The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1880-11-27
Our Common schools.

they are peculiar to our own time and country,
and are organized, as nearly as possible, rs a
combination Of the cotton mill and the rail
road with the model stateprson The school
committee Is the board of direction, while the
superintendent-the chief executive officer
sits in his central office with the timetable,
which he calls programme, before HIM, by
which one hour twice "a week Is allotted to
this study, and half an hour three time a
week to that and twenty hours n term to a
third and at such time one class will be at
this point, and the other class at that, the
whole moving with military precision to a
given destination AT specified date. Mechan-
ical methods could not be carried further.
The organization is perfect The machine
works almost with the precision of clock: WORK.
Ii is, however, company front all the time.
From one point of view children are regarded
rs automatons; from another as india rubber
bags; from a third, as so much raw material.
They must move in step, and exactly alike.
They must receive the same mental nuriment
in equal quantities and at fixed times. Its as
similatlon is wholly lmmaterial, but the mo-
tons must be gone through with. Finally as
raw material they are emptied in at the pri-
maries, and marched out at the grammar
grades-and it is well.
This was the very gencral-in fact, the in
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES Oll tlic IdI SC SCtIC VI tue Slo
tenn Of SUPPLEMENTARY IN vogue during the
last twenty five years. 1t was also, perhaps, a
natural and necessary phase of development,
something which had to be passed through,
though it Immediately resulted IN severa! un-
desirable things. In the first place, so far as
the child was concerned, the initiative or
memorlzing faculties only were cultivated,
and little or no attention was paid to the think
ing or reflective powers Indeed, 1t may al.
most be said that child OF any originality, or
with individual characteristics, was looked
upon as wholly out of place in public school.
The idea, under the system, was masses Of
children designated from usage by names, in
stead Of more conveniently by numbers, who
learned certain rules by heart, and applied
them with mechanical promp,tude and cor
rectness Any deviation from this semimili-
tary method was sternly repressed as breach
of correct discipline. Starting from this point,
the course of s0.called educational develop
ment up to a recent period has been natural,
logical, and common place. There have been
Just three steps to It-memOrlzng, examna-
TONS programmes-the last two, the latest ed.
vocational hobbies built upon the traditional
founCation of the first.
The way in which these led from one on 20
to the next Is obvious enough. In the first
place, time out of mind, all knowledge was,
educationally speaking looked upon as vast
accumulation OF facts, rules and definitions,
and the grand aim and object of teaching was
to impart as many as possible Of these to the
youthful mind. The way to impart was to
cause them to be laborlously committed to
memory. Thus the teacher sat IN his char, a
sort of lone fisherman on the shore of the
great ocean of things known, and he hooked
up out of 1t now rule, and now a fact, and then
again a definition, and he gave them to the
children, and saw that they swallowed them
whether they liked them or not, and whether
they were nourished by them or not. But IN
progress of time 1t became apparent to the
more observing that the knowledge thus i'm
parted was not retained, and the examination
was then devised as a means of assuring the
purveyor of knowledge that the facts, rules
and definitions impaired were held, so to
speak, on the intellectual stomach for at least
u reasonable period. The examination, how
ever, as 1t was organized and gradually rami
fled into fully developed whole, almost ne
cessarily called the programme into existence.
The world of knowledge was too large, there
were too many facts and rules and definitions
for the teacher, as we'll rs for the taught and
so, for the protection OF the former, 1t became
necessary to shake out from the wide domain.
by certain metes and bounds, the districts
within which he was 10 search for the hidden
treasures. Anything obtained or to be obtain
ed outside was not to count. The programme
was thus a relief to the teacher, clearly making
as it did the limits within which the cram
ming process was to be carried on. 1t made
his work possible. The development of the
system was then complete.
Under these circumstances, education being
reduced TO little more than mechanical
process of examining with periodical nerve
trials TO ascertain the degree of the degree OF
retention, the average child not unnaturally
felt toward his school and what was there re-
quired Of him very much as a learned dog or
monkey may be supposed 10 feel toward his
task.master Accordingly, the slckening dis,
like OF school, and of things taught at school,
is, with the majority of those emancipated
from it, almost the strongest association con-
nected with early life.-Chdries Francis Id
ans, jr., IN Noe Harper.
Ian