the work of the school, at every step, while receiving, to correct,
enlarge, or arrange the faulty or disordered knowledge brought into the
school by children. We unconsciously use these materials, and depend
upon them for explaining new lessons, more constantly than we are aware
of. In fact, if we were wise teachers, we would consciously make a
more frequent use of them and, in order to render them more valuable,
take special pains to review, correct, and arrange them. We would
teach children to observe more closely and to remember better the
things they daily see.
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