New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1876-09-16
THE sEprEMBER SCHOOL OPENING.

Nearly whole page of our advertising space,
as will be seen, is daily occupied by announce
ments of the opening this month OF the Fall
term of colleges and schools of every kind
and grade, medical, military, legal, theologi-
cal, commercial, classical scientific, or primary.
The parent has but to choose, apparently, In
this embarrassment of riches, guide for his
boy or girl. If he thinks friction with other
human beings is part of the training needed by
the child, reared in the isolation OF home, here
are plenty of mammoth establishments where
he will be left to fight and push his way to
success quite as much as IN the bigger world
outside. Or, il he hold to the theory OF
individual training, here are numberless
clergymen or retired scholars willing to
give his boy or girl the benefits OF re-
" fined and Christian home" or experienced
graduates of European schools, and Ladies OF
culture who crowd forward anxious to come
to his house and give to the pupil the fruits OF
their wisdom and experience. The ordinary
parent is satisfied that he cannot easily make
mistake, and contents himself with slight in
yestigation. His boy or girl is sent to an es-
tablishment which he hears is good school,"
or to q teacher who has brought Joness boy
"on wel,n and that is the end OF 1t. II the
bow brings home bad reports, he concludes at
once either that the child is a Ounce or incor-
rightly lazy, or that the school is bad one
Il does not occur to him that the boy and the
school system may each have merit and yet be
unsuited to each other.
In short, the first thing we need in this cOun-
try to insure better education to our chill
dren is that parents themselves be sufficiently
educated to choose the right training for their
children. The school in which Jones's boy,
tough, cheeky, aggressive, proved his su-
periority in the rough-and- scramble
for knowledge may be the one where a
languid, timid, apathetic boy would be pushed
TO the wall, and left there for life, convinced
of his hopeless mediocrity. 1t should, too, have
been the work of parents who visited the
Exposition during the Summer to look into
this matter of education as it is set forth there
to contrast the different systems OF teaching
of our own and other countries, and to find out
why and how the American Is deficient
When the fathers and mowers know what
they want in the education of their
children, and can demand it intclligently, there
is more chance that it will be supplied. The
defect in our American schools, taken en- mdssc,
is as must be apparent from comparison
with others, that the scholar is made to learn
by means fair or foul but he is not made in
love with learning. He is crammed with facts,
as though his brain were an empty receptacle,
which the teachers duty is TO fill, not sleep
ing agent which he is 10 quicken into life. All
the marvellous display of pictures, sculpture,
machinery, and apparatus of every kind which
are used in the object teaching of Euro
pean and even Asiatlc schools are intended
solely to rouse the child's latent powers
of observation and comparison, to give life
ard reality to the bare skeletons Of facts.
Through the whole course of instruc ion in
countries where education is made science,
of which we have but learned the primary
rules the same object is pursued. When the
boys in German gymnasium "a free public
school, be it remcmbered) begin to read a
Greek play, a week of preparatory instruction
is given, in which the history, construction.
&c, of the theater in Greece, its actors and
audiences, are shown to the boys by pictures
and models and oral explanations. When the
young fellow begins to thumb over his old
tragedy he knows the men and women of its
day. their habits and place in the world-a
different knowledge from that of Greek gram
mar or even poetry, however well beaten into
his head
The great mass of teachers among MS are not
likely to make their pupils in love with learn
ing, simply because they are not in love with
it themselves. They adopt teaching too often
as last resource or u stepping stone to some
thing better. Higher pay, which will command
n higher class of educators, may partially serve
to set the matter right. Whatever else we
economic in this Winter let it not be in the
trimming of the boys and girls. Find teacher
who puts his heart as well as brain into his
work and pay him well, and other men will
be led to follow his example.