AUTOMATIC CONTRASTED WITH SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION.
The Past tyrannizes over the Present by Interposing the Stolid
Resistance of Habit. -- Habits of Thought like Habits of the Body
become Automatic. -- There is much Freedom of Speech but very little
Freedom of Thought: Habit, Tradition, and Reverence for Antiquity
forbid it. -- The Schools educate Automatically. -- A glaring Defect
of the Schools shown by Mr. John S. Clark, of Boston. -- The Automatic
Character of the Popular System of Education shown by the Quincy
(Mass.) Experiment. -- Several Intelligent Opinions to the same
Effect. -- The Public Schools as an Industrial Agency a Failure. -- A
Conclusive Evidence of the Automatic and Superficial Character of
prevailing Methods of Education in the Schools of a large City. -- The
Views of Colonel Francis W. Parker. -- Scientific Education is found
in the Kindergarten and the Manual Training School. -- “The
Cultivation of Familiarity betwixt the Mind and Things.” -- Colonel
Augustus Jacobson on the Effect of the New Education.
All reforms must encounter the stolid resistance of habit. It is not
less tyrannical because it is a negative force. It braces itself and
holds back with all its might. It is in this manner that the past
dominates the present.[E11] This automatic habit of mind is precisely
like certain automatic habits of the body which operate quite
independently of any act of volition. For example: “When we move about
in a room with the objects in which we are quite familiar, we direct our
steps so as to avoid them, without being conscious what they are or what
we are doing; we _see_ them, as we easily discover if we try to move
about in the same way with our _eyes_ shut, but we do not _perceive_
them, the mind being fully occupied with some train of thought.”[42] In
the same way the mind under certain conditions becomes an automaton,
constantly revolving old thoughts after the causes that gave rise to
them have ceased to operate. Piano-forte playing affords an excellent
illustration of this automatic action of the mind. “A pupil learning to
play the piano-forte is obliged to call to mind each note, but the
skilful player goes through no such process of conscious remembrance;
his ideas, like his movements, are automatic, and both so rapid as to
surpass the rapidity of succession of conscious ideas and
movements.”[43]
[42] “Body and Mind,” p. 22. By Henry Maudsley, M.D. New York: D.
Appleton & Co., 1883.
[43] Ibid., p. 26.
Freedom of speech and freedom of thought are catch-penny phrases. There
is much of the former, but very little of the latter. Speech is
generally the result of automatic thought rather than of ratiocination.
Independent thought is of all mental processes the most difficult and
the most rare; habit, tradition, and reverence for antiquity unite to
forbid it, and these combined influences are strengthened by the law of
heredity. The tendency to automatic action of the mind is still further
promoted by the environment of modern life. The crowding of populations
into cities, and the division and subdivision of labor in the factory
and the shop, and even in the so-called learned professions, have a
tendency to increase the dependence of the individual upon the mass of
society. And this interdependence of the units of society renders them
more and more imitative, and hence more and more automatic both mentally
and physically.
Another powerful influence contributes to the same end. The schools
educate automatically. They train the absorbing powers of the brain, but
fail to cultivate the faculties of assimilation and re-creation, and
neglect almost wholly to develop the power of expression. Mr. John S.
Clark, of Boston, has made this point of the failure of the schools to
train the brain-power of expression to its utmost, so plain that it is
here reproduced in full, as follows:
[Illustration:
Five senses.
Tongue.
Hand.
Fig. 1.]
“Studying the functions of the brain, we find that for educational
purposes it may be likened to an organism with a threefold form of
working, an organism with a power of absorption, a power of assimilation
and re-creation, and a power of expressing or giving out. The force or
character of a brain is measured entirely by its expressing power, by
what comes out of it. Examining a little closer, we find that the brain
absorbs through all the five senses, while for expressing purposes it
makes use of but two of these senses, or rather of but two organs of
these senses--the tongue and the hand. _Fig._ 1 is a simple diagram
representing a brain with the five senses placed on one side, as means
of absorbing power, while on the other side the tongue and the hand are
placed as organs of expressing power. The other function of the brain,
that of assimilation and re-creation, cannot of course be graphically
represented. It may, however, be said to be the result of the action of
the other two functions. Now, the equipping of a brain, or the healthy
education of a brain, consists in giving it expressing power through
the tongue and the hand, coextensive with the power of absorption and
the power of re-creation.
[Illustration:
Reading. }
Mathematics. }
Geography. } Five Senses.
Grammar. } Tongue.
History. } Speech.
