Elaboration 56

The knowledge required for the first question is so absolutely simple that it shows up clearly. All that one has to know is that New-Zealand is on the Southern hemisphere, that when the (full) moon is low, the sun (in daytime) must be high (summer). The simplest of children can do the reasoning with an absolute minimum of knowledge about things it can see almost everyday and night in the sky. True, we demand them to be taught astronomy sometimes, but then, seeing the compulsion, the child will lose all interesse when the examination is over. At a so-called laboratory for psychology, I once was told to be stupid to read Tacitus, because that was what the man had to do his exam in. He had been robbed of the joys of Tacitus, Herodotus, Apuleius, Hesiod, etc. by 'having' to translate parts of them. The socalled classical upbringing even has the opposite effect of what its purpose should be. It only functions for growing an aversion for classical wisdom. The child should not be forced to study Greek and Latin, instead it should be made interested in the (often perfect) English translations of the wise (see Joan and Peter (Wells) ). True, extra languages, when made fluent (thinking in them), add even so many 'intelligences' to one's capacities, but then one should rather take living languages that, preferably, are useful and very different qua logic. One can take the second world-language Spanish, or, a very, very different but logical language like Turkish. When a teacher has taken control over a child's attention, time, and efforts, he is held to use this as a grown-up, integer man. Except for the case that the pupil wants to career in a dead language like Greek, Latin or Sanskrit, his efforts should be of use to him, not in creating a lifelong aversion for excellent wisdom because these sages wrote in inanimate language. The child should love what is does, what it has to do (see Spencer, Wells, etc.).