Chapter 17 2. Teach children to read the book "The World"

For the vast universe, the earth is a small island—an island of human beings, and the most eye-catching thing on the earth is the sun above the head. Once our focus is away from ourselves, we will lose sight of the earth and the universe. develop interest. Some people may say: "This span is too big!" Just now we only paid attention to the things around us, and these things are closely related to ourselves, why now we suddenly turn our attention to exploring the earth, Or even the entire universe? In fact, this sudden change is brought about by the enhancement of our physical strength and the development of our minds.When our own strength is insufficient, our focus is on how to protect ourselves so that life can continue, and once the strength of our body increases and survival is no problem for us, our desire will turn to expand the dimension of life, To explore more unknown possibilities.

However, the desire at this time is only desire, and we do not have enough knowledge, so our thoughts only stay at the limit that our eyes can see and our hands can touch, and our reason is also bound by this limit Inside. We need to move our thoughts through sensations and transform sensations into concepts, but there must be a transition between the objects of sensation and the objects of thought. Feeling is the guide of our initial thinking activities. At this time, for us, the world is a book, and it is the only book, and the fact is the only lesson. We see that those children are reading, but this does not mean that they are using their thoughts. They only know that they are "reading", but "reading" is just an action, and their thinking does not necessarily move with the words.They are just learning sentences, not being educated.

To arouse the curiosity of your pupils, encourage them to observe the various phenomena of nature, and you will soon find that this method is very fruitful. The more unsatisfied, the stronger the students' curiosity will be.You only need to ask questions and let the student find the answer by himself. All the knowledge he acquires is not taught by you orally, but by his own exploration.Let him explore and discover by himself, instead of you teaching bit by bit. In the process of learning, the student's reason is dominant, not your authority. Once your authority overwhelms his reason, he will lose his own opinion.

For example, if you teach a child geography, you bring him maps, globes and other auxiliary tools, hoping that these devices can help the child learn better. But please think about it, why don't you let him see the real thing first, but let him see these things that represent the real thing?At the beginning of the study of geography, you should first let the student understand clearly and intuitively what you are going to teach him, so it is better to let him see the real thing. On a quiet evening, Emile and I came to a beautiful place.There, we took a walk while admiring the sunset, the sun was slowly setting on the vast horizon, and the surrounding scenery was particularly beautiful under the setting sun, which left a deep impression on us.

Before sunrise the next day, we came to this place again. The fresh air in the morning was invigorating. The sun was still hidden below the horizon, but the tens of thousands of rays it emitted had already burned half the sky like a flame, and the fire light stronger…… The sun seemed to burst out of the horizon suddenly, and the darkness that permeated the sky was burned away by this light. The sight was amazing.After a night of silence, the greenery reappeared from the darkness is even more alluring, and under the light of the new sun, it shines with golden light. The birds in the forest sang happily to welcome the arrival of a new day.In such a fresh and beautiful scenery, a kind of thoroughness and pleasure from the depths of the soul swims through the whole body, which makes people addicted.In just half an hour, what we see and feel is enough to cleanse our souls.

This feeling will make people excited, and many teachers will be eager to convey this feeling to students through language, and use their own descriptions to arouse students' awareness of his feelings.He was hopelessly foolish to think that in this way the students could relate to him, that the scene which aroused his emotions would also touch the students' emotions! People see all things in nature and keep their feelings about it in their hearts.To understand everything, you must first feel something about everything.Indeed, children are "seeing" various scenes, but what they see is only their appearance, and they do not understand the inner connection between all things in nature.They hear all kinds of natural sounds, but they don't recognize the beautiful relationship that exists between these sounds.

They need a hitherto unexperienced and never-before-seen emotion, and only by acquiring these can they grasp the comprehensive feeling of nature. How can a person feel the freshness and beauty of the morning air if he has never run in the barren fields, has not burned his feet by the hot sand, and has never breathed the suffocating air under the scorching sun? No matter how beautiful the flowers are, how tender the grass is, how crystal the dew is, how soft the beach is, how can he feel it?If he has not met wonderful love, how can the singing of birds in the morning make him intoxicated? From this point of view, you have to show him something when the time is right.In the process of observing alone, if you find that he is curious, you can ask him some simple questions at this time, and let him continue to observe with the questions and find the answers by himself.

Take the example of watching the sunrise we just listed.After watching the sunrise with him, you can guide him to pay attention to the mountains and nearby scenery where the sunrise is, and let him talk about what he saw, and then let him recall what he saw at sunset the previous day. Then, you continue to ask him: "Look, the sun set in that place yesterday, but it rose from this place today. What is going on?" You don't need to say too much, even if he asks you questions again, you don't need to answer, and you can even change the topic.You have to leave the question to him to think and explore. Don’t worry, he will definitely pursue it. This is human curiosity.

