Our aim in education in general is two-fold, biological and social. From the biological side we wish to help the natural development of the individual, from the social standpoint it is our aim to prepare the individual for the environment. Under this last head technical education may be considered as having a place, since it teaches the individual to make use of his surroundings. The education of the senses is most important from both these points of view. The development of the senses indeed precedes that of superior intellectual activity and the child between three and seven years is in the period of formation.
We can, then, help the development of the senses while they are in this period. We may graduate and adapt the stimuli just as, for example, it is necessary to help the formation of language before it shall be completely developed.
All education of little children must be governed by this principle—to help the natural psychic and physical development of the child.
The other aim of education (that of adapting the individual to the environment) should be given more attention later on when the period of intense development is past.
These two phases of education are always interlaced, but one or the other has prevalence according to the age of the child. Now, the period of life between the ages of three and seven years covers a period of rapid physical development. It is the time for the formation of the sense activities as related to the intellect The child in this age develops his senses. His attention is further attracted to the environment under the form of passive curiosity.
The stimuli, and not yet the reasons for things, attract his attention. This is, therefore, the time when we should methodically direct the sense stimuli, in such a way that the sensations which he receives shall develop in a rational way. This sense training will prepare the ordered foundation upon which he may build up a clear and strong mentality.
It is, besides all this, possible with the education of the senses to discover and eventually to correct defects which to-day pass unobserved in the school. Now the time comes when the defect manifests itself in an evident and irreparable inability to make use of the forces of life about him. (Such defects as deafness and near-sightedness.) This education, therefore, is physiological and prepares directly for intellectual education, perfecting the organs of sense, and the nerve-paths of projection and association.
But the other part of education, the adaptation of the individual to his environment, is indirectly touched. We prepare with our method the infancy of the humanity of our time. The men of the present civilisation are preeminently observers of their environment because they must utilise to the greatest possible extent all the riches of this environment.
The art of to-day bases itself, as in the days of the Greeks, upon observation of the truth.
The progress of positive science is based upon its observations and all its discoveries and their applications, which in the last century have so transformed our civic environment, were made by following the same line—that is, they have come through observation. We must therefore prepare the new generation for this attitude, which has become necessary in our modern civilised life. It is an indispensable means—man must be so armed if he is to continue efficaciously the work of our progress.