SERVATION

1. Estimate the mental progress made by the child during the first five
years and compare with that made during the second five years of its
life. To do this make a list, so far as you are able, of the
acquisitions of each period. What do you conclude as to the importance
of play and freedom in early education? Why not continue this method
instead of sending the child to school?

2. Which has the better opportunity for sensory training, the city child
or the country child? For social training? For motor development through
play? It is said by specialists that country children are not as good
players as city children. Why should this be the case?

3. Observe carefully some group of children for evidences of lack of
sensory training (Interest in sensory objects, skill in observation,
etc.). For lack of motor training (Failure in motor control,
awkwardness, lack of skill in play, etc.). Do you find that general
mental ability seems to be correlated with sensory and motor ability, or
not?

4. What sensory training can be had from (1) geography, (2) agriculture,
(3) arithmetic, (4) drawing? What lines of motor training ought the
school to afford, (1) in general, (2) for the hand, (3) in the grace and
poise of carriage or bearing, (4) in any other line? Make observation
tests of these points in one or more school rooms and report the
results.

5. Describe what you think must be the type of mental life of Helen
Keller. (Read "The World I Live In," by Helen Keller.)

6. Study groups of children for signs of deficiency in brain power from
lack of nutrition. From fatigue. From worry. From lack of sleep.

CHAPTER V

HABIT

Habit is our "best friend or worst enemy." We are "walking bundles of
habits." Habit is the "fly-wheel of society," keeping men patient and
docile in the hard or disagreeable lot which some must fill. Habit is a
"cable which we cannot break." So say the wise men. Let me know your
habits of life and you have revealed your moral standards and conduct.
Let me discover your intellectual habits, and I understand your type of
mind and methods of thought. In short, our lives are largely a daily
round of activities dictated by our habits in this line or that. Most of
our movements and acts are habitual; we think as we have formed the
habit of thinking; we decide as we are in the habit of deciding; we
sleep, or eat, or speak as we have grown into the habit of doing these
things; we may even