volitions and ideas like warp and woof. Mind and will will be so
compactly organized that all their forces can be brought to a single
point. Each concept or purpose will call up those related to it, and
once strongly set toward its object, the soul will find itself borne
along by unexpected forces. This power of totalizing, rather than any
transcendent relation of elements, constitutes at least the practical
unity of the soul, and this unimpeded association of its elements is
true or inner freedom of will. Nothing is wanting or lost when the
powers of the soul are mobilized for a great task, and its substance
is impervious to passion. With this organization, men of really little
power accomplish wonders. Without it great minds are confused and
lost. They have only velleity or caprice. The will makes a series of
vigorous, perhaps almost convulsive, but short, inconsistent efforts.
As Jean Paul says, there is sulphur, charcoal, and saltpetre in the
soul, but powder is not made, for they never find each other. To
understand this will-plexus is preeminent among the new demands now
laid on educators.
But, although this focalizing power of acting with the whole rather
than with a part of the soul, gives independence of many external,
conventional, proximate standards of conduct, deepening our interests
in life, and securing us against disappointment by defining our
expectations, while such a sound and simple will-philosophy is proof
against considerable shock and has firmness of texture enough to bear
much responsibility, there is, of course, something deeper, without
which all our good conduct is more or less hollow. This is that better
purity established by mothers in the plastic heart, before the
superfoetation of precept is possible, or even before the "soul takes
flight in language"; it is perhaps pre-natal or hereditary. Much every
way depends on how aboriginal our goodness is, whether the will acts
with effort, as we solve an intricate problem, in solitude, or as we
say the multiplication table, which only much distraction can confuse,
or as we repeat the alphabet, which the din of battle could not
hinder. Later and earlier training should harmonize with each other
and with nature. Thrice happy he who is so wisely trained that he
comes to believe he believes what his soul deeply does believe, to say
what he feels and feel what he really does feel, and chiefly whose
express volitions square with the profounder drift of his will as the
resultant of all he has desired or wished, expected, attended to, or
striven for. When such an one comes to his moral majority by standing
for the first time upon his own careful conviction, against the
popular cry, or against his own material interests or predaceous
passions, and feels the constraint and joy of pure obligation which
comes up from this deep source, a new, original force is brought into
the world of wills. Call it inspiration, or Kant's transcendental
impulse above and outside of experience, or Spencer's deep
reverberations from a vast and mysterious past of compacted ancestral
experiences, the most concentrated, distilled and instinctive of all
psychic products, and as old as Mr. Tyndall's "fiery cloud"--the name
or even source is little. We would call it the purest, freest, most
prevailing, because most inward, will or conscience.
This free, habitual guidance by the highest and best, by conviction
with no sense of compulsion or obligation, impractical if not
dangerous ideal, for it can be actually realized only by the rarest
moral genius. For most of us, the best education is that which makes
us the best and most obedient servants. This is the way of peace and
the way of nature, for even if we seriously try to keep up a private
conscience at all, apart from feeling, faction, party or class spirit,
or even habit, which are our habitual guides, the difficulties are so
great that most hasten, more or less consciously and voluntarily, to
put themselves under authority again, serving only the smallest margin
of independence in material interests, choice of masters, etc, and
yielding to the pleasing and easy illusion that inflates the minimum
to seem the maximum of freedom, and uses the noblest ideal of history,
viz., that of pure autonomous oughtness, as a pedestal for idols of
selfishness, caprice and conceit. The trouble is in interpreting these
moral instincts, for even the authorities lack the requisite
self-knowledge in which all wisdom culminates. The moral interregnum
which the _Aufklärung_ [Enlightenment] has brought will not end till
these instincts are rightly interpreted by in intelligence. The
richest streams of thought must flow about them, the best methods must
peep and pry till their secrets are found and put into the
idea-pictures in which most men think.
This brings us, finally, to the highest and also immediately practical
method of moral education, viz., training the will by and for
intellectual work. Youth and childhood must not be subordinated as
means to maturity. Learning is more useful than knowing. It is the way
and not the goal, the work and not the product, the acquiring and not
the acquisition, that educates will and character. To teach only
results, which are so simple, without methods by which they were
obtained, which are so complex and hard, to develop the sense of
possession without the strain of activity, to teach great matters too
easily or even as play, always to wind along the lines of least
resistance into the child's mind, is imply to add another and most
enervating luxury to child-life. Only the sense and power of effort,
which made Lessing prefer the search to the possession of truth, which
trains the will in the intellectual field, which is becoming more and
more the field of its activity, counts for character and makes
instruction really educating. This makes mental work a series of acts,
or living thoughts, and not merely words. Real education, that we can
really teach, and that which is really most examinable, is what we do,
while those who acquire without effort may be extremely instructed
without being truly educated.
It is those who have been trained to put forth mental power that come
to the front later, while it is only those whose acquisitions are not
transpeciated into power who are in danger of early collapse.
It is because of this imperfect appropriation through lack of
volitional reaction that mental training is so often dangerous,
especially in its higher grades. Especially wherever good precepts are
allowed to rest peacefully beside undiscarded bad habits, moral
weakness is directly cultivated. Volitional recollection, or forcing
the mind to reproduce a train of impressions, strengthens what we may
call the mental will; while if multifarious impressions which excite
at the time are left to take their chances, at best, fragmentary
reproduction, incipient amnesia, the prelude of mental decay, may be
soon detected. Few can endure the long working over of ideas,
especially if at all fundamental, which is needful to full maturity of
mind, without grave moral danger. New standpoints and ideas require
new combinations of the mental elements, with constant risk that
during the process, what was already secured will fall back into its
lower components. Even oar immigrants suffer morally from the change
of manners and customs and ideas, and yet education menus change; the
more training the more change, as a rule, and the more danger during
the critical transition period while we oscillate between control by
old habits, or association within the old circle of thought, and by
the new insights, as a medical student often suffers from trying to
bring the regulation of his physical functions under new and imperfect
hygienic insights. Thus most especially if old questions, concerning
which we have long since ceased to trust ourselves to give reasons,
need to be reopened, there is especial danger that the new equilibrium
about which the dynamic is to be re-resolved into static power will be
established, if at all, with loss instead of with gain. Indeed, it is
a question not of schools but of civilization, whether mental
training, from the three R's to science and philosophy, shall really
make men better, as the theory of popular education assumes, and
whether the genius and talent of the few who can receive and bear it
can be brought to the full maturity of a knowledge fully facultized--a
question paramount, even in a republic, to the general education of
the many.
