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Friedrich Diesterweg: "An Educator's Little Book of Crabs" (1856)

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6. Rules Which, When Applied, Can Stunt the Development of Healthy Human Understanding in Children

1. Isolate them from nature and from free play with other children!
2. Neglect the development of the senses and the exercise of the body!
3. Ignite their fantasies from a very early age through monstrous fairy tales and fantastic legends!
4. Make them retain and repeat incomprehensible words!
5. Burden their memory with as much obscure material as possible!
6. Avoid any stimulation of their capacity for reasoned judgment!
7. Make them accustomed to never having an opinion, teach them to mistrust themselves and to seek the all-powerful judgment of the adults around them and to blindly repeat it!
8. Teach them only mechanically, and make them imitate senseless customs.
9. Put a special emphasis on the repetition of religious rules!
10. Infuse them with a belief in the high value of religious ceremonies and external actions.
11. Teach them to assess the value of other people according to external conditions, such as birth, class, money, or church affiliation. Teach them to believe in the exclusive truth of their faith and to believe that all other religions are heretical.
12. Prevent them from learning how to understand natural phenomena and instead fill them with a belief in miracles, demons, devils, and prejudices of all sorts!

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