The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-05-16
HAVE NOT KEPT IN TOUCH

Frequently in private conversation
one hears, and occasionally in some pa
per reads harsh comment on the
processes of modern pedagogy Some
Of the studies are sneered ait as "fads;"
others are denounced as useless inno-
vations on the good old curriculum of
the three RS, which was good
enough for !: preceding generations
and should be sufficient for this. Again
we hear the criticism that spreading
studies over So wide a range makes
mere smatterers of the pupils, ground
ed in none Of them. This does not
come from any hostility to the schools,
for let an attack come on them from
any quarter and people rise in mass to
repel it. 1t comes from another and a
removable source whose cause is plain
ly discernible and capable of eradica-
ton.
These criticisms come almost entire
ly from men and women of middle or
post-middle ages, who are merely in
sensible to the fact that pedagogy has
not refused contact with that spirit of
progress and development that has af-
fected so strongly all the sister sciences
and arts within the past thirty years.
It would be strange indeed if, when
medicine, surgery, mechanics, chemis-
try, manufactures, almost every voca-
ton into which men turn their ener-
gies, have outgrown old methods and
ideas, and have taken on new and
vastly more productive processes, edu-
cation in our schools should have
Jagged behind, content with doing what
was ancestrally done, and insisting
that it's methods had attained final
perfection. 1t would be strange if
broader views Of what education really
and fundamentally is should not have
come and forced their way against
sciences and arts were broadening
their pathways.
And it is this that has happened and
it is against this that all this criticism
is directed. When one comes to exam
inc into the cause for this antagonism
one findss:it1 in the simple fact that
these critics Judge educational methods
by the standards that existed when
they received their schooling. With the
progress that has been made in other
branches they have kept in touch be-
cause these have come into their daily
lives since. The various utilities to
which electricity has been put affect
them daily. They do not consider the
substitution of the trolley for the mule
or the arc for the gaslight, as a. "fad;"
they do not turn up their noses when
the doctor comes to treat the diph-
thereto child with anti-serum. because
it has displaced the old treatment with
which they were familiar; nor do they
insist that their shoes shall still be
made by the patient shoemaker on his
bench, instead of by the sixty four per-
sons now needed to make a single pair.
All these changes in the direction Of
progress have come daily under their
observation and made their impress on
their daily lives.
But when, thirty or forty years ago,
these critics left their schools they left
behind them all touch with educa-
tional methods and ideas, save as they
have since been disturbed by the re-
quest Of their children for assistance in
some study. The new terms and
studies, strange to their school days.
rouse their prejudices, for that with
which they were familiar and which,
having been the best in their day,
must, they assume. still be the best.
The new = an innovator. making