Speaking generally, the fundamental fallacy in methods of
instruction lies in supposing that experience on the part of
pupils may be assumed. What is here insisted upon is the
necessity of an actual empirical situation as the initiating
phase of thought. Experience is here taken as previously
defined: trying to do something and having the thing perceptibly
do something to one in return. The fallacy consists in supposing
that we can begin with ready-made subject matter of arithmetic,
or geography, or whatever, irrespective of some direct personal
experience of a situation. Even the kindergarten and Montessori
techniques are so anxious to get at intellectual distinctions,
without "waste of time," that they tend to ignore -- or reduce --
the immediate crude handling of the familiar material of
experience, and to introduce pupils at once to material which
expresses the intellectual distinctions which adults have made.
But the first stage of contact with any new material, at whatever
age of maturity, must inevitably be of the trial and error sort.
An individual must actually try, in play or work, to do something
with material in carrying out his own impulsive activity, and
then note the interaction of his energy and that of the material
employed. This is what happens when a child at first begins to
build with blocks, and it is equally what happens when a
scientific man in his laboratory begins to experiment with
unfamiliar objects.
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