The Education Of Karl Witte - Or, The Training Of The Child

H. Addington Bruce

• Publisher: Thomspon Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781443790147
• eBook ISBN: 9781447490036
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Johann Heinrich Friedrich Karl Witte (born July 1st, 1800 in Lochau (now part of Schkopau); died March 6th, 1883 in Halle) was a German jurist and Dante Alighieri scholar. He was the son of a pastor Karl Heinrich Gottfried Witte who encouraged a fairly intense program of learning. When Karl was nine, he spoke five languages and at the age of 12 became a doctor of philosophy at the University of Giessen in Germany. The book focuses on the treatment Karl received from each of his parents as a child, which focused on a combination of teaching by curiosity, intrigue, humor and sarcasm also incorporating fun learning games into everyday activities. It helped that Karl sr. was an influential and highly-regarded scholar himself in both Austria and Germany, thus, from a young age, Karl jr. was able to mingle with the sons and daughters of accomplished men & women, and, Karl sr. was able to take Karl jr. to many on-location places such as factories, mines and newspaper printing presses, which may be off limits to people of more modest means and backgrounds.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Editor’s Introduction
• I. For Whom this Book is Written
• II. Was my Son Born with Extraordinary Aptitudes?
• III. Did my Educational Work Proceed Successfully?
• IV. Is my Son’s Education Finished?
• V. Every Ordinarily Organized Child may Become a Superior Man, if He is Properly Educated
• VI. Did I Intend to Make a Precocious Scholar out of my Son?
• VII. How Came my Son to be a Precocious Scholar?
• VIII. Did I Pretend to have the Necessary Skill for Making a Scholar of my Son?
• IX. Objections to the Early Education of my Son
• X. Did my Son Profit from his Early Education?
• XI. Should Children be Left to Themselves up to their Seventh or Eighth Year?
• XII. What we did to Guard Karl against Flattery, or, at Least, to Weaken its Venom
• XIII. Karl’s Toys and the First Steps in His Mental Education
• XIV. Must Children Play Much with Other Children?
• XV. Karl’s Diet
• XVI. What we did for Karl’s Moral Education
• XVII. How Karl Learned to Read and Write
• XVIII. On the Separation of Work and Play
• XIX. Concerning Rewards
• XX. How Karl Learned the Languages
• XXI. Karl’s Education in the Sciences
• XXII. The Cultivation of Taste
• XXIII. Karl Goes to College