Excerpt from Primary Object Lessons: For Training the Senses and Developing the Faculties of Children; A Manual of Elementary Instruction for Parents and Teachers "Instruction must begin with actual inspection, not with verbal descriptions of things. From such inspection it is that certain knowledge comes. What is actually seen remains faster in the memory than description or enumeration a hundred times as often repeated." Thus wrote John Amos Comenius, an exiled teacher of Austria, about the middle of the seventeenth century. And to the introduction of his works Germany is largely indebted for the great progress in her schools which commenced during that century. Said the great Swiss educator Pestalozzi at the close of the eighteenth century, "Observation is the absolute basis of all knowledge. The first object, then, in education, must be to lead a child to observe with accuracy; the second, to express with correctness the result of his observations." On the philosophical principles taught by those two great educators, and confirmed by the experiences of subsequent observers, is based the system of mental development illustrated in the present work. In the application of these principles, however, there have been successive changes resulting in the various forms of the inductive methods of education now practiced in this country and in Europe. Not to those noble educators belongs all the credit of the present system of teaching from objects, the unknown from the known; they developed principles only; the systems have grown out of the study and application of those principles by succeeding educators. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.