The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-05-29
TEaCHEBS OF ST. Paul SCHOOLS
DR.. Dewey Effectively Demolishes 1.-THE
Fetch of Primary Education

the cultivation Of the soil and the rails
ing of crops. 1t was not only an ade-
quate substitute for what We now
term manual training, in the develop
ment of hand and eye, in the acquisi-
ton of skill and deftness; but it was
initiation into self-reliance, indepen-
dcnce of Judgment and action, and was
the best stimulus to habits of regular
ard continuous work.
In the conditions, which surround
childhood today, all this is removed
and nothing has come to take It's pace.
Just at a time when a child is SUB
jccted to a great increase in stimulus
and pressure from his environment he
.cses the practical ard motor training
necessary to balance his intellectual de
ve,opment. Faci ity in acquiring infor-
nation is gained while the power to
use it is lest. While need of the more
formal intellectual training in the
school has decreased, there arises the
urgent demand for the Introduction of
the means of manual and industrial
training, which shall give children
what they formerly obtained in home
and social life.
DR.. Dewey depreca.es from the physf-
cal standpoint the giving up of so much
of the first two years Of school life to
the combining and analytic work OF
learning to read and write. The ma
tllral order of the development of the
sensory and motor centers Is from
th= larger, coarSer adjustments having
to do with the bodily system as
whole Chose nearest the trunk OF the
BODY, to the finer and accurate, adjust
ments having to do with the periphery
and eXtremeties of the body.
The oculist tells us that the vision
of the child is that of the savage, be-
ing adapted to seeing large and some
what remote objects in detail. To vio-
late this law means undue nervous
strain; it means putting the greatest
tension upon the centers least able to
dc the work. AT the same time. the
lines of activity which are hungering
and thirsting for action are left unused
pecially in the barbarous fashions, long
current in the schools, of compelling
the child to write on ruled lines in
small hand and with the utmost at
tainable degree of accuracy-involves
a nicely and cOmpleXity of adjustments
of muscular activity which can be sdeh-
nitely appreciated only by the special
list AS the principal of Chicago
school has wittily said: ''The pen is
literally mightier than the sword"
DR.. Dewey thinks that present phys
Illogical knowledge points to the age
Of about eight as early enough for
anything more than an-incidental at
tention to visual and written language
forms. He calls attention to the con-
ception of John Fiske that advance in
civilization is an accompaniment of
the prolongatfon of infancy. In this
connection he deprecates anything
which develops to high degree any
set of organs at the expense of others,
and says that many educators are al
ready convinced that premature facil-
ity and glibness in the matter of nu-
"A noti fnf,I o,~1 q
arrested development of certain higher
spiritual capacities. He says that the
same thing is true of verbal symbols,
and that only the trained psychologist
is aware of the amount of analysis and
abstraction necessary for the recogni-
ton of verbal form. That the es-
sence of abstraction is found in COM
polling attention to rest upon elements
which do not appeal to the chilIs in
tereStS and activities. To cut the child
off from all the things to which he
spontaneously attends, and which is
his natural unconscious food, is to force
the premature use of analytic and alb
stract powers. This cripples later in
tellectual development.
DR.. Dewey would therefore postpone
learning to read to time when the
child's intellectual appetite is more con-
sciously active and when he is matur=
enough to deal more rapidly and eff
fectively with the formal and mechani-
cal difficulties. The child should have
a personal interest in what is read, q
personal hunger for it and a personal
power of satisfying this appetite. He
should be trained in dealing with ma
terial outside Of books, and deal with
problems in the direct personal way
He should be exercised upon the things
themselves and not upon what some
one has said about them. In music,
painting, modelling, he should be given
an outfit for his inner impulses and
feelings, and put in possession of the
necessity of existing social life. He