The illusion is that beginnings are hard. They are easy. Almost any
mind can advance a little way into almost any subject. The feeblest
youth can push on briskly in the beginning of a new subject, but he
forgets, and so does the examiner who marks him, that difficulties
increase not in arithmetical but in almost geometrical ratio as he
advances. The fact, too, that all topics are taught by all teachers
and that we have no specialized teaching in elementary branches, and
that examinations are placed in the most debilitating part of our
peculiarly debilitating spring, these help us to solve the problem
which China has solved so well, viz., how to instruct and not to
educate. A pass mark, say of fifty, should be given not for mastery of
the first half of the book, or for knowledge of half the matter in it,
but for that of three-fourths or more. Suppose one choose the easier
method of tattooing his mind by attaining the easy early stages of
proficiency in many subjects, as is possible and even encouraged in
too many of our school and college curricula, he weakens the
will-quality of his mind. Smattering is dissipation of energy. Only
great, concentrated and prolonged efforts in one direction really
train the mind, because only _they_ train the will beneath it. Many
little, heterogeneous efforts of different sorts leave the mind in a
muddle of heterogeneous impressions, and the will like a rubber band
is stretched to flaccidity around one after another bundle of objects
too large for it to clasp into unity. Here again, _in der Beschränkung
zeigt sich der Meister_ [The master shows himself in self-limitation];
all-sidedness through one-sidedness; by stalking the horse or cow out
in the spring time, till he gnaws his small allotted circle of grass
to the ground, and not by roving and cropping at will, can he be
taught that the sweetest joint is nearest the root, are convenient
symbols of will-culture in the intellectual field. Even a long cram,
if only on one subject, which brings out the relations of the parts,
or a "one-study college," as is already devised in the West, or the
combination of several subjects even in primary school grades into a
"concentration series," as devised by Ziller and Rein, the university
purpose as defined by Ziller of so combining studies that each shall
stand in the course next to that with which it is inherently closest
connected by matter and method, or the requirements of one central and
two collateral branches for the doctorate examination--all these devices
no doubt tend to give a sense of efficiency, which is one of the
deepest and proudest joys of life, in the place of a sense of
possession so often attended by the exquisite misery of conscious
weakness. The unity of almost any even ideal purpose is better than
none, if it tend to check the superficial one of learning to repeat
again or of boxing the whole compass of sciences and liberal arts, as
so many of our high schools or colleges attempt.
Finally, in the sphere of mental productivity and originality, a just
preponderance of the will-element makes men distrust new insights,
quick methods, and short cuts, and trust chiefly to the genius of
honest and sustained work, in power of which perhaps lies the greatest
intellectual difference between men. When ideas are ripe for
promulgation they have been condensed and concentrated, thought
traverses them quickly and easily--in a word, they have become
practical, and the will that waits over a new idea patiently and
silently, without anxiety, even though with a deepening sense of
responsibility, till all sides have been seen, all authorities
consulted, all its latent mental reserves heard from, is the man who
"talks with the rifle and not with the water-hose," or, in a rough
farmer's phrase, "boils his words till he can give his hearers sugar
and not sap." Several of the more important discoveries of the present
generation, which cost many weary months of toil, have been enumerated
in a score or two of lines, so that every experimenter could set up
his apparatus and get the results in a few minutes. Let us not forget
that, in most departments of mental work, the more we revise and
reconstruct our thought, the longer we inhibit its final expression,
while the oftener we return to it refreshed from other interests, the
clearer and more permeable for other minds it becomes, because the
more it tends to express itself in terms of willed action, which is
"the language of complete men."
So closely bound together are moral and religious training that a
discussion of one without the other would be incomplete. In a word,
religion is the most generic kind of culture as opposed to all systems
or departments which are one sided. All education culminates in it
because it is chief among human interests, and because it gives inner
unity to the mind, heart, and will. How now should this common element
of union be taught?
To be really effective and lasting, moral and religious training must
begin in the cradle. It was a profound remark of Froebel that _the
unconsciousness of a child is rest in God_. This need not be
understood in guy pantheistic sense. From this rest in God the
childish soul should not be abruptly or prematurely aroused. Even the
primeval stages of psychic growth are rarely so all-sided, so purely
unsolicited, spontaneous, and unprecocious, as not to be in a sense a
fall from Froebel's unconsciousness or rest in God. The sense of
touch, the mother of all the other senses, is the only one which the
child brings into the world already experienced; but by the pats,
caresses, hugs, etc., so instinctive with young mothers, varied
feelings and sentiments are communicated to the child long before it
recognizes its own body as distinct from things about it. The mother's
face and voice are the first conscious objects as the infant soul
unfolds, and she soon comes to stand in the very place of God to her
child. All the religion of which the child is capable during this by
no means brief stage of its development consists of those
sentiments--gratitude, trust, dependence, love, etc., now felt only
for her--which are later directed toward God. The less these are now
cultivated toward the mother, who is now their only fitting if not
their only possible object, the more feebly they will later be felt
toward God. This, too, adds greatly to the sacredness and the
responsibilities of motherhood. Froebel perhaps is right that thus
fundamental religious sentiments can be cultivated in the earliest
months of infancy. It is of course impossible not to seem, perhaps
even not to be, sentimental upon this theme, for the infant soul has
no other content than sentiments, and because upon these rests the
whole superstructure of religion in child or adult. The mother's
emotions, and physical and mental states, indeed, imparted and
reproduced in the infant so immediately, unconsciously, and through so
many avenues, that it is no wonder that these relations see mystic.
Whether the mother is habitually under the influence of calm and
tranquil emotions, or her temper is fluctuating or violent, or her
movements are habitually energetic or soft and caressing, or she be
regular or irregular in her ministrations to the infant in her arms,
all these characteristics and habits are registered in the primeval
language of touch upon the nervous system of the child. From this
point of view, poise and calmness, the absence of all intense annuli
and of sensations or transitions which are abrupt or sudden, and an
atmosphere of quieting influences, like everything which retards by
broadening, is in the general line of religious culture. The soul of
an infant is well compared to a seed planted in a garden. It is not
pressed or moved by the breezes which rustle the leaves overhead. The
sunlight does not fall upon it, and even dew and evening coolness
scarcely reach it; but yet there is not a breath of air or a ray of
sunshine, nor a drop of moisture to which it is responsive, and which
does not stir all its germinant forces. The child is a plant, must
live out of doors in proper season, and there must be no forcing.
Religion, then, at this important stage, at least, is naturalism pure
and simple, and religious training is the supreme art of standing out
of nature's way. So implicit is the unity of soul and body at this
formative age that care of the body is the most effective
ethico-religious culture.
