The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1889-06-25
NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Physiological Notes on Primary Education
and The Study of Language. by Mary Put
nam Jacob, NJ. D., New York: G. p. Put
MANS Sons. For sale by Loring. Short &
Harmon. The name of the author of this
volume Is SO we'll known in scientific and
medical circles, that no other recommended
ton Is needed to assure the public of the
value and interest of what she has written.
DR.. jacob has made a keen and close study
OF methods for developing and training the
faculties OF children; such as ''shall put the
mind into the widest and most effective
relation with the entire world Of things
spiritual and material, :" and she is con-
WINGED that there is an exquisite absurdity
in the time-honored system of beginning
the education by learning to read or write.
ITO study words before things" says DR..
jacob, tends to impress the mind with
fatal belief in their superior Importance.
To study expression before subject of
thought have been accumulated, is to culti-
vate the habit always prevalent in civilized
life. of talking fluently without having any
thing to say. To direct attention to certain
acts Of arbitrary signs before attention has
been trained by contemplation of real
objects, teaches the mind to place conven-
tional and contingent facts on the same level
with necessary truth"
The first idea taught a child should be
that of form; therefore the child's education
should begin with the simplest of all
sciences, geometry. 1t would be impossible
within the limits of a book notice, to follow
DIR. jacob, through her whole course of
raac MI 10 ucrb and
Whether the experiment tried upon one
child may be considered test of what the
mental training of all children should be is
an important question. There is no hint
given In the book as to the adaptation of the
author method to various cases. Rather a
scientific principle is applied ip all cases
alike. A process Of development machine is
constructed, and into this is flung the atom
of humanity, who. have gone through the
various phases of "the formation OF space
conceptions, optic-nerve conceptions and
auditory nerve conceptions" shall be turned
out at the age OF seven prepared to learn
how to read and write; or in the words Of
the author "where the child has once learned
to handle present existences, be will be
prepared to understand the reflections of
past life in language. When he has had
some experience in framing complex
distractions, he can then appreciate the
complex distractions Of speech" 1t may be
for the child's ultimate advantage that it
should be framing complex distractions
at the age of four and half: but do we not
stand a little in awe of the mite at that early
ueriod of her existence, who. instead of
hainu ahcarhan in no dolls in har 1ou m
for parents, brothers and sisters and all that
is bright and beautiful In nature. and living
the life of lily of the field which neither
tolls nor spins, but gains constant strength
and vitality, has her little brain filled with
thoughts of curves and angles; knows about
''and Is especially fond Of, the trapezium,
trapezoid, the pentagon, the hexagon, etc."
and is interested in horse-railroad as an
illustration of parallel straight lines which
never met, the marks of carriage-wheels as
parallel curved lines. the marks of horse
she divides her cake into squares
and cubes, and makes pentagons and
octagons with the knives and forks. She
speaks Of stewed onions as "a dish of
oblates," and in pulling the cords of a
window-shade, calls upon her friend to
observe that she has made "two scalene
triangles." Watching the growth of some
beans on saucer of cotton wool she dictates
this wonderful infant the f. flowing entry
for her journal, "The cpl perm, on the under
side Of Tertuis, is all black, and has split
leaving space the shape OF an equilateral
triangle, with the apex pointing to the
convex edge of the cotyledons." While
there is, as we have said, much that is
valuable and suggestive in DR.. Jacobs
work, we would yet urge for consideration
that the same intellectual training may not
be applied with equal prosperity to Louisa
Grandgrind and Sissy June. The author
most truly says "The final ends of education
are efficiency aud repose. The educated
person is he who knows how to get what he
wants, and how to enjoy it when he has got