The Bozeman weekly chronicle. (Bozeman, Mont.) 1883-1889, 1884-12-24
EDUCATIONAL.
Hopeful Progress in the Systematic
Study of the Intelligence Of
Children.
Negative Success fthe kindergarten
"a New Pronoun Needed.

/
Children.
Negative Success of the Kindergarten
"a New Pronoun Needed.
THE STUDY OF CHILDREN.
So much is now known of the educa-
tional theories of classical antiquity, OF
the social customs that centered about
children. and of their legal status. that
it seems strange at first that laborious
monographs collection and interpreta-
tion of direct and incidental sources
has told us 80 little of their daily life at
home and on the street, their games,
quarrels. friendships, and points of
view. etc. The minute record of a
schoolboy's life in ancient Greece or
Rome, even for a single day. as it could
be made by modern methods, would be
! of the greatest interest and value to lis.
! There are. likewise. many sources of
information respecting the organiza-
tionsqf, scllaols and universities during
, the middle ages; but Of student life,
comparatively little is known. I'M
portant as studies and curricula are, it is
not too much to say that life. out of
school or classroom, is far more im-
portant to the average child or collie
gian.
There is great and very significant
difference in the value of instruction
impaired in the different educational in
stitutions of our own day and land, but
the difference in the non-examinable ell
ements of student or pupil traditions,
ideals and views of life, honor, duty,
associations, centers of interest, sports,
personal habits, home influences, loca-
ton and natural environments. etc., is
more significant for vast majority of
pupils. In fact, every great education
al reform has been the direct result of
a closer personal acquaintance with
children and youth, deeper insi ght into
their needs and modes of thought and
feeling. The great teachers lived with
their pupils and loved and studied
them. Froebel recommends that when
q child was born each parent should
open.a ''iifc-book," III which should be
recorded the stages of its physical and
mental growth, good and Dad influence
es and qualities, all striking incidents,
and experiences and peculiaritics, and
their own endeavors and motives in
rearing the child. This book should be
kept without the knowledge of the
child, to be given him at maturity as
guide to aid his choice of profession or
calling. physical regime. etc.
Whatever may be thought of such
record, it may be said with confidence
that the cver-tluctuating line between
the old and new in education now lies
between those who adhere to a fixed
and definable method, or the logical
order of ideas, on the one hand, and
those who subordinate this to the more
pedagogic law of growth or adaptation
to the need and capacities of the pupils.
Rudimcnts are never, save in the exact
sciences ut least-and rarely there
first principles. The former look at
the inculcation of subject matter COM
monty of Il fixed amount as an end, and
a fixed method, normal or logical, as
the order: while the latter class of
teachers, who have asked themselves
what was the educational value of their
spcuialty.-what they were teaching it
for, or whether the order which its
items had assumed in the adult scien-
tific mind was, after all, the best to OBJ
serve in instruction, look solely at the
child, and use everything as means of
developing its capacities.
The sympathy and tact of the few
born teachers may be trusted to make
this adaptation, but there has never
been a period in education where
fresh and searching look into the real
nature of children was so needed
as now, and nowhere more than
in our own country. In this study an
thropology, psychology and literature
have a common interest with educa-
ton. If children associate mainly with
adults, and are passed from lap to lap
and from mouth to mouth, they be-
come artificial in mind, and feeble and
excitable in body. A child's play is
never natural when it is conscious of
older eyes. As children grow more,
and the maternal instinct is left to ex-
press itself in juvenile books, or in the
cbild's columns of the weekly journals.
it is very easy to distinguish the artifi-
cial, goodly, self-conscious child, act.
speech, sentiment, or story from the
healthy product of nature. The study
of child-life has, moreover, already
produced score of valuable PAM
phlets, mostly by foreign scientific
men, containing records of their OBJ
servations on their own infants. The
same individual and objective method
of study is already in use in the study
of idiots, the blind and deaf, criminals
and the insane. Applied to animals, it
has, in the last ten years, taught us
more of the instincts of beavers, spi-
ders, bees, ants, birds, etc, than al
that was known before. In the study
of the senses, heredity, the time of
mental processes, certain idiosycracies
of normal adult men, the same method
has been one of the most fruitful of all
branches of research.
The systematic study of the intelli-
gence and character of children within
school ages has lately begun, and is
making most hopeful, and. indeed, un-
suspected progress.-G. Stanley Hall
IN Journal Of Education.
NEGATIVE POWER.
Much of the success of the kinder
garten is negative, and consists in pre-
venting harm. Its positive success is