Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1879-10-22
Educational Reform.

We recently alluded to some essential
changes which had been introduced, with
apparently beneficial results, into the schools
Of Quincy, Massachusetts,. These achieve
menis for good are due to the painstaking
efforts of the chairman of the school com
mittee, Hon. Charles Francis Adams, Jr.,
and which have extended over the four or
five years last past.
When the school committee put the pupils
to the test to see just how much they were
getting from their instruction, which was
furnished them at cost of more than $40
head annually, they found that the knowl-
edge acquired was only superficial that the
scholars were set to learn certain cut-and-
dried tasks, and the measure of their prof.
cheney was their ability to give parrot-like
answers to questions on them. They got
training of the memory, but SO far as con
cerned any real understanding of their stu
| dies and the capacity to use what they had
been taught, they were shamefully deficient.
The teachers performed their work in per-
functory way, following the presidents of
many years, and the youngsters committed
facts, rules, and exceptions to memory with
out any great interest in what they were do
ing, and'without any proper idea of what it
all meant. Their time was spent in cram
ming their heads with undigested and indi-
gestibe facts gathered from an armful of
school books covering wide range of sub
iects of study. Poor boys and girls No
wonder they sometimes played truant and
went to sleep on warm deys over their mo-
notonous tasks.
The school committees reform began in
the primary schools; but first they succeeded
in engaging as superintendent of schools a
young man of enthusiasm in teaching, who
had carefully studied the German methods,
for in Germany pedagogy has been elevated
to the rank of social science. Instead of
being drilled in the alphabet after the old
fashion, the children were taught to read
before the blackboard almost without know
ing it, getting their knowledge by practice
When their interest tagged they were turned
out to play games and to stretch their legs.
School-going under such circumstances be-
came delight instead of an odious task.
In the higher schools the number of
studies was reduced from seven to three
reading, writing and arithmetic, the two
former including, naturally, not only gram
mar and spelling, but also geography and
history. They were taught by incessant
practice, not by the old way of imposing on
the pupils lessons to be learned by rote In
stead of the Reader of ancient memory, the
teachers used as practice books Biographies,
histories and articles in the current period
icals. The pupils were so in the habit of
writing that they grew to write as readily
as they spoke, and, incidentally and in the
way of practice, the art of spelling correctly
was taught and taught in the only way in
which it can be acquired. A boy may stand
at the head of an oral spelling class, and yet
when he comes to write words he may fail
in his photography, as he does in his COM
mand of language when he is set to the new
task of setting down in black and white
what he can talk about glibly enough.
The results of the experiment, as Mr..
Adams details them, have been most crafty.
ing. The scholars during three years under
the new system have made steady progress
they approach their studies more willingly,
and show that they really know what they
have been taught. The new plan, Mr..
Adams says, is ga complete negative OF
the whole present common school system,
founded on faith in the influite capacity
of children to know at an early age little
of everything" That this method of teach
ing is the sensible one we can understand,
not only from the results attained at Quincy,
but also from knowledge of the manner of
the working of the childish mind, its quick
ness in learning by practice, aud inability to
grasp abstract ideas or general principles.
While grammar, the old bugbear of all
youngsters, may seem to them dry and in.
comprehensive babble when taught out of
the text books, they imperceptibly to them
selves acquire the habit of writing their
language dramatically, as they learn the
habit of speaking it with propriety, when
they are taught by practice to express them
selves logically and with clearness and are
corrected in their errors.
All this improvement has been effected at
Quincy, and yet the cost of public education
has been reduced from 1925 annually per
child to Sl5.6S.