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John Gregory imparts to us the art of teaching as seven laws. He presents these seven laws in varying forms so they can be understood clearly and neatly, taking hold in the mind.
Below is an excerpt from The Seven Laws Of Teaching.
Hermann Krusi, one of the most sagacious of teachers because one of the most sympathetic students of childhood, said: "Every child that I have ever observed, during all my life, has passed through certain remarkable questioning periods which seem to originate from his inner being. After each had passed through the early time of lisping and stammering, into that of speaking, and had come to the questioning period, he repeated at every new phenomenon the question, 'What is that?' If for answer he received the name of a thing, it completely satisfied him; he wished to know no more. After a number of months, a second state made its appearance, in which the child followed its first question with a second: 'What is there in it?' After some months more, there came of itself the third question: 'Who made it?' and lastly, the fourth: 'What do they do with it ?' These questions had much interest for me, and I spent much reflection upon them. In the end it became clear to me that the child had struck out the right method for developing its thinking faculties. In the first question, 'What is that?' he was trying to get a consciousness of the thing lying before him. By the second, 'What is there in it?' he was trying to perceive and understand its interior, and its general and special, marks. The third, 'Who made it?' pointed toward the origin and creation of the thing; and the fourth, 'What do they do with it?' evidently points at the use and design of the thing. Thus this series of questions seemed to me to include in itself the complete system of mental training. That this originated with the child is not only no objection to it, but is a strong indication that the laws of thought are within the nature of the child, in their simplest and most ennobling form." Krusi's questions belong chiefly to the first period of growth and education. In the second and third periods other questions follow.