The Republican journal., 1892-07-21
Human vivisection is by no means rare

Human vivisection is by no means rare
in many an American home, where most
of the time is spent in exploiting growing
children for the amusement or interest of
the parents or visitors.
When it is distinctly seen that education
is not a science. but an art, it is perceiv-
ed why so many so-called normal schools
fail of their purpose, and why the educa-
tional journals which appear from time
to time only to return to the silence from
which they arose. are for the most part
such very useless reading.
To hold a school up to the highest
standard of excellence. and this by unceas
inc vigilance, is one thing: to manage it
so as to make the most money and to gain
the most friends, is another. The teacher
who tries to do both will probably not
succeed in the first.
Perhaps the best training any ambitious
GIRL could have for teaching would he
found not in normal school, but for one
wear in an asylum for idiots. one year at
Hampton. and one III a school for the
blind. She would learn in such work as
this how to reach the intelligence which
lies waiting.
Ii the teacher he not better fitted to Oil
rect the education of the child than is the
parent. then she is not a tit person to be
at the head OF the school, OF indeed to
teach at all.
| think if Pestaozzi and Froebel were
now living. they would ask for new names,
50 weary would they be of having all sorts
of crude and absurd labor ascribed to
them.
Parents may be roughly divided into
two classes-those, to use a proverbial
expression. to whom all their own geese
are swans; and those who are persuaded
that their sv ans are geese; there is mid
die class, but it is so very small that it
NAV almost be disregarded in a descrip-
ton. Strange to say. the second class is
quite as large as the first.
The teacher position in the education
al world is that of the physician, and not
that of the trained nurse: that is a point
which is not generally understood, and
one that needs to be insisted ON.
The main object of the school may be
said to he to create character, and for this
end it should seize upon every opportuni-
tv of STRENGTHENING the will and of MAX
inc it controlled and consecrated. There
is no lesson and no regulation which may
not be consciously used for this and when
everything is used for this purpose, every
thing will fall into its proper place, and
the school will be what it should be-
Governing does not consist in allowing
disorder to happen and then Furnishing it.
1t consists in seeing every smallest wander
ing of attention at its very beginning, and
SO preventing disorder To do this. the
teacher must be conscious of every pupil
at every second. Nothing is easier than
this when one can do it.
The teacher must always be in two
places at once-her own mental place and
that of her little pupil: this demands the
greatest sensitiveness of nature on her
part and it is for this reason. perhaps,
that woman, other things being equal
and often where they are not perfectly
equal-mav be a far better teacher than a
man.
To teach a class is as much more inspir
ING than to teach a single pupil as to play
first violin in an orchestra is more inspir
manage great school of the kind that |
have limited at is to conduct the orchestra.