Languages. }
Physiology. } Hand.
Literature. } Writing.
Natural History. }
Theoretical Sciences.}
Fig. 2.]
“Applying our popular schemes of education to the brain, and especially
those based on the 3-R idea of education, we find what is indicated in
_Fig._ 2, that provision has been made for greatly distending the
absorbing side of the brain, while for the expressing side, the
practical side, provision has been limited to the use of the tongue in
speech and to the hand in writing. If now we follow the result of this
brain equipment into practical life, we find that speech and writing, as
means for expressing thought, have their applications mainly in the
commercial and financial employments and the professions, and only
incidentally in the industrial and mechanical employments. With such an
inadequate and one-sided brain equipment it is not possible in any
broad, practical way to bring thought or brain-power to the service of
industry. The fact so generally admitted, that we are getting so few
intelligent artisans or mechanics from our scheme of public education,
that we turn out pupils of both sexes with a decided repugnance to
industrial labor, is an attestation to the truth of this statement. The
simple fact is that our education is not broad enough on the expressing
side of the brain, that too much attention has been given to the
absorbing side of this organ, that no adequate provisions have been
made whereby it can discharge its power in work connected with the
industries.
[Illustration:
Reading. }
Mathematics. }
Geography. } Five Senses.
Grammar. }
History. } Tongue.
Languages. } Speech.
Physiology. }
Literature. } {Writing.
Natural History. } Hand. {Drawing.
Theoretical Sciences.} {Manual Arts.
Practical Sciences. }
Fig. 3.]
“In _Fig._ 3 a remedy for this defect is indicated in the addition of
the study of graphic and æsthetic art, through drawing, and of training
in the manual arts, to the previous brain equipment. Observe where these
features come in the scheme--on the expressing side of the brain and in
the service of the hand, thus giving the brain ample power to discharge
thought in its most complete form for use or for beauty. With these
features added to the brain equipment its power of expressing thought in
all practical directions will be coextensive with its absorbing and
re-creating powers; and just as soon as the public can clearly see that
in the outcome of our public education there is no respecting of persons
or of classes, that pupils are trained for honest labor with their hands
as well as to living by their wits, are taught to produce something, to
_create values_ by the action of their brain through the work of their
hands, a much deeper interest in public education will not only be
manifested, but generous provisions for its support will also be
given.”[44]
[44] Address delivered before the Philadelphia Board of Trade and the
Franklin Institute, June 6, 1881.
The charge that the schools educate automatically rather than
rationally is of such vital importance that it should be sustained by
the best attainable proof. Strong proof is at hand in the history of the
so-called Quincy (Mass.) experiment.
In 1878 doubt of the efficiency of the schools of Norfolk County, long
indulged, culminated in action by the Association of School Committees
and Superintendents. It was insisted by certain members of the committee
that the existing methods were “about as good as human intelligence
could devise,” and by others that the people were getting “no adequate
returns for the money expended under the system in general use.” It was
resolved to institute a searching investigation, and the standard for
the measurement of the acquirements of pupils adopted was, “a reasonable
degree of ability to read, to write legibly, correctly, and
grammatically, and to deal readily with simple mathematics after about
eight years of schooling.”
The association selected Mr. George A. Walton, an experienced educator,
to make the examination of the schools of the county, and the number of
pupils examined exceeded three thousand. In their preface to Mr.
Walton’s report the gentlemen of the association say:
“Publicity, discussion, and discontent are wholesome things to apply to
school management in Massachusetts. That this is a fair sample of the
results now accomplished cannot be questioned. But though they may not
be flattering to our pride, we yet believe that they are as good as can
be obtained in any other county in Massachusetts, or, indeed, of any
other State where similar tests are applied in a similar manner. If any
school authorities elsewhere doubt the truth of this statement, let the
experiment be tried in the schools of their county.
“The questions naturally arise, What is the cause of this lamentable
ignorance? and what is the remedy? The answer to the former suggests the
reply to the latter. Too much has been attempted in the schools. There
has been a slavish adherence to text-books, and no room given for
freedom and originality of thought. Rules have been memorized, and the
children taught to recite from the text-book, while they have not had
the slightest conception of the true meaning of the subject....
“The rules and exceptions in grammar are faithfully committed to memory,
and most intricate sentences can be successfully analyzed, the phrases
separated, and the modifiers named in true grammatical style, while the
pupils who have undergone such severe training in this respect are
unable to present their own thoughts concisely or clearly, or even
_correctly_, upon paper. The _memory_ is cultivated, and the _reason_
allowed to slumber.
