121 UNGRADED VOL. I, No. 2 first, attract the spontaneous attention of the child, and, second, contain a rational gradation of stimuli". From the quotations given it will be seen that each of these educators held that ability in sense discrimination is best developed by a course of formal training through the special exercise of each sense. The indirect method of sense training is the natural method of the individual in the practical affairs of life. It is the method by which the race has developed its sense powers. Dr. Dewey and Dr. Eliot among modern educators emphasize the importance of proper sense training. Both are exponents of the indirect method. Dr. Eliot believes that the absence of sense training from our systematic education is one of the greatest defects in the kind of education that has come down to us from the middle ages. He advocates the use of the concrete, practical subjects such as drawing and the manual arts to furnish this training. Let us see how the sense powers were developed where special direct methods have not been emphasized. How has the race come by its powers of sense discrimination? How does a blind man acquire his acute sense of hearing and touch? Why is it that the people of India can discriminate so many more colors than Europeans can? How do the tea-tasters learn to discriminate between the different varieties of tea and the different grades of the same variety? The difference between the kind of training that has made those persons so skillful, and that of the direct method, lies in the motive furnished and in the attitude of the person who is being trained. In the direct method the discrimination is made an end in itself. It leads no further. In the indirect method it is necessary to make certain discriminations in order to accomplish a desired end. If a child is trying to build a house with blocks so that it will stand and look well, careful discrimination of form, position, size and color of blocks and of their relation to each other is necessary. Will not his attitude toward the work be essentially different from that of a boy who is given a basket of blocks to sort, and told to put all the cubes in one place, the oblongs in another and the spheres in a third, merely for the sake of showing that he can do it. The relative values of the direct and indirect methods of developing sense powers may be seen also from the point of view of evolution. The powers of sense discrimination have developed through exercise conditioned by some need. The Indian hunter sees the track of certain game where an ordinary man sees nothing. He had to develop this keen sense of sight or starve. If sense training then is a proper phase of education for the quick minded child, it is doubly desirable, even necessary for those who are mentally slow. How may we get this necessary training of the senses for our children? Sense training is provided whenever the child has an opportunity to adapt his environment to his needs; whenever he is brought into contact with real JUNE, 1915 UNGRADED 13 objects, whenever he is given an opportunity to work on concrete things and not alone on verbal descriptions of them. Dr. Eliot says, "The accuracy of language has many deficiencies and accuracy of speech as a moral equity is often hard for a child to appreciate, but any child knows when he has planed a piece of board so level a straight edge will show no light under it when turned about on the plane." That is something that can be done just right, and if it is not done right, the child itself can see it is not right. How many of our school books on which we so much rely in education, not only do not state things just as they are, but make actual misstatements. I watched a little child examine its illustrated spelling-book. At the head of the page was a little diagram of a cow, about an inch long, and against the diagram was printed this sentence, "This is a cow." That untruth is a type of many statements in our readers, geographies and histories. The actual handling of the various materials in manual training gives abundant opportunity for sense training. The following description of a lesson in woodwork illustrates this point. Class of Young Children Project: Chair for the Class Doll Teacher-What are we going to make to-day? Children-Chairs for the doll. Teacher-How many front legs has it? How many back legs has it? How long are the front legs? Children-Three inches. Teacher-Why did we make the front legs three inches long? Children-To fit the doll. Teacher-What part of the doll do they fit? Children They are the same as the doll's legs from the heel to the under part of the knee. Teacher-Why? Children-So that her feet will touch the floor. (One boy remarked that his chair was too small.) Teacher-Where did we measure the doll for the front legs? Children-Heel to knee on the back of the chair. Teacher-Now we have made the front legs, what must we do next? Children-We must make the back legs for the chair. Teacher-How long shall we make these? One child said three inches and another discovered that if they were three inches long the chair wouldn't have any back on it. We must make it more than three inches. Teacher-How much more? How high do the chairs come on your back? Children-Up to my shoulders. 