Part 7 (1/2)

Now take the case of other children in who place, but who are surrounded by too great a profusion of objects At the ht, obstructed, alled in the toils that bind them to earth A diminution of the absorbed attention bestowed upon the new objects, instability, and consequently fatigue, manifest themselves in an obvious extinction of internal activity The child's bearing deteriorates, he indulges in loud, ehter, rude actions, and indolence He deain other objects, because he has remained ier sensible to anything but the desire to alleviate his weariness Like the adult who during a chaotic life commits kindred errors, he becomes undisciplined, feeble, and ”in peril of perdition” If so fro out his heaven to hiy to save hiive an idea of the criteria by which we experimentally determine the quantity of the material necessary for developress; this has been proved again and again by my collaborators

If, on the other hand, the material be insufficient, and the pri the child on to that _maturity_ which causes him to ascend, there will be no explosion of that spontaneous phenoe of an auto-education advancing in infinite progression The saed attention which leads to repetition of the acts, guides us in detere_ of the child A stimulus which will cause a child of three years old to repeat an act forty times in succession, may only be repeated ten times by a child of six; the object which arouses the interest of a child of three no longer interests a child of six

Nevertheless the child of six is capable of fixing his attention for a er period than a child of three, when the stimulus is suited to his activities; if, indeed, a little child of three may achieve as his maximum the repetition of an act forty ti two hundred times an act which interests him If the maximum period of continuous work on the same object may be half an hour for the child of three, it may be over two hours for the child of six

Hence, to establish syste children to write, without taking their ages into account, is valueless For exa is based upon the direct preparation of the : _ie_of the letters of the alphabet The children, filling in the contours of the insets with innu the sand-paper letters in the other, fix the two muscular mechanisms so perfectly, that the final result is an ”explosion” of ”spontaneous writing” extraordinarily uniform in all the children--because, as if all molded to a co the same alphabet, and therefore reproduce its for this about, to establish a real motor-mechanism, it is essential that the exercise should be repeated over and over again Now the children who take ures with parallel strokes, and, above all, in touching the letters, are, at most, between four and five years old If we offer the same material to a child of six he will not touch the letters often enough, and he will alrite iun the exercise at a suitable age This applies also to all the other details of the system It is therefore possible to determine experimentally, with, I believe, a precision not hitherto attained, what is the es, and hence, if the fitting e level of intellectual develope

Here we have an indication of the possibility of _deter_ the means of development so exactly as to establish a true correspondence between internal needs and external stimuli, just as actual as the correspondence which exists between the insect and the flower

He who has all thisabout the natural development of the psychic life of the child With such objects at his disposal, every teacher may realize the ideal of _liberty in the school_

This long, occult experiested to uin--is, in fact, my initial contribution to education

All this preparatory work has served for the determination of the method noell known, but it is also the key to its continuation

=Thepoint=--In the organization of the external means of development, there remains a material impress of the internal develop its course, and in its flights The material part does not contain the impress of the whole soul, any more than the impress of the foot is the iround is not the sphere of action proper to the aeroplane, but it is the part of _terra-fir-place, the refuge, the _hangar_ to which the aeroplane must always return Thus in psychical formation there is a necessary material part from which the spirit rises, and where it should find repose, refuge, and a point of support, Without this it could not grow and rise ”freely”

In order that it ht ”to reproduce its for to the peculiar functions of the material aid Thus, for instance, in the first period of the psychical life, the material corresponds to the primitive exercises of the senses--it is in quality and quantity deteriven by nature--and permits an exercise of the activities sufficient to _mature_ a superior psychical state of observation and abstraction _Vice versa_, nothing corresponds in the material to the subsequent career which the childish spirit accoht and with so er for higher kinds of exercise--and noitness the same primitive phenomenon of attention, which will exercise itself henceforth upon the alphabet and arith in a ence by linking auditory ies of the spoken and written word; and in the positive study of quantities, proportions, and number The same concomitant phenomena of ”patience” and ”perseverance” then ether with those of vivacity, activity, and joy, characteristic of the spirit when the internal energies have found their _keyboard_, the gymnasium in which they exercise theanized in this uidance of an order which corresponds to its natural order, becoorously_, and manifests itself in the _equilibrium_, the _serenity_, the self-control which produce the wonderful _discipline_ characteristic of the behavior of our children

