The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-05-29

the Teachers.
The new interest shown in education
by all classes of Intelligent people is
evidenced perhaps more by the great
number of technical or semi-technical
articles on education one finds in high
class periodical literature than by any
other sign. Time was when these sub
jects. treated by school men and wom-
en-, would have been confined to the
strictly pedagogical magazines or pa
pers, to be read only by the pedagogue.
Now the educational writer has a wide
audience and is coming to exercise COR
responGingly wide influence. In the last
Forum, for example, one-seventh of the
space is devoted to strictly school edu-
cational discussion, by strictly school
men.
The article entitled THE Primary
Education Fetch" is somewhat start
ling TO pedagogue and layman alike.
1t is entitled to consideration both from
the novelty of the theory advanced
and from the high standing of it's au-
thor. DR.. Dewey, professor of psychol-
ogy in Chicago university.
DR.. Deweys theories if carried out,
would involve such radical changes,
even in the up-to-date school, as to
make it unrecognizable by it's best
friends. and an object of severe repro
baton by its worst enemies.
He AYERS that to take up the first
three years of a child's life in teaching
him TO read, write and cipher, is d
procedure adapted to conditions, social.
industrial and Intellectual, which no
longer exist. That such a course was
established at a time when scientific
methods of observation and experiment
were either unknown or confined to a
few specialists. The immediate sur
rOundings of our ancestors were crude
and undeveloped. Newspapers, maya
zines, libraries, art galleries and all the
daily play of intercourse and reaction
which is effective today, were non-eX-
istent All escape from the intellectual
environment OF those times was
through books. Reading and writing
were obviously the open doors to learn
ing and to success in life. The cur
riculum OF the three Rs grew out of
these conditions But a tremendous
change has been wrought in present
conditions by the advent of quick and
cheap mails, Of busy and continuous
travel and transportation, the telegraph
and telephone, the establishment of
libraries, art galleries, the prevalence
of cheap literature and we are more
likely to be surfeited than starved. The
capital handed down from past gener-
atoms and upon whose transmission the
integrity of civilization depends, is no
longer amassed in those banks called
books, but is in active circulation at a
low rate of interest. The significance
attached to reading and writing as
primary instruments of culture has
shrunk proportionally as the inherent
intellectual life of society has quicken
ed and multiplied.
Then, too, science and art have be-
come free. The simplest processes of
knowing and doing have been worked
out SO that it is possible to initiate the
child from the start into the operations
by which society maintains its eXis-
tence. 1t is possible by industrial
training. to reproduce the processes of
production, transportation and con-
sumption. 1t is possible at an early
day fer the child to become acquainted
with, and 10 use. in a personal way
the methods by which truth is discover
ed, and communicated, and so to make
language from the start the vehicle to
get ard to convey genuine and personal
experience.
DR.. Dewey dwells upon the training
which children of earlier generations
received when life was largely rural
when home was the enter of industry
where spinning, weaving and the max
1re of clothes, as we'll as the ordinary
EoUSshold occupations were participat-
ed in by the children. They also came
Into contact with scenes of nature and
were familiar with the care of animals.