Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1891-07-18
r..I, of the sehoels.

Fault ~ tho Schools.
A lady of wide educational experience
told. the other dsv, this story of . small
scbool-boy whom she found in great
distress over his lessons. When she
asked what had been his particular
trouble that day, he stated this arduous
problem:
IF John has two red apples. and
Charles has two, how many red apples
have they 10th together?"
as that hard ?" she asked.
.Very hard, ;" he said, sadly.
But surely" she replied. you know
already that two and two make four;
there can be no trouble about that?"
@Of course not, was the pathetic re-
Spouse. -Of course I know that we'll
enough, Mrs. -. But the process!E
it's the process that wears me out"
No one who has had much to do with
schools, and especially with public
schools, can help seeing the tremendous
force of this intantile sarcasm. Multi
tudes of things which come SO naturally
into child's mind that they might al
most be taken for granted, are virtually
taken from him, and offered him again
in such . formal shape, and so envi-
roned with definitions and technicslities
and processes" that he is almost made
unconscious that he ever knew them.
It is not confined to arithmetic. Many
children who have grown up under
educated influences write better Eng
lish- certainly more idiomatic, and often
more correct-before studying English
grammar than afterward. They write
as they speak, by ear, and the rules con-
fuse more than they help. In the study
of natural history I have heard exer-
cises with @object lessons" that seemed
to me EXPIRE ssly contrived to stultify
the human int elect; and this especially
in normal schools, where one young
pupil stands up before the others, max
ing believe that she knows everything,
and her classmates sit before her MAX
ing believe that they know nothing. It
IS necessarily all form and q process.
They go through the questions which
the children are supposed to ask about
the object; and of course, if the real
children do not ask the right questions,
they must be taught to ask them. They
must wish to know what they ought to
wish to know, not what they really desire.
When the young teacher faces real chill
dren, therefore, instead of studying
their actual minds, she proceeds on q
method previously arranged.
It did not surprise me, in the discus
sion which elected the anecdote with
which I began, when later speaker,
a man who had spent many successful
years as teacher and school superintend-
emit, expressed frankly the opinion that
there were many schools which simply
stultifed their pupils instead of enlight-
ening them, and when he asserted, as q
general proposition, that at least 80 per
cent. of them in our public schools
were devoted simply to teaching
over again to children, in q more elab-
crate way, what they already knew per-
fectly we'll in their own way, the time
being given, in other words, to the "pro-
cess, not to the real thing. It is some
thing, I suppose, which all the best
teachers will admit as an evil, and some
thing which they all struggle against all
the time. At some points certainly
there have been much improvement
made; thus reading and spelling are
taught far. more easily than they once
were, and in q less mechanical way.
The same is true, in many schools, with
grammar, geography, and history; and
when one considers what large schools
our teachers have, and of what hetero-
geneous materials, and under what
uncertain supel vision, one may we'll
wonder that they accomplish as
much as they do. They certainly
achieve almost everywhere some train
ing in the elementary duties of obedi-
ence, order, self-control, patience, and
propriety. This is much; and the time is
coming when they. will impart more of
the substance of intellectual training,
with less of the process. sabbath
Recorder.