Margaret McMillan

“ There is no reason why he should not have the vision made possible by them, any more than there is a reason why he should not see Holzel's wonderful picture of the Sahara or the Rockies. The vision feeds the imagination, and that is the thing that cannot be done too soon, as the child himself proves by his eagerness to look at and hold the pictures!
And yet the looking at far-off things and through microscopes does not take the place of that outward movement-the self-projection that seems to be as necessary for human growth as is breathing or simple movement. ”

“ You advance in the shadow, and examine the face of one of the smaller boys. He is sitting, devouring the teacher with his eyes, and his intense attention makes him frown. You tickle his neck, he does not even smile, he shakes his head as if to drive away a fly. ”

“ Come to the school in the twilight; there is no light in the windows; all is peaceful. The snow is on the stairs; there is a faint murmur, a slight movement behind the door, a boy runs upstairs two steps at a time, and enters the class room. ”

“ In the hands of young children, and indeed of older ones, an instrument is merely a hindrance. It may become a substitute, which is worse! Or it is used as a toy, or diverted from its purpose. And it is doubtless for one or other of these reasons that the greatest teachers, such as Tolstoy, do not care to see any instrument in schools. ”

“ The really original thing in him is something that was gained in the free period when he used his powers as a child, as a primitive man, and also as an artist.
From all this it appears first that instruments, like tools, should not be made very early in life.
And also that when a boy or girl really begins to require instruments, he or she should make them himself or herself—make, that is to say, rude and simple instruments, which are true projections; should grind his own lenses, when he needs eye-instruments, like Galileo or Herschel, and make the tools he needs like Newton. ”

“ If the teacher uses a book, it is a book full of pictures—a book written too by literary artists, each describing one place that he knows and has lived in. Such geography primers in Russia bear the names of Tolstoy, Gorky, and other master painters in words, every one of whom has lent his aid to the primary school teacher. ”

“ When Tourgueniéff himself thinks of Shakespeare he thinks of him in a picture, and declares it worthy "of the brush of a painter." And what are Shakespeare's works to any of his lovers but a panorama—a series of wonderful pictures—beautiful as Tourgueniéff's own novels? ”

“ Perhaps at first a child with deteriorating senses may strive to overcome his defects—may listen, and look eagerly, obeying an impulse that indicates how the door of the senses must be opened wide, and how this opening is a great part of the whole of the life of childhood. ”

“ One terse piano solo of twenty bars is founded on a stirring theme by a youngster of seventeen months, a child just striving to talk, and quite incapable of doing anything with a pencil, except trying to swallow it! ”

“ Long delay in the development of a musician is unnecessary, because the musical apparatus in his own body is perfected in all its parts soon after birth. For example, that part of the ear which is concerned with hearing more directly than any other, is full grown at birth, and long before a baby can speak, its key board (or Corti's organ) is vibrating with the activity of microscopic strings that analyse and place myriad sounds and tones. ”

“ Miss Whelan, a teacher near Worthing, is founding all her scheme of education in her school on art—and above all on drama. The children learn history by becoming actors and inventing tableaux vivants. They choose who shall personate different characters, they mount the stage and arrange the scenes. [5] Geography, too, is taught after the same method. In the Review of Reviews for December, 1906, we have an account of a drama-geography lesson on Canada—some of the children dressed as animals, some as settlers, some as Indians. Literature also is taught by plays and pictures ”

“ It was long assumed that they did not exist!
Grown-up people look for pictures in literature, in drama, and travel, and children look for them, and will not care for things of which they have had no vision. ”

“ But in so far as the higher sense-organs are concerned there is no possible room for doubt as regards the symptoms! The poorer and more neglected the group of children the greater percentage of injured eyes and ears does it furnish. We see this more particularly when we come to think of eyes. ”

“ Even if the question is considered in detail, and the very latest discoveries with regard to the life taken into account, the fact of projection is driven home. We will cite one out of many. Photographers found that light will break up iodide of silver, and that with the aid of iodide of silver, therefore, they could get negatives; but nature had got negatives by the action of light on eye pigment for aeons. Many years after the silver salts began to be used in photography—in 1876—Ball found that light breaks up the coloured substance in the retina of the eye. ”

“ In teaching geography to children the greatest geographers do not arm themselves with the best charts, models, and maps, before entering the class rooms. These things are useful to them, as students, but they are of use only in so far as the student can see clear pictures, through them, pictures painted in unfading colours ”

“ Other geographers engage the finest painters of the age to paint pictures of different scenes. The Libyan desert and its burning sands—the Rockies, a revelation in azure, the great prairies and savannahs, the Arctic summer, and the warm splendour of the southern night, are all rendered on canvas by realistic painters, working with the aim of making these things visible to non-travelling children. ”

“ From the very first, however, the impulse to project is a symptom of health, of vigour. It is not the child suffering from adenoids, or weakness of chest or throat, who wants to shout through his hands. It is the healthy child who experiences this need. ”

“ For a long time, though they enjoy instrumental music, and even mere noise, they have little impulse to make any other instrument than this. And so the original instruments are well used, and well nourished, they become stronger, and finer with use, and fall more under the control of the will. ”

“ The instrument is projected then in the first place only because the projection is needed. The musician needs a stronger lung, a larger lip, a bigger larynx. He wants, as does everyone in whom new power is generated, a greater body than his own, but one that is still his own. In this need and power lies the whole history of instrument making ”

“ We do not consciously make our food change into muscle and nerve, or bone; we are not chemists, and we certainly could not, by taking thought, elaborate all the juices and acids that are formed in us daily. ”

“ Even when good ideals are introduced, yet the methods tend continually to be debased. For example, no sooner was free-arm drawing and free design introduced than a great weight of new and expensive "apparatus," sheets of copies, with skeleton lines and coloured flower forms, were flung on the market. ”

“ He can sing—he can play if there is nothing to hinder. If the right stimulus is given, the music will begin. Tolstoy, Hearn, and many others, have testified, after working among children and peasants, that they are nearly all capable of a wonderful musical development. ”

“ William Platt, listens and hears his babies rediscovering the plagal cadence and canon for themselves, and gathers material for pianoforte pieces from their lips. But much oftener to-day the real music is stopped, and something else is forced on the singer. ”