COPYRIGHT, 1908 BY COLIN A. SCOTT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 78.5 The Athenæum Press PREFACE The aim of this book is to put at the disposal of its readers a point of view or method of thinking rather than a completed system of thought. Since this point of view is social, it should be participated in by the pupils as well as understood by the teacher. The question of "methods" as something peculiar to the outfit of the teacher is thus absorbed into the larger and more practical problem of community life. The stimulus to such thinking comes from the observation of the facts of social life as they occur in the schoolroom or wherever people are being educated. It is interesting to observe that most of the systems of education and their consequent "methods" have had another origin. Herbart's experience as a private tutor, in which capacity he was engaged principally with single pupils, doubtless gave him the important observations of fact which led to his theories. When Rousseau explains what education should be, he takes one pupil and artificially isolates him from the rest of the world. It was difficult for Pestalozzi to see what was actually occurring among the children in his charge, because his own peculiar experience as a child was constantly in the background of his mind and constantly affecting his emotions. Other writers, as Montaigne, Mill, and Herbert Spencer, have in mind to a large extent their own experience as individuals. Their views are thus largely subjective. 133479 |
