Lessons XVIII. and XIX. Before the child is able to use tools, he deals with objects through a direct use of the various organs of his body. No better preparation can be given the child for an intelligent use of tools and machinery than to let him practice a great variety of activities that furnish him with the muscular sensations necessary to interpret the more complex processes.
Encourage the child to collect natural forms in wood, stone, bone, horn, shells, and other materials that may be available, and preserve the best of them, thus forming the nucleus of an industrial museum.
References: Katharine E. Dopp, The Place of Industries in Elementary Education, pp. 19-21, 32, 33, 134-140; “Some Steps in the Evolution of Social Occupations,” III., The Elementary School Teacher, March, 1903.
Lesson XX. The purpose of this lesson is to show the way in which man began the conquest of the animal world. Lead the child to see that it has taken a long time to make the earth a good home for man, and that one reason why we can learn more than the lower races knew is because they spent their time in making the earth a better place in which to live. (See pp. 147-148.)
Lesson XXI. This lesson is based upon well-authenticated facts supplied by Professor Boyd Dawkins. It portrays not merely the intelligence of animals, but man’s alertness to take suggestions. It also suggests to the child a relation that exists between him and the larger world to which he is already looking with expectancy. (See Supplementary Facts, pp. 142-144, for information regarding the rhinoceros, the mammoth, and the sabre-toothed felis.)
Lesson XXII. This lesson, together with the two following, in which the probable method of subduing fire is portrayed, marks the climax of interest in the story of the Tree-dwellers. No greater conquest has ever been made. In writing of this subject, Mr. Geiger says: “And if we admire in genius not only superior intellectual endowment but the boldness of attempting to think of what has never been thought of by any one before, and to undertake what has never been done before, it was surely an act of genius when man approached the dreaded glow, when he bore the flame before him over the earth on the top of the ignited log of wood—an act of daring without a prototype in the animal world, and in its consequences for the development of human culture truly immeasurable.”
Only the first step in the conquest of fire is portrayed in this lesson. That is fear.
References: Mason, Origins of Invention, Chapter III.
Katharine E. Dopp, The Place of Industries in Elementary Education, pp. 22-24.
Lesson XXIII. This lesson shows how man, first through fear and then through the desire to make friends with the dreaded object in order to secure its protection, subdued fire. Its significance with reference to social life is portrayed in this and in the following lessons.