Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1886-10-30

l
| In the Primary school section the presid
ing officer was M. S. Crosby, superintendent
of schools in Waterbury, and the exercises
which excited much interest, were as fol
lows:
Penmanship in primary classes With illus
trations and descriptive lecture. Miss Edith Good
| year, Bristol.
Reading, class exercises. Miss L. h. Pier
| pont, Waterbury.
| Discussion.
gs Class e Mss ds sPSes
| training school, New Haven.
| Discussion.
| Adjournment.
The reading by Miss L. M. Pierpont, OF
| Waterbury, was illustrated by class of very
| young children who did admirably. The
| class exercise in geography by Miss Ida
| johnson was splendidly conducted. A class
| of seven little children gave not only all the
l geographical facts concerning the Green, but
| the measurements and many historical facts.
| This recitation effectively urged the advan-
tages of first teaching local geography.
AFTERNOON.
| In the afternoon the High school hall was
| crowded with teachers, professors and Others
| interested in this association, and many were
unable to obtain seats. The first exercise
was an address by Colonel Jacob L. Greene,
president of the Connecticut Mutual
L vi
| "What the business world demands of the
| common Schools during which he said:
| There will probably be no disposition to
question the statement that no institution of
| our land and time is so generally used and
| so generally trusted for its results as our
| common schools. The common school sys-
| TEN is the one expression of conception of a
| need and of its satisfaction in which all share
| directly and individually and without prac-
teal difference of opinion. Practically I'M
limited in opportunity and dealing with the
very foundations of all intelligent action, its
responsibility is Unreasonable and it cannot
be shifted. What the church was to the
State in other days, and even more, is the
common school to the American State in this
day of seeularism, of human self sufficiency,
when belief as basis of conduct is count
ed no part of the qualification of a
citizen: when character is assumed by the
State to be sufficiently grounded in knowl
edge and sufficiently attested by the absence
% - ~irni,aAl -Aaord- Na0ar has humane in
stitution had wide a field, wholly to it
self, SO great and fundamental a work and
such implicit and universal confidence our
common school system. And I am asked,
what does the business world demand of it!
What is the business world; who compose
it; what are its objects, its distinctive
functions and the conditions of their fulfill
ments What are its sympathies and its an
tipathies? What are its conceptions and
where are they grounded? What is its pc
culiar realm and what sort of personality
What modes of power and what equipment
withal does it require CT its admitted free
man? 1t is easy to answer that it
is the great humane hive, that it
comprises fairly almost every
man, woman and child who exchange with
each other multifold forms of service to an
swer indefinite needs. The reason of its be-
ing, the spring of its activities and the key
to its directions is human desire, whether
through need or pleasurable choice; its func-
ton is the satisfaction of that desire. It
measures need against need and service
against service. The sum of it's activities is
nearly the bulk of human action. The sym
pathies and antipathies and conceptions of
this world, its spiritual sources of being and
action, what are they Where does it hinge
itself?
1t gives its own answer in an abundant
literature, in thousand organizations, and
in an endless and consistent history. Self
interest, the supply of ones own wants or
desires, is the accepted point of view. Its
results are magnificent; look at the volumes
and almost infinite variety of production;
the fertility of invention; the multitude of
useful and curious arts; the subordination
of physical forces to human control and ser
vice; the variety and volume of human en-
ergv brought into constant play; the rail-
roads hat consolidate continents; and never
was there such abundant universal supply for
human wants. But never was human want SO
multiplied and cultivated, SO luxurious aud
imperious. Never was the pressure of per-
sonal needs of an artificial and Fictitious
sort at once so universal and intense. And
this busy, scheming, inventing, toillng, ad-
venturing, anxious much enduring, much in
tending business world whirls through its
DINING round. unwilling that its own exis-
tence and it's own success disprove its philo-
sophy; that it is over1uled, and its methods
and its results are alike determined, by that
to which it denies the rank of calculable mo-
tive, or the substance of appreciable force,
and into this world you are sending not only
the acting, but the thinking loving, hating,
controlling unit. What must you give hims
What he needs may be summed under two
heads, and state them in inverse order;
power and point of view; force capable of
efficient self-direction and character which
determines its actions upon normal lines.
state them in this order because
it is the commonly accepted view
that you are specially charged to give him
power; and your Office is much sinpliied to
the popular apprehension through that I'M
fortunate aphorism that knowledge is
power" And at the start you need an in
sight into the nature of the person before
you, his individual powers and their peculiar
balance, which makes you q true prophet of
his future and its characteristic features and
therefore ready to guide his feet into its
paths. Each kind Of work demands its own
instruments; each material is suited to form
some certain instruments. 1t is yours first
of all to discover and then to develop fitness
specific zs1s Ct fitness; Only so does o.s each
on his own equal chance. Other
wise he is distorted to conform
to a chance or arbitrary, certainly an abnor-
NAL pattern, misshapen and crippled. That
he has received special gifts and inherited
special weaknesses and that you assume to
fit him for the worlds service, determine
alike his right and your duty, and l suspect
one practical conclusion from this fact is
that much smaller classes and many more
teachers, and sometimes very differently
qualified teachers, must be regarded, first
necessity. And now, having carefully OBJ
instruct and educate him. You must teach
that which sets his power on right lines of
specific development and SO teach it that the
development shall go on through life.
Again, very much of the knowledge
which child leaving the common school
must use in his life work must be
gained in the pursuit of that
which cannot be in any sense profes
sional or technical one. His ac-
ouirement then must be of an original char
acter. 1t is the fear of many that there is
too much of a tendency to solve the problem
by multiplicity of branches of learning gone
through under the stimulus OF the working
system and in too short a time There is
too little realization of the fact that a little
which is fundamental and is thoroughly di-
gested and assimiated is far more valuable,
both for practical application and-what is
its highest function-as a whet and prepar-
alton for the acquisition of other knowledge,
than much which is gone over under apres-
sure, to be lost, as it certainly is. when the
pressure is removed.
Do we all quite realize what the three RS
properly administered are capable of doing