UNCLE ROBERT'S VISIT

BY FRANCIS W. PARKER AND NELLIE LATHROP HELM




PREFACE BY THE EDITOR OF THE HOME-READING BOOKS.


The publishers take pleasure in offering to the public, in their
Home-Reading Series, some books relating to the farm and other aspects
of country life as the center of interest, written by Colonel Francis W.
Parker, the President of the famous Cook County Normal School, in
Chicago. For many years the teachers of the common schools of the
country have been benefited by the inventions of Colonel Parker in the
way of methods of teaching in the schoolroom. His enthusiasm has led him
to consider the best means of arousing the interest of the child and of
promoting his self-activity for reasonable purposes.

The Pestalozzian movement in the history of education is justly famed
for its effort to connect in a proper manner the daily experience of the
child with the school course of study. The branches of learning
taught to the child by the schoolmaster are necessarily dry and
juiceless if they are not thus brought into relation with the child's
world of experience. Almost all of the school reforms that have been
proposed in the past one hundred years have moved in this line. The
effort to seize upon the child's interest and make it the agency for
progress has formed the essential feature in each. In this reform
movement Colonel Parker has made himself one of the chief influences.