The Portland daily press., 1872-02-02
Primary School Education.

''You would, then, if understand you,"
said /, shave the children learn English, even
in school, by reading good authors, and by
writing down their thoughts the best way
they could, without regard to rules =.
siYes.n said he, "under the guidance of
teachers who, having been taught to think
and feel themselves, know how to make the
children feel and think. How do you write
Yourself? Do you square your elbows and say,
Now I will illustrate my subject by meta
phor? or, Now / will be sublime according
to the rules of the h-to-be-dis-commend-
ed Mr.. Quackenboss? Do you keep that vast
abortion, Mr.. Goold Browns Grammar of
English Grammars,' constantly by your side,
and search painfully through his 1902 pages
to see whether by chance you may not have
violated one of his, say 40, 900 rules? think
you do no such thing. You know well enough
that the two conditions of good writing are,
first, clear thinking, and second, the command
of a copious vocabulary, gained through a
loving familiarity with good authors. Now i
would have that sort of training begin in
the primary school, just as l would have the
children's training in science begin there"
''Training in science begin in the primary
schoolr' exclaimed 1. SIS it not enough to
begin rhetoric there? You surely would not
bring in all those formidable ologies besides ?"
'Indeed l would,' said he; Zoology, Or
anthology, entomology, ichthyology, paleon-
tology, and all the rest of them. They con-
tain the very objects the Creator has provid-
cd as the stimulants of childish curiosity,
and-what is not SO often observed-they are
the main and proper subjects on which to be-
gin the exercise of the childs faculty of Ian
guage. Which would you prefer as school
composition-a boys description of his last
shooting excursion, or girls faint remin-
iscence of last Sundays sermon on the vir-
tuousness of virtue? Are you going to be
taken in by pedantic Greek names? What is
entomology but catching and examining
bugs? And can't baby catch bug, and
wonder at its curious form and ways? And
does not all science grow out of that very
wonder? What is the youthful mind curious
about-at least till we deaden it with our pre-
posterous schools-but about these very mar
wells of creation which we do our best to spoil
for him with our learned jargon and cur
grammar rules ? Why, every village school
should be an Agassiz museum in miniature.
and the children should be continually writ
ing learned memoirs upon its contents
learned to them, though not perhaps, to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
There is certainly something in what You
say" said 1; ''and suppose you would have
natural history begun in the primary school,
you would have physical and. perhaps, chem
ical science begun there too; for there seems
to be no limit to the number of studies you
would introduce into this brave primary
school of yours ?'' $1,000 : -
''Indeed would,'' said he, s'and in one
sense there is no limit, save the possible sub
jects of human 6, knowledge Children are
even philosophers and metaphysicians in their
own childish fashion, and ask questions some
times which it puzzles their elders to answer.
/ would, therefore, include philosophy among
my primary-school studies. And surely the
unspoiled minds of children are 'of imagina-
ton all compact. and first and foremost
primary study should be poetry. Our schools
ought to be represented by a series Of con-
centric circles, which should have the pri-
mary school for a centre, and then the little
human soul should take its first feeble steps
in all directions out into the vast domains of
knowledge, and no farther in one direction
than into every other.-From English in
School," by WILLIAM ATKINSON, in Har-
per's Magazine for February.
HE WILL NEVER TRY 1T AGAIN.-There
was man in Maunch Chunk. a few DAYS ago.
with patent air brake for railroad cars, for
SALE He claimed that it would stop a train
going at the highest rate of speed in half its
own length. There was certain railroad
man up there who treated this suggestion
with scorn, and said he would wager large
sums that the air-brake would not stop a
train any quicker than any other brake. So
he borrowed the e6htrvance and fixed it on
an open car on the Switch back railroad, and
went up to the top of Mount Pisgah to get
fair start. He let her come down theAinclin-
ed plain for while until she began to move
along at the rate of sixty miles an hour, and
then he suddenly placed his foot on the brake
and put it on with full power. One minute
later the eye of any solitary traveller passing
through those wilds might have observed a
car standing perfectly still on the track and
railroad man going down hill among the
blackberry bushes and underbush headfore-
most at the rate-say of forty-six miles an
hour. He was carried home on streteher,
and now that railroad man not only has per-
feet faith in the availability of the air-brake,
but he is convinced that it would be a good
thing if some man would invent machine
for taking the fatness and general demorali.
cation, as it were, out of mutilated noses.