The Discovery Of The Child

ELEVATION 231

receives the lesson with great joy when he has already fixed the
sense distinctions. The lesson on the name then clarifies and
completes his own voluntary work. The idea is known, it lives
through his own .work; and now comes the baptism, the nafne, the
consecration. It is interesting to watch the child's intense joy
when he has associated a name with something about which he
has learnt something through his senses.

I remember having taught one day to a small girl who was
not yet three the names of three colours.

I got the children to place one of their little tables,in front of
the window and having seated myself iii one of their chairs, I
made the child sit down in a similar one, on my right hand. I had
on the table six pieces of colour,.in pairs of the same colour—red,
blue and yellow. As a first exercise I put before the child ;one of
the tablets and asked her to find its match; and this I repeated for
all three colours, getting the similar pairs arranged in a column.
Then I passed on to Seguin's three stages. The little one. learnt
to'recognize the respective names- of the three colours.

She was so delighted that she looked at me for a long time
and then began to dance about. As I watched her dancing in
front of me, I said to her laughing: " Do you know the colours?."
And: she always replied as she danced on:." Yes ". This joy of
hers had no end; she continued to dance round that she might
hear the same question repeated, and answer it with; her enthusiastic
" Yes ".

The,defective child, on the contrary, is helped by the lesson
to understand the material; his attention is clirected insistently on
the contrasting differences, and in the end he gets interested in
them and begins to work; the object in itself did not possess a
stimulus strong enough to rouse his energy. :

A COMPARISON BETWEEN OUR TEACHING AND
EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

There is generally neglected a very interesting comparison
between the research of Itard on the education '.of children who.