Page 278 - The Story of My Lif

May 8, 1887.

No, I don’t want any more kindergarten materials. I used my little stock of
beads, cards and straws at first because I didn’t know what else to do; but the
need for them is past, for the present at any rate.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They
seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot
who must be taught to think.

Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less
showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his
impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a
sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks,
or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead
flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be
got rid of, before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual
experiences.

Helen is learning adjectives and adverbs as easily as she learned nouns. The idea
always precedes the word. She had signs for SMALL

and LARGE long before I came to her. If she wanted a small object and was
given a large one, she would shake her head and take up a tiny bit of the skin of
one hand between the thumb and finger of the other. If she wanted to indicate
something large, she spread the fingers of both hands as wide as she could, and
brought them together, as if to clasp a big ball. The other day I substituted the
words SMALL and LARGE for these signs, and she at once adopted the words

and discarded the signs. I can now tell her to bring me a large book or a small
plate, to go upstairs slowly, to run fast and to walk quickly. This morning she
used the conjunction AND for the first time. I told her to shut the door, and she
added, “and lock.”