Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1885-04-02
EDUCATIONAL.
Ingenious Method of Drawing the Curios-
ity and Attention oftPupiIs.
Valuable Hints from Various Sources-Long
Distance Teaching in Australia.
CURIOSITY.

''CurioS ty is as much the parent of
attention as attention is of memory.
To teach one who has no curiosity TO
learn, is to SOW a field without blowing
it. y WhateIY
A Methodist minister, on being asked
why that denomination INDUCED in
such lively music, answered. that they
didn't believe in letting the wicked
world have all the good tunes. So il
may be said of harnessing in that I'M
conquerable attribute to human nature.
that turned everything topsy-turyeY in
Edenic days, to help do the work of the
school-room in reconstructinU this
same fallen humanity. 1t has the locic
of the sj1nilia SjmiLjbuS theory for a
foundation, and the favorable testimony
OF our best thinkers and teachers in the
practice of it. Prepare the presenta-
ton of new subject never so careful
ly, If it comes before the class as a set
of alternatives, they will acceptit much
IN the spirit of the good deacon who
slept all through the sermon because of
his implicit confidence in the soundness
OF the preacher. Such al unquestion-
ing acceptance of facts by class is the
death warrant of its interest and atten-
ton, and results as fatally to its enthu-
siasm as the calm sleep of man freez-
lng-tO death. Let the teacher cut in
genuity to work, and devise some way
in which a lesson can seem to contain
some hidden thing that the children are
to seek for, and if skillfully done. not
much of a clue need be given before the
class will be digging for it, under the
sharp spur Of curiosity, which, strange
to say, has as much impelling force in
boys as in girls, the popular heresy to
the contrary Notwithstanding.
A good principal once came into our
school-room and gave first lesson in
decimal fractions. Taking a half-sheet
of papc1 and pair of scissors, he stood
before the children and silently be-
gan cutting it into slips. Gradually
the rustic. of the school-room died
away. Everybody wondered. AS piece
after piece of that mysterious paper
.fiuttered down on the boys desk in the
front row, the wide-eyed children held
their breath in suspense as to what it
could all mean; and when he had gath
cred them all up again on book-cov-
er, making a restored whole out of the
ten parts, he held it up to a hundred
watchful eyes in a room so quiet that
the ticking of the clock alone broke the
silence. Not much difficulty in hold
ing the attention OF the class after that.
To borrow our text figure, curiosity
had ploughed the field, and the seed
would fall on good soil. Each of these
ten pieces were cut into ten others, and
these in turn into ten more tiny bits
with the same impenetrable air of mys-
terry. Of course explanations and
blackboard work followed, but the class
had been led by curiosity alone to walk
pleasurably into that bottomless sea of
infnitesmalS, without knowing that
they were in the very Styx of waters,
or ever finding it out afterward, for
decimals were carried with a furore
that year, and the transfers from the
little papers to the convenient meter
measure, which, though it could not be
cut apart was yet never confusing, was
easily made.
1t is surprising how much of this
way of arousing attention can be intro
duced into school-work, when once we
seek in ourselves for a variety of ways
to accomplish it. individuality has
here a limitless field-MrS Eva D.
Kellogg IN Journal Of Education.