Next to be considered are the sentiments which unfold under the
influence of that fresh and naive curiosity which attends the first
impressions of natural objects from which both religion and science
spring as from one common root. The awe and sublimity of a
thunderstorm, the sights and sounds of a spring morning, objects which
lead the child's thoughts to what is remote in time and space, old
trees, ruins, the rocks, and, above all, the heavenly bodies--the
utilization of these lessons is the most important task of the
religious teacher during the _kindergarten_ stage of childhood. Still
more than the undevout astronomer, the undevout child under such
influences is abnormal. In these directions the mind of the child is
as open and plastic as that of the ancient prophet to the promptings
of the inspiring Spirit. The child can recognize no essential
difference between nature and the supernatural, and the products of
mythopoeic fancy which have been spun about natural objects, and which
have lain so long and so warm about the hearts of generations and
races of men, are now the best of all nutriments for the soul. To
teach scientific rudiments only about nature, on the shallow principle
that nothing should be taught which must be unlearned, or to encourage
the child to assume the critical attitude of mind, is dwarfing the
heart and prematurely forcing the head. It has been said that country
life is religion for children at this stage. However this may be, it
is clear that natural religion is rooted in such experiences, and
precedes revealed religion in the order of growth and education,
whatever its logical order in systems of thought may be. A little
later, habits of truthfulness[3] are best cultivated by the use of the
senses in exact observation. To see a simple phenomenon in nature and
report it fully and correctly is no easy matter, but the habit of
trying to do so teaches what truthfulness is and leaves the impress of
truth upon the whole life and character. I do not hesitate to say,
therefore, that elements of science should be taught to children for
the moral effects of its influences. At the same time all truth is not
sensuous, and this training alone at this age tends to make the mind
pragmatic, dry, and insensitive or unresponsive to that other kind of
truth the value of which is not measured by its certainty so much as
by its effect upon us. We must learn to interpret the heart and our
native instincts as truthfully as we do external nature, for our
happiness in life depends quite as largely upon bringing our beliefs
into harmony with the deeper feelings of our nature as it does upon
the ability to adapt ourselves to our physical environment. Thus not
only all religious beliefs and moral acts will strengthen if they
truly express the character instead of cultivating affectation and
insincerity in opinion, word, and deed, as with mistaken pedagogic
methods they may do. This latter can be avoided only by leaving all to
naturalism and spontaneity at first, and feeding the soul only
according to its appetites and stage of growth. No religious truth
must be taught as fundamental--especially as fundamental to
morality--which can be seriously doubted or even misunderstood. Yet it
must be expected that convictions will be transformed and worked over
and over again, and only late, if at all, will an equilibrium between
the heart and the truth it clings to as finally satisfying be
attained. Hence most positive religious instruction, or public piety,
if taught at all, should be taught briefly as most serious but too
high for the child yet, or as rewards to stimulate curiosity for them
later, but sacred things should not become too familiar or be
conventionalized before they can be felt or understood.
The child's conception of God should not be personal or too familiar
_at first_, but He should appear distant and vague, inspiring awe and
reverence far more than love; in a word, as the God of nature rather
than as devoted to serviceable ministrations to the child's individual
wants. The latter should be taught to be a faithful servant rather
than a favorite of God. The inestimable pedagogic value of the
God-idea consists in that it widens the child's glimpse of the whole,
and gives the first presentment of the universality of laws, such as
are observed in its experiences and that of others, so that all things
seem comprehended under one stable system or government. The slow
realization that God's laws are not like those of parents and
teachers, evadible, suspensible, but changeless, and their penalties
sure as the laws of nature, is most important factor of moral
training. First the law, the schoolmaster, then the Gospel; first
nature, then grace, is the order of growth.
The pains or pleasures which follow many acts are immediate, while the
results that follow others are so remote or so serious that the child
must utilize the experience of others. Artificial rewards and
punishments must be cunningly devised so as to simulate and typify as
closely as possible the real natural penalty, and they must be
administered uniformly and impartially like laws of nature. As
commands are just, and as they are gradually perceived to spring from
superior wisdom, respect arises, which Kant called the bottom motive
of duty, and defined as the immediate determination of the will by
law, thwarting self-love. Here the child reverences what is not
understood as authority, and to the childish "Why?" which always
implies imperfect respect for the authority, however displeasing its
behest, the teacher or parent should always reply, "You cannot
understand why yet," unless quite sure that a convincing and
controlling insight can be given, such as shall make all future
exercise of outward authority in this particular unnecessary. From
this standpoint the great importance of the character and native
dignity of the teacher is best seen. Daily contact with some teachers
is itself all-sided ethical education for the child without a spoken
precept. Here, too, the real advantage of male over female teachers,
especially for boys, is seen in their superior physical strength,
which often, if highly estimated, gives real dignity and commands real
respect, and especially in the unquestionably greater uniformity of
their moods and their discipline.
During the first years of school life, a point of prime importance in
ethico-religious training is the education of conscience. This latter
is the most complex and perhaps the most educable of all our so-called
"faculties." A system of carefully arranged talks, with copious
illustrations from history and literature, about such topics as fair
play, slang, cronies, dress, teasing, getting mad, prompting in class,
white lies, affectation, cleanliness, order, honor, taste,
self-respect, treatment of animals, reading, vacation pursuits, etc.,
can be brought quite within the range of boy-and-girl interests by a
sympathetic and tactful teacher, and be made immediately and obviously
practical. All this is nothing more or less than conscience-building.
The old superstition that children have innate faculties of such a
finished sort that they flash up and grasp the principle of things by
a rapid sort of first "intellection," an error that made all
departments of education so trivial, assumptive and dogmatic for
centuries before Comenius, Basedow and Pestalozzi, has been banished
everywhere save from moral and religious training, where it still
persists in full force. The senses develop first, and all the higher
intuitions called by the collective name of conscience gradually and
later in life. They first take the form of sentiments without much
insight, and are hence liable to be unconscious affectation, and are
caught insensibly from the environment with the aid of inherited
predisposition, and only made more definite by such talks as the
above. But parents are prone to forget that healthful and correct
sentiments concerning matters of conduct are, at first, very feeble,
and that the sense of obligation needs the long and careful
guardianship of external authority. Just as a young medical student
with a rudimentary notion of physiology and hygiene is sometimes
disposed to undertake a more or less complete reform of his diet,
regimen, etc., to make it "scientific" in a way that an older and a
more learned physician would shrink from, so the half-insights of boys
into matters of moral regimen are far too apt, in the American
temperament, to expend, in precocious emancipation and crude attempts
at practical realization, the force which is needed to bring their
insights to maturity. Authority should be relaxed gradually,
explicitly, and provisionally over one definite department of conduct
at a time. To distinguish right and wrong in their own nature is the
highest and most complex of intellectual processes. Most men and all
children are guided only by associations of greater or less subtlety.
