Connecticut western news., 1882-06-21
EDUCATION.

EDUCATION.
 - There are few public interests nearer the the hearts of the people than our common school system. This is attssted by the large sums which are cheerfully appropriated year after year for it's support. It is true, never thelsss, that there are many friends of our common schools and among them experienced educators, who believe that they do not always produce the good results we have right to expect from them. There is more attention paid to form than to substance, to the husks than to the kernal. There is species of edu- cational martinetism creeping into the system which seems to consider dress parade Of more importance than efficient service in the field. Common schools and common sense do nos al wsys work together in harmony. This sub feet was alluded to in an address by President Steele of the Philadelphia Board of Education and agaln by Professor Raftery, Principal of Academy at Kingston, N. Y., in an address before Teachers Association. The former declared that the memory had become almost exclusively the objective point and the meas ure of its power and accumulation is virtual ly the standard of scholarship. Instruction, he added, which is merely task of the mem ory, must be fatiguing, drudgery to the pupil, lifeless and narrowing to the teacher. It leaves the scholar in the end with the most limited benefits from his severe task, and in stead of implanting love of knowledge, ere ates repugnance for and disgust with books of an improving character. Indeed the individuals time is sadly wasted and the purpose for which the schools are maintained in great measure defeated.
 Prof Raftery in his address, says:
 One of the great mistakes of the times seems to be that our educators pay too much atten- tion to the methods and details of learning, and too little to the great fundamental princi- pies that underlie it all They are so absorbed with the buds, leaves and blossoms, that they allow the limbs and trunk to languish and de- cay. The various publishing houses, even, vie with each other in sending forth floods of be- wildering methods and socalled improvements for the immature intellects of our children, but not one treaties in a thousand on the fun damental principles that underlie all true edu' cation.
 It makes no matter how much seed ii sown in unprepared ground, it will no give the return. It is only the ground tha is ploughed and properly cultivated tha yields the return in the harvest and it k to the harvest that every educator should be looking. How wildly do some of our modern institutions where the order is to drive, tc cram and to glut. differ from those presided over by such men as we mentioncdl One O the latest writers on jurisprudence state' that it IS not the amount of detail, nor law points, nor decisions, which a studen learns, that avails him most but it is the man ner in which he learns to think, and to grasl legal principals and apply them, that consti tutes his real advantage. Is not the sam thing true in every other field of education Nobody can pretend to appropriate all the de tails of learning; and true education doe not certainly consist in the amount 0 such detail which one is able to carry in hi mind. We will hazard the statement tha although man might be able to recite ever word in all the text books taught in ou schools and colleges, he could yet be called a unedueated man he might be crammed, bu he could yet be uneducated in the deepe s9nse of the word. He would no more nee essarily be called an educated man than tn man that is able to recite the whole Biol from end to end could be called & Christian nor man who knows Paradise lost by heal could be called poet True education doe not so much consist in what is put into th mind as in what is drawn out; and this is, fact, the primary and fundamental meaning the word the real Latin educ0 Some of tf most successful professional men of our lare cities, who stood high in their college classe will tell you now if you place Homer or
 Thucydides in their hands that they ca scarcely read the text, much more transla 1t. Now if the good which they derived fro college depended on the amount of deta which they carried with them from ther they would be in a bad condition, but the know better. They know that what was
 most value to them was the dicipline of mir which they received, the taste for learnir which they imbibed, the habits of study whie they acquired, and considering their il struetors performed their duty-the primo pals of manhood, honor and integrity whit they bore with them from these classic hall