The external material, then, should present itself to the psychical requirements of the child as a staircase which helps him to ascend, step by step, and on the steps of this staircase there will of necessity be disposed the her _formation_ Therefore the psychical exercises require new material, and this, if it is to fulfil its purpose, must contain new andthe attention, of ence ripen in the continual exercise of its own energies, and of producing those phenomena of persistence in application and of patience to which will be added elasticity, psychical equilibrium, and the capacity for abstraction and spontaneous creation Thus, in the subsequent develop themselves to those exercises of the memory which seem to us most arid, because a desire has been born in thees they encounter in the world, but also to ”acquire knowledge rapidly” by a deter yet co theof poeh this is someti again, is the _detachment_ the child shows at a certain point froe of maturity he desires to ”reason in the abstract” andan internal impulse which seeks to liberate the soul from every material bond and at the same time to effect an econoht years old becoer and precocious calculators

Children thus launched upon the enterprises of self-education acquire a remarkable ”sensibility” as to their own internal needs Just as the new-born infant whose food is rationally regulated, is silent and tranquil during the two hours of digestion and assimilation, and cries out the moment the hour for a fresh meal has struck, so do these children ”ask for help,” ask for ”new materials,” new ”forms of work,”

as soon as they have accomplished their mysterious phenomena of internal_their most immediate need_, just as one in physical ould be able to state distinctly whether he were hungry, thirsty, or sleepy A child, in like ra Nature His sensibility manifests itself in a lucid and intense desire, to which the teacher has only to respond

It is evident that soressive development of such phenomena, and that the teacher, who is to respond to the requests of the child in conscious evolution, cannot do so adequately by haphazard uided by conditions previously determined by experience In other words, those external means already alluded to several times, that _staircase_, the steps of which lead the soul upwards, must have been already _established by experience_, just as all the preceding means of the first development of the infant were established

The construction of the ascending stairway, of the external radually amplified, like an inverted cone, the apex of which touches the very beginnings of psychical life, resting upon that primitive impulse which attracts the child of two and a half to the sensory stier leads the new-born infant to perfor And as these external rowing psychical needs of the child, and comprise within thehest external organization is not based solely upon psychological necessities, but also upon those factors which take into account the cultural aspect itself Each subject of study, as, for instance, aritheometry, natural science, music, literature, should be presented by means of external objects upon a well-defined systeical character of the preliminary work must now be supplemented by the collaboration of specialists in each subject, in order to ensure the establishate of means necessary and sufficient to incite to auto-education

This is the experimental preparatory work, which establishes those means of development, those external _impressions_, necessary to unfold the inner life, and an _exact_ correspondence to the psychical needs of _formation_ is essential in their construction

Up to a certain point, they ht correspond with the so-called didactic or objective nificance, however, is profoundly different The objective material of the old schools was an aid to the teacher, inhis explanations co passively to his to be explained_, and these were chosen at random, that is to say, without any scientific criterion of their relation to the psychical needs of the child

Here, on the other hand, _the means of development_ are experimentally determined with reference to the psychical evolution of the child; and their aiive mere instruction; they represent the means which induce a spontaneous interpretation of the internal energies

The external material is then offered, and _left freely_ to the natural individual energies of the children They choose the objects they prefer; and such preference is dictated by the internal needs of ”psychical growth” Each child occupies hi as he wishes; and this desire corresponds to the needs of the intimateand prolonged exercise No guide, no teacher can divine the intimate need of each pupil, and the time of maturation necessary to each; but only leave the child _free_, and all this will be revealed to us under the guidance of nature

=Psychical truths=--It is necessary to adopt a scientific point of view in order to interpret the facts that reveal themselves in children when they are developed upon this system, and to divest oneself co to which the progress of the child is assessed according to his proficiency in the various subjects of study Here, almost like the naturalist, it is essential to observe the development of certain phenomena of life It is true that we prepare special ”external conditions”; but the psychical effects are directly bound up with the spontaneous development of the internal activity of the child

Hence there is no direct correspondence between teacher and child; instruction is certainly not a cause of the effects observed It is the objects of the ents,” provoke special psychical reactions; these anization of the personality Discipline, as the first result of an order establishi+ng itself within, is the principal phenon” of an internal process that has been initiated