“In arithmetic the pupils show a readiness to solve a problem when they
are able to fit it to some rule that they have learned; but when they
are given a simple question out of the regular course, they are like a
ship at sea without rudder or compass.”
This is the severest and most sweeping criticism ever passed upon our
American common-school system, and it emanates from its friends and the
friends of universal education.
Mr. Walton says of reading, as taught in the Norfolk County schools, “As
for any systematic analysis by which the pupil learns to make a careful
and independent study of his piece, it is but little practised in the
schools even of the grammar grade;” and he declares that reading,
without comprehending the ideas of which the words are mere signs, “is
not merely useless, but dangerous, just in proportion to the facility
with which the words are called.”
Of the results of his examinations in penmanship Mr. Walton says, “Most
of the faults in the writing indicate imperfect teaching.” Of his
examinations in spelling he says that “the commonest words are
misspelled when used in sentences or composition, while words of
difficult orthography are spelled with accuracy when dictated for
spelling.” For example, he says, “The words ‘whose,’ ‘which,’ and
‘father,’ when spelled orally, were generally correct, but when written
in sentences they were frequently, in many schools, in a majority of
cases, erroneous.” No test could more clearly demonstrate the purely
mechanical character of the methods of instruction than this of a
comparison between the pupils’ oral and written spelling. The average of
excellence in spelling the three simple words “which, whose, scholar,”
of the primary grade for the whole county of Norfolk, as found by Mr.
Walton, was the exceedingly low one of 55.9, the basis being 100.
The ingenuity in bad spelling of this grade of pupils, who had been at
least four years in school, is well illustrated by the example of the
word “carriage,” written as follows: “Carage, carrage, craidge, caradg,
carege, carriag, carrige;” and of the word “sleigh,” written “saly,
slay, slaig, slaigh, slagh, slaw, sleig, sleugh, sleight, sligh, sley,
slew, slave, sleygh;” and of the word “Tuesday,” written “Tusgay,
tuestay, toesday;” and of the word “Wednesday,” written “wanesday,
wedenyday, Wedernsday, wednest, Wenday, Wendsday, wensday, wenesday,
wensdaw, wenze, Wenzie, Wendsstay, wenstday, Wesday, Whensday, winday,
Windday, Winsday,” etc.
The word “scholar” presented one hundred and sixty different erroneous
spellings; that of “depot” fifty, among which were the following:
“Deappow, deppowe, deaphow, deapohoe, teapot, doopo,” and “bepo.” An
exercise in spelling by both grades of pupils, the “primary,” composed
of pupils from eight and a half to ten and a half years old, and the
“grammar,” composed of pupils from twelve and a half to fifteen and a
half years old, showed errors of which the following are examples:
_Any_, spelled ane and enny; _along_, aloud and alon; _amongst_, amunt;
_animals_, anables; _arithmetic_, rithmes; _asked_, asted; _beautiful_,
beuful; _been_, ben, bene, and bin; _by-and-by_, bimeby; _coat_, coot,
coth, cote, goat, and coate; _Boston_, bostone; _boy_, poy, and bou;
_city_, sitty; _eggs_, ages; _custard-pie_, custed puy; _coming_, comin,
commun, gomming, and comming.
An exercise in composition developed the following specimen errors: “The
was two boys; They was two boys; How is all the boys? Things that was
good; They is not many here I know; He come to school; I see him
yesterday; He asked cyrus what he done that day; I had saw him; he had
wore a coat,” etc.
The examinations in mathematics yielded similar results to those
developed in reading, writing, spelling, and composition. Mr. Walton
says, “If instead of this [the routine method of the school] the pupil
should be compelled to deal with real things, and to find his answer by
studying the conditions of his problem, the fiction which arithmetic now
is to most pupils would become to them a reality.”[45]
[45] “The New Departure in the Common Schools of Quincy,” by Charles
F. Adams, Jr., and the “Report of Examination of Schools in Norfolk
County, Mass.,” by George A. Walton. Boston: Estes & Lauriat, 1881.