In order for a child to be completely convinced of the truth, he must be allowed to obtain the truth through his own feelings, and the process of obtaining the truth should not be too fast, and he should be given sufficient time to experience and comprehend, and to figure out the ins and outs. If he still can't figure out the answer on his own, you can take a simpler approach: Ask him the question in reverse. If he cannot understand the path of the sun from setting to rising again, at least he knows the path of the sun from rising to setting, because this is what he can see with his eyes.If your student is not hopelessly stupid, he will be able to draw this inference by himself.

In this way, the first lesson on cosmology is off to a good start.After that, we still need a long process to tell students about the laws of the sun's movement and the shape of the earth, because the transfer from one sensed concept to another is a slow process. We always spend a long time thinking about the same idea, and we can't force students to pay attention to those things. However, the movement of celestial bodies in the universe follows the same principles and laws. The observation of sunrise and sunset in the first lesson is very helpful for students to observe later. Compared with understanding the principle of the cycle of day and night, it is much more difficult to understand the laws of the earth's rotation and solar and lunar eclipses.Although the latter takes more time, it requires relatively less effort.

Should we conduct scientific research with an analytical method or a comprehensive method?People are very divided on this question.However, we don't have to choose only one of the two. When studying the same subject, we can use the analytical method or the comprehensive method. If we apply these methods to education, we can do this: when a child feels that an analytical method should be used, as a teacher, he must use a comprehensive method to guide him. The advantage of this is that the two methods are used for research at the same time, and the research results can be mutually verified.Using different methods to reach the same conclusion can surprise students. For example, when teaching geography, I start by surveying our classrooms and homes and move on to great discoveries and measurements of parts of the earth.When the children focus on the vast space, I will bring them back to the earth and let them pay attention to the land they live in, because the more familiar places are, the more attractive they will be. The two places he mentioned in geography class, one is the small town where he lives, and the other is his father's villa in the country.Then there are the fields and rivers between and near these two locations, and finally the position of the sun, for orientation.That last point is where it all comes together. He can draw a very simple map by himself, first draw two places, then estimate the distance according to his knowledge of the things between and near the two places, and then add those places to the map step by step.After all this is done, you will find that the benefits of letting your children use their eyes as a compass are beyond your imagination. Of course, we can't completely let the child explore by himself. In some cases, we have to guide him, but the guidance should not be too much, and it is best not to let him notice it.If he is wrong, let him continue to be wrong, there is no need to correct it, and there is no need to say anything until he realizes his mistake and corrects it by himself. If you have to give him a hint, don't point it out very clearly. You can design a situation for him and let him detect his mistakes by himself.If a person never makes mistakes, he will never know what is right, let alone learn in the right way. In any case, the most important thing is not what knowledge he has learned, but how he has learned to acquire knowledge. After learning geography, it doesn't matter whether he has a complete and clear impression of the map in his mind, what is important is that he can understand what the symbols and patterns on the map represent, and at the same time let him master the method of making maps , which is what we want to achieve. The students you teach can only read maps, but the students I teach can draw maps by themselves. These are the different results of the two different educational methods. As the saying goes, it is better to teach a person to fish than to teach him to fish. My basic principle of educating students is not to teach them much knowledge, but to let them form a clear concept in their minds and learn how to learn. What I need to do is to infuse the truth into his mind and shut out the wrong ideas that he may form during his studies. It doesn't matter even if he doesn't know anything, as long as he is thinking, the way of thinking is correct That's fine. The development of human reason and judgment requires a process, but the breeding of prejudice is easy, so we must guard against it.But there is no limit to learning, if you look at science itself from a scientific point of view, you will find this, you will never reach the shore of science. We also found another phenomenon, that is, some people are obsessed with the beauty of knowledge and are seduced by knowledge, learning one after another without stopping for a moment. They are like children picking up shells at the beach. They are excited when they see so many shells, so they keep picking them up, but when they see other more beautiful shells, they can't help but drop the shells in their hands and pick them up. others.He kept picking up shells on the beach, but in the end he was empty-handed because he didn't know how to choose the shell he liked the most. People have a lot of leisure time when they are young, and we need to fill this time in various ways to prevent it from being abused.However, the present situation is like this: children do not have enough time to do things that are beneficial to their growth. What we need to understand is that children's desires begin to appear, and when the desires come, their attention will be focused on this and they will not take care of others. The period of peace brought by reason is so short, during which there are still many necessary things to be done. If anyone tries to make a child a learned person in such a short time, I can only say that this kind of The idea is too hopeless. The purpose of education is not to teach a student how much knowledge, but to stimulate and cultivate his interest in knowledge. If his interest can be well cultivated, we can continue to teach him the methods of scientific research.Obviously, this is the basic principle of a good education. The method of philosophy is to deduce and develop successively all scientific categories from a system of universally connected truths.However, the method we are talking about here is not this kind, but another kind, completely different from this philosophical method, which emphasizes the specificity of knowledge. Every non-trivial thing is related to every other thing in this way, and is oriented toward the next, which