Reports of the Bureau of Education, Part I [pp. 101-104]

Reports of the Bureau of Education.
strations, kindergarten fashion. The child
was simply set at these things, and expected
to be punished if he did not masterthem; and
somehow, not merely the exceptional child,
but the majorityof the class did master them,
and came out of the school with healthy,
active brain and a power of original thought.
Now, the text-book is simplified to the utmost possible, and fortified with pic ures and
like aids; the teacher is trained in Normal
School, and Teachers' Conventions, and by
educational tracts, to know all manner of
ingenious ways of explaining and illustrating
every process; and subjects really requiring thought are no longer given to the child
of eight or ten, but reserved for the last years
of the eight years' course into which the
graded schools are divided. Moreover, the
hours of school are shortened, broken with
exercises and movements of a recreatory
nature. And yet the complaint is always of
overtaxed children.
There is something in all this that will
bear much looking into. The best teachers
say that not over-work, but too little real
work, with too much variety of subject, artificial stimulation of ambition, and the unceasing sense of a machine-like grind ir the
school system, wears out the children, while
the bulk of the work is done for them by the
teachers, whom the modern school breaks
down, as the longer hours and worse grading
oftheold fashioned school did notbreak them
down. This is partly, they say, due to the
incessant pressure of the public, of children's
literature, of every influence, toward keeping
everything severe from children; but partly
to the necessities of a working graded system of schools.
Moreover, it is suggested that though the
old-fashioned country school, with its uncompromising demands, did produce vigorous, healthy minds and original power, the
conditions cannot be repeated: the country
was new, peopled by a strong-brained race,
chosen originally by a sort of natural selection out of that portion of the upper yeomanry and plainer gentry of England in whom
the tendency to mental independence was
strongest, and not yet seriously modified eith
er by immigration or by the easier life of a
country grown prosperous. The teachers
were the daughters of this race, sensible and
authoritative by nature, and its sons, fresh
from college, embryo ministers and lawyers
and statesmen. The severe demands to
which these healthy young brains responded
so well, would be simply crushing to the mixed race that now fills our school-rooms. The
children of educated parents are to a great
extent withdrawn from the lower public
schools, the boys to academies, in the best
of whicn the vigorous methods of the'older
time still prevail, and the girls to more or
less fashionable senmirnaries, where quite the
converse is true. The high schools for the
most part live well up to the sterner methods, and mental vigor and independence are
found in them; but by the time the high
school is reached, the eliminations from the
classes have restored their make-up more
nearly to the old type. In the city primary
and grammar schools, and the mixed common schools of the country, there is a very
large per cent. of the children of foreigners;
few of the children come from homes of as
strenuous mental habits as their parents may
very likely have done. The relaxation of
theology, the relaxation of home-teaching,
the relaxation of literature, all send the children into school unprepared for mental stress.
The laissezfaire system of the country schools
still turns out, occasionally-as every observer
knows-pupils of more competent mental
equipment than the city machine produces;
high school and college teachers will testify to
this. But it may be by a survival-of-the-fittest process: hundreds of mediocre brains
may have lost such training as they were capable of, that this one excellent brain might
work out its own development the better for
having to do it almost unhelped.
What then? Between the dangers of
laissez faire and the dangers of system and
organization (and supervision means system
and organization), what can be done? The
question is not unanswerable. For either
method works admirably with ideal teachers,
boards, and inspectors. Either method will
approximate to admirable working as these
1885.]
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