The prime difficulty is here stated. The schools deal in “fictions.” In
the language of the Norfolk County committee, “The _memory_ is
cultivated and the _reason_ allowed to slumber.” Now, if to every fact
memorized the pupil were required to apply the test of reason to analyze
it and find out its relation to other facts, and fix it with all its
relations in his mind, he would possess certain solid information of an
ascertained practical value. It is very simple. It is making the pupil
think for himself by showing him how to think for himself instead of
thinking for him. Of course this is object-teaching. In the
reading-lesson the pupil is required to know the meaning of the words of
which it is composed in order to read with correct expression. When
required to spell a word orally he is also required to write it. In the
study of arithmetic he is shown certain objects, blocks of cubical and
other forms, and required to apply the rules of the book to the
ascertainment of their contents. In grammar the analysis of the sentence
is followed by the writing of it, and the construction of other
sentences involving similar principles in the art of composition, and so
on.
This is the kindergarten system now rapidly coming into high favor as an
essential preliminary step in education. It is also the system of the
manual training school. Under this system the pupil is not merely told
that the saw is a thin, flat piece of steel with teeth used for cutting
boards and timbers; a saw is placed in his hand and he is taught to use
it: and so of all the hand and machine tools of the trades. He stands at
the forge, bends over the moulding-form, shoves the plane in the
carpenter-shop, presides at the turning-lathe, that ingenious invention
of Maudslay--an automaton truer than the human eye, more cunning and
more accurate than the human hand; executes plans for patterns and then
makes the patterns, and finally, from the faint lines he has traced on
paper, constructs a machine, breathes the breath of life (steam) into
its veins, and with it moves mountains!
In further support of the charge that the schools educate automatically,
and hence superficially, the following intelligent opinions are cited:
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., remarks that the common schools of
Massachusetts cost $4,000,000 a year; and adds, “The imitative or
memorizing faculties only are cultivated, and little or no attention is
paid to the thinking or reflective powers. Indeed it may almost be said
that a child of any originality or with individual characteristics is
looked upon as wholly out of place in a public school.... To skate is as
difficult as to write; probably more difficult. Yet in spite of hard
teaching in the one case and no teaching in the other, the boy can skate
beautifully, and he cannot write his native tongue at all.”[46]
[46] “Scientific Common-school Education.”--_Harper’s Magazine_,
November, 1880 (see note [E12] at end of chapter).
Mr. Edward Atkinson says, “We are training no American craftsmen, and
unless we devise better methods than the old and now obsolete apprentice
system, much of the perfection of our almost automatic mechanism will
have been achieved at the cost not only of the manual but also of the
mental development of our men. Our almost automatic mills and
machine-shops will become mental stupefactories.”[47]
[47] “Elementary Instruction in the Mechanic Arts.”--_Scribner’s
Monthly_, April 1881, p. 902.
Prof. Barbour, of Yale College, says, “Our schools are suffering from
congestion of the brain: too much thought and too little putting it in
practice.”
An English observer of our public schools says, “They teach apparently
for information, almost regardless of development. This system develops
no special individuality or power, forms few habits of observation,
benefits little except the memory, and herein lies its great weakness.”
The late Mr. Wendell Phillips said, “Our system stops too short, and as
a justice to boys and girls as well as to society it should see to it
that those whose life is to be one of manual labor should be better
trained for it.”
Mr. Wickersham, late Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State
of Pennsylvania, says, “It is high time that something should be done to
enable our youth to learn trades and to form industrious habits and a
taste for work.”
Dr. Runkle, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says, “Public
education should touch practical life in a larger number of points; it
should better fit all for that sphere in life in which they are destined
to find their highest happiness and well-being.”
Opinions of this character might be multiplied almost indefinitely. They
reflect the general sentiment that, as an industrial agency, the public
school is a failure; but its value as an enlightening and civilizing
agency is not therefore underestimated. It was not established as an
industrial agency; it was established as a bulwark of liberty, and nobly
did it fulfil its mission. The colonial fathers had a horror of
ignorance, and as a barrier against it they raised the public school.
But they were without industrial interests in the higher departments of
skilled labor, and without commerce in a large way. Lord Sheffield said
that the American colonies were founded with the sole view of securing
to England a monopoly of their trade, and Lord Chatham declared that
they had no right to manufacture even a nail or a horseshoe. Even after
the Revolution, in 1784, the commerce of the country was so
insignificant that eight bales of cotton shipped from South Carolina
were seized by the customs authorities of England on the ground that so
large a quantity could not have been produced in the United States!
These humble conditions no longer exist, and to object to the expansion
of the public-school system to meet the requirements of new exigencies
is to ignore the logic and march of events. The nations are running an
industrial race, and the nation that applies to labor the most thought,
the most intelligence, will rise highest in the scale of civilization,
will gain most in wealth, will most surely survive the shocks of time,
will live longest in history. In the race for industrial supremacy we
are not at the front. It is a fact to be pondered that we are exchanging
the products of unskilled for skilled labor with the nations of Europe.
