Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1888-03-08
SCHOOLS OF TODAY.
THE CHANGE WHICH HAS COME
OVER OUR METHODS.

OVER OUh ME f1OOO.
How the whole Tone OF School Life Has
Been Elevated-The Part Played by
Observation-Disclosures of Object Les
sons.
1t is curious thing that, side by side with
the modern amenities in schooling, there
sometimes comes in a reaction against every
thing that can make learning attractive. 1t
is like the theory which used to exist, that
no drug could be really useful unless it gave
out the full terrors Of its natural taste and
odor. Sometimes even now, in out of the
way places, one finds an old fashioned drug
shop perhaps opening out of the very parlor
of an old fashioned DOCTOR, where the mere
atmosphere is as barbarous and forbidding
as the strange foreign names of the articles
sold there-coloquintida, perhaps, or ipecac-
uanha. But the modern drug shop is called
a pharmacy, and it aims to replace those
vigorous old odors with others suggestive of
Araby the Blest.
A similar change has come over our school
methods. / can recall when battered desks
and chopped benches were regarded as an
essential part of even the private school sys-
boys were natural barbarians and would
soon make the new look as badly as the old.
Yet about that time the discovery was made
that the way to secure respect for school fur
niture was to make it respectable, and the
boyish jackknife found other objects So
can remember when the introduction of
singing, and later of drawing, into our pub
lie schools was regarded as finical whim,
suitable for girls school only. Emollit
mores; each of these practices is found to
help school discipline and refine the taste, SO
that the whole tone of school life is elevated.
I was fitted for college by teacher who
never let his rattan 60 out of his hand except
to lay it on his desk close by him. A public
school principal who should now pursue this
course would lose his place, and rightly; the
very regulations of some communities re-
qulre that the rod, it if exists, should be kept
in the desk, out of sight, and that every blow
should be afterward reported to the proper
authorities.
One of the most curious forms of this Grad
grind severity is the crusade occasionally
undertaken against all illustrations of school
books. The most thoughtful and carefully
designed work, in geography, in history, even
in arithmetic, is supposed to be sufficiently
Yet it is a period when all works for older
Observation-Disclosures encunlonaac!;ae -.---.-
ries, magaZines-have brought the art OF
pictorial Illustrations to its highest point.
Webster and Worcester have alike adopted
it. Justin Winsor's monumental Narrative
and Critical History Of America" is crowded
with portraits, autographs, fac-similes, and
reproductions of historic pictures. The later
editions of Gray's Botany of the Northern
United Statesn have careful delineations of
every historical genus. The American maga-
zines have won the admiration of the world
by their illustrations of all geographical and
historical papers
Mr.. Edward Atkinson carried the art of
pictorial exhibition even into political econ
omy, and is never quite happy till he can get
his proposition embodied for the eye in
parallel lines. The United States census re-
port resorts to charts and curves and colored
diagrams when it wishes fully to elucidate
any important general result. All this is
done for grown people-for the gravest, the
r1aturest, the most educated. They, if any,
are the persons who might fairly be asked to
fix their minds clearly and austerely upon
words and numerals, without STOPPING to the
alleged frivolity Of picture books. If they
do not accomplish this, if the very people
who make the criticism are only too glad to
exc out their own imperfect knowledge by an
illustrated magazine or an illustrated die
tionary, is it not little absurd in them to
enforce such grim abstinence upon school
children9
In an admirable article by the eminent
French writer Professor Tn. Ribot ON 1.-THE
Mechanism of Attention" he maintains a
different theory. The infant child, he says,
is at first under the sway of spontaneous at
tention alone, noticing only bright objects or
sustenance giving objects. BY degrees it OBJ
serves things less selfishly interesting, begin
ming at about the third month. The path is
from the most intense, most impressive sensa-
tions, to the finer and more delicate ones. To
fix and hold one sensation is an art that
must be learned. ga child, for example,
refuses to learn to read, but is vastly inter-
ested in the pictures in the book. The father
saws that reading will show the meaning of
the pictures. This acts as an artificial in
ducement, and the child goes to work, sub
stituting an artificial attention to arbitrary
signs for the natural attractiveness of pict-
ures." After a while ''art has done its
work, and attention has become second ma
ture." All this is long since recognized in
our schools in the introduction of object les
sons. Formerly pupils learned a definition
of q bird; then they were taught something
about birds structure; after that, if they
were fortunate, they were taken to see some
stuffed birds in museum. Now the stuffed
bird, or better STILL living one, is part of
the school properties; that is shown first, and
when curiosity is aroused the children
readily learn about it. But as no school can
have annexed to it complete museum Of
natural history, geography and the history
of the human race the pictorial art comes in
by way of substitute or preliminary.
No child can understand from words alone
that there is any part of the world which is
essentially different from his native town.
hut his first picture of a glacier or geyser,
a castle or a cathedral, the sphinx of Egypt
or the Esouimau in his kayak, opens his eyes
to the rest Of the globe; he begins to be
man. It is even more true Of history; the
most skillful combination of words can never
bring a child SO near the mound builders or
the Pueblo Indians, to the puritans or the
cavaliers. to the revolutionary soldiers and
the founders of our government, as ne Is
brought by the first good picture he SEES
ct w. H." in Harpers Bazar.
The Dear, Unselfish Creature.
Mr.. Sampson passionately)-I love you
,vsvp