New-York tribune., 1905-08-13


", if they did little
else \ famous old Ger
man pedagogue, Hauber-
4 !. !. !. ! !. /
erie kept a record of some }4zC7g9
seventy thousand n0td HI
bencs over the head with d@Ee Z Y
Bible, hymn book, etc, - < 49,
cuffs, knock downs, snaps IF ~
on the ear, that he had e II -
administered during his y - -
hfty-one wears of teach
ing Evil was bound up @B
in the heart of a child, and
the rod the
At the opposite extreme stood men like Rousseau,
Wordsworth Alcott in his famous Boston School
They held that children freshly arrived from
God full of wondrous intuitionS, purer and better
than adults and worthy of the utmost reverence
Handsome idiots. like Casper Hauser studied
bv wise men, and their fooshness interpreted
wisdom As usual the truth lies between all such
extremes, although all evolutionists think nearer
the latter than the former view.
1t is barely quarter of century since the first
systematic attempts to study children begun
by Preyer, Darwin, Tiedemann and others Now
50 rapidly has the movement grown that we have
a photography of more than two thousand valuable
books and memoirs, some dozen journals, and scores
of academic chairs in universities and normal schools,
devoted prdeutics child study The child
has become key to interpret the deepest questions
concerning the origin of mans body and soul in
every civilized land of the West, and within the
last wear two societies have been established,
among whose members are found some of the most
brilliant names in letters and science in Italy,
Poland Bohemia, while in Russia Japan, India and
Argentine the work is being pushed with enthu-
siasm. The French Sociftt dc Lingnistlqne, which
forbade by its law the study of the origin of Ian
guage has opened its proceedings to contribu-
tions to this theme from baby linguistcs.
Important, if not epoch-makng, contributions
have been made in this field to the subjects of dis
ease, religion, the development OF society, of in
dustrv; and knowledge of the child nature IS rapidly
becoming the basis OF educational thought and bids
fair give the business of teaching pro-
feSsional and scientific character than it has
done in the past There critics galore and
naturally because much of the early work was
crude placer mining Now new methods of great
dclicacy and accuracy have developed, and the
child is being revealed to the world about the
interesting thing in it and is the open
to great many of the mysteries of human nature,
and curiously enough many of the outspoken
quandam critics are now recounting the triumphs
of the movement in literature representing it in
colleges and universities.
Studying children does not mean taking babies
into the classroom for demonstration analysis
of any kind 1t does not defower impair parental
love. No babies injured by anything that any
parent competent pryng specialist wants to sub
ject them to- No mother could possibly object
but could only welcome the services of these ex-
perts. Curio1,sly enough one undreamed-of result
of making children more interesting has often been
noted: namely, parents more anxious to have
them, and some headway, at least, has already been
made against suicide which our rigorous Presi-
dent deplores.
Let me try, then as briefly as l can to give those
who have not followed what has been done some
general idea of it all At birth the infant enters
into a world of which, had he been intei-
gent, he could have had no more knowledge than
we have of the state of the soul after death 1t is
cold world with lower temperature, a world of