In the course of a year, for example, England exports of raw material
and food only about $150,000,000 in value, while her exports of
manufactures aggregate about $850,000,000 in value. On the other hand,
our exports consist almost entirely of raw material and food, their
annual value being about $800,000,000, while of manufactures we export
only a beggarly $75,000,000 worth, and our imports of manufactures are
of the annual value of about $250,000,000. In crude, uneducated,
unskilled labor capacity, we have grown much more rapidly than in the
departments of educated, skilled labor; and in the exact ratio of this
growth of unskilled over skilled labor, we are behind the age. We are
industrially ill-balanced. We are selling brawn and buying
thought--cunning, invention, genius; exhausting our physical manhood and
impoverishing a virgin soil. We are suffering from a paucity of skilled
labor, and we hesitate to apply the needed and obviously adequate
remedy--the training of the youth of the country in the elements of the
useful arts, in the public schools.
A final and conclusive evidence of the verity of the charge that
prevailing methods of education are automatic, and hence superficial in
their character, is found in an examination test recently made in one of
the public schools in a large American city, in the department of
mathematics. The superintendent begins to distrust his own system of
abstract instruction, and resolves to test the acquirements of certain
classes of pupils ranging from ten to twelve years of age. He submits a
series of questions in number, which are promptly solved either orally
or in chalk on the black-board, showing a complete mastery of the
subject from the abstract side, or point of view. To test the practical
value of the knowledge thus exhibited the superintendent repeats his
series of questions, applying them to things. For example: He passes six
cards to a pupil, and requests that one-half of them be returned. This
question having been promptly and correctly answered by the return of
three of them, and the six cards being again placed in the hands of the
pupil, the second question is propounded, namely, “Please give me
one-third of one-half of the cards in your hand.” The pupil is puzzled;
he fumbles the cards nervously, blushes, and returns a wrong number or
becomes entirely helpless and “gives it up.” This question, or some
other question of similar general import, is submitted to each member
of the class with a like unfavorable result in eight or nine cases in a
total of ten cases. The superintendent is astonished; he is more than
astonished, he is deeply chagrined; for he knows that the kindergarten
child of six or seven years of age, with the blocks, would answer his
series of questions correctly eight or nine times in a total of ten.
It is impossible to conceive of a more striking illustration of the
prime defects of automatic education than is afforded by the foregoing
described experiment. It sustains and justifies the severe criticism of
the schools by Mr. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in his magazine article
of 1880, in the course of which he says,
“From one point of view children are regarded as automatons; from
another, as india-rubber bags; from a third, as so much raw material.
They must move in step and exactly alike. They must receive the same
mental nutriment in equal quantities and at fixed times. Its
assimilation is wholly immaterial, but the motions must be gone through
with. Finally, as raw material, they are emptied in at the primaries,
and marched out at the grammar grades--and it is well!”[48]
[48] “Scientific Common-school Education.”--_Harper’s New Monthly
Magazine_, November, 1880, p. 937.
The testimony of Col. Francis W. Parker, of the Cook County (Illinois)
Normal School, is to the same effect. He says,
“The most important work of to-day is to collect, reconcile, and apply
all the principles and methods of education that have been discovered in
the past, into one science and art of teaching. This would certainly
radically change all our school work in this country. When this is done
the ground will be made ready for new advances in the incomplete science
of education. Because a complete science has not yet been discovered is
a very poor reason for not applying what we already know. What specific
changes would the application of known mental laws, in teaching about
which all psychologists are in agreement, bring about? For it is only by
a sharp comparison of what is now done according to tradition and custom
in our schools, with that which can be done by the application of the
simplest principles of teaching, that the value of the true art of
instruction may be in some degree appreciated.
“To illustrate this it may be mentioned that little children have been
taught to read, in the past, and a great majority of them are now
taught, by a method that is utterly opposed to a mental law, about which
there can be no dispute among those who know anything of the science of
teaching. I refer to the A B C method. Nearly three hundred years ago
Comenius discovered a rule of teaching which may be said to embrace all
rules in its category--‘Things that have to be done should be learned by
doing them.’ This rule is so simple and plain that every one, except the
teachers, has adopted and used it since man has lived upon the earth. If
I am not very much mistaken, the school-master for the last fifty years
has been incessantly inventing ways of doing things in the school-room
by doing something else. We try to teach the English language by rules,
definitions, analyses, diagrams, and parsing. Before the poor innocent
child can write a single sentence correctly, we teach the painful
pronunciation of words without the grasping of thought as reading. We
vainly endeavor to give children a knowledge of number by teaching
figures, the signs of number. We cram our victim’s mind full of empty,
meaningless words, instead of inspiring and developing it by the sweet
and strong realities of thought. This futile struggle to do things by
doing something else is to-day costing the people of this country
millions and millions of hard-earned dollars; and it is much to be
feared that it will one day cost their children the blessings of free
government. This is a serious charge.
