The Aberdeen weekly. [volume] (Aberdeen, Miss.) 1878-1933, 1910-03-11


tendency of public school education
The metropolis has, including hlsh schooi',
65l ,325 children enrolled in its ola sonoo'
houses which cost s99. 133, 600. and has teach
ing and supervising force OF lo,4o9 p eLso,
whose combined salaries amount to Sl''ooi'ooo
a year.
For weeks | went from school to schooi
from class to class room, from teacher 10
teacher, from principal to professor, oDserV-
ing, questioning comparing, analyzing the oio
idea Of the common school with the new, par
ticularly looking to how theory consisted
with practice and results
To start with. had the fact that there is
general complaint that the boys and girls VINO
come from American public schools write bad
ly, spell badly, and weak in grammar and
arithmetic.
But facts are hard things to overcome, and
the more | searched for evidence with which
to shame and confound modern pedagogy and
its methods, the less | disposed to con-
DENIM until finally it became plain that |, in
common with the general public was mistaken,
and that an attack upon what is known as the
new education" could not be justified That
there is some and much that is expert
mental in it cannot be denied. But the great
groundwork of it seems to be sound and prac-
teal
It is claimed that the old system of teach
ing children in the schools based on an
ignorant theory of the human brain. The idea
was that STERN high drill in few subjects
developed
in all subjects. Teachers have assumed that
the mind was a group of general powers or
faculties, such observation, comparison, at
tention, logic. memory language. and so on,
and that an intensive study along the line OF
any mind faculty would develop that faculty
as a whole and practically for all purposes
1t is now held by leading educational
thorities that the BRAIN instead of being col
lection of few general faculties, divides itself
on investigation into countless Specifications.
and that mental power developed in one func-
ton of the brain cannot a rule be trans
ferred to another function
That discovery upsets the foundations on
which education has been based for centuries
and, together with the modern demand for
technical and manual training to meet indus
trial problems, accounts for the sweeping
changes observable in the public schools
To-day the teaching profession has grown
to enormous proportions. There are in the
United States alone more than half million
teachers and college professors That is more
than third of the membership of all the pro-
fessions combined The teachers of the coun-
try outnumber the lawyers physicians more
than four to
Pedagogy has suddenly become a conscious
profession which seeks establish itself upon
a firm scientific basis.
The new idea is that broad curriculum.
embracing, in addition the three Rs,
ual training art science and nature studies.
touches all the latent possibilities. tastes and
ambitions of the child arouses, interests and
develops its capacities; and, so, prepares it for
Standardization in its life vocation
Such investigators Prof. Edward L.
Thorndike professor OF educational psychology
in the Teachers college, Columbia university.
declare that actual scientific tests show that
the specialization of the human mind is even
greater than ordinary observation leads one to
suppose"