The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1896-10-13

! The lectures on the History of Educa-
| ton were excellent and valuable, but
| these lectures cannot be claimed to be
the outcome of the new methods, mas
much as the lecturer had received his
| education and was trained under the
| old system.
The other lecturer was Mr.. Dresslar.
| On one occasion he gave us a discourse
on that he was pleased to term ge-
| geography. His peculiar advice to the
| teachers was that in teaching geogra-
| ply they should impress upon the
minds of the children the necessity OF
| their leading noble lives, and always
have a high standard before them. The
lecturer had spoken highly of the
| teacher of geography class at the sum-
mer school. l attended four of these
classes, but 1 found that he did not once
attempt to tack a moral precept to
Iatitudinal or longitudinal line, nor
did he fix one on the highest mountain
or end one floating down one of the
longest rivers of the world He had
evidently a greater knowledge of the
fitness of things. A man who would do
this would perhaps, in teaching Eu
clid's Geometry, read us hOmily or
give us quotation from Valleys The
ology' at the end of each problem. The
homily may be good in it's way, but it
would not help a lad much over the
pORs dsiIeOrHn. Another peculiar bit of
advice of this eXpounder of geography
was that you should teach the child
to be not as you are, but to be better
than you are. How is a teacher to do
this? Children are naturally initiative.
To prevent this imitation it would be
necessary for the teacher to give his
pupils the same sort of advice as a
drinking, swearing, fOX-hunting parsOn
of by-gone generation was credited
with giving his fiock-"DOn't do as I
do. Do as / tell thee" | could men
ton other peculiar instances, but per-
haps the two l have mentioned will
suffice to show the tendency of the pro-
fessor's discourses to run into clap
trap His experiments with the weights
were CoItuS, anu VI CuoNelliOi1etl
value; but perhaps it would be as well
for him to vary them, when next he
pays Honolulu visit, by bringing a
rope and a balancing pole, and give us
an illustration of the pOise of the hui
man body on the tight and slack
ropes. This would be of equal interest
and educational value with his weights
experiments. 1t would serve, too, to
prove beyond a doubt upon what frail
basis a man may stand, and yet pose
as an important figure.
1t is my candid opinion that a teach
er would get far more practical infOr
nation and intelligent insight into the
methods of teaching from a careful
perusal of John Swetts invaluable
work than he would from a thousand
lectures of the Dresslar type. Mr..
SWEET gives us not his own highly in
teIligent and practical views, but he
quotes freely from the greatest think
ers past and present. Mr.. Dresslar, in
his discourse on geography" never
made a single quotation, nor did he in
the fragments of other discourses that
I summoned up patience to listen to.
1t was nothing but Dresslar from be-
ginning to end. This complete reliance
upon his own knowledge and expert
ence, and stunning all authorities,
gave his lectures strong SAVIOR of
empiricism So much for the new Gen
eral Pedagogy, with Mr. Dresslar as an
exponent l am, etc,
GEO. F. JESSETT.
Oct. IL.