Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1878-07-29


better than drills in spelling, arithmetic
and grammar. The mass of our citizens
are not intelligent enough to understand
one-half the instruction contained in
good weekly newspaper.
We make, therefore, this demand for
the sciences-frst, that they have an
equal place with the usual studies of
primary and grammar and district
schools; secondly, that our teachers be
required to make plain the elements of
the sciences to pupils below fourteen
years of age, at the expense of rote-
drill and problems in arithmetic, gram
matical analysis, spelling without defn-
itions, and the time spent in preparing
for pretentious written examinations,
imposed at too early an age, that have
become one of the worst abuses of an
artificial system in publlc-school work.
We are concerned next with the meth.
DDS of teaching these sciences in district
schools, or grades below the high school.
The efforts of authors of elementary text
books in science are not entirely success
| full; most of them are still too technical.
There is less vividness in the statements
of the facts of science, less personifcation
and poetry of the study than a child's
apprehension demands. The ancients
taught their children the forces and
sounds and shapes of the waters and
fields and forests, by personifcations of
nymphs and dryads. gods and godesses,
in whose histories and habits they were
personally interested. So should the
stories of insects, fishes, mollusks, birds.
and well-known animals, or of plants
and stones, be told without text books
by the teacher, with scientific truthful
ness as to their modes of life and motion.
Thus children would become familiar
with their living forms. With textbooks
|
still defective, the teachers opportunity
| lies in what President Hill calls the in
cidental method. Let her have speci-
mems of minerals, leaves, insects, flowers,
pictures of birds and animals, and simple
apparatus for illustrating chemical and
physical forces, in order to make real to
her classes the subjects of the lesson.
By hundred well-selected stereoscopic
pictures she could teach physical and
political geography as effectively as the
shapes, circles, and seasons of the earth
by globe. Thus the textbook in the
hands of suggestive and exclusive
teacher will become secondary to her
personal power to make knowledge real
and interesting to the young pupils in
her classes. Yet the textbook in science
will give the study equal dignity to the
arithmetic in the mind of the scholar,
while it corrects the unscientific or gar
rulous tendencies of the teacher.
Moreover, no other studies will SO
naturally develop the personal power of
the teacher. Proceeding by the method
of nature from step to step, from the
known to the unknown, she will awaken
enthusiasm in the class, and from the
fulness of her devotion to the subject
there will be an overflow into the minds
of the pupils. Rote-teaching in these
elements of science is utterly defenceless.
Every class of facts and every principle
involved should have illustration from
the wide range of nature. The living
way of Sauveur in language, should be
applied to the science is utterly defence
less. Every sense and power of the
childs can be grasped and applied to them
by the live teacher.-Schou Bulletin.
He Was CoRREoT-"Broke down, did
you" queriei Gratiot avenue wagon
maker, few days ago, as farmers
team hitched to the front wheels of a
wagon halted at his door.
"Mashed by the cars" was the brief
reply.
"Train struck you, eh q
"Well, kinder. I had on load of
fence posts, and when | reached the
crossing the train was right at hand. |
put the whip on to Sarah. and gave
Bill yank on the lines, and then fig
gered on my chances. I'm whole four
boss team on mental arithmetic, l am,
and l wasn't minute calkelating that
that air locomotive would strike the of
hind wheel of my wagon. Bill reared
up, Sarah SHE'D, and the engine footed
over four hundred times minute, but |
had them fggers right down fne."
"The engine ran into your wagon.
did ito"
"Of course it did-struck that hind
wheel exactly as l calkelated, lifted me
Just as | calkelated. landed them horses
and fence posts where calkelated, and
now calkelate than you want about
$40 to repair the busts on this vehicle r
He was right on that too. Nothing
like arithmetic.
CANNING FRUIT CoLD.-A lady in
Springfield, Massachusetts, has been
making some interesting experiments in
putting up canned goods without cooking
Heating the fruit tends more or less to