The Discovery Of The Child

218 THE DISCOVERY OF THE CHILD

he took up a brown pencil to colour the trunk and made the
branches and the leaves green. Later on, he coloured all the
branches brown also, using green only for the leaves.

In this way we gain proofs of the intellectual progress of the
child.

We do not create observers by saying, " Observe," but by
supplying the means of observation; and this material educates
the senses. Once this connection between the child and his
environment is established, his progress is assured, because the
more acute senses enable him to observe his surroundings better,,
whilst the latter, attracting his attention by their variety, continue
the sense education.

If, instead of this, we leave out sense education, recognition of
the properties of bodies comes to form part of culture, which is-
limited precisely by recognitions learnt and remembered; and they
remain sterile. That is to say, when the teacher has taughtr
according to the old methods, the names of the colours, she has-
imparted knowledge about determinate qualities, but she has not
developed the interest in colour. The child will learn those colours
forgetting them over and over again, and he will not go beyond the
limits of the teacher's lessons. When the teacher in the old style
has suggested the generalization of the idea by saying, for example,
" What is the colour of this flower, of this ribbon? " probably the
attention of the child will remain fixed in dull fashion on the
specimens offered him by the teacher.

If we compare the child with a watch or any other complicated
mechanism, we may say that the old method can be likened to
what we do when we press with the thumb on the teeth of the
motionless wheels to make them go round, in which case the
' turning * corresponds exactly with the driving force applied by
the thumb. This is the equivalent of the culture which is limited
to the work of the teacher. The new method, however, resembles
winding-Tip, which sets into independent motion all the mechanism,
motion which is directly dependent on the machine and not on
the work of the person who has wound it up. Similarly, the