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Obiter Dicta - Louis Agassiz
Identifier
024967
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Obiter Dicta - Louis Agassiz
Select such subjects that your pupils cannot walk without seeing them. Train your pupils to be observers, and have them provided with the specimens about which you speak. If you can find nothing better, take a house-fly or a cricket, and let each hold a specimen and examine it as you talk.
In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Massachusetts, before a Teachers' Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.
The source of the experience
Agassiz, LouisConcepts, symbols and science items
Concepts
Symbols
Science Items
Activities and commonsteps
Commonsteps
Improving perceptionLearning - extraction
Learning - synthesis
Learning - synthesis, what can go wrong
Learning - understanding and recognition
Learning - verification