14 UNGRADED VOL. I, No. 2 Teacher-How high shall we make the back of the doll's chair? Children-To her shoulders. Childrn then measured the doll from the lower part of the back to the shoulders and found it was five inches. Teacher-How long must the back legs of the chair be? Children-Five inches and three inches-8 inches (arithmetic). Two children were unable to find 8 inches on their rulers and other children showed them. Teacher-How many inches did we add to the legs to make the back? Teacher-When your chairs are finished, we will use those of the careful workers. If we get four good chairs, what might we make then for the doll? Children-A table. The children were making the chairs out of 1% joist and using the back saw. There were several pieces of joist of several lengths. Teacher held up a short piece of joist and asked if they could use it for the back legs. Children-No, it is too short. Teacher-How long do you think it is? Teacher held up a long piece and said: Can you use this? How many 8-inch pieces can you cut from it? A child came up and measured, and said two 8-inch pieces. Teacher-How many inches left over? The children then selected joists and tools and went to work. All measured carefully and marked off 8 inches before sawing. Another subject that will provide some of the sense training for our children that agriculture provided for most of the world a few years ago, is nature study. Whether it deals with organic or inorganic life it affords material for obseration and for the gaining of knowledge at first hand. Field lessons, trips to parks, excursions to the seashore, museums, blacksmiths' shops and other workshops will bring children into contact with real animals, real objects and man's activities and thus offer the substance for sense impressions. The necessity of giving our Ungraded class children the opportunity for just this kind of experience will appear when we consider that in an experiment conducted on normal children in a Boston school three-fifths of them had never seen a crow, ant, squirrel, robin; four-fifths did not know pine, oak, elm or maple trees; about one-fourth did not know butterfly, hen or crow; one-half did not know of frogs or bees. All those subjects that call for doing rather than for mere memorizing, contribute largely to sense training. HOWARD BRADSTREET FREDERICK W. ELLIS, ELIZABETH E. FARRELL, Advisory Board Business Manager W. R. McHARGUE 5 W. 125th St. 15 President Association of Neighborhood Workers, New York SAMUEL B. HECKMAN, Ph.D., Director Educational Clinic, College of the City of New York Volume I JUNE 1915 EDITORIAL Number 2 The Ungraded teacher is only a good teacher. In the beginning she sought out the impossible; found him at the foot of the class, neglected on the streets, in the juvenile court, in the institution. Here she saw the stark futility of the old traditions of education and correction. Yet in her heart she could not accede to the easy fatalism of the custodian. She heard the state protest against the dependent; heard the citizen demand protection from the irresponsible; heard the eugenist cry out upon the degenerate. This triple challenge she accepted. She took up her task with humbleness. She had only her group of unresponsive, neglected, twisted little lives. She watched them. They talked a little, played a little, worked a little-she and they together-and she watched them. Medicine found a cause. Psychology gave a clearer understanding. Industry offered a solution. Pedagogy drew up a tentative method. But the child was— and is the metron. The Ungraded teacher has become a scientific observer-a scientist. That spirit of clear-eyed, aggressive efficiency which in imperial courts has engendered World War for a merciless supremacy, she has turned to the merciful upbuilding of abject hearts and minds. She stands for the triumph of Modernity, for the final establishment of the individual in society. "Twenty years from now the great result of your work will be seen, not in the children, but in a changed public sentiment," says Dean Balliett. How changed? As a nation we are coming to see the great fallacy in group education and in arbitrary correction, just as we have long seen it in class legislation. We are coming to realize that we must demand direct objective knowledge of the normal child on the part of those whom we entrust with his training, no less than with the abnormal. We are slowly learning that the formation of citizenship consists not in the pouring in of systematized knowledge and in the imposition of restraint, but in the firm guidance of activated powers and in the outpouring of native abilities. This is one of the contributions of the Ungraded teacher-an effort toward the realization of the Scientific Spirit in education. After all-she is only a good teacher. 16 UNGRADED VOL. I, No. 2 MENTALLY DEFECTIVE CHILDREN-By Alfred Binet and Th. Simon, M.D., Translated by W. B. Drummond.-Published by Longmans, Green & Co. Readers will find this book practical as well as interesting. In it is the author's definition of the term, mental defectives, together with methods of selection and some valuable suggestions in regard to the necessary pedagogical, psychological and medical tests to be given to determine such selection. In connection with education and training such topics as intellectual aptitudes of defectives and the utility of special schools are discussed. The book closes with a strong plea for "methods of scientific precision" in all educational work. The New York University Summer School Department for teachers of mentally defective children will be this year under the active direction of Dr. Arnold Gesell, Assistant Professor of Education, Yale University. The Demonstration School at 219 Sullivan Street will be made even more a feature of the summer work than in the past. This school is one of the typical buildings of the Children's Aid Society with kindergarten, gymnasium and manual training and assembly rooms, as well as equipment for work in domestic and household arts. A special private class for atypical children will be conducted at the Horace Mann Building during the Summer Session of Columbia University, July 6th to August 13th. Dr. Louis E. Bisch will again give his summer courses on the Psychology, Education, and Treatment of Atypical Children. In conjunction with these courses a special Demonstration School will be conducted, in which students may have an opportunity of directly observing the education of the children. |