St. Nicholas/Volume 32/Number 4/Childhood Reasoning/Teacher Taught
I. The Teacher Taught.
In their efforts to teach children, parents areoften surprised by the original views which the youngsters take, and by their presentation of views which, while they may be but partial, are at least correct and discriminating so far as they go.
It occurred to a father, who noticed a carpenter hammering upon the roof of a distant house, that he would give his little son (eight years old) a lesson in physics, by calling attention to the fact that the blows of the hammer could be seen before the sound made by themcould be heard, and explaining that the difference in time between the seeing of the blows and the hearing of the noise was due to the fact that light travels much faster than sound. He sought to introduce the subject by asking the boy if he understood why it was that he could see the hammer fall before he could hear the noise of the stroke. He was astonished to receive the reply: “Yes; it's because my eyes are nearer to the hammer than my ears.”