Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1899-03-06

f1uence that increasingly impels to {
higher moral plane. You spend the bes
days and years of your manhood in ac.
cumulating wealth, and then you poul
it without stint into temples of learn.
ing for your children. Childhood owe!
much to the home that nourishes it; tt
the school that educates it; to the state
that protects it. They, in turn, owe theil
existence to childhood.
If such, then, is the nature of thu
child; if such has been it's part of thu
development of civilization, we'll may
the question of what shall be the char
acter of it's education, command the
profound attention of the parent, the
teacher and the statesman. In creating
the educational system, citizenship
scholarship and statecraft, realize theil
~loftiest functions. Then we must con.
slider at once the character of education
to be developed by this institution. II
has been created a normal university
Ato iihiiiS llhPllCo q OIouu Vi uoCluI-
ness. AS a normal school, it's mission
is to train the teachers who are to &c
into our primary and secondary schools
1t thus becomes the school of the peo-
pie. 1t touches the lives and homes OF
all. AS it sends teachers into the com
mon schools it sends it's life blood into
the commonwealth. 1t is truly the heart
of the public.
But the human mind cannot find a
resting place in the archives of civiliza-
ton. 1t is not enough that we may at
tain to the culture of our historic past.
The horizon broadens. The student of
today must be armed with all the appli-
ances for modern scientific investiga-
ton. Laboratories must be equipped
and scientific research promoted if our
young men and women are to attain to
humanity's full stature. No education
is sound and liberal until it has appre-
hended the great achievements and the
great problems of science. The study of
the mighty manifestations of the power
and grandeur of Nature is no less al
Turing and %ennobling than the study of
the majestic progress Of man. The
study of history and literature and Ian
guage has enriched and refined and
idealiZed the human mind, but the
study of science has kindled and eman-
cipated and actuated it. History only
carries us back to where the human
hand commenced to record the human
thoughts in conventional characters,
but a~nthropology takes us even farther
back to the age before the human
tongue struck speech, before human
lips had formed>a word, before the hui
man form had stood erect and faced the
world to conquer and illume it with the
light of human reason. Then biology
takes up the search for the origin of
man and the development of life and he
who would assert that the quest has
been in vain must battle against a host.
But mar would know more than the
record of his w ascent. He would
learn the history and the structure Of
the planet on which he makes his home.
| We marvel when we think of the in
| scrutable Sphinx, silently facing the
Egyptian dawn for centuries, and final
ly yielding up it's secrets, even the
words of it's builders. Then think of
these eternal hills, yielding up to the
| %geologist the story of this planet, and Of
the life that has inhabited it, after hold
ing it securely through time that we no
longer estimate in cons, but designate
only in terms of infinity. The physicist
analyses matter into dynamic systems.
Energy is will. He speaks to the I'M
seen forces of nature and they obey.
The astronomer ~nnounce the instant
of the suns eclipse ages and ages in the
future. He weighs the dog-star, though
its light be eight and one-half years in
travelling to our planet, and then the
chemist analyses it and tells unerringly
the exact chemical composition and
meteorological construction of it. Yet
most astounding of all the flights of
mind are the speculations of mathe-
mates. The imagination refuses to fol-
low the marvellous flights of Lobacheus-
ky and Sylvester. The history of phi
losophy affords no parallel to modern
mathematical method, for here the pure
reason, unassisted by the senses, tri-
umphs over limitless time and space.
Then the psychologist, most daring of
all, most reverent of all, invades the
very temple where is .enshrined this u
preme creation Of the living God, and
seeks the genesis of the all-conquering
mind. The history of scientific research
contains nothing else to subtle in meth
cd, SO sublime in results as the work of
the psychological laboratories Of the
past decade. 1t has revolutionized ed
ucational methods. Education has be-
come a science. Ignorance of child
growth, Of mental development, on the
part Of the public school teacher is
crime.
Verify science has emancipated the |
mind; has set it free and plumed 1t for
these immortal flights. Then our de-
partment of sciences and mathematics
must be equipped with the best appli-
ances for modern research.
Closely related to the study of the SCI
.nces, a department that every child in
the commonwealth should have access
to, is that of physical and manual edu-
The old Greek ideal, ito give
to the body and to the soul all of the
beauty and all the perfection of which
they are capable" is as noble today as