Perhaps the whole round of human duties might be best taught by
gathering illustrations of selfishness and tracing it in its countless
disguises and ramifications through every stage of life. Selfishness
is opposed to a sense of the infinite and is inversely as real
religion, and the study of it is not, like systematic ethics, apt to
be confused and made unpractical by conflicting theories.
The Bible, the great instrument in the education of conscience, is far
less juvenile than it is now the fashion to suppose. At the very
least, it expresses the result of the ripest human experience, the
noblest traditions of humanity. Old Testament history, even more than
most very ancient history, is distilled to an almost purely ethical
content. For centuries Scripture was withheld from the masses for the
same reason that Plato refused at first to put his thoughts into
writing, because it would be sure to be misunderstood by very many and
lead to that worst of errors and fanaticism caused by half-truths.
Children should not approach it too lightly.
The Old Testament, perhaps before or more than the New, is the Bible
for childhood. A good, protracted course of the law pedagogically
prepares the way for the apprehension of the Gospel. Then the study of
the Old Testament should begin with selected tales, told, as in the
German schools, impressively, in the teacher's language, but
objectively, and without exegetical or hortatory comment. The appeal
is directly to the understanding only at first, but the moral lesson
is brought clearly and surely within the child's reach, but not
personally applied after the manner common with us.
Probably the most important changes for the educator to study are
those which begin between the ages of twelve and sixteen and are
completed only some years later, when the young adolescent receives
from nature a new capital of energy and altruistic feeling. It is
physiological second birth, and success in life depends upon the care
and wisdom with which this new and final invoice of energy is
husbanded. These changes constitute a natural predisposition to a
change of heart, and may perhaps be called, in Kantian phrase, its
_schema_. Even from the psychophysic standpoint it is a correct
instinct which has slowly led churches to center so much of their
cultus upon regeneration. In this I, of course, only assert here the
neurophysical side, which is everywhere present, even if everywhere
subordinate to the spiritual side. As everywhere, so here, too, the
physical may be called in a sense regulative rather than constitutive.
It is therefore not surprising that statistics show that far more
conversions, proportionately, take place during the adolescent period,
which does not normally end before the age of twenty-four or five,
than during any other period of equal length. At this age most
churches confirm.
Before this age the child lives in the present, is normally selfish,
deficient in sympathy, but frank and confidential, obedient to
authority, and without affectation save the supreme affectation of
childhood, viz., assuming the words, manners, habits, etc., of those
older than itself. But now stature suddenly increases, and the power
of physical and mental endurance and effort diminishes for a time;
larynx, nose, chin change, and normal and morbid ancestral traits and
features appear. Far greater and more protracted, though unseen, are
the changes which take place in the nervous system, both in the
development of the cortex and expansion of the convolutions and the
growth of association-fibers by which the elements shoot together and
relation of things are seen, which hitherto seemed independent, to
which it seems as if for a few years the energies of growth were
chiefly directed. Hence this period is so critical and changes in
character are so rapid. No matter how confidential the relations with
the parent may have been, an important domain of the soul now declares
its independence. Confidences are shared with those of equal age and
withheld from parents, especially by boys, to an extent probably
little suspected by most parents. Education must be addressed to
freedom, which recognizes only self-made law, and spontaneity of
opinion and conduct is manifested, often in extravagant and grotesque
forms. There is now a longing for that kind of close sympathy and
friendship which makes cronies and intimates; there is a craving for
strong emotions which gives pleasure in exaggerations; and there are
nameless longings for what is far, remote, strange, which emphasizes
the self-estrangement which Hegel so well describes, and which marks
the normal rise of the presentiment of something higher than self.
Instincts of rivalry and competition now grow strong in boys, and
girls grow more conscientious and inward, and begin to feel their
music, reading, religion, painting, etc., and to realize the bearing
of these upon their future adult life. There is often a strong
instinct of devotion and self-sacrifice toward some, perhaps almost
any, object, or in almost any cause which circumstances may present.
Moodiness and perhaps a love of solitude are developed. "Growing fits"
make hard and severe labor of body and mind impossible without
dwarfing or arresting the development, by robbing of its nutrition
some part of the organism--stomach, lungs, chest, heart, back, brain,
etc.--which is peculiarly liable to disease later. It is never so hard
to tell the truth plainly and objectively and without any subjective
twist. The life of the mere individual ceases and that of person, or
better, of the race, begins. It is a period of realization, and hence
often of introspection. In healthy natures it is the golden age of
life, in which enthusiasm, sympathy, generosity, and curiosity are at
their strongest and best, and when growth is so rapid that, e.g., each
college class is conscious of a vast interval of development which
separates it from the class below; but it is also a period subject to
Wertherian crises, such as Hume, Richter, J.S. Mill, and others passed
through, and all depends on the direction given to these new forces.
The dangers of this period are great and manifest. The chief of these,
far greater even than the dangers of intemperance, is that the sexual
elements of soul and body will be developed prematurely and
disproportionately. Indeed, early maturity in this respect is itself
bad. If it occurs before other compensating and controlling powers are
unfolded, this element is hypertrophied and absorbs and dwarfs their
energy and it is then more likely to be uninstructed and to suck up
all that is vile in the environment. Far more than we realize, the
thoughts and feelings of youth center about this factor of his nature.
Quite apart, therefore, from its intrinsic value, education should
serve the purpose of preoccupation, and should divert attention from
an element of our nature the premature or excessive development of
which dwarfs every part of soul and body. Intellectual interests,
athleticism, social and esthetic tastes, should be cultivated. There
should be some change in external life. Previous routine and
drill-work must be broken through and new occupations resorted to,
that the mind may not be left idle while the hands are mechanically
employed. Attractive home-life, friendships well chosen and on a high
plane, and regular habits, should of course be cultivated. Now, too,
though the intellect is not frequently judged insane, so that
pubescent insanity is comparatively rare, the feelings, which are yet
more fundamental to mental sanity, are most often perverted, and lack
of emotional steadiness, violent and dangerous impulses, unreasonable
conduct, lack of enthusiasm and sympathy, are very commonly caused by
abnormalities here. Neurotic disturbances, such as hysteria, chorea,
and, in the opinion of some physicians, sick-headache and early
dementia are peculiarly liable to appear and become seated during this
period. In short, the previous selfhood is broken up like the
regulation copy handwriting of early school years, and a new
individual is in process of crystallization. All is solvent, plastic,
peculiarly susceptible to external influences.
