The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-09-22
AoA-thu-sat
Education of Our Youth.

Professor Barrett Wendelrs article on "Our National Superstition in the Sep tember number of the North American Re- view, will be read with interest by all who are interested In the education of Americans youth Americans believe that national salvation depends upon ed ucation. and in that belief they spend vast sums upon schools and colleges. What kind of education do these institutions inn part? The answer which Professor Wen dell gives to that question is discouraging; 1t is even apalling He for years a member of a committee in Harvard whose duty it was to scrutinize the qualifications of students from other colleges who desired to become candidates for degrees at Har- yard. and his testimony is that the commit tee were frequently confronted with bach elors of arts who seemed virtually unedu- Cated In the course of his experience, all 1t has seemed to him that the boys who reach college from preparatory schools are proving flaSbier and flabbier in mind This phenomenon Professor Wendell regards as a proof of the failure of the new methods of education. whereby. after the fashion of the kindergarten, the pupil is permitted to confine himself to subjects which inter est him. Such methods make provis- ion for the training of the will and it is the faculty of voluntary. distinct from spontaneous. attention which education, in the broad sense, ought surely to cultivate. Looked at from this point of view. the clas- sics and mathematics were better instru- ments of education than for a long time many people have supposed them to be, Professor Wendell says:
 You can hardly imagine a subject es- s-ntally uninteresting, which would not ward ploddng work with a similar result with substantial ignorance of the matter studied, but with increasing and lastngly muscular power of voluntary attention. The only actual practical virtue which lies In the traditional subjects comes mostly from the accident that they are traditional As natural consequence. they have acquired through the centuries degree of precision not vet attained by any rivals, Even unsympathetic and unintelligent teachers can, therefore, keep closer watch on them. If the attention of boys who study classics or mathematics begins to wander, 1t can instantly be perceived as vagrant- If 1t errs. its errors can swiftly and certainly be corrected And the very fact that the classical languages dead, and that the distractions of mathematics must general ly seem repellently lifeless Is part Of the secret of their educational vitality. Of late years, it has often been supposed that training in natural science would do more for the power of voluntary attention. and therefore would have a higher educational value. than training in the old humanities S0 far my observation has gone. this has mt yet proved the case. And one reas- on why it has not, I am disposed to think. Is because the natural sciences are adept nowadays 10 prove a shade too interest ng, In the end. accordingly. like other alluring things, they often excite an attention more nearly spontaneous than voluntary If 90. the study of them would inevitably re suit rather in technical information and nabitual aptitude of a special kind, than in any broad general training, available for any other service than that immediately con cerncd.