Evening star., 1900-10-06

their minds. 1t is necessary to treat people
as individuals; but 1t does them q world Of
good sometimes to treat great many of
them together, and to let them get used to
1t as best they may. The first lesson Of
life. as Lowell reminds US. is to burn our
own smoke: that is, not to inflict on out
stders our personal sorrows and petty NOR
bidness, not to keep thinking of ourselves
as exceptional cases."
The Specialists.
In practical life the work has to be done
and the man must adapt himself to it or
lose It; and in practical life everybody but
the trained man, the man who has gained
power through training. is going to have a
hard time. Education should first and fore
most train; and training has for its very
sustenance the overcoming of obstacles;
furthermore, every speciality is better mas
tered, better understood in it's relation to
human life and achievement by the man
who has worked hard in other subjects. i
believe that the job is the better for the
side job. Even now, one difference be-
tween college and a polytechnic school
is that the college provides basis of gen.
eral culture for the specialist to build on.
whereas the polytechnic school aims rather
to put man into a self-supporting
speciality with no "frils." There Is
something the same difference between
ItiStn OIL science ana q mechanlC.
Difficulties Evaded.
So far what 1 have said is chiefly theory;
but the prior reasoning is supported by
painful signs-by crude specialists that one
shudders to think of as educated men
Qearned men, doubtless, but not educated
mem; by hundreds of students who lack
the very underpinning of education. who
are so far from knowing the first lesson of
training, namely, that to be happy and sue
cessful they must get interested in what
they have to do, and that doing it regular
ly and earnestly means getting interested
so far from knowing this. that they sit in
front of a book helpless to effect any use
fui transfer of the authors mind to theirs.
Brought up to feel that the teacher must
interest them, they have become SO re-
duced that they would like, 1t WERE to
lie in bed and have their studies sent up
to them. Unwittingly the newfashioned
education encourages their Incidence. 1
remember some years ago talking with a
student who was fond of chemistry, but
whose habits of work, as 1 saw them in
another subject, were shiftless and slack.
j tried to show him the necessity. even for
chemistry, of habitual accuracy in thought
and expression, and at last l told him that
though the position he took might do for
genius. it would not do for ordinary men
like himself and me. He replied that he
had rather be anything than an ordinary
man. What he is now l do not know. An
OtneT student refused 10 TAKE pans Will
his English because. he said. he had been
brought up among people who spoke Eng
lish well 'by intuition This intuitive
English is often picturesque and winning,
but It is seldom capable of difficult work.
The Pupils Will Too Dominant.
How many boys know what will best de-
velop their minds? How many parents.
even If themselves educated, can resist the
combined pressure of boys and plausible
new fashioned educators? Even the youth
who wants the old prescribed curriculum
cannot get it; he may choose the old
studies. but not the old instruction. In
struction under an elective system is aimed
at the specialist. In elective mathematics,
for example, the non-mathematical student
who takes the study for self-discipline
finds the instruction too high for him: in
deed, he finds no encouragement for elect
ing mathematics at all. The new. system
holds that the study should follow the bent
of the mind rather than that the mind
should bend itself to follow the study. AS
result prescribed work, so far as 1t eX-
lists under elective system. is regarded
by many students as folly, and If dlfIicult,
as persecution. When the writing of foren-
sicS-argumentative work which involved
hard thinking--was prescribed in Harvard
College no work was done in the college
unless honestly. Students would often de-
fend themselves from cheating in TINS
study because 1t was really too hard for
prescribed subject.
Doubt III. related to Doubt I. Do we not
see in the men educated according to mod
ern methods such a weakness in attacking
difficulties as may indicate that we should
be slow to let the secondary school march
in the path of the college and the grammar
school follow close behind!
Teachers as Authorities.
Another doubt about the newfashioned
education have been glad to see expressed
in recent numbers of the The Nation. II
concerns what is expected of the teachers;
1t concerns the abnormal value set on the
text books and, l may add the abnormal
value set by some institutions on the higher
degrees. We frequently hear 1t said OF
eacher that he has taught for many years
but has prod Iced' nothing: and this often
means that he has never written text
book. / would not undervalue text books
as a practical result in teaching. But the
teachers first business is to teach: writing
is secondary affair; and result the
part of a teachers production is what he
produces in the minds and character of his
pupils. Few of the great teachers, whether
of schools or of colleges, are remembered
through their text books.
The education lays much stress on
writing and investigation and on theses as
the result of investigation. and originality
in these theses, that it seems sometimes to
encourage a young man in maintaining a
of which the sole value lies in
its novelty (no one having been unwise
enough to maintain it before) and in de-
Tending that proposition by a Germanized
thesis
"Monstrum horrendum informe. ingens.
cui lumen ademptum."
Such theses, l suspect have more than
once been accepted for higher degrees; yet
higher degrees won through them leave
the winner farther from the best qualities
Of a teacher, remote from men and still
more remote from boys.
Doubt ". While fitting the study to the
boy, have We been uniting the teacher for
him?
The Responsibility of the Teacher.
Obviously the new education throws a
tremendous responsibility on teachers. We
see why it should; and all of us who are
IA miliar with the inner workings of mod
ern school a modern college know that
1t does. How is it training the new gen.
Grafton for this responsibility?
In some ways admirably. 1t tries to show
that teaching Is not a haphaZard affair.
but subject for investigation and study:
1t tries to show how libraries should be used
and how original investigation should be
conducted: but oldfashoned people doubt
whether 1t gives due weight to the maxim
that Prof. Bowen used to repeat often,
The foundation must be stronger than the