Abstract
YOUR correspondent, “A Father,” has in view a very desirable object—to teach a young child geometry—but I fear that he is likely to miss altogether the path by which it may be reached. His principle, that “a child must of necessity commit to memory much that he does not comprehend,” appears to me to be totally erroneous, and not entitled to be called a fact. To this time-hallowed principle it is due that a large proportion of all who go to school learn nothing at all, while those more successful learn with little improvement of their faculties. It is a convenient principle which allows the title of teacher to be assumed by those who only hear lessons. Children labour under this difficulty that they learn only through language, which is to them a misty medium, particularly when the matter set before them is in any degree novel or abstruse, and no pains are taken to clear up the obscurity of new expressions. Children know nothing of abstraction, and learn to generalise from experience, not from words. Committing to memory what is not understood is a disagreeable task; begetting a hatred of learning, and causing many to believe that they want the special faculty required for the task set before them. The art of teaching the young ought to be the art of enabling them to comprehend, and memory ought to be strengthened not by drudgery but by being founded on understanding and by the rational connection of ideas.
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COOLEY, W. Elementary Geometry. Nature 4, 485 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004485b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004485b0
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