Between love and religion, God and nature have wrought a strong and
indissoluble bond. Flagellations, fasts, exposure, excessive penances
of many kinds, the Hindoo cultus of quietude, and mental absorption in
vacuity and even one pedagogic motive of a cultus of the spiritual and
supernatural, e. g. in the symposium of Plato, are all designed as
palliatives and alteratives of degraded love. Change of heart before
pubescent years, there are several scientific reasons for thinking
means precocity and forcing. The age signalized by the ancient Greeks
as that at which the study of what was comprehensively called music
should begin, the age at which Roman guardianship ended, as explained
by Sir Henry Maine, at which boys are confirmed in the modern Greek,
Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal churches, and at which the child
Jesus entered the temple, is as early as any child ought consciously
to go about his heavenly Father's business. If children are instructed
in the language of these sentiments too early, the all-sided deepening
and broadening of soul and of conscience which should come with
adolescent years will be incomplete. Revival sermon which the writer
has heard preached to very young children are analogous to exhorting
them to imagine themselves married people and inculcating the duties
of that relation. It is because this precept is violated in the
intemperate haste for immediate results that we may so often hear
childish sentiments and puerile expressions so strangely mingled in
the religious experience of otherwise apparently mature adults, which
remind one of a male voice constantly modulating from manly tones into
boyish falsetto. Some one has said of very early risers that they were
apt to be conceited all the forenoon, and stupid and uninteresting all
the afternoon and evening. So, too, precocious infant Christians are
apt to be conceited and full of pious affectations all the forenoon of
life, and thereafter commonplace enough in their religious life. One
is reminded of Aristotle's theory of Catharsis, according to which the
soul was purged of strong or bad passions by listening to vivid
representations of them on the stage. So, by the forcing method we
deprecate, the soul is given just enough religious stimulus to act as
an inoculation against deeper and more serious interest later. At this
age the prescription of a series of strong feelings is very apt to
cause attention to concentrate on physical states in a way which may
culminate in the increased activity of the passional nature, or may
induce that sort of self-flirtation which is expressed in morbid love
of autobiographic confessional outpourings, or may issue in the
supreme selfishness of incipient and often unsuspected hysteria. Those
who are led to Christ normally by obeying conscience are not apt to
endanger the foundation of their moral character if they should later
chance to doubt the doctrine of verbal inspiration or some of the
miracles, or even get confused about the Trinity, because their
religious nature is not built on the sand. The art of leading young
men through college without ennobling or enlarging any of the
religious notions of childhood is anti-pedagogic and unworthy
philosophy, and is to leave men puerile in the highest department of
their nature.
At the age we have indicated, when the young man instinctively takes
the control of himself into his own hands, previous ethico-religious
training should be brought to a focus and given a personal
application, which, to be most effective, should probably, in most
cases, be according to the creed of the parent. It is a serious and
solemn epoch, and ought to be fittingly signalised. Morality now needs
religion, which cannot have affected life much before. Now duties
should be recognised as divine commands, for the strongest motives,
natural and supernatural, are needed for the regulation of the new
impulses, passions, desires, half insights, ambitions, etc., which
come to the American temperament so suddenly before the methods of
self-regulation can become established and operative. Now a deep
personal sense of purity and impurity are first possible, and indeed
inevitable, and this natural moral tension is a great opportunity to
the religious teacher. A serious sense of God within, and of
responsibilities which transcend this life as they do the adolescent's
power of comprehension; a feeling for duties deepened by a realization
and experience of their conflict such as some have thought to be the
origin of religion itself in the soul--these, too, are elements of the
"theology of the heart" revealed at this age to every serious youth,
but to the judicious emphasis and utilization of which, the teacher
should lend his consummate skill. While special lines of interest
leading to a career must be now well grounded, there must also be a
culture of the ideal and an absorption in general views and remote and
universal ends. If all that is pure and disciplining in what is
transcendent, whether to the Christian believers, the poet or the
philosopher, had even been devised only for the better regulation of
human energies set free at this age, but not yet fully defined or
realized, they would still have a most potent justification on this
ground alone. At any rate, what is often wasted in excess here, if
husbanded, ripens into philosophy, the larger love to the world, the
true and the good, in a sense not unlike that in the symposium of
Plato.
Finally, there is danger lest this change, as prescribed and
formulated by the church, be too sudden and violent, and the capital
of moral force which should last a lifetime be consumed in a brief,
convulsive effort, like the sudden running down of a watch if its
spring be broken. Piety is naturally the slowest because the most
comprehensive kind of growth. Quetelet says that the measure of the
state of civilization in a nation is the way in which it achieves its
revolutions. As it becomes truly civilized, revolutions cease to be
sudden and violent, and become gradually transitory and without abrupt
change. The same is true of that individual crisis which
psycho-physiology describes as adolescence, and of which theology
formulates a higher spiritual potency as conversion. The adolescent
period lasts ten years or more, during all of which development of
every sort is very rapid and constant, and it is, as already remarked,
intemperate haste for immediate results, of reaping without sowing,
which has made so many regard change of heart as an instantaneous
conquest rather than as a growth, and persistently to forget that
there is something of importance before and after it in healthful
religious experience.
[Footnote 1: See author's Boy Life, in Massachusetts Country Town
Forty Years Ago. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1906, vol. 13, pp.
192-207.]
[Footnote 2: Those interested in school statistics may value the
record kept by a Swabian schoolmaster named Hauberle, extending over
fifty-one years and seven months' experience as a teacher, as follows:
911,527 blows with a cane; 124,010 with a rod; 20,939 with a ruler;
136,715 with the hand; 19,295 over the mouth; 7,905 boxes on the ear;
1,115,800 snaps on the head; 22,763 nota benes with Bible, catechism,
hymnbook and grammar; 777 times boys had to kneel on peas; 613 times
on triangular blocks of wand; 5,001 had to carry a timber mare; and,
7,701 hold the rod high; the last two being punishments of his own
invention. Of the blows with the cane 800,000 were for Latin vowels,
and 76,000 of those with the rod for Bible verses and hymns. He used a
scolding vocabulary of over 3,000 terms, of which one-third were of
his own invention.]
