The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1885-07-15
Defective School Training.


academies and colleges, all over the
country, have been celebrating their
annual " commencement" a festival
which until recently signalized and dig
nifed the closing of the school year of
colleges and universities. The " insti-
tuition of learning " whose commence
ment day exercises are not now paraded
in the public press is deficient in enter
prise. The pageantry of these yearly
graduations bears to real life something
of the relation of dress parade of mill
tia to the arduous work of "grim-vis-
aged war" Thrice happy the young
soldier of life if he shall find, when the
battle has begun, that the parallel ex-
tends no further-if it does not turn
out that his cartridges are sawdust and
his arms formidable chiefly to himself.
In the nature of things, the liability of
humankind to err is not lessened in the
work of developing and equipping the
human mind. The finishing and adj
justing of the complex mental gearing
of single boy or girl, let alone few
scores or hundreds, so that the engine
shall work with vigor, harmony and
efficiency, presents is delicate task, of
bewildering difficulty, even to master
mechanics among mind mechanicians.
If the mechanic is skillful, the material
may defeat his best work; if the ma
terial is ductile, plastic, tibrous, the
imperfections of the workman may mar
or spoil the fabric. To the latter cause,
we fear, is attributable much of the
poor mental machinery annually turned
out from educational workshops. The
course of study may be adapted to
the development of good-all-round "
men and women, but for the lack of
ability on the part of instructors to
discover wrong mental tendencies in
pupils, or of judicious direction all
along the course of mind-building, mis-
takes are made or opportunities lost
which will require years of experience
in practical life to correct or recover.
The waste of time and labor at school,
through the heedlessness or incompe-
tency of instructors, is something ap-
palling in the grand aggregate. The
effects of the instruction of mental
training crops out at hundred points,
but it is especially prominent in the
rhetorical efforts of pupils, written or
spoken, on graduation day, when those
who are considered the best represen-
tatives of the scholarship an institution
produces come to the front. If ability
to think, if the rare art of speaking and
writing the English language, is taught,
intelligence and common sense do not
seem always to prescribe the methods.
At a leading grammar school in this
state rhetoric was Caught" for full
term without requiring from the pupils
an exercise in composition. Writing
makes an exact man." but composition
writing, the exercise by means of which
progress in true learning is stimulated
and tested, as well as exactness acquired,
is either in disuse in the schools or in
adequately taught and required at in
tervals too infrequent to be of any sub
stantial benefit. Vaguely worded laws
loosely drawn contracts, ambiguous
verbal agreements, the fruitful testi
mony of statute books and the courts
show that whatever else the schools
may accomplish, they do not achieve
, precision in the written or oral use OF
language by the people. The boy OF
, girl that discourses on graduation day
with parrot volubility on ethical, philo
; sophical, political or social problems
| quite likely cannot describe in concise
: language and compact phrases almos
/ any everyday occurrence, or embody /
: simple statement of plain facts in un
{ ambiguous words. AT the point wher
S the average school training register
2 its practical efficiency it is found to b.
i wofully deficient. In the rhetorical ex
:. ercses, also, where the instructo
$ should be in an especial way, to tn
: lads in particular, ga guide, philosc
! pher and friend" the pupil is left