The Education of the Child
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Ellen Key >> The Education of the Child
A champion of the transformation of pedagogy into a
psycho-physiological science is to be found in Sweden in the
person of Prof. Hjalmar Oehrwal who has discussed in his essays
native and foreign discoveries in the field of psychology. One
of his conclusions is that the so-called technical exercises,
gymnastics, manual training, sloyd, and the like, are not, as
they are erroneously called, a relaxation from mental
overstrain by change in work, but simply a new form of brain
fatigue. All work, he finds, done under conditions of fatigue
is uneconomic whether one regards the quantity produced or its
value as an exercise. Rest should be nothing more than
rest,--freedom to do only what one wants to, or to do nothing
at all. As to fear, he proves, following Binet's investigation
in this subject, how corporal discipline, threats, and ridicule
lead to cowardice; how all of these methods are to be rejected
because they are depressing and tend to a diminution of energy.
He shows, moreover, how fear can be overcome progressively, by
strengthening the nervous system and in that way strengthening
the character. This result comes about partly when all
unnecessary terrorising is avoided, partly when children are
accustomed to bear calmly and quietly the inevitable
unpleasantnesses of danger.
Prof. Axel Key's investigations on school children have won
international recognition. In Sweden they have supplied the
most significant material up to the present time for
determining the influence of studies on physical development
and the results of intellectual overstrain.
It is to be hoped that when through empirical investigation we
begin to get acquainted with the real nature of children, the
school and the home will be freed from absurd notions about the
character and needs of the child, those absurd notions which
now cause painful cases of physical and psychical maltreatment,
still called by conscientious and thinking human beings in
schools and in homes, education.
By Helen Key
The Century of the Child
Cr. 8vo. With Frontispiece. Net, $1.50
CONTENTS: The Right of the Child to Choose His Parents, The
Unborn Race and Woman's Work, Education, Homelessness, Soul
Murder in the Schools, The School of the Future, Religious
Instruction, Child Labor and the Crimes of Children. This book
has gone through more than twenty German Editions and has been
published in several European countries.
"A powerful book."--N. Y. Times.
The Education of the Child
Reprinted from the Authorized American Edition of "The Century
of the Child," With Introductory Note by EDWARD BOK.
Cr. 8vo. Net 75 cents
"Nothing finer on the wise education of the child has ever been
brought into print. To me this chapter is a perfect classic; it
points the way straight for every parent, and it should find a
place in every home in America where there is a child."--EDWARD
BOK, Editor of the Ladies' Home Journal.
Love and Marriage Cr. 8vo
Ellen Key is gradually taking a hold upon the reading public of
this country commensurate with the enlightenment of her views.
In Europe and particularly in her own native Sweden her name
holds an honored place as a representative of progressive
thought.
New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London
Clever, original, and fascinating The Lost Art of Reading Mount
Tom Edition New Edition in Two Volumes
I. The Child and the Book
A Manual for Parents and for Teachers in Schools and Colleges
II. The Lost Art of Reading or, The Man and The Book
Two Volumes, Crown 8vo. Sold separately. Each net, $1,50
By Gerald Stanley Lee
"I must express with your connivance the joy I have had, the
enthusiasm I have felt, in gloating over every page of what I
believe is the most brilliant book of any season since
Carlyle's and Emerson's pens were laid aside. The title does
not hint at any more than a fraction of the contents. It is a
highly original critique of philistinism and gradgrindism in
education, library science, science in general, and life in
general. It is full of humor, rich in style, and eccentric in
form and all suffused with the perfervid genius of a man who is
not merely a thinker but a force. Every sentence is tinglingly
alive, and as if furnished with long antennae of
suggestiveness. I do not know who Mr. Lee is, but I know this
--that if he goes on as he has been, we need no longer whine
that we have no worthy successors to the old Brahminical
writers of New England.
"I have been reading with wonder and laughter and with loud
cheers. It is the word of all words that needed to be spoken
just now. It makes me believe that after all we have n't a
great kindergarten about us in authorship, but that there is
virtue, race, sap in us yet. I can conceive that the date of
the publication of this book may well be the date of the moral
and intellectual renaissance for which we have long been
scanning the horizon."--WM. SLOANE KENNEDY in Boston Transcript.