Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/229

Rh when education was confounded with fact-knowledge. Pestalozzi found an illustration in the tree. Who can educate a crab-apple tree into a peach-tree? A crab-apple tree can be made a better crab-apple tree perchance, a peach-tree can be made a better peach-tree by development, by assisting the natural processes, by warding off destructive forces. Development must take place by assimilation of food. This is true for body, mind, and spirit. Around about man lies his food. Nature furnishes material for man's education. That is his development. Pestalozzi saw this, and he saw no less plainly that the material might hinder the development. Improperly given food will destroy life. There must, then, be a law for this development process; assimilation must proceed properly, or all will fail. The subject-matter of education must receive its law from the course of the development process. How does man unfold his powers? What is the order given here by man himself? Pestalozzi's answer brings us face to face with the essential characteristic of his method. Man unfolds his powers by beginning with sense-perception, with "Anschauung." This German term is nearly as untranslatable as the word "Gemüthlichkeit." Sense-perception covers perhaps the larger portion of the meaning, yet does not include it all. Anschauung signifies that clear discernment of an object which is given by direct face-to-face acquaintance. Man's development begins exactly here with such perception. This is the basis of all knowledge. The degree of intensity, the clearness, the comprehensiveness, the order of this perception, must be decisive respecting each individual's education. Pestalozzi says, "When I look back and ask myself what I have really accomplished for education, I find I have settled it that the fundamental principle of instruction lies in the recognition of perception as the absolute basis of all knowledge." This principle originates and philosophically justifies object-teaching. Perception has a law or method; standing at the bottom of education, perception leads naturally up in orderly gradation to that which is higher. Perception must be reduced by definite and psychologically arranged exercises to a perception science. When giving instruction, we must see to it that the objects are examined by the child one at a time, and not in the dim distance, but close at hand. We must see to it further that characteristic illustrations are brought forward, not any abnormal representations. From the perception of a thing arises its name, from the name we advance to an enumeration of its properties; from this we finally develop the definition, the clear idea. Here is the philosophy of object-teaching. Let the child see. This seeing must be something far greater than any general vision; it must be a seeing arranged according to a strict psychology. Pestalozzi worked out a system of object-teaching, or a psychology of perception. We have place for but the briefest statement: "The entire sum of all the external properties of an object is found within the object's circumference and in the relation of its number, and is made known by