St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-12-24
THE WASTE OF 1T.

of school into blocks or platoons, as
signing each platoon to room in which
the pupils are instructed in certain por-
tions of certain studies, and who move
through series of rooms from one
grade to another. ignores the most i'm
portant feature of the youthful mind
and entails a needless waste of oppor-
tunity. The system which permits
children of all ages and stages of edu-
cational progress to occupy the same
room utlliZeS the strongest force in the
development of the mind of the child,
and economies the labor of the teacher
and the pupil.
The child during all the years GUS
tomarily assigned to its school life is a
walking Interrogation point. Its chronic
condition is wanting to know. 1t is eager
to learn all the things in this new life.
which to it is SO mysterious. Its eyes
and ears are open and alert to see and
hear, and its mind is active in solving
for Itself the problems which perpleX
it. AT this time it absorbs information
as sponge takes up water. 1t is more
than at any other stage of its life per-
ceptive and receptive. 1t learns daily
from what it sees and hears, and what
it gets in response to the questions it is
always asking. The watchful observ-
ingness of children, their capacity to
absorb ideas seemingly beyond their
years. has been the cause or embarraSs-
ment to many parent who thought the
conversation with gossping neighbor
was beyond the comprehension of the
child.
This capacity for getting knowledge
by observation, by hearing the recitation
of advanced classes, is entirely lost in
the graded school system, or is only
partially untitled in those rooms where
two grades are taught, and where the
children in the lower grade have the
advantage of the instruction given to
those in the grade in advance. 1t is
used to its fullest in those private
schools or in the ungraded country
school where all the studies are recited
in one room, and in which are classes
ranging from the primary to the higher
studies. There is an overflow of the
instruction in all the recitatlons beyond
the class Immediately concerned in it,
which is absorbed more or less COLI
sciously by the pupils in the lower
forms. 1t is grinding with the waters
that have passed. 1t opens to the minds
of the younger children a long educa-
tional vista, and enlists their attention
to what is before them, and to studies
to which IN due time they must come.
4 i
with those studies. When they reach
them they are not treading strange
ground, as is the child who moves on to
the next grade in the next room of a
graded school.
Every teacher whose good fortune it
has been to teach in an ungraded school
will recognize the truth of this, and
corroborate it from her own experience.
Even the teachers whose misfortune, for
themselves as we'll as their pupils, it is
to teach in graded schools having two
grades in their rooms, will readily at
test how much more proficient are the
children of the lower grade when they
come to the work of their preceding
grade whose instruction they had over
heard. And teachers of both kinds will
appreciate in this experience of theirs
the enormous waste of time and op-
portunitY for the pupil, and of energy
for the teacher, the graded system thus
involves.
Two instances will illustrate. Said a
gentleman in discussing this question
"All that l know of what we used to
call natural philosophy, what is now
called physics, is what | learned as a
boy of eight or nine listening to the
recitationS of class and the talk of the
teacher in that study in private school
which attended. The war broke off
my school going, and L never studied
physics; but as my own children now
come on to study it l find myself sur.
prised at my familiarity with it, and ii
is wholly due to what my young mind
then absorbed"
Said a gentleman who had been a
teacher and a county superintendent
Among my pupils in country school
was raw Irish boy who had come over
at twelve years of age, innocent of all
books. He had his alphabet to learn.
One day in his second winter at school
noticed him using his slate when he
should have been at some other study.
My most advanced class in arithmetic
were reciting, and were at the board
working out some difficult problem
which 'stalIed" them. Stepping back
to see what the boy was doing, he hid his
slate, and. suspecting mischief, and
making him show it to me, l was aston
ished to find that he had correctly solved
the problem which baked the class. He
had been learning arithmetic by obser-
vatjOn."
Every teachers memory is rich with
similar experiences. Every man and
woman will recall the information they
imbibed in the same way while at
school. And it is one of the most
serious objections to our graded gram
mar schools that those opportunities for
learning by observation are denied
the children, thus impeding their prog
ress. We have no doubt that this waste
adds fully two years to the length of
time which children in such schools
must give TO the course of prescribed
studies. The matter is serious one,
and we are glad to see in some educa-
tional journals, and to hear from teach
ers, that the evil is recognized and a
search made for remedy. We believe