International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1932)

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537 And then, while exhorting the teacher not to make an abuse of language, and to train the child's mind to observe, Pestalozzi continues : " If children are to be taught to reason and to become capable, in time, of thinking for themselves, they must be prevented from talking in season and out of season, and from giving their opinions on things they know only superficially. "... Truths generated by intuition make all vain circumlocution superfluous, and make the mind of man invincible to error. " The whole gamut of the knowledge that we receive through the senses is derived from observation of nature and from the solicitude with which we treasure up what nature offers to our sight . An intuitive, natural and objective method : " I acted, with my children, as nature does with the savage, presenting objects before their gaze one by one and then seeking for the appropriate term ". The perfect visual method which, with the thing or its image, excites curiosity, arouses interest and sharpens observation, without which the most brilliant phantasy and the sharpest brain runs the risk of turning back on itself for lack of nourishment, before reaching its full development. Pestalozzi was also of the opinion that two series of figures should be presented to the eyes of children, from the very cradle : the first series should, seconding nature, make known things and their names to the child by means of images taken from nature ; while the second series, associating example and precept, supporting the one by the other and putting into the child's mind a notion of the form side by side also with a notion of the objects that have reference to it, should make the teaching gradually progressive and in conformity with psychological laws. He insists at length (1) on intuition considered both as a vital value acquired from the object, which in a certain sense identifies intuition with interest, and as a total act of the subject " implicating sight, interpretation, estimation and actual or potential action " : " Do not believe in the ripeness of judgment of men except when it appears to be the result of an intuition, complete in all its parts, of the object causing it ; when a judgment seems to you not to be the mature result of a profound and complete intuition, look upon it as a fruit which has fallen because eaten by maggots and has therefore only the appearance of being ripe. In the first place, therefore, learn to classify your intuitions, to have a complete understanding of what is simple before proceeding to what is complex. Study how to build up, in each branch of science, a graduated series of cognitions, so that each new notion shall be but a slight, almost imperceptible addition to the notions already deeply and indelibly graven on the memory. " Let your impressions be stronger and clearer in important problems ; therefore, draw the various objects together by means of art and make them act on your mind by the aid of several senses . And he insists again, albeit implicitly, on the necessity of not neglecting the education of the senses, which have such a large part in the acquisition of culture, when he places the first origin of our whole knowledge on the visual impression of what surrounds us and on our experience of and direct contact with things. Lastly, returning to his point of departure, he once more insists on the necessity of placing intuition as the foundation of the educational process. (1) Carlo Sganzini : /. H. Pestalozzi.