How do children learn? How are they taught? These are two fundamental questions in education. Caleb Gattegno provides a direct and lucid analysis, and concludes that much current teaching, far from feeding and developing the learning process, actually stifles it. Memory, for instance, the weakest of the mental powers available for intelligent use, is almost the only faculty to be exploited in the educational system, and holds little value in preparing a student for the future. Gattegno's answer is to show how learning and teaching can properly work together, what schools should achieve, and...

Parents love their children, but how well do they understand them? This book is a contribution to making the general public aware that children can be understood if grown-ups do what is required - that is, try to make sense of what children do with their time to change it into experience. What children do varies with their ages. The different tasks of different periods is what we shall explore in this three-part book. The first part focuses on babies, the second part on young children, the third part on adolescents. Insights into each of these stages are expanded in Gattegno's age-specific...

Originally released in 1969, Towards a Visual Culture is a remarkably relevant read for today's teachers and programmers. Although the technology has evolved, humans remain visual learners and television remains a visual medium. In this book, Gattegno provides a framework for developing effective and efficient educational programs in an optimistic, forward-thinking manner. He foresees technology able to transmit all knowledge into all homes through satellites and computers, and urges educators and programmers to take advantage of the immense opportunities therein. The media are truly...

"What is there in the life of each of us that requires our full attention at a particular age, that is vital for that age or for coming ages and cannot be postponed?" This is the question Caleb Gattegno poses in his age-specific trilogy The Universe of Babies, Of Boys and Girls, and The Adolescent and His Will. Gattegno views adolescence as the recasting of experience so that the will can express itself more truly in the rest of one's life. He uses the first four chapters to express the importance of the contribution of adolescence to human life, while the details of this contribution,...

"What is there in the life of each of us that requires our full attention at a particular age, that is vital for that age or for coming ages and cannot be postponed?" This is the question Caleb Gattegno poses in his age-related trilogy The Universe of Babies, Of Boys and Girls, and The Adolescent and His Will. In this book, Gattegno makes proposals for the study of children of elementary school age, and provides some answers to questions helpful in improving as a teacher of boys and girls in all school subjects.

"Until now, it was left to chance to produce the number of mathematicians the world needed. Now we can work deliberately and diligently at increasing their numbers . . . Each individual will be able to decide whether becoming a professional mathematician suits him or her, or whether, after tasting this intellectual nourishment, they prefer other involvements to become more permanent. Such a choice was never mentioned in the past because the gift for doing math was considered rare and not easily brought about in those who did not display it spontaneously. This volume attempts to show how at...

This book is an introduction to teaching with Words in Color, and will guide you through how to teach all the sounds and spellings found in Reading Primers R0 & R1. In the first section, you will be introduced to some basic characteristics of the approach, and given some simple activities to help get familiar with the materials. The second and third sections will take you through Reading Primers R0 & R1 - introducing appropriate teaching techniques and games along the way. The fourth section is a toolbox of teaching techniques and games for various levels of reading, which you can use during...

"Reading and writing can become as much the birthright of everyone as their speaking has always been." C. Gattegno

Gattegno wrote this book as a scientist interested in learning processes, as a student interested in the mastery of foreign languages, and as a teacher interested in providing his students with ideal learning conditions. These perspectives combined with years of research, travel, and fieldwork create a full insight into the problem of learning a foreign language. He argues that learning a language should not be about recitation and memorization, but about the natural learning processes we have used since birth. "In fact," he writes, "We can no more say that we remember our language than that...

In this chapter of the Science of Education treatise, Caleb Gattegno asserts that since learners of foreign languages are already fluent in at least one language, they hold all the skills necessary to learn another. And while babies do not learn to speak through teachers, classes, and materials, foreign-language teachers can still optimize this artificial environment to trigger the awarenesses and experiences that lead to fluency. By learning our first language, we have all gained great language expertise. This chapter discusses how one can access this expertise and put it to use in the...