One day a directress called my attention to a little girl of three years, one of our very youngest pupils, who had repeated this exercise perfectly. We seated the little girl comfortably in an armchair, close to the table. Then, placing the twenty-four objects before her upon the table, we mixed them, and calling the child's attention to the difference in form, told her to place the cubes to the right and the bricks to the left. When she was blindfolded she began the exercise as taught by us, taking an object in each hand, feeling each and putting it in its right place. Sometimes she took two cubes, or two bricks, sometimes she found a brick in the right hand, a cube in the left. The child had to recognise the form, and to remember throughout the exercise the proper placing of the different objects. This seemed to me very difficult for a child of three years.
But observing her I saw that she not only performed the exercise easily, but that the movements with which we had taught her to feel the form were superfluous. Indeed the instant she had taken the two objects in her hands, if it so happened that she had taken a cube with the left hand and a brick in the right, she exchanged them immediately, and then began the laborious feeling the form which we had taught and which she perhaps, believed to be obligatory. But the objects had been recognised by her through the first light touch, that is, the recognition was contemporaneous to the taking.
Continuing my study of the subject, I found that this little girl was possessed of a remarkable functional ambidexterity—I should be very glad to make a wider study of this phenomenon having in view the desirability of a simultaneous education of both hands.
I repeated the exercise with other children and found that they recognise the objects before feeling their contours. This was particularly true of the little ones. Our educational methods in this respect furnished a remarkable exercise in associative gymnastics, leading to a rapidity of judgment which was truly surprising and had the advantage of being perfectly adapted to very young children.
These exercises of the stereognostic sense may be multiplied in many ways—they amuse the children who find delight in the recognition of a stimulus, as in the thermic exercises; for example—they may raise any small objects, toy soldiers, little balls, and, above all, the various coins in common use. They come to discriminate between small forms varying very slightly, such as corn, wheat, and rice.
They are very proud of seeing without eyes, holding out their hands and crying, "Here are my eyes!" "I can see with my hands!" Indeed, our little ones walking in the ways we have planned, make us marvel over their unforeseen progress, surprising us daily. Often, while they are wild with delight over some new conquest,—we watch, in deepest wonder and meditation.
EDUCATION OF THE SENSES OF TASTE AND SMELL
This phase of sense education is most difficult, and I have not as yet had any satisfactory results to record. I can only say that the exercises ordinarily used in the tests of psychometry do not seem to me to be practical for use with young children.
The olfactory sense in children is not developed to any great extent, and this makes it difficult to attract their attention by means of this sense. We have made use of one test which has not been repeated often enough to form the basis of a method. We have the child smell fresh violets, and jessamine flowers. We then blindfold him, saying, "Now we are going to present you with flowers." A little friend then holds a bunch of violets under the child's nose, that he may guess the name of the flower. For greater or less intensify we present fewer flowers, or even one single blossom.
Copyright, 1912, by Carl R. Byoir