Education and the Philosophical Ideal by Horatio W. Dresser - Read the Complete Text for free at NewThoughtLibrary.com

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Horatio W. Dresser's

Education and the Philosophical Ideal

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Preface - Introduction - The New Point of View - Educational Ideals - Equanimity - The Subconscious Mind - The Spiritual Ideal in Childhood - An Experiment in Education - The Expression of the Spirit - An Ideal Summer Conference - The Ministry of the Spirit - The Mystery of Pain and Evil - The Philosophical Ideal - The Criteria of Truth - Organic Perfection - Immortality - Index - p. 247

Yet there are times when the child's native instincts are to be consulted in preference to an accepted theory of education, as the following instance shows. The editor of a kindergarten magazine advised her readers to have the little children press and mount flowers. Accordingly, a certain kindergartner, much against her will, but accepting the authority of her chief as final, proposed an excursion to the fields for the purpose of pressing flowers. Her pupils declared their lack of interest, but the teacher still persisted, although the little ones manifested no pleasure when a book was produced and the dainty flowers were plucked from their waving stems to be imprisoned within its leaves. When the time came, a few days later, to open the book and mount the flowers, one little fellow piped up and exclaimed, "Well, we've killed them this time." The teacher persisted, however, and showed the children how to mount the flowers. But one could have heard a pin drop during the operation, she said. And then and there the teacher decided to obey the promptings of Nature rather than the dictates of authority.

Froebel assures us ' that '' education in instruction and training, originally and in its first principles, should necessarily be passive, following (only guarding and protecting), not prescriptive, categorical, interfering." Everything depends upon how deeply we understand the child, and the natural law whereby the soul is to be led forth into expression. When

(1) Education of Man, p. 7.

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