The Republican journal., 1901-09-05
The Ideal School as Based on Child Study

At the sessions of the representatives
of New England high schools and col
leges all the discussions and interests
centre more and more in the details of
how 10 tit in this and that study, and
whether a little more or less should be
required or methods tinkered. College
requirements, and suggestions how they
may be best met, have ceased to be edu-
cational themes i'll any large sense. 1t
| is high time to reverse this relation.
The college depends on the high school,
and not vice versa The latter should
| declare its Independence, and proceed
to solve its own problems in its own
way: it should strive to fit for life those
whose education stops here, and should
bring the colleges to meet its own de-
mands. 1t should ask again how best
to feed the interests and capacities pc
culiar to this age; how to fill and de-
velop mind, heart, will, and body, rather
than how to dlstil a budget of prepared
know no more of the needs of this age
than teachers of other grades The
current link" theory and practice i'll
terfere, moreover, with the natural Sc
lective functions: favor uniformity and
intieXibility; and ignore the needs of
the majority of high-school pupils who
go no further.
| Under this condition it is idle to study
adolescence or to plan for it, because
nothing worth While can be done: al
though the inverse relation | plead for
would be vastly to the interests of the
colleges. and would in few years great
ly increase their classes and the efficacy
of the whole system. Few institutions
of modern civilization SO distruSt hui
/ man nature as does the modern Amerl-
can high school, when under college
domination. For lower grades the law
of compulsory attendance is analogous
to high protective tariff, which re-
moves the stimulus to better methods
of manufacture, and interferes with the
law of competition which is the main
spring of evolution The high school
is no less effectively protected against
the currents of new ideas, and is left to
be victim of tradition, routine, the
iron law of mechanism. 1t takes the
easiest way by working under the
shelter and dictation OF the college
above and on the momentum of the
grammar school below. This, ! believe,
accounts for the rapidly decreasing
numbers as we go up the high school
classes; forthe decreasing proportion OF
high school boys who go to college: for
the preponderance of girls in the high
school; and for the educational apathy
of the high school teacher, who is prone
to all the narrowness and affectation of
the specialist without his redeeming
virtue of productivenesS in research.
The teacher must teach more, and
know more; he must be living foun-
foi, rnf cfa Mt
not be a dealer in desiccated, second
nearer of lessons. That is the chief
and humiliating difference between our
secondary teachers and those abroad,
who are mostly Doctors of Philosophy,
as they should be. If we could move
many university professors to the col
lege, many college professors to the
high school, many high school teachers
to the grammar school, and some gram
mar school teachers, with at least a
sprinkling of college graduates, into
the kindergarten, it would do much. In
the German and French school,, the
teacher is one who knows a great deal
about his subject and is nearer to Orlgl-
nal sources, who tells the great truths
of the sciences almost like stories; and
who does not affect the airs and meth
DDS of the university professor. Very
many secondary teachers are masters
and authorities. Here, most of our uni
versity pedagogy is mere device for SO
influencing high school principals and
teachers as to correlate curricula, in
order to corral in students, and little in
terest is taken in the grammar grades,
and none in the kindergarten
dent G. Stanley Hall in the September
Forum.