From Childhood To

Adolescence.
Ch. 1-5

“My vision of the future is no longer of people taking exams

and proceeding on that certification from the secondary
school to the university, but of individuals passing from one
stage of independence to a higher, by means of their own
activity, through their own effort of will, which constitutes the
inner evolution of the individual.”
 Chapter 1:
The Successive Levels of
Education

❖ The child is moving from a

sensorial learner to a social
explorer.
❖ Changes in the child mean
the child has different needs.
The child having different
needs mean we have to adjust
how we teach.
Planes of development (with subdivisions):
❖ First two years/ years from 3 to 5/ 6th and 7th years
• (detailed in The Discovery of Child and The Secret of Childhood)
❖ Physical and psychic changes- Losing baby teeth, stronger and slimmer, less gentle and accommodating
❖ Seven to twelve
❖ Twelve to eighteen
❖ Eighteen to twenty-four
 Chapter 2:
Metamorphoses

❖ First period engaged in “exercises of practical life”

❖ Child stretches limits to win independence through patience,
exactness, and repetition
❖ Child needs to classify and absorb exterior world by means of senses
❖ Passage from sensorial to abstract
❖ IT IS the ADULT’s responsibility to assist child’s development by
creating environment adapted to needs
❖ Teacher MUST be aware of own limitations
❖ With small child “count his words”
❖ With older child “say what is true” (not all details)
❖ School is a place to express their true nature and
not be suppressed.
❖ School should be “preparation for life”, not just
a place to deliver education
❖ Child’s need to escape closed environment with
passage to abstraction and birth of moral sense
❖ Experience with money exchange in our society
is labeled as a necessity
❖ Returning toward intellectual and moral sides of
life. Good vs. Evil. The concept of justice is
born, with the understanding of the relationship
between ones actions and the needs of others,
which awakens conscience.
❖ Distributive justice- equal rewards and
punishments for all vs individual rights and
development
 Chapter 3:
The Moral Characteristics
of the Child from 7-12 Years

3 Characteristics

1. The need to escape the closed environment

2. The passage of the mind to the abstract

3. The birth of the moral sense

- Culture and experience

- Introduction to moral relationships

- Awakening the Conscience

- Internalizing morals gives child sense of dignity

- Possibility of the child being under the

command of their own conscience
 Chapter 4:
The Needs of the Child
from 7-12 years.
New point of view = How and why, Cause and
effect.
- Importance of guiding to their own
independence.
- The child has a need to be mobile which
requires preparation. Outings are a
practical necessity to experience and
awakening of the conscience.
(ex. Swimming, packing for a picnic, compass
points, weather prediction, position of the sun.
animal tracks)
Outings → Experience → Conscience
 Chapter 5:
The Passage to Abstraction—The Role of the Imagination , or
“Going Out,” the key to culture
Going out = Bringing the world itself to the children.

P 12 “In teaching him the necessity of preparation, we

oblige him to reflect.” First acquire the background
knowledge before “going-out”.

Seeing real things rather than a representation of things.

Studying reality in details gives us keys to Imagination.

(greater concepts of the world)

Contact with real things brings a real quantity of knowledge

and new intellectual interests arrive.

No image or picture can replace the sight of the real thing.

The teacher must both love the child and love and
understand the universe.

You must give him the world in order to appeal to his soul.
The role of education is to interest the child profoundly in an external
activity to which he will give all his potential. p11

“ W h e n a c h i l d ’s i n t e r e s t i s a r o u s e d o n t h e b a s i s
o f r e a l i t y, t h e d e s i r e t o k n o w m o r e o n t h e s u b j e c t
is born at the same time.” p21
 What needs have we observed in children that
would require different methods of teaching?

What are some concrete examples of using a

c h i l d ’s d e v e l o p m e n t a l s t a g e a s a g u i d e ?