OUR CHILDREN
Patri, Angelo
Our Children By Angelo Patri IF YOU were starting out to build a house, would you use the strongest means you had or would you look up what the books said and lay in a supply of materials,...
...Our Children By Angelo Patri IF YOU were starting out to build a house, would you use the strongest means you had or would you look up what the books said and lay in a supply of materials, regardless of whether you could use them in this particular bit of building or not...
...Make him use them all...
...some are chemists and some are milliners and some are musicians and some are hewers of wood and drawers of water...
...We should know by now that all studies are not for ALL the people's children...
...Which is the more important to us, the course of study or the pupil who is to take his learning experiences from it...
...To help him, the school lays in a whole set of race experiences without regard to his need for them...
...Knowing this, what do we do...
...Some do well with arithmetic through the fundamentals and fail with higher mathematics...
...It is true that these learning experiences have been used before...
...There are few for whom there is no place of importance when necessary work is the test...
...They're all good...
...We keep right on trying to make the child who cannot learn mathematics give more time to it, spend more energy on it, lose more of his growth on it...
...I ask you that because helping a child grow through learning experiences is much like building a house...
...They've all been used before...
...When we get clear of the notion that every pupil must take ALL the courses or fail and become a marked failure, and allow the pupil to develop his ability on the basis of his strength, we will cease to have failures...
...Cease To Have Failures Then why don't we cease trying to make a hewer of wood (take lessons in geometry, and the drawer of water take a course in drafting because it is in the course of study...
...others cannot learn mathematics...
...Every child who fails in school is a community failure and must be so charged...
...still others cannot learn history...
...By some people they have been used with happy results, by others they have not been used at all, and by still others, who are forced to use them, they were used to ill effect...
...Yes...
...We will all agree that some are born to be scholars...
...It all depends upon the one question: Can this child use this experience to his good...
...A Stupid Mistake There are some children who cannot learn Latin...
...A child will live in the house he builds for his soul and the material he uses is his learning experiences...
...He must use them too...
...It is one of the stupidest mistakes educationists make...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 4