[Footnote 3: For most recent and elaborate study of children's lies
see Zeitschrift für pädagogische Psychologie, Pathologie und Hygiene,
Juli, 1905. Jahrgang 7, Heft 3, pp. 177-205.]
* * * * *
GLOSSARY
AGAMIC. Unmarried; unmarriageable, sometimes non-sexed.
AGENIC. Lacking in reproductive power; sterile.
AMPHIMIXIS. That form of reproduction which involves the
mingling of substance from two individuals so as to effect
a mixture of hereditary characteristics. It includes the
phenomena of conjugation and fertilization among both
unicellular and multicellular organisms.
ANABOLISM. _See_ METABOLISM.
ANAMNESIC. Pertaining to or aiding recollection.
ANEMIC. Deficient in blood; bloodless.
ANTHROPOMORPHISM. The attributing of human characteristics
to natural, supernatural, or divine beings.
ANTHROPOMETRY. Science of measurement of the human body.
ARTIFACT. Any artificial product.
APHASIA. Impairment or lose of the ability to understand or
use speech.
ASSOCIATIONISM. The psychological theory which regards the
laws of association as the fundamental laws of mental action
and development.
ATAVISTIC. Pertaining to reversion through the influence of
heredity to remote ancestral characteristics.
ATAXIC. Pertaining to inability to coördinate voluntary movements;
irregular.
CALAMO-PAPYRUS. Reed papyrus or pen-paper.
CATABOLISM. _See_ METABOLISM.
CATHARSIS. Purgation or cleansing. Aristotle's esthetic theory
that little renders immune for much.
CEREBRATION. Brain action, conscious or unconscious.
CHOREA. St. Vitus's dance; a nervous disease marked by irregular
and involuntary movements of the limbs and face.
CHRESTOMATHY. A collection of extracts and choice pieces.
CHRISTENTHUM. The Christian belief; the spirit of Christianity.
COMMANDO EXERCISES. Gymnastic exercises whose order is dependent
upon the spoken command of the director.
CORTEX. The gray matter of the brain, mostly on its surface.
CORTICAL. Pertaining to the cortex.
CRANIOMETRY. The measurement of skulls.
CRYPTOGAMOUS. Having an obscure mode of fertilization; or,
of plants that do not blossom.
CULTUS. A system of religious belief and worship.
DEUTSCHENTHUM. The spirit of the German people.
DIATHESIS. A constitutional predisposition.
EPHEBIC. Pertaining to the Greek system of instruction given
to young men to fit them for citizenship; adolescent.
EPIGONI. Successors; followers who only follow.
EPISTEMOLOGY. The theory of knowledge; that branch of logic
which undertakes to explain how knowledge is possible and
to define its limitations, meaning, and worth.
EUPEPTIC. Having good digestion.
EUPHORIA. The sense of well-being; of fullness of life.
EVIRATION. Emasculation; loss of manly characteristics.
FERAL. Wild by nature; untamed; undomesticated.
FORMICARY. An artificial ants' nest.
GEMÜTH. Disposition; the entire affective soul and its habitual
state.
HEBETUDE. Dullness; stupidity.
HEDONISTIC. Relating to hedonism, that form of Greek philosophy
which taught that pleasure is the chief end of
existence.
HETAERA. A Greek courtesan. This class was often highly
trained in music and social art, and represented the highest
grade of culture among Greek women.
HETEROGENY. (1) The spontaneous generation of animals and
vegetables, low in the scale of organization, from inorganic
elements. (2) That kind of generation in which the parent,
whether plant or animal, produces offspring differing in
structure or habit from itself, but in which after one or
more generations the original form reappears.
HETERONOMOUS. Having a different name.
HOROLOGY. The science of measuring time and of constructing
instruments for that purpose.
HYGEIA. The Greek goddess of health; health.
HYPERMETHODIC. Methodic to excess; overmethodic.
HYPERTROPHY. Excessive growth.
INDISCERPTIBLE. Incapable of being destroyed by separation of
parts.
INHIBITION. Interference with the normal result of a nervous
excitement by an opposing force.
IRRADIATION. The diffusion of nervous stimuli out of the path of
normal discharge which, as a result of the excitation of a
peripheral end organ may excite other central organs than
those directly connected with it.
KINESOLOGICAL. Pertaining to the science of tests and
measurements of bodily strength.
KINESOMETER. An instrument for measuring muscular strength.
MEDULLATION. The investment of nerve fibers with a protective
covering or medullary sheath, consisting of white, fat-like
matter.
MERISTIC. Pertaining to the levels or spinal and cerebral
segments of the body.
METABOLISM. The act or process by which, on the one hand, dead
food is built up into living matter--anabolism, and by
which, on the other, the living matter is broken down into
simpler products within a cell or organism--catabolism.
METAMORPHOSIS. Change of form or structure; transformation.
METEMPSYCHOSIS. The doctrine of the transmigration of the
soul from one body to another.
MONOPHRASTIC. Pertaining to or consisting of a single phrase.
MONOTECHNIC. Pertaining to a single art or craft.
MORPHOLOGY. The science of form and structure of plants and
animals without regard to function.
MYOLOGY. The scientific knowledge of the muscular system.
MYTHOPOEIC. Producing or having a tendency to produce myths.
NOETIC. Of, pertaining to, or conceived by, mind.
NUANCE. Slight shade; difference; distinction; degree.
ORTHOGENIC. Pertaining to right beginning and development.
ORTHOPEDIC. Relating to the art of curing deformities.
OSSUARY. A depository of dry bones.
PALEOPSYCHIC. Pertaining to the antiquity of the soul.
PANTHEISTIC. Relating to that doctrine which holds that the
entire phenomenal universe, including man and nature, is
the ever-changing manifestation of God, who rises to
self-consciousness and personality only in man.
PATRISTICS. That department of study occupied with the
doctrines and writings of the fathers of the Christian Church.
PHOBIA. Excessive or morbid fear of anything.
PHYLETICALLY. In accordance with the phylum or race; racially.
PHYLETIC. Pertaining to a race or clan.
PHYLOGENY. The history of the evolution of a species or group;
tribal history; ancestral development as opposed to ontogeny
or the development of the individual.
PHYLUM. A term introduced by Haeckel to designate the great
branches of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Each phylum
may include several classes.
PICKELHAUBE. The spiked helmet of the German army.
PLANKTON. Sea animals and plants collectively; distinguished
from coast or bottom forms and floating in a great mass.
POLYGAMIC (LOVE). Pertaining to the habit of having more than
one mate of the opposite sex.
POLYPHRASTIC. Having many phrases; pertaining to rambling,
incoherent speech.
