Come and Go Freely
My latest favorite quote. It is quoted by Charlotte Mason in Home Education Vol.1 - but was actually spoken (written in a letter actually) by Anne Sullivan, the teacher who opened the up dark prison of Helen Keller's mind and heart.
"No," she says, "I don't want any more Kindergarten materials...I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to be to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think, whereas if the child is left to himself he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things, and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of colored strips of paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences."
Charlotte Mason continues:
"It is a great thing to have a study of education as it were de novo, in which we see the triumph of mind, not only over apparently insuperable natural obstacles, but over the dead wall of systematised education - a more complete hindrance to many a poor child than her grievous defects proved to Helen Keller."
"No," she says, "I don't want any more Kindergarten materials...I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to be to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think, whereas if the child is left to himself he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things, and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of colored strips of paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences."
Charlotte Mason continues:
"It is a great thing to have a study of education as it were de novo, in which we see the triumph of mind, not only over apparently insuperable natural obstacles, but over the dead wall of systematised education - a more complete hindrance to many a poor child than her grievous defects proved to Helen Keller."
posted by Mary Ellen Phillips | 9:48 AM
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