The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1909-10-27

| First, education Is not begun early
enough. and second, that children are
| caught rather than educated"
To teach" is to cram fact or a
definition or date or the name of a
letter or the word cat into a baby
brain To educate" is to permit and
encourage the child-brain to learn au-
tomatically by encouraging the reason
ing powers. This sounds little dense,
but perhaps we can make it plain.
Sidus took his baby boy in hand when
he was less than 2 years old. He
started three separate lines of develop
ment. First was taught a love of
play and physical exertion. Then Mrs.
Sidus was assigned the duty of giving
the child full normal dose of Mother
Goose fairy tales and all the babble
and prattle of nursery days. The
father. then. each day sought not to
teach the child anything. but to lead
him to discover for himself some fact
and the relation of that fact to other
facts.
The first course gave the child
sturdy body and made him lover of
outdoors and an expert in all childish
games. The second course kept him
baby" and stimulated his magma
ton. The third gave him facility in
handling the most wonderful of all
toos-the reasoning brain.
Never in his life has he been told in
answer to a question, that che wouldn't
understand" Never has he been told
a thing is true because father says
So" Never has he been given a false
or slovenly answer in reply to his
childish questions. Each time the lit
tie mind reached out-whether to ask
How big is the SUM-" or "Whv does
the kitty have tail" a careful,
truthful answer has been given. Sidus
found that the foolish questions"
which his boy asked were the same
that all children asked. but he saw in
them the cropping of the awakening
mind and sought to give them direc-
ton, purpose and relation
The result was that the child not
being held down to the alphabet,
learning to count 100" and a few
vague and unrelated facts about things
he saw about him, was as easily inter-
ested in history as he was in Mother
Goose. He didn't learn to count TO-"
but he learned. by playing dominos,
the relation of numbers (not figures)
and his mind was permitted to discover
for itself that twice two makes four.
They found that a simple book on
chemistry was as interesting TO the
child when he first began 20 read as
was Alice ia Wonderland Not Only
As lntersstiaAs But Ms understandable.
Tbete are u lot of things which we
think Il child is too young ~ under
stand. Sc we Ny0a's explain them. The
child. however, is as much interested
in locomotive as he is in a cat, and
what interests him he can understand.
You don't believe 1t, do you?
Well, this Sidus boy went to school
when he was years old. He entered
the first grade, as usual, and by noon
had been sent u to the third grade. In
six months he had passed through
seven school grades, and he didn't
study any more, If as much, as did his
fellow pupils. Indeed, it is doubtful
If he really had to study as other
children understand the word. He
read the text books through and I'M
derstood them. To study" in the
common acceptation of the word is to
mentally tear the book up and store
dts statements, definitions and dates
understoOd-in the head. This is
purely parrots method.
When the Sidus boy was 8 years old
he was ready for Harvard. They had
to take him out of school for couple
of years because he was physically a
little child (and mentally, too, and
he could not endure the discipline of
sitting still and the dull routine of
high school. He was, in fact, the mis-
chievous, restless little shaver of or
years.
Remember, this is no bullying
browed Johnny Bostonbeans" 1t is
just healthy child who has been
taught that he had a mind and how to
use it.
Prof Sidus says that modern school
methods tend to repress children and
to stunt their minds by holding them
down to certain easy" subjects. This,
says Sidus, gets the child mind into a
groove and destroys it's courage, it's
originality and it's power for independ-
ent thought. 1t makes the brain merely
receptacle for information, rather
than producer of knowledge and
thought
Prof. Sidus has at least given us
something to think about.
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