The Gestalt theorists had shown experimentally that even the most elementary experience is always structured, the most basic structure being that of the figure/ground.
Note that this version of atomism differs from the atomistic positivism about the form of elementary experience that Carnap attributed to Mach, in contrast with his own, scientifically updated and preferred Gestalt-doctrine of a unified field of experience at a given time.
In the Aufbau the construction of matter from "elementary experiences", and later Nelson Goodman (1951) continued the project.
But this meant that analysis understood in the decompositional sense could not yield these qualities, precisely because they were not seen as constituents of the elementary experiences (1928, §68).
In this book Carnap investigates the example of a world built up from primitive temporal parts of the totality of experiences of a subject (the so-called "elementary experiences" or just "erlebs") and thus faces the problem of abstraction: how can qualities, properties and their objects in the world be abstracted from our phenomenal experiences.
Thus our elementary experiences of time confront us with a paradox: "On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise" ("Narrated Time," Philosophy Today 29 19855): 263).
Retrospective reports on bullying from adults and adolescents may have reflected high school experiences rather than elementary school experiences.
And as a result, all these children may have contracted it once or twice their entire elementary school experience.
In the decades before the Great Verbal Decline, a content-rich elementary school experience evolved into a content-light, skills-based, test-centered approach.
In fact, a child's preschool and early elementary school experience is crucial to healthy mental, emotional and physical growth and adjustment, and teachers play a major part in that experience.
"If they don't learn now how to initiate a conversation, how to cooperate, how to be a good friend, then I think their elementary school experience will have failed them," he said.
