Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1871-12-19

WHAT THE COMMON SCHOOL SHOULD
TEACH.

BY c. b. sTErsoN.
CONCLUDED FROM YESTERDAY
3-NDUsTRIAL DRAWING.
| No one study in the common school should
receive more attention than industrial draw
ing. 1t is of service to all, but touches more
directly the carpenter, machinist, millwright,
bridge builder, tinsmith, boiler-worker, cloth
manufacturer, ship-builder, sail-maker, stone-
cutter, masons, carvers, designers of all kinds
of furniture, of tableware, Of carpets, of
paper-hangings. No workman without a
knowledge of its fundamental principles can
follow the drawing which is placed in his
hands, but must be directed in all things.
Result unskilled labor and low wages. And
this result is seen wherever you look in the
State of Maine. With properly educated
workmen ships, for example, could be built
in this State for a quarter less than at pres
ent. Now the common school, beginning its
instruction with the youngest pupils in free
drawing to train the hand and eye and to de-
velope the inventive faculty, then giving the
pupils of the grammar school age one or two
years of practice with instruments in linear
work and photographic projection, should, as
it can, teach all those fundamental principles
which underlie industrial drawing Only
enough of special applications in the form of
working drawings perhaps. need be given to
illustrate the varied bearings of the principles,
just as in teaching arithmetic illustrative ap-
plications Of its principles to different kinds
Of business are given, without an attempt to
make specialties. Thus much Of industrial
drawing should at once be put into the COM
mon school; it is needed by boys and
girls alike, to the latter of whom it would, in
many ways, be of direct, practical service,
opening new avenues for employments. Up
on this the high school, which can hardly be
| ranked as a common school, so few attend it,
should make considerable advance. Even
| if we overlook its practical bearings, the dis
| cipline and mental recreation which it would
afford, makes strong appeal for drawing in
the common school, to cay nothing Of the
higher artistic taste it would tend to develope.
4-GEoGRAPHY.
Instead of the 20, 900 or 80. 900 of dry, iso.
lated, lifeless facts of the present textbooks
in geography, which we vainly attempt to
cram into the heads of the boys and girls,
1000 or 1000, unforgetably learned, would
meet all ordinary requirements in this direc-
zion. To these add few of the general laws
of nature and stop short, as you would before
a precipice. For all else depend upon the
newspaper and books of travel.
5-NArURAL SCIENCE.
SO far as to make known to all the general
characteristics of the house they live in and
the general laws of life and health, should be
taught in the common school. The people of
Maine would live longer and do more, nor
would they pay, as now, to quack doctors and
for patent medicines enough to build ten
miles Of railroad yearly. Then the common
school should teach the elements of Chemis-
try, with practical applications to the prepar.
alton of food, to cheese and butter making, to
ventilation and heating of houses, to drainage
of land (and nearly the whole State needs to
be underdrained), and to the general man
agement of soils. Chemistry, the most won
derful of all the natural sciences, is also the
most practical. No one should be ignorant of
its general principles and applications. Bot
any which deals with the forms of plants and
with the laws of their growth, that most de-
lghtful of all studies for children, and ex-
ceedingly servceable to all who cultivate
farm or garden, should also find an early
place in the common school curriculum.
Something of Animal Physiology, teaching
how to take care of animals and making
known their good points, that the farmer
may know whether he has horse worth a
hundred or thousadd dollars, should he be
admitted to the common schools, yes, thrust
into it. Instruction should also, on the prac-
tical score, be given in what n termed natural
philosophy.
Now, with these natural sciences, the
grievous mistake must not be made which
has been made with arithmetic, grammar and
geography. There must be no attempt to
teach them exhaustively. Only enough to
ground the pupils well in the elements should
be attempted. This much should be most
accurately and most thoroughly taught, which
cannot indeed be done in one or two terms,
I'm need not pOpsurna vaars No etu1v shosrIJ
run through the whole common school life as
hitherto arithmetic has. No more than this
elementary instruction in the natural sciences
will make the young men and women stick to
the farm because it will put brain into their
work and make it more pleasant and profta-
BILE.
6-ECoNoMICs-GovERN
The common school should give the. older
pupils some intelligent instruction in econom-
les. The people should understand the laws
which regulate the production and distribu-
tion of wealth. of which they are now almost
universally ignorant. The common school
should also help the voter to a clear compre-
hension of the government under which he
lives and votes Thousands of voters in our
State will never read either of the constitu-
tons under which they live, if they do not
read them in school, Some, also, of the use
full lessons of history, not merely its dry facts,
should find place in the common schools.
These should be learned rather through the
general reading of hich mention has been
made, and not only memorizing Textbook.
Nor should the historical studies of the pupils
be confined to the United States, as is usually
the case, for that makes them narrow, birot-
ed, and they leave school believing there is
nothing worthy of consideration beyond the
limits of their own country. We need to
have some of the tall feathers plucked ont of
our cap, and not more stuck in
music.
If that which affords the greatest amount of
happiness to the greatest number is the most
useful thing, according to Jeremy Bentham,
then music must be ranked as exceedingly
useful, and should be taught in the common
school. 1t sweetens social life, and 1t sweet
ems school life, promoting and not 'retarding
the progress of the pupils in their other stud
les. As a mental discipline music. when
properly taught, is of the utmost value.
Ninety and nine out of hundred, instruction
beginning at an early age, can learn to sing
Further, music can ne taught not only in the
-