On Principles 9 & 10: The Mind Episode

Homeschooling Outside the Box

Principle 9 & 10: How We Make Use of Mind

“We hold that the child’s mind is no mere sac to hold ideas but is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a ‘spiritual organism’ with an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet with which it is prepared to deal and what it is able to digest and assimilate as the body does food-stuffs.

“Such a doctrine as the Herbartian, that the mind is a receptacle, lays the stress of education, the preparation of food in enticing morsels, duly ordered, upon the teacher. Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching but little knowledge; the teacher’s axiom being ‘what a child learns matters less than how he learns it.’”

Reference: Volume 6, Chapter 7

Charlotte combines these two principles in one chapter and it’s pretty impressive that she felt so strongly against his approach that she calls out one particular educational guru of her day in her actual principles. So who was this guy?