Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: with which to decorate Lincoln's picture—symbolic of the chains which he removed from his fellow man." On the other hand, the programme cited has four marked defects arising from its constructive principle and common to all programmes of its type. The first of these defects is the assumed priority of conscious thought over impulse and activity; the second is the imposition of an externally unified whole of thought; the third is the sacrifice of specific values in exercises with the gifts and occupations, and the fourth is the substitution of arbitrary connections for those causal ties which it is one great aim of all sound education to reveal. What becomes of that cardinal principle of progressive pedagogy that " in the beginning is the act," if children may not act until their minds have been filled by the kindergartner with a thought content? What becomes of originality when every detail of every exercise is planned and prescribed ? How shall each gift be so used as to throw into relief its own specific quality if all exercises must illustrate some chosen theme? Finally, what are we doing for a human mind when we respond to its yearning for the discovery of causal ties by such pitiful exercises as " an effort to connect with the capital through copying some detail in architecture, paving, or carving ?" The programme cited is one of the earlier embodiments of the concentric ideal. It is the hybrid product of a mixed marriage between Froebelian / instrumentalities and non-Froebelian aims and ' methods. Its author is, however, serenely unaware of the antagonistic ideas arming for war " below the threshold of her consciousness." To us, on the contrary, it should now be evident that the aim of this programme is instruction and its method an attempted unification of many distinc... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.