The semi-weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1882-1886, 1884-04-02
COMMON SCHOOL HDUOAi
TON.
Discussion Of the Subject In the
Teachers INSTITUTES. -

Our Language DisseoSed and Re
, duced to It's Component
Parts.
The paper read by County Super
intendeut LOckley, on Common
School Education, before the Teach
ers' Institute in this city, having
provoked considerable discussion, We
give the concluding portion IF his
remarks, tbinkinE it will be interest
!. ing to the reader. After expressing
his views on ''diagramming," as q
meth~d of teaching a knowledge of
language, Mr.. Lockley says:
I can readily conceive that when
the remarks I am now addressing to
YOU r subjected 10 a keen discus
sion, exception will be taken to the
alleged uselessness of a portion of the
work we perform. It will be said we
te ,ch children to spell and to read,
to write and cipher, we teach them
grammar that they may use their,
own language CORE city. American
history, geography and other useful
Studies. Is there anything in this
curriculum that could :properly be
dispensed with? Perhaps not. But
when the boy or girl leaves school
with this information acquired, you
will agree with NE that he or she il
not educated. What is education?
According to the etymology of the
word, it is a leading OF drawing out
of the mental powers. Children learn
to spell and read the school books
placed before them by mere routine.
The language we speak and write is
artificial; q medium men have in~
vented and adopted to communicate
their ideas. (TalIeyrand improved
upon this definition by saying that
language was used to disguise our
ideas A series of readers has been
prepared for use iE schools, where
from the elementary exercises, in
words of three or four letters, we at
tain to the gems of standard litera.
ture, and have u pupils read from
the best authors who have enriched
this is mere task work.
Our scholars pore over these
books from day to day
and from month to month, the effect
of the generous and elevated senti-
ments they repeat being du]led or
destroyed by iteration, and the weari-
some plumbers of the dullest men,
bers of the class. Byron said he
hated Horace, because he never
could forget the task work he had
performed in school cons ruing his
involved and difficult numbers and
Lalnartine. (the elegant French
poet,) speaks so ingenuously on this
subject, that / am induced to read
you a brief extract from his Confess
sions.
Amongst those poets,' he says,
'those whom l admired in preference
were not the ancients whose classic
pages, we had. when too young.
m.istened with cur tears and with
the sweat Of our studies. There ex>
hailed from them, when I opened
their pages a sort of prison odor of
WEAKNESS and c~onstraiLt, which
made Inc shut them again, as an en-
franehised captive hates to look upon
his discarded chains. But they were
those who are not inscribed in the
catalogue of works of study. the mod.
ern poets, Italian, English, Ger
man. French whose flesh and
blood are cur own flesh and
blood; who feel, who think,
who love, who sing, as we feel, as we
think, as we sing, as we love-we the
men of modern times"
The three RS, as our chief studies
are humorously called, do not consti-
tute education, they merely teach us,
to use a figure that will be under
stood, the use of tools. Our muscles
are developed and toughened by ex-
ercise, and so our intellectual fibre
gains consistency and adaptedness
by constant use. But the exercise
we impose upon 1t in u common
schools need not be mere mental cal |
listhenics-a profitless expenditure
of force simply to develop increased
force. It Is told Of some primitive
tribe in Asia that in loading their
asses for market, they place the COM
modities they have for sale in one
pannier, and this they balance by |
filing the otner pannier with stones. !
Useful studies can be assigned the !
pupil which will afford him all the
intellectual exercise his growing fac
ulties require. and leave q resultant
of valuable knowledge.
Our respected school principal.
Prof, Howell, has a small class in
Latin, and be says they have pene-
'ra+ed far enough into the mysteries
of that noble language to become
deeply interested in their study.
Every successive lesson; shows them
more clearly the debt we owe to the
old Romans forI the language we
speak, and it is a constantly increas-
ing pleasure to them to trace the roots
of the words We have in daily use to a
language that died upwards of a
thousand years ago. Here is an
analysis that pays for the time and
labor expended; this is a pathological
that brings profit to the
operator.
And this experience suggests the
question whether the study of
grammar is really necessary
in our schools. It Is defined as an
art teaches the correct use of
language. Nothing more. It classi-
10 SSoly "olu Cudt we uS0 uOO6r
different parts of speech; tells us that
noun is the name of an object; that
verb expresses an action, and that
are used to Join the
various clauses of a sentence to-
1t prescribes a series of
AVIS tor the combination Of words.
md goes no further. It is q heavy
upon the memory of the young
people, and teaches them nothing
)ut mere forms. {
Now supp'se We substituted for
his study in u common schools =;
'ome foreign language, ancient or F.!
modern, Latin or French, for :
Instance. You would then be i'm !
proving upon the practice of the :
people ! spoke about, and :
,ou would be filing both panniers g
hat are to be sent to market with :
'seful commodities. In teaching a for '
ign language you also have to teach
and while the scholar
learning the uses and variations of