Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/75

Rh If, then, we go into our schools with this idea in mind and examine the methods of teaching we can not fail to discern what a disregard there is of this important principle. Better results would be obtained—incomparably better—could there be a change in this regard in the methods of the schoolroom.

I do not ask for license, but for orderly activity—educative activity. It was in 1797 that Johann Heinrich GotliebGottlieb [sic] Heusinger, Docent in Philosophy and Pedagogics at the University of Jena, apprehended this important principle, and expressed his surprise that teachers had not heretofore recognized this impulse of children to activity and taken advantage of it in the work of instruction. It is not the first instance in which the truth of an idea has been recognized a century after its expression. And it is a source of much pleasure to me to offer some of my pedagogical worship at the shrine of Heusinger.

In the different branches of study, then, which pupils pursue in our schools, and which they try to master in order to acquire a fair education, there are numerous places and many topics that admit of the employment of the motor side, if teachers had but the versatility and inventive talent to make the application. Time would be economized, broader mental development would be given to the child, and discipline would take care of itself, for it is undirected motor energy that produces so much trouble in the matter of discipline, and unused motor energy that produces so much fatigue in pupils during school hours.

In order that this article may not seem to be too largely theoretical, and also to show, if possible, more clearly what has already been set forth, I shall endeavor to point out some applications of the employment of the motor side in actual school work. A moment's thought will lead one to see that there are some studies where the employment of the motor activities is much more difficult than in others. Perhaps the most difficult of all subjects is in teaching reading to a class of beginners. In this particular I got my first suggestion from a visit to a little Dorf school in Germany. What I saw appealed to me as a simple and at the same time a remarkable application of the principle I have tried to give exposition to here. I doubt whether the kind, genial schoolmaster had ever read Heusinger's essay or had ever heard his name. I do not think he himself appreciated how scientific, how in accord with the best knowledge of to-day, the lesson he gave in reading to the lowest class really was. The spirit of that little village school, the work and the relations between teacher and pupils, were most beautiful and ideal. In three visits to Germany I never saw any other school comparable with it. Instruction by means of orderly activity, and much of it, were the aim. Activity was not suppressed; it was directed and controlled and made to