f school studies. But object lessons drawn from physical nature do
not measurably qualify us for a better appreciation of individual and
social life and action. The fundamental illustrative materials for
history are drawn from another source, from the depth of the heart and
inner experience of each person. Many words in our own school books
can be illustrated and explained by objects and activities in physical
nature, but a large part of the words in common use in our readers and
school books can be explained by no external objects. They depend for
their interpretation upon the child's own feelings, desires, joys,
griefs, etc., and upon similar phenomena observed in others.

Object lessons in this liberal sense point to the direct exercise of
the senses and intuitions in the acquisition of experience of all
sorts. They include the objects, persons, and events that we see
around us and our own experiences in ordinary life--the grass, plants,
trees, and soils; the animals, wild and tame, with their structure,
habits, and uses; the rocks, woods, hills, streams, seasons, clouds,
heat, and cold. There is also the observation of devices and
inventions; tools, machinery and their workings, the different raw and
manufactured products, with their ways of growth and transformation.
Besides these are the various kinds and dispositions of men, different
classes and races of people, with great variety of character,
occupation, and education. Their actions, modes of dress, and customs
are included. But we have many other primary and indispensable lessons
to learn from the playground, the street, from home and church, from
city and country, from travel and sight seeing, from holidays and work
days, from sickness, and healthful excursions. Even a child's own
tempers, faults, and successes are of the greatest value to himself and
to the teacher in a proper self-understanding and mastery. By object
lessons, therefore, we mean all that a child becomes conscious of
through the direct action of his senses and of his mind upon external
nature or inner experience. It is desired that a child's knowledge in
all direct experience be simple, clear, and according to the facts.
All words that he uses become only signs of the realities of his
experience. Every word stands for a potent thought in his own life
history. Of course object lessons in this rich and real sense can not
be confined to such few objects--birds, leaves, models, and s