The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-09-03


We alluded briefly yesterday to the reopen
ing of our city public schools but as the gen.
eral educational new year is near at hand the
subject is deserving of more extended and
earnest reference, and more particularly on
some vital points which appear to have been
systematically ignored. The school and col
lege systems of the present day demand at the
hands Of their managers many reforms which
the public press may indicate and urge, while
leaving to the more practical teachers the de-
tails of their execution Despite the strong
hold education has obtained upon the Ameri-
can mind, SO that the schooling OF his children
is enforced upon On American citizen by
moral compulsion more effective than that OF
legal enactment, little concern is manifested
as to the modes of education and the ends it
should keep ever in view.
The university curriculum of the present
day is a kind of anachronism, which has been
moulded in The English system of the last
century, when the student was domicied in the
university for a period, varying with his
means, of from four to ten years, and had
abundant leisure to assimilate and digest the
large mass of learning spread before him. The
modern university aims to cram its students,
in half the time, with double the amount of
mental pabulum; and the inevitable result is
an annual discharge of graduates whose men,
tai powers, instead of being developed, are
strained beyond recuperation. What we want
in our colleges and public schools is not the
mass of knowledge impaired, but the intel
lectual gymnastics which draw out the think
ing powers and whet them for ife-work. Our
teachers and scientists have always with char
acteristic esprit de corps resisted and resented
this idea, and call it unitarian, and shudder
when fitting the scholar for life duty is dis
cussed as the end of their vocation. There
are certain tools and instruments Of all intel
lectual labor which every boy or girl must
possess and know how to use before indie
pendent exertion and progress are possible,
and our free schools are ordained and sup
ported to furnish this elementary outfit of the
young citizen. The cause of true education is
not whit concerned in the discussion which
has so long ragged in collegiate circles whether
science or classic and other literature is to be
study; for the Intellectual development which
would be furnished from either or any other
study is so infinitely more important than any
intellectual acquisition of knowledge that the
mere quality of the latter may be regarded as
q secondary matter. Once train a boy to be a
mental athlete, capable of original research into
the phenomena of nature, and you have made
him the possessor of q power with which he
can mine the richest and most varied strata of
human lore and thread his way, Faraday-ike,
amid the most intricate and painless fields OF
the sensible and sub-sensible world. 1t is
true, as Milton tells us,
Fame Is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
To scorn delights and live laboripus days;
but the spur to scholastic diligence is not to
be the mere parchment trophies of university
halls, the poor and empty commencement
honor set before the modern collegian; but
those real and enduring prizes which are won
on the actual battle field of life.
The grand work which commands the need
of fame and the rewards Of the present and
future ages is not in copying the past or imi-
tating its greatest masters and pioneers;
but in (what Professor Tyndall has SO
eloquently pleaded for in his American lee
tures) original investigation and improve
ment in all the departments of human activity,
whether of science, art literature, manufac-
tures &c. Now the very faculties of the mind
which are demanded for all original and indie
pendent labor are, under the present system of
technical education, left dormant, and often
1x,f ba, 90 {l,
lecture room in which the student is trained
in memorizing what his professor propounds
While student he is ever in the attitude Of
receptivity on the ipse dart Of the master or
the text book, whose opinion is not to be gain
said or tested in the crucible of his indepen-
dent experimental inquiry, and gradually.
after two or three years of college life, he is
graduated, not hardy and well trained ex-
plorer of natures secrets, but the mere echo of
what has so long been ringing in his ear from
the professional chair.
1t is this which undoubtedly explains why
the greatest of our great and original investi-
gators are not college bred men, but men
whose intellectual powers have been exqui-
sitely trained in the hard life of poverty and
amid the intensely educating influences of the
early struggle for intellectual and social eleva-
ton. Faraday, the BLACKSMITH Philosopher
of England to whom we have already refer
red, had no scholastic advantages till he was
over twenty years of age, and, though dying
without any mathematical knowledge, he out
shone all modern investigators, in field, too,
where mathematics was declared the most in
dispensable
We have only had space to offer these few
suggestions, which, in q very high degree,
will apply to our elementary school sys-
TENS as well as to colleges and universities.
We should be the last to contend that the