=Advantages of the Objective Method.=--The advantages of this method in such cases are readily manifest. Although, for instance, the pupil who knows in a general way an inch space and the numbers 144, 9, 30-1/4, 40, and 4, might be supposed to be able to organize out of his former experiences a perfect knowledge of surface measure, yet it will be found that compared with that of the pupil who has worked out the measure concretely in the school garden, the control of the former student over this knowledge will be very weak indeed. In like manner, when a student gains from a verbal description a knowledge of a plant or an animal, not only does he find it much more difficult to apply his old knowledge in interpreting the word description than he would in interpreting a concrete example, but his knowledge of the plant or animal is likely to be imperfect. Objective teaching is important, therefore, for two reasons:
1. It makes an appeal to the mind through the senses, the avenue through which the most vivid images come. Frequently several senses are brought to bear and the impressions thereby multiplied.
2. On account of his interest in objects, the young child's store of old experiences is mainly of objects and of their sensuous qualities and uses. To teach the abstract and unfamiliar through these, therefore, is an application of the law of apperception, since the object makes it easier for the child's former knowledge to be related to the presented problem.
=Limitations of Objective Method.=--It must be recognized, however, that objective teaching is only a means to a higher end. The concrete is valuable very often only as a means of grasping the abstract. The progress of humanity has ever been from the sensuous and concrete to the ideal and abstract. Not the objects themselves, but what the objects symbolize is the important thing. It would be a pedagogical mistake, then, to make instruction begin, continue, and end in the concrete. It is evident, moreover, that no progress could be made through object-teaching, unless the question and answer method is used in conjunction.
=Characteristics of the Illustrative Method.=--In many cases it is impossible or impracticable to bring the concrete object into the school-room, or to take the pupils to see it outside. In such cases, somewhat the same result may be obtained by means of some form of graphic illustration of the object, as a picture, sketch, diagram, map, model, lantern slide, etc. The graphic representation of an object may present to the eye most of the characteristics that the actual object would. For this reason pictures are being more and more used in teaching, though it is a question whether teachers make as good use of the pictures of the text-book, in geography for instance, as might be made.