Ebook The Education of Karl Witte

Witte's fundamental principle — that the education of a child should begin with the dawning Of the child's intelligence — came into direct collision with the accepted peda gogical policy of refraining from anything in the way of formal education until the child reached school age. By beginning too soon to teach and train a child, the prevalent theory ran, not only will the child be robbed of the joys of childhood but there will also be grave danger of seriously, perhaps irreparably, ln juring his health by overstraining his mind. It was in vain that Witte could and did point to the success of his daring experiment in the upbringing of his own child. The outcome of that experiment, in the opinion of most educational authorities, proved, not the wis dom of the course followed, but the excep tional innate ability of the child on whom the experiment was made.