when needful; for instance, during prayers, or while others are speaking. 10. They ought to be exercised in patience, so that they may not expect that all things should be done at their nod; from their earliest age they should gradually be taught to restrain their desires. 11. They should serve their elders with civility and readiness. This being an essential ornament of youth, they should be trained to it from their infancy. 12. From what has been said, courteousness will arise, by which they may learn to show good behavior to every one, to salute, to join hands, to bend the knee, to give thanks for little gifts, etc. 13. To avoid the appearance of rudeness or levity, let them at the same time learn gravity of deportment, so as to do all things modestly and gracefully. A child initiated in such virtues will easily, as occurred in the case of Christ, obtain for itself the favor of God and man.
8. As to sound learning, it admits of a threefold division; for we learn to know some things, to do some things, and to say some things; or rather, we learn to know, to do, and to say all things, except such as are bad.
9. A child in the first six years may begin to know, 1. Natural things,[1] provided it knows the names of the elements, fire, air, water, and earth; and learn to name rain, snow, ice, lead, iron, etc. Likewise trees and some of the
- ↑ Joseph Neef, the first to introduce Pestalozzian ideas in America, in his Plan and Method of Education says: “To unfold any faculty whatever, we must exercise it, and to exercise it we must possess means for exercising it; and these means we have in abundance. Let us but open our eyes. The whole cabinet of nature, beings and objects, animate and inanimate, obtrude themselves on us, and yet how neglected they are.”Professor Preyer, of Germany, remarks: “The extraordinary incitement which the direct observation of nature, and particularly of animate nature, gives during the whole season of childhood, nothing else can supply or make good.”
