New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1888-09-18
PRACTICAL EDUCATION.
THE CULTIVATION OF ART ATTITUDES

THE CULTIVATION OF ART ATTITUDES
PRACTICAL EDUCATION. Treating Of the Develop
msnt OF Memory. the Increasing Quckness OF fer
copllon and Training the Constructive Faculty by
CHARLES @. LELAND. 1:mo pp. $50. D. van
Nostrand.
This is book from which all who are Interested
IN the improvement Of educational methods may
derive valuable ideas. The author writes with
the authority Of bread and successful experience
The theories Of education which lie advocates
and develops have been tested thoroughly, and
90 remarkable have been the results that all the
world Is on the way to adopt them. Mr.. Leland's
essays are moteover written with lucidity,
directness and wealth of Apostle illustration
sufficient to enlist the attention and rouse the in
tcrcst Of the most hide-bound conservatism. At
first sight those who are not familiar with the
practical results reached in the authors Phila-
dclphia Glasses by the methods here iuculcatcd,
and since applied with evcr-increasing success TO
Industrial teaching all over the United States and
IN many European countries, may be somewhat
surprised at the apparent simplicity Of the doc
trnc, and may be distrustful Of experiments which
seem to depend primarily upon the revival of
antique and obsolete practices. short period
of observation in the industrial art classes organ
lied upon Mr.. Leland's plan would dispel all
doubts and msgivings of this kind, but to such as
have not the opportunity to satisfy themselves in
that way 1t may be of service to explain the
methods briefly
The initial principle, as regards industrial
hrt training, is that education can hardly be begun
too early II 1t be begun right. Nearly all children
possess an innate aptitude for the minor arts and
Tor decorative arts especially. At four or five
years they often try to draw, to represent things
on plane surfaces. II they are taken in hand
at this period and taught free-hand drawing,
and II they are also led TO take interest in minor
art work, they will soon be able to copy with
nm approach to prccison,and in the next place they
win learn to design Mr. Leland has demonstrated
that original designing is not the difficult feat
generally supposed, but that when the young OBJ
servauon has once been awakened and developed
by careful discipline, and the hand has been
taught the freedom and boldness to be acquired
only by free-hand drawing, designing becomes
easy, and even quite young children capable
Of producing original designs Of distinct beauty
and freshness 1t Is interesting to recall the fact
that all this is really but return to educational
methods practised thousands of years ago. in what
we are accustomed TO speak OF as the infancy Of
the world. The great Eastern races which then
held half the babitablc globe in fee had then
discovered principles which, after being lost to
mankind for centuries, are Just now being re-
formulated through modern independent research
OF old the practice of the minor arts was left to
the women and children, and to this day Oriental
peoples have pursued that method. The beautiful
shawls and carpets and embroideries, the delicate
ligrec jewelry, the exquisite lace patterns, which
bought eagerly in Eastern bazaars and trans
ferred to the cabinets and drawing -rooms of West
ern mihonares are to great extent the products
Of childish brains and childish fingers. The ORR
entail Juvenile artist moreover works without
patterns, or rather he carries the pattern in his
mind And this trait naturally brings up another
part Of Mr.. Leland's system.
This is the special development of memory
both Of mind and eye. The Western world gained
much By the invention of printing, but it also lost
much Before that time the human memory was
cultivated to degree of vigor and retentive ca
pacity which seems little less than miraculous TO
generation so dependent upon books for all
knowledge that as Mr.. Leland says, q man is
great scholar in these times who knows where
TO look for the information his own head cannot
contain. Inevitably this dependence upon books
has lowered the common estimation of mnemonic
possibilities. Men have forgotten what their pre-
decessors could do in the way of remembering
But even so recently as the middle ages vast
of learning were committed to memory. When
cure, the scholar who wished to possess the con-
tents of volume simply learned the whole by
rotc. Nor is there in such feat anything re-
markable. For ages the Vedas have been handed
down orally in India, and text and profusc CON-
mentary have together been committed TO memory
and retained through long lives, then passed on
TO the next generation. The Mahabarahta with
its three hundred thousand shlolas, often thus
mastered The great grammar of Parsini, with a
tcn-fold accretion of comment in the same
manner disseminated. Mr. Leland gives an in |
stance in which the whole of the Ialmud thus
learned by heart Now the printed edition of
the Talmud fills twelve thick folios.
II is a popular falacy that any special develop
ment Of the memory is obtained at great cost to
the intellectual faculties This is delusion and
the best possible proof that it is consists in the
fact that the science of dalectcs never fourshed
30 brilliantly as during the ages when men had to
trust to their memories for all aids to controversy
and ratiocnaton. The learned then carried their
libraries in their heads, and there is ample and |
varied proof that the crudition thus slowed away
was 50 orderly arranged as to be at the instant |
command Of ite owners. What consider |
prodigious memories were then the common pos
session Of thousands everywhere. 1t is indeed |
true that much Of the learning SO committed was
Of kind which we moderns regard as useless or |
even worse than useless. Such TO great extent, |
though not altogether, was the Scholastic Philoso
ply. But at least it may be said that the scholars
If those days possessed their knowledge beyond |
deprivation short of death madness, whereas
here are many modern scholars who, if put out |
II the reach Of books, would be shorn Samsons.
Also il is to be observed that this cultivation Of
he memory tended TO the production of strong
Each man took what he most
needed, or preferred, in the way of learning and
ach ass,mlated all he took, working it into the
warp and wool of his own intellect, as Shakespeare
worked the crude and clumsy plays and novels out
4 which he wrought the immortal dramas which
'ear his name AT present the influences of cduca-
ional systems operate in the contrary direction
They conform Ill minds 10 common model and