POST-SIMIAN. Pertaining to an age later than that in which
simian or monkey-like forms prevailed.
PRENUBILE. Pertaining to the age before sexual maturity or
marriageability is reached.
PRIE DIEU. A praying desk.
PROPEDEUTIC. Preliminary; introductory.
PROPHYLACTIC. Any medicine or measure efficacious in preventing
disease.
PSEUDOPHOBIAC. Pertaining to a morbid condition in which the
subject is continually in fear of having said something not
strictly true.
PSYCHOGENESIS. The origin and development of soul.
PSYCHONOMIC. Pertaining to the laws of mind.
PSYCHOSIS. Mental constitution or condition; any change in
consciousness, especially if abnormal.
PUBERTY. The age of sexual maturity.
PUBESCENT. Relating to the dawning of puberty.
PYGMOID. Of pygmy size and form.
RABULIST. A chronic wrangler; one who argues about everything.
SCHEMA. A synopsis; a summary. In the Kantian sense, a
general type.
SCHEMATISM. An outline of any systematic arrangement; an
outline.
SUPERFOETATION. A second conception some time after a prior
one, by which two foetuses of different age exist together
in the same female. Often used figuratively.
TEMIBILITY. (From Italian _temibile_, to be feared.) The principle
of adjustment of penalty to crime in just that degree necessary
to prevent a repetition of the criminal act.
TIC. A nervous affection of the muscles; a twitching.
TRANSCENDENTAL. In the Kantian system having an _a priori_
character, transcending experience, presupposed in and
necessary to experience.
TRAUMATA. Wounds.
TRAUMATISM. A wound; any morbid condition produced by
wounds or other external violence.
VERBIGERATION. The continual utterance of certain words or
phrases at short intervals, without reference to their meaning,
as seen in insane _Gedankenflucht_ or rapid flight of
thought.
INDEX
* * * * *
Abstract words, need of
Accessory and fundamental movement
Accuracy of memory
overdone
Activity of children, motor
Adolescence
biography and literature of
characterized
Agriculture
Alternations of physical and psychic states
Altruism of country children
of woman, cutlet for
Amphimixis, psychic, basis of
Anger
Anthropometry and ideal of gymnastics
Arboreal life and the hand
Art study
Arts and crafts movement
Associations devised or guided by adults
Astronomy
Athletic festivals in Greece
Athletics as a conversation topic
dangers and defects of
records in
Attention
fostered by _commando_ exercises
rhythm in
spontaneous
Authority and adolescence
Autobiographies of boyhood
Automatisms
motor, causes and kinds of
control and serialization of
danger of premature control of
desirable
Bachelor women
Basal muscles, development of
Basal powers, development of
Bathing
Beauty, age of feminine
Belief, habit and muscle determining
Bible, the
influence of, in adolescence
methods of teaching
study of, for girls
study of, in German method of will training
study of, order in
study of, postponed
study of, preparation for
Biography and adolescence
Blood vessels, expansion at puberty
Blushing, characteristic of puberty
Body training, Greek
Botany
Boxing
Boys
age of little affection in
dangers of coeducation for
differences between, and girls
latitude in conduct and studies of, before puberty
puberty in, characteristics of
Brain action, unity in
Bullying
Bushido
Cakewalk
Castration, functional in women
Catharsis, Aristotle's theory of
Character and muscles
Children
faults and crimes of
motor activity of
motor defects of
selfishness of
Chivalry, medieval
Chorea
Christianity, muscular
Chums and cronies
Church, feminity in the
City children vs. country children
Civilized men, savages physically superior to
Climbing
hill
muscles, age for exercise of
Coeducation, dangers in
College
coeducation in
English requirements of
woman's ideal school and
Combat, personal, as exercise
_Commando_ exercises
restricted for girls
Concentration
Concreteness in modern language study, criticized
Conduct
mechanized
of Italian schoolboys tabulated
weather and
Confessionalism
of young women
passional inducement to
Conflict, _see_ Combat
Control
nervous, through dancing
of anger
of brute instincts
of children's movements
Conversation, athletics in
degeneration in, causes of
Conversion
Coördination loosened at adolescence
inherited tendencies of muscular
Corporal punishment
Country children vs. city children
Crime, juvenile
causes of
education and
reading and
Cruelty, a juvenile fault
Culture heroes
Dancing
Deadly sins, the seven, vs. modern juvenile faults
Debate and will-training
Doll curve
Domesticity
Dramatic instinct of puberty
Drawing, curve of stages of
Dueling
Education
art in
crime and
industrial
intellectual
manual
moral and religious
of boys
of girls
physical
Effort, as a developing force
Emotions
dancing completest language of the
religion directed to
Endurance
Energy and laziness
English
language and literature, pedagogy of
pedagogic degeneration in, causes of
requirements of college
sense language, dangers of
_Ennui_
Erect position and true life
Ethics, study of, criticized
Ethical judgments of children
Euphoria and exercise
Evolution, movement as a measure of
Exercise
health and
measurements and
music and
nascent periods and
rhythm and
Farm work
Fatigue
at puberty
chores and
not a cause for punishment
play and
restlessness expressive of
result of labor with defective psychic impulsion
rhythm of activity and
will-culture and
Faults of children
Favorite sounds and words
Fecundity of college women
Femininity in the church
in the school and college
Feminists
Fighting
Flogging
Foreign languages, dangers of
France, religious training in
Friendships of adolescence
Fundamental and accessory
Future life, as a school teaching
Games
groups
Panhellenic
Gangs, organized juvenile
Genius, early development of
Germany, will-training in
Girl graduates
aversion to marriage of
fecundity of
sterility of
Girls
and boys, differences between
coeducation for, dangers of
education of
education of, humanistic
education of, manners in
education of, more difficult than of boys
education of, nature in
education of, regularity in
education of, religion in
ideal school and curriculum for
overdrawing their energy
Grammar, place of
Greece, athletic festivals in
Greek body training
Group games
Growth
at puberty
gymnastics and its effect on
of muscle structure and function, measure of
periods
rhythmic
Gymnastics
effect on growth, its
ideal of, and anthropometry
ideals, its four unharmonized, and
military ideals and
nascent periods and
patriotism and
proportion and measurement for, criticized
Swedish
Habits and muscle
Hand and arboreal life
Health, exercise and
of girls
Heredity, a factor in development
High School, the coeducation in
language study and
Hill-climbing
Historic interest, growth of
Home, restraint of, detrimental
Honor, among hoodlums
in sports
Hoodlums
Hysteria
Imagination, at puberty
of children
play and
Individuality, growth of, at puberty
Industrial education
Industry and movement
Inhibition
Intellect, adolescence in
Intemperance
Knightly ideas of youth
Knowing and doing
Language, concreteness in, degeneration through
dangers of, through eye and hand
precision curve of
_vs_. literature
Latin, danger of
Laughter
Laziness and energy
Lies
Literary men, youth of
women, youth of
Literature and adolescence
language _vs_.