“The three hundred thousand teachers of this country are as faithful,
honest, and earnest as any other class of active workers. If, then,
these great truths in education be at the doors of our educators, why do
they not acquire and use them? The answer is not far to seek. Not one
teacher in five hundred ever makes a practical, thorough study of the
_history_ of education, to say nothing of the science.
“The tremendous projecting power of tradition stands stubbornly in the
way of progress in education. It can only be met and overcome by the
most thorough searching and indefatigable study of the child’s nature,
and of the means by which the possibilities for good in God’s greatest
creation may be realized.”[49]
[49] Letter to the author under date of April, 1883, and by him
reproduced in a communication published in the _Chicago Tribune_,
April 23, 1883.
The change from automatic to scientific education ought not to be very
difficult. It has been made in the kindergarten. It consists in
substituting things in place of signs of things. The boys should be
taught to read in school as he will be required to read; to write as he
will be required to write; and to cipher as he will be required to
cipher, when he becomes a man.
In teaching chemistry, for example, there should be a laboratory with
the necessary illustrative apparatus. In teaching geography, in addition
to the books and the globe, the form of the continent should be moulded
in sand, with coast lines, mountain ranges, rivers, canals, harbors,
cities, etc. In teaching number the pupil should have the things and
parts of things, represented by signs, in his hands. In teaching
mechanics the pupil should handle the saw, the plane, the file, the
hammer, and the chisel, and stand at the bench, the forge, and the
turning-lathe. It is in this way only that the pupil can be taught the
power of expressing, as Mr. Clark puts it, “what has been absorbed on
the receptive side.”
Mr. MacAlister illustrates the force of Mr. Clark’s diagrams in a
sentence: “We must not close our eyes to the fact that by far the larger
number of men in every civilized community are workers to whom a skilled
hand is quite as important as a well filled head.”[50] The prevailing
methods of teaching fill the head but do not provide for assimilation,
re-creation, and expression. Now to assimilate, to reduce to practical
value and put to use facts memorized, and to create, the power of
expression is an essential prerequisite; creating is expressing ideas in
concrete form. But under the old _régime_ of education only two modes of
expression are provided--speech and writing. A third mode--drawing--has
been very generally adopted. Drawing, however, is only the first step,
an incomplete step, so to speak, of expression. It is a sign, an
outline, of a thing. What we want is the thing itself. That thing can
only be produced at the forge, the bench, or the lathe; and this is
manual training in the arts.
[50] Mr. James MacAlister, Superintendent of Schools of the City of
Philadelphia, Pa., at the meeting of the American Institute of
Instruction, Saratoga, N. Y., July 13, 1882.
What manual training will do for the pupil is expressed in the following
terse paragraph by Col. Augustus Jacobson:
“The boy leaving school should carry with him mechanical, business, and
scientific training, fitting him for whatever it may become necessary
for him to do in the world. I would secure for society the advantage of
all the brain capacity that is born and all the training it can take. It
is possible and practicable to let every child of fair capacity start in
life from his school a skilled worker, with the principal tools of all
the mechanical employments, an athlete with the maximum of health
possible to him, and thoroughly at home in science and literature. The
child so trained would, when grown, be to the ordinary man of to-day
what Jay-Eye-See is to an ordinary plough-horse.”
[E11] “Fortunately the past never completely dies for man. Many may
forget it, but he always preserves it within him. For, take him at any
epoch, and he is the product, the epitome, of all the earlier epochs.
Let him look into his own soul, and he can find and distinguish these
different epochs by what each of them has left within him.”--“The
Ancient City,” p. 13. By Fustel De Coulanges. Boston: Lee & Shepard,
1882.
[E12] “In fact, memory comes from interest. What children are deeply
interested in they will never forget. A boy who can never say his
lesson by heart will remember every detail of the cricket or football
matches in which his heart really lives.”--“Educational Theories,” p.
116. By Oscar Browning, M.A. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1885.