In a well-regulated Kindergarten there should be no punishments, but an understanding should be had with parents that sometimes the child is to be sent home for a day, or at least for some hours. The curtailment of the Kindergarten will generally prove an effectual restraint upon disorder, and it will not be necessary to repeat the penalty in a school year. But I shall say no more upon moral and religious exercises, Mrs. Mann having treated this part of the subject so exhaustively. It is to be remembered, however, that she had in her school children who had strayed much farther from the kingdom of heaven than those who will generally make up the Kindergarten. But she shows the spirit that should pervade all that is done to children at all times.

CHAPTER VIII.

OBJECT LESSONS.

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I NOW Come to Object Lessons, which should begin simultaneously with all the above exercises; for mental exercises are not only compatible with physical health, but necessary to it. The brain is not to be overstrained in childhood, but it is to be used. Where it is left to itself, and remains uncultivated, it shrinks, and that is disease. child is not able to direct its own attention; it needs the help of the adult in the unfolding of the mind, no less than in the care of its body. Lower orders of animals can educate themselves, that is, develop in themselves their one power. As the animals rise in the scale of being, they are related more or less to their progenitors and posterity, and require social aid. But the human being, whose beatitude is "the communion of the just," is so universally related, that he cannot go alone at all. He is entirely dependent at first, and never becomes independent of those around him, any further than he has been so educated and trained by his relations with them, as to rise into union with God. And this restores him again to communion with his fellowbeings, as a beneficent Power among its peers.

The new method of education gives a gradual series of exercises, continuing the method of Nature. It cultivates the senses, by giving them the work of discriminating colors, sounds, &c.; sharpens perception by leading children to describe accurately the objects immediately around them.

Objects themselves, rather than the verbal descriptions of objects, are presented to them. The only way to make

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words expressive and intelligible, is to associate them sensibly with the objects to which they relate. Children must be taught to translate things into words, before they can translate words into things. Words are secondary in nature; yet much teaching seems to proceed on the principle that these are primary, and so they become mere counters, and children are brought to hating study, and the discourse of teachers, instead of thirsting for them. To look at objects of nature and art, and state their colors, forms, and properties of various kinds, is no painful strain upon the mind. just what children spontaneously do when they are first learning to talk. It is a continuation of learning to talk. The object-teacher confines the child's attention to one thing, till all that is obvious about it is described; and then asks questions, bringing out much that children, left to themselves, would overlook, suggesting words when necessary, to enable them to give an account of what they see. It is the action of the mind upon real things, together with clothing perceptions in words, which really cultivates; while it is not the painful strain upon the brain which the study of a book is. To translate things into words, is a more agreeable and a very different process from translating words into things, and the former exercise should precede the latter. If the mind is thoroughly exercised in wording its perceptions, words will in their turn suggest the things, without painful effort, and memory have the clearness and accuracy of perception. On the other hand words will never be used without feeling and intelligence. Then, to read a book will be to know all of reality that is in it.

I am desirous to make a strong impression on this point, because, to many persons, I find object-teaching seems the opposite of teaching! They say that to play with things, does not give habits of study. They think that to commit to memory a page of description about a wild duck, for instance, is better than to have the wild duck to look at, leading the child to talk about it, describe it, and inquire into

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its ways and haunts! They do not see that this study of the things themselves exercises the perception, and picturesque memory, which is probably immortal, certainly perennial, while the written description only exercises the verbal memory. Verbal memory is not to be despised; but it is a consequence, and should never be the substitute for picturesque memory. It is the picturesque memory only which is creative.

There is another and profound reason why words should follow, and not precede things, in a child's memory. It will have a tendency to preclude the unconscious sophistry which takes the place of real logic in so many minds; and at all events will give the power to detect sophistry; for it necessitates the mind to demand an image, or an idea, for every word. It gives the habit of thinking things and principles, instead of thinking words merely; - of looking through rhetoric after truth and reality. There is nothing perhaps which would conduce more to sound morality and earnestness of character, in this country, than that object-teaching, as proposed in Mr. Sheldon's "ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION," should pervade the primary schools. It would require a volume to go into object-teaching, in such detail as to serve as a manual for teachers; and happily the work of Mr. Sheldon's, just named, precludes the necessity of my doing so. It is published broadcast over our northern States; and every teacher, especially every Kindergarten teacher, should procure it, and give days and nights to the study of it, until its methods and matter are completely mastered. I have one or two exceptions to take, in respect to it myself, as will be seen in the sequel; yet I consider it not only an invaluable manual, but that it goes far to supply the place of the training school for teachers on the Pestalozzian plan," for whose use I believe it was primarily intended."

Object-teaching should precede as well as accompany the process of learning to read. In Germany, even outside of Kindergarten, thinking schools have long preceded reading

schools, and yet learning to read German, in which every sound is represented by a different letter, and every letter has one sound, cultivates the classifying powers, as learning to read English cannot. With children whose vernacular is English, it is absolutely injurious to the mind to be taught to read the first thing. I must speak of the reasons of this in another place, my purpose here being to show that object-teaching is necessary, in order to make wordteaching, whether by teacher's discourse, or by the reading of books, a means of culture at any period.

Every child should have the object to examine, and in turn each should say what is spontaneous. Out of their answers series of questions will be suggested to the teacher, who should also be prepared with her own series of questions,- questions full of answers.

The first generalization to which children should be led is into the animate and inanimate,—what lives and what exists without manifestation of life. The next generalization will be into mineral, vegetable, animal, and personal.

But you can begin with chairs, tables, paper, cloth, &c., coming as soon as possible to natural objects. Mrs. Agassiz's "First Lesson in Natural History" is an excellent hint. Sea anemones, star-fishes, clams, and oysters are easily procured. If sea anemones, taken into a bottle of salt water, clinging to stones, look like mere mosses at first, on the second day it is pretty certain, that in their desire for food they will spread themselves out, displaying their inward parts in the most beautiful manner. Every child in the class should have his turn at the object, if there are not objects enough for each,— should tell what he sees, and be helped to words to express himself. This, I must repeat, is the true way of learning the meaning of words; and leaves impressions, which no dictionary, with its periphrases and mere approximations to synonymes can give. Let a child himself hammer out some substance with a mallet, and he will never forget the meaning of malleable; and