The Discovery Of The Child

H A P T E R XXV

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPRESSIONS

I THINK that the part of the method which is described here will
be clear enough to enable teachers to apply it practically. Anyone
who has grasped as a whole the idea embodied in this method
will understand why the part referring to the material application
of it is excessively simple and easy.

The figure of the common mistress who maintains, so pain-
fully, the discipline of immobility and who expends her lung
power in loud and continuous talking, has disappeared.

For verbal teaching there has been substituted a " material
for development," which includes in itself the control of error,
and which permits individual children to teach themselves by their
own efforts. Thus the teacher becomes a director of the sponta-
neous work of the children; she is a " patient one,** a " silent
one".

Each child is occupied with different work, and the teacher can,
whilst supervising them, make mental observations; these, collected
and arranged in orderly, scientific form, may serve as a base for
formulating a reconstruction of child psychology and preparing
for experimental pedagogy. I think I have, in my method, created
the conditions of study necessary for building up a scheme of