But it is the fault of the
teacher if the pupil does not perceive in due season the
inadequacy of his performances, and thereby receive a stimulus to
attempt exercises which will perfect his powers. Meantime it is
more important to keep alive a creative and constructive attitude
than to secure an external perfection by engaging the pupil's
action in too minute and too closely regulated pieces of work.
Accuracy and finish of detail can be insisted upon in such
portions of a complex work as are within the pupil's capacity.
Unconscious suspicion of native experience and consequent
overdoing of external control are shown quite as much in the
material supplied as in the matter of the teacher's orders. The
fear of raw material is shown in laboratory, manual training
shop, Froebelian kindergarten, and Montessori house of childhood.
The demand is for materials which have already been subjected to
the perfecting work of mind: a demand which shows itself in the
subject matter of active occupations quite as well as in academic
book learning. That such material will control the pupil's
operations so as to prevent errors is true. The notion that a
pupil operating with such material will somehow absorb the
intelligence that went originally to its shaping is fallacious.
Only by starting with crude material and subjecting it to
purposeful handling will he gain the intelligence embodied in
finished material.
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