The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-01-16

extent that warrants the effort? To the
! student of sociology the conclusion IS
| inevitable that the present education IS
I not guarantee against SelfishneSs, and
does not direct to the best weil-being of
| the whole community. Children's eyes
and ears and hearts have a hunger that
the mastery of the three Rs by the old
! time process cannot feed. Through my
heart 1 am what 1 am" exclaimed the
! great Pestallolzi. The thirst of the i'm
; aginatiOn must be satisfied in the school
room or materialism will leave its blight
/ on our people. The state does not do its
/ duty to the individual or the community,
| if it fails TO develop the best in each
child. The progressive and harmonious
( growth of the universal community de-
/ ponds on the complete development of the
! individuals of which it is composed. The
highest test of any educational system is
| its influence on the expansion and
/ strengthening of the spiritual nature. In
J the old Greek world they knew better
than we. There the triune nature of the
/ individual was recognized, and those stud
/ les which brought culture to the soul, as
well as the body and intellect, were fos-
! tered. Because of this the Greeks We're
| the most harmoniously developed of
! any people, and we hold as a result their
! rich legacy in art, literature and mathe-
mates. The pressing demand that the
/ social order be spiritualized can be ac-
compliShed through the only available
avenue the public schools. The condi-
! lions of life in large centers are SUCH
) that from ethical and social reasons the
Z demand must be granted. Today the
anxiety on the part of those who form
the plan of study for the schools is how
education may spiritualize itself Educa-
ton has come to mean the development Of
the whole man; the physical. intellectual
/ and aesthetic or spiritual. 1t must help
/ the individual to understand himself 10
| justly value his kind, put himself in
! harmony with his surroundings. and
show him how to better social conditions.
/ The social idea is the center of all the
/ teachings of Froebel If we go right to
{ RI things the
/ clay modelling, the drawing, the mat
weaving. the song and the game exist
world, for the promotion of altruism be-
! tween him and his teachers, MS COM
+ panions and his studies. 1t is through
] this relating things to each other and
through their application in life, that the
soul gains its intelligence. not through
the producing of Il result. Drawing in the
/ schools has come to its present import
/ ance because prominently ii mediates,
! relates and unifies other studies to each
other. In its several forms when rightly
! taught it is more altrustic than any other
1 study 1t transports and connects i'm
! aginatiOn and intellect, the actual and
/ ideal. the objective and subjective worlds.
/ 1t lends itself out to all other recoS-
nized studies, while in itself it is a
; thought study, generating in the mind an
activity q quality of feeling and synthetic
! grasp of ideas not to be attained through
| the most faithful devotion to literature or
mathematics. The instructive love for
beauty is innate with every human and
with it its natural outgrowth. expression.
! Side by side with this instructive love of
beauty in childhood we find the other in
stinctive desire of productions-the desire
/ to create to put outside of himself in
some form the loved idea. In the crud-
est drawing or rudest, most absurd clay
figures. seemingly lacking in every ele-
ment of beauty, we must assure our
selves we see the testimony of the divine
creative power. As L note this universal
love for beauty and the desire to create
in my continual contact with children. |
am convinced that the potential artist.
poet or seer is within every child, and
that the world has been made the poorer.
! because through our clumsy educational
! processes we have Stifled the best until
/ the stupid, average, or commonplace citi-
/ zen is the result. The difference between
! the artist or poet and the rest of the
world. is simply that on the one hand
the mind has been trained to give atten-
/ ton to the things about him, until he sees
/ in the most common things beauties of
which the other never dreamed. In his
! immortal confession Wordsworth tells of
! this highly trained Soul-senSe when he
1 says that the meanest thing that grows
/ gave him thoughts too deep for tears.
! We wonder sometimes that men follow so
meekly the leadership Of demagogues.
| We should not wonder when the training
/ in the schools has been so much that
which makes copyists of them. too often
| the most successful teacher has been the
, one who could soonest destroy 1ndiv:dl-
ality. The mind is weakened by all school
1 processes that increase the store of
! knowledge without at the same time, and
( by the same processes, increasing the
/ tendency to express and use the knowl-
! edge gained. 1t is a law that the one who
I never has learned to exercise self-eXpres-
sion forever remains a material being, al
ways influenced from the without and
( subject to the will of others. UneXpreSSed
feeling or thought is accompanied by
! gradual loss of mental power. The DOS
! sibility of mind growth is evidenced by
increasing the power of expression. No
| thought can be thoroughly wrought into
/ selfhood until it hSs been expressed. and
each new form of expression strengthens,