Machinery and movement
Mammae, loss of function of
Manners
in girls' education
Manual training
defects and criticisms of
difficulties of
Marriage, dangers in delay of
influenced by coeducation
influenced by college training
Mastery in art-craft, equipment for
Maternity, dangers of deferred
Measurements and exercise
Memory, accuracy, age, and kinds of
sex curve of types of
Military drill
ideals and gymnastics
Mind and motility
Money sense
Monthly period and Sabbath
Motherhood, training for
Motor, activity, primitive
automatisms
defects of children
defects, general
economies
powers, general growth of
precocity
psychoses, muscles and
recaptulation
regularity
Movement and industry
Movements, passive
precocity of
Muscle tension and thought
Muscles, per cent by weight of body
character and
motor psychoses and
small, and thought
will and
Muscular Christianity
Music and exercise
Myths, study of
Nascent periods and exercises
Nature in girls' education
Obedience
Panhellenic games
Passive movements
Patriotism and gymnastics
Peace, man's normal state
Periodicity in growth
in women
Philology, dangers of
Plasticity of growth at puberty
Play
course of study
imagination and
prehistoric activity and
problem
sex and
stages and ages of
work and
Plays and games, codification of
Precocity, motor
in the motor sphere
Predatory organizations
Primitive motor activity
Punishments
in school, causes of
Reading age
crime and
curve
Reason, development of
Recapitulation and motor heredity
Records in athletics
Regularity in education of girls
Religious training, age for
for girls
in Europe
premature
two methods of
Retardation as a means of broadening
Revivalists
Rhythm, exercise and
in primitive activities
of work and rest
Savages physically superior to civilized men
School, language study in
need of enthusiasm in
punishments in, causes of
reading in
Scientific men, youth of
Sedentary life
Selfishness of children
Sex, play and
sports and
Slang curve
value of
Sleep, in education of girls
Sloyd, origin, aims, criticism of
Social activities
organizations of youth
Solitude
Sounds, favorite, and words
Sports, values of different
codification of
sexual influence in
team work in
Spurtiness
Sterility of girl graduates
Story-telling, interest in
Struggle-for-lifeurs
Students' associations
Stuttering and stammering
Swedish gymnastics
Swimming
Talent, early development of
Teachers, aversions to
Team spirit
Technical courses, need of
Telegraphic skill
Temibility
Theft, juvenile
Thought and muscle tension
Transitory nature of youthful experiences
Tree life and erect posture
Truancy
Truth-telling
Turner movement
Unmarried women, dangers to
Vagabondage
Vagrancy
Virility in the Church
Weather and conduct
Will, muscles and
training
Womanly, the eternal
Women, bachelors
dangers to, in not marrying
education of, ideal
young, confessionalism of
Work at its best, play
play and
rest and, rhythm of
Wrestling
Young Men's Christian Association
* * * * *
INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES.
* * * * *
AN IDEAL SCHOOL; OR, LOOKING FORWARD.
By Preston W. Search, Honorary Fellow in Clark University. With an
Introduction by Pres. G. Stanley Hall. Vol. 52. 12mo. Cloth, $1.20
net.
"I am not concerned that the things presented in this little
constructive endeavor will not find bodily incorporation in schools;
for it is cross-fertilization and not grafting that has given us our
richest varieties of fruits and flowers. This work is an attempt at
spirit, not letter; at principle, not method."--_From the Author's
Preface_.
"A book I wish I could have written myself; and I can think of no
single educational volume in the world-wide range of literature in
this field that I believe so well calculated to do so much good at the
present time, and which I could so heartily advise every teacher in
the land, of whatever grade, to read and ponder."--_Pres. G. Stanley
Hall, Clark University_.
"It is to my mind the most stimulating book that has appeared for a
long time. The conception here set forth of the function of the school
is, I believe, the broadest and best that has been formulated. The
chapter on Illustrative Methods is worth more than all the books on
'Method' that I know of. The diagrams and tables are very convincing.
I am satisfied that the author has given us an epoch-making
book."--_Henry H. Goddard, Ph.D., State Normal School, West Chester,
Pa_.
"I received a copy of 'An Ideal School,' and I am satisfied that I
made no mistake when I, with the other two members of the book
committee, recommended the book to the 310 teachers in our
county."--_J.G. Dundore, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania_.
"Certainly one of the most notable books on education published in
many years"--_P.P. Claxton, Editor Atlantic Educational Journal_.
"You have done the cause of real education an important service. This
book is, in my opinion, one of the most useful in the International
Education Series."--_Albert Leonard, Editor of the Journals of
Pedagogy_.
* * * * *
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
DICKENS AS AN EDUCATOR.
By JAMES I. HUGHES, Inspector of Schools, Toronto. Vol. 49. 12mo.
Cloth, $1.50.
ADOPTED BY SEVERAL STATE TEACHERS' READING CIRCLES.
All teachers have read Dickens's novels with pleasure. Probably few,
however have presumably thought definitely of him as a great
educational reformer. But Inspector Hughes demonstrates that such is
his just title. William T. Harris says of "Dickens as an Educator":
"This book is sufficient to establish the claim for Dickens as an
educational reformer. He has done more than any one else to secure for
the child considerate treatment of his tender age. Dickens stands
apart and alone as one of the most potent influences of social reform
in the nineteenth century, and therefore deserves to be read and
studied by all who have to do with schools, and by all parents
everywhere in our day and generation." Professor Hughes asserts that
"Dickens was the most profound exponent of the kindergarten and the
most comprehensive student of childhood that England has yet
produced." The book brings into connected form, under proper headings,
the educational principles of this most sympathetic friend of
children.
"Mr. James L. Hughes has just published a book that will rank as one
of the finest appreciations of Dickens ever written."--_Colorado
School Journal._
"Mr. Hughes has brought together in an interesting and most effective
manner the chief teachings of Dickens on educational subjects. His
extracts make the reader feel again the reality of Dickens's
descriptions and the power of the appeal that he made for a saner,
kindlier, more inspiring pedagogy, and thus became, through his
immense vogue, one of the chief instrumentalities working for the new
education."--_Wisconsin Journal of Education._