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Children's Museums: The Serious Business of Wonder, Play, and Learning
Author(s) -
EDEIKEN LINDA R.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
curator: the museum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.312
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 2151-6952
pISSN - 0011-3069
DOI - 10.1111/j.2151-6952.1992.tb00731.x
Subject(s) - admiration , wonder , pity , feeling , meaning (existential) , sympathy , aesthetics , psychology , object (grammar) , curiosity , psychoanalysis , social psychology , art , philosophy , linguistics , psychotherapist
If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused—a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love—then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimiliate. Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder