He agreed with Arnold and Humboldt that the purpose of education was to produce well-rounded human beings with a rich mental life and an insightful understanding of the world. He did not agree with them about the humanities being the only place to start. Instead he suggested that a better foundation might lie in studying the sciences. These taught children the basics of the physical world and also gave them humanistic skills, in the form of an inquiring attitude. It taught them to observe phenomena closely and to learn actively through experiments, as opposed to taking everything from the
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