Chicago eagle. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1889-19??, 1893-02-04
GOETZ OBJECTS
Continued from page l. )

teacher his time and found fault with
the Board of Education. Time went
on. the first semi-annual examination
came, and my German boys stood
among the first in the class in the
English branches: the annual exam
nations came, and again my German
boys held their own and passed with
high honors from the district TO the
intermediate schools. My preju5ices
began to soften: | began to feel that
the study of German was not so bad
after all as | had imagined. After
three years experience as class
teacher in the upper grades | was
elected principal. Here | was con-
fronted by a fact | could not then
The teachers OF En-
glish in the primary grades requested
me to assign them to the German
Why do you prefer to
teach in the German department?
| asked; and each answered:
Because the children do better
in all their studies and are
more easily disciplined, and they do
better on examination in English
than those who devote their whole
time to English studies. So during
two years principalship l watched
the progress of the pupils carefully
and compared the results of the two
and found the teachers
were correct. After ten years expe-
rience the statistics showed that the
pupils who studied two languages
passed to the intermediate schools on
an average of little more than a year
younger than those who studied En-
glish only. The fact is that a child
can study two languages at the same
time and do as well in each as he
would if all his time were devoted to
either language. You forget the all
important fact that the mind of the
child is only in its infant stages of
development, that therefore it can
comprehend but little on any one sub
iect, that the process of developmentof
the infant mind is slow and gradual.
A child can learn each day a little of
a large number of subjects, but not
much of any one: it can learn, for in
stance, as much arithmetic in one
half hour daily as in ten hours; it
will learn in the half hour all its
mind will asSimilate, and any at
tempt to give it more than this be-
comes examining, stultifying proc
esS and defeats its own ends. You
can't force the mind of a child with
out injuring it. You can't teach it
beyond its powers of comprehension,
and any attempt to do so must result
in failure. Again, the number of
subjects relieves the mind of the
child, tension in one direction must
not long be retained. Those editors,
physicians, and Others who complain
Of Oyerburdening the minds of chill
dren in the primary grades on the
ground that they have too many
branches of study, do so through ig-
norance of the real facts, and against
the experience of the best school
systems of the word.
The danger of overburdeniny the
minds of children lies exactly in the
opposite direction, lies in attempting
too much in one or few subjects,
and not in the direction of too many
studies. And / assert here that if. as
some advocate, the courses of study
were reduced to the three RS the in
struction would become terribly bur.
densome to the children especially in
the lower grades, and they would
learn less of these subjects than they dc
now. In the upper grades the mind,
of the pupils are more fully developed,
and the number of studies can be
safely leSsened, and perhaps should
be. From what has been said, it is
evident that it would he a great mis-
take to postpone the subject of Ger.
man till the children reach the gram
mar or high school grades, as many
advocate. The introduction Of the
German language into the public
schools OF our country has. unfortun
ately for the interests of education
met with much prejudical opposition
and is, even among educators. some.
what Of a yexed question. One OF
the most common objections raised
Is that IL you admit one for.
eign language into the curric.