The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1878-02-20

the school system Of our commonwealth
to the first rank among the systems of
the world
Nor in the transfer of the child from
the house school to the common school,
is there a separation-but he continues
to be attached to the freside. The
schoolmaster is, by the law of nature,
subordinate to the parent, and is to
carry on the work begun by him as
ally and not antagonist. have read
that in Norway its people in summer at
tend to the culture of the fields, in the
winter to that of the household. Here,
around the freside, the father presides
at the task, the mother teaches, and the
travelling schoolmaster, who is called a
household pilgrim" commonly assists
her. This pilgrim schoolmaster travels
through the snow-paths with his little
baggage of Christian science and nation
al history and poetry, and thus are
formed those religious and patriotic
sentiments so finely interviewer among
the population.
Here, then, in the four walls of home
mainly, and not in the working rooms
of school and college alone, the faculties
are shaped and moulded into forms of
manly strength and usefulness.
And how shall the child-man be
taught? We say, not by rote or by
book simply but emphatically by ex-
emplars of action, by works and the
knowledge of effects and consequences.
A great man among the ancients was
asked "what boys ought to learn" and
he answered, "what they ought to do
when they become men," Education
that fails to furnish the student with
real things is nothing;; and mere words
and definitions are the shadows of an
insubstantial shade OF nothingness,
which only the ignorant mistake for
landmarks along the way. There should
be education of substance and utility
not of theory and solutions of insoluble
enigma. Instruction should not be
poured into child understanding with
funnel, but dropped into it with the
careful hand of the husbandman, sowing
the seed that by -and-by produces golden
fruit, and fills the gamers of the world
with things of use and worth to men.
Lycurgus, anxious for the right educa-
: ton of children, makes little mention OF
learning, but much of valor, religion,
prudence and justice, placing them at
least above the arts and sciences. The
eldest son in Persian succession of roy.
atty we are told, was, as soon as born,
delivered to euuuchs, whose charge it
was to keep the body healthful. After
he came of seven years, he was taught
to ride and go hunting and at fourteen
was transferred to the hands of four OF
the wisest, most temperate, just and
valiant of the nation. The first was to
instruct him in religiOn-the second TO
be always upright and sincere--the
third to conquer. his appetites and de-
sires-and the fourth to despise all dan
ger. And Plato prescribes this disci,
pline to PROFOUND to children questions
upon the judgments of men and their
Actions and remember in Xenophon
{ where Cyrus got a threshing when at
school for giving a false judgment, in
deciding that the small boy nth the
long tailed coat should give his garment
to the large boy with the short-tailed
, coat whereas the justice of the case
was that no one should have anything
, forcibly taken away from him that is his
{ own.
Right Individual education, is inn
, pressed not with the weapon of force,
, but is worked with the wand of love.
, St. Augustine says "My love is my
} weight; where it bears me thither 1 go .
; and love lends a radiance to every ac-
( tion of our lives. In the German legend,
/ a young man sits sketching an admira-
bic landscape. Behind him, is the fiend
in human resemblance, noting every
motion of his hand, each emotion of his
face. Satan, after watching him awhile,
( cries " You are in love !" " How do you
/ know that ?" replies the youth. "I can
see it," he answered. The fend was
r right. Love evokes the highest art and
| genius of the soul, and keeps the fend
, away till the "better angels" of our na.
| ture touch the canvas of our lives with
) glowing colors of unfading hue. And
, the exemplars of other times--the good
3 and great-how these pictures lingel
c still in the silent oratorio of the soul,
Q where we do reverence to them as the