Visual Education (Jan-Dec 1921)

VltiUAL EDUCATION similar system in connection with the schools of Japan. EDUCATORS ENDORSE THE IDEA Chicago educators have been quick to express their appreciation of the extension service. Writes one : "You have succeeded in doing exactly the thing we in the schools needed to have done for us; namely, placing familiar animals of this region before the children, reproducing for them the home surroundings of creatures well known to you, perhaps, but utterly unfamiliar to them and their teachers." Another, on returning the school's allotment of exhibits, testified : "Teachers and children alike have found a splendid stimulus to interesting and valuable work in the classroom. The children talked intelligently on a subject that under other circumstances seemed to arouse no interest whatever." The principal of the Burnside School wrote: "It has inspired the children in ways we did not expect. It has made nature-study a living, vivid subject." During the Panama-Pacific Exposition, Dr. Simms had observed the same quiet, keenly observant woman wandering day after day among the cases and photographs, making abundant notes, asking pertinent questions, absorbing every smallest detail of the display. He marveled a little at her unusual interest, but did not learn her identity until some time later, when the following letter arrived, signed "Maria Montessori" : I admire very much the way in which nature is interpreted in this exhibit. The units attract the child's attention and do not teach errors. They truly represent nature. Besides, they have the added value of permitting prolonged observation of the many details which in nature could only be seen in passing glimpses and to which it would be hard to attract the child's attention. The knowledge of these facts, observed in this way, makes the future observation of real nature more interesting to the child. Dr. Paul Bartsch, of the National Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, on returning from a visit to Chicago, wrote the director of the N". W. Harris Public School Extension : I wish there might be some way to actually determine the amount of good that enterprises of this kind bring about. To me it seems the very foundation of things. I am sure that the citizens of Chicago will show a much greater interest in outdoor studies, and a much closer touch with nature, than other citizens where such work is not undertaken. . . . In your work you are counteracting to a great extent the pernicious results which have come about from the purely histologic studies now pursued under the name of biology, which not only waste the time of the unprepared youth but kill all incentive for a closer understanding of nature. If there is one thing at all to be gained from biology, it is the companionships we form with the plants and animals that surround us in our every-day existence. Those companionships are only possible when we have come to recognize the organism as a living being. A knowledge of cellular structure will never give any one the thrills which our old-fashioned botany and zoology bestowed upon the older generation. THE "PORTABLE" IDEA IN VISUAL EDUCATION If it is to realize its supreme usefulness in teaching, the visual supplement to textbook and oral instruction must become an integral part of the lesson. It must be right at hand in the classroom for the pupil to use in direct connection with his lesson. Make him wait a week, a day, even a few hours, until you can organize an expedition to bring him in direct personal contact with the thing which has aroused his curiosity and interest, and the beautiful impulse of knowledgehunger that prompted the inquiry will generally have disappeared. The chance to teach something that the child would remember because he really wanted to know, because he was sincerely interested in finding out, has passed by, 1G