Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-08-02
WORDS OF WISDOM.
Profitable Reading for Parents and
Teachers.
How can School Programmes be =
Shortened and Enriched!
Charles W. Eliot in the August Atlantic.

Charles ". Eliot in the August Atlantic
Much time can be saved in primary
and secondary schools by diminishing
the number of reviews. and by never
aiming at that kind of accuracy of at
tainment which reviews, followed by e1-
aminations, are intended to enforce.
Why should an accuracy of knowledge
and of statement be habituaiIy demanded
of children which adults seldom possess?
How many well-edueated adults can add
long columns OF figures correctly, or ind
the least common multiple Or the great
est common divisor of six or eight mum
bers? Nothing but practice can keep
one skillful in these exercises; and we
may reasonably be grateful that few
people are compelled to keep in the nee
essary practice. Few adult minds retain
accurately considerable masses of isoIat-
ed facts, ana it is commonly observed
that minds which are good at that
are seldom the best minds. WHY
do we try TO make children do what we
do not try 10 do ourselves? Instead of
mastering one subject before going to
another, it is almost invariably wise to
go on to a superior subject before the
inferior has been mastered = mastery
being very rare thing. On the mastery
theory, how much new reading or think
ing should we adults do? Instead of re-
viewing arithmetic, study algebra; for al
zebra will illustrate arithmetic, and sup
ply many examples of arithmetical pro-
cesses. Instead of re-readins a familiar
story, read new one; it will be vastly
more interesting, and the common words
will all recur-the common words being
by far the most valuable ones. Instead
of reviewing the physical geography of
North America, study South America
There, too, the pupil will find mountain
chains, water sheds, high plateaux, broad
plains, great streams, and isothernal
lines. The really profitable time TO re-
view subject is not when we have
just finished it, but when we
have used it in studying other sub
jects, and have seen its relations to
other subjects, and what it is good for.
For example, the French programme
puts review of arithmetic, algebra, and
geometry into the last year. With all his
mathematical powers strengthened by
the study of algebra and geometry, and
with all the practice Of arithmetic which
his study of mensuration and algebra
has involved, the boy returns at seven
teen to arithmetic, and finds it infinitely
easier than he did at fourteen. Further,
the French boy has escaped those most
vexatious of arithmetical puzzles which
little easy algebra enables one to solve
with facility. Many an educated New
Englander remembers to this day the ex-
asperaJIon he felt when he discovered
that problems in Colburn's Sequel, over
which he had struggled for hours, could
be solved in as many minutes after he
had got halfway through Sherwin's
Algebra. Is it not an abominable
waste of the time and strength of
children to put them to doing in diff
cult way, never used in real life, some
thing they will DO able to do in an easy
way year or two later? To introduce
artificial hardness into the course of
training that any human being has to
follow is an objectionable educational
sin. There is hardness enough ia this
world without manufacturing any partic-
ularly for children. On careful search
through all the years of the public school
programmes now in use, many places
will be found where time might be saved
and strain lessened by abandoning the
effort to obtain an exaggerated and
wholly unnatural accuracy of work. It
is one of the worst defects of examina-
tions that they set an artificial value up
on accuracy of attainment. Good ex
animation results do not always prove
that the training of the children exam
ined has been of the best kind.