is the order in which most people see things.This directional sequence can continuously stimulate students' curiosity and guide them to learn and explore.This order is especially suitable for the education of children. I taught Emile how to make a compass, and taught him how to use it to determine directions on a map. From this process, he could understand the procedure of this method.For a long time, my students and I have been curious about some of the characteristics that appear after rubbing amber, candles, glass, and the like. One day, I took my students to the market, and we saw a juggler doing a very interesting thing.He put a wax duck in the water basin, and without external force, the duck chased a piece of bread in the water.It turned out that the juggler had placed a magnet in the bread. Later, my students and I did a similar experiment, putting a magnet in the duck, but the strange thing is that the duck stayed on the water surface, motionless, and always stayed in the north-south direction.Inspired by this experiment, I led the students to make a compass and other similar things by themselves.In this way, our study of physics began. According to the division of geography, the earth is divided into many natural zones, and the temperature of each natural zone is different. The closer to the poles, the more obvious the seasonal changes.Under the influence of temperature, all objects follow the law of thermal expansion and contraction, and the volume change of liquids is extremely obvious, especially alcohol.We made thermometers according to this law. The wind blows on the face, from which we perceive the air as a fluid substance, although we cannot see or touch it.If you put a glass upside down in water, you will find that the glass is empty, unless you put the glass on its side to release the air in the glass, otherwise it is impossible for water to enter the glass, so it can be seen that the air is There is resistance. If you continue to press the cup into the water, you will find that the space in the cup is getting smaller, but the water cannot take the place of the air, so it can be seen that the air can be compressed. The more the air in the ball is compressed, the higher it bounces, so the air is elastic. When you lie in the water and stretch your arms out of the water, you will feel a downward pull on your arms, which shows that air has weight. Based on these commonplace phenomena in life, people have manufactured tools such as barometers, siphons, and air guns.Similar experiments seem simple and rough, but all the principles of statics and fluid mechanics are obtained through simple and rough experimental research. But students don't need to bring those instruments with them when they walk into the lab, because that would destroy science.On the one hand, these cold instruments will make children fearful; on the other hand, these instruments will distract students.Their attention should be directed to the results of the experiment, not to these aids. The instruments we need will be made by ourselves, but I have no intention of making them before gaining experience.This is my plan, after gaining some experience through some experiments, we will gradually build some instruments to prove it. Maybe our instruments are not very precise, but we will have a clear estimate of what these instruments should look like and the effect of these instruments. When I first taught statics to the students, I did not directly use the scale as an instrument, but put a stick flat on the back of the chair, and let the stick balance when it was at rest. Then I measured the length of the stick at both ends of the back of the chair and placed two objects of unequal weight on the ends of the stick, then carefully moved the point of contact between the stick and the back of the chair to bring it back into balance. Through experiments, we found that to achieve balance, the weight of the object placed at both ends of the stick is inversely proportional to the distance from it to the back of the chair.After such an experimental demonstration, the students have already understood the principle of the balance and know how to adjust the balance before they have seen the balance. Obviously, it is much easier to operate and more impressive for students to understand the principles of things in this way than directly showing and explaining with instruments.Only by letting their rationality take the lead in learning can they not habitually obey authority. Another advantage of this kind of teaching is that it can exercise our ability to discover the connection between things, so as to deepen our understanding of knowledge, and then learn to make instruments.Although such research is slow and laborious, its advantage is that while the student is exploring with his heart, his hands are exercised and his body is also active. Inventing instruments in experiments, and then using instruments to assist experiments, makes our senses more precise.With the assistance of instruments, our senses are idle, so our senses will appear more clumsy in front of delicate instruments. Now is the era of using skills to make tools, while tools were a substitute for skills before.We add the art of making and using tools to our use of all that nature has to offer, and thus our hands become more dexterous. Before, we used skills to replace tools, but now we use skills to make tools. In education, if we don't let a child gnaw on books, but let him work in a factory, then he will eventually use his own hands to promote the maturity of his heart and thinking.Such a student will become a scientist, but in his own opinion, he may be just a skilled craftsman. I have mentioned that purely speculative things are not suitable for children to learn, even for older children, such as adolescent children.What you have to do is to teach him to use the deductive method to find out the connection between many experiments, and then guide him to sort out and digest these connections and form his own ideas. These ideas will naturally appear in his mind when needed, and there is absolutely no need for you to teach him the advanced theories of physics.Without the experience of these experiments and the memory of ideas formed in his mind, it would be difficult for him to remember individual facts and theories isolated from each other. I would let the student begin with the most common and obvious things, to investigate the laws of nature, and form him in the habit of taking what he sees as a fact, and not a cause. I lifted a stone with my hand, pretending to put it in the air, but the stone fell down.While doing this, I found that Emile was looking at me seriously. "You said, why did the stone fall?" I asked him. No child could ever be troubled by such questions, much less Emile.He would say that the stone is so heavy, of course it will fall. "Then what's going on?" "Because of its weight, it will fall down." He continued to answer. "So the stone falls because it's going to fall?" He couldn't answer this question, and the little scientist was finally stumped by me. This was Emile's first theoretical physics class.