Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 171, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1919 — Children’s Minds Should Be Stored With Pictures They Can Describe in Own Words [ARTICLE]

Children’s Minds Should Be Stored With Pictures They Can Describe in Own Words

Memorizing is a worthy mental exercise; but one can hardly help protesting against the practice, now happily less common' than in years within memory, of compelling young children to commit to memory tasks actually painful either from their Impossible length or from their uninteresting and unintelligible matter. The good practice of a pleasurable habit of learning by heart a suitable quantity of suitable matter has suffered from a natural reaction; but we are now returning to better things, and we are convinced that there are few efforts more pleasant to children than the consciousness of having committed to memory a suitable task, that is, of having formed a clear and complete picture of some interesting subject. Do not let the time pass for storing your scholars’ minds with an abundance of distinct pictures, which they can represent to their own minds and describe in their own words. —A Teacher.