Reports of the Bureau of Education, Part II [pp. 215-218]

.Educational Reports.
self to internal problems. But in this pres
ent decade any correction of Russian evils
from the outside, whether peaceful or by
force, is hardly to be looked for. Western
Europe does not dread Russia; a Czar who
fears to face his own subjects is not to be
feared by others.
But, as has been stated heretofore, the
downfall of Czarism, or at least its modification, is inevitable. The system is too glaringly
anomalous, too much in opposition to the
spirit of the age, long to exist in this modern
world of ours. The trend of the time is
toward Democracy; not any Chinese wall of
caste prejudice, of religious teaching, of bayonet-points and piled-up cannon, can avail
against the desire of humanity for more perfect liberty, for freedom of individual effort.
And while the constitution of Russian society, with its mir and the zemstvo, socialist by
tradition, will modify and amend democratic
teachings and ideas, fitting these to race surroundings and race peculiarities, it cannot
be doubted that in Eastern as well as Western Europe democracy will win.
But not speedily. For as "Stepniak"
points out, all the resources of the empire,
all material aids, all the discoveries of science, are under the control of the Czar and
Czarism. And eighty million peasants, separated into sluggish little communities that
only exist for themselves, and only ask to be
left to themselves, begging the tchinovnik to
come for taxes, or recruits for the army, as
rarely as possible, look to the "Little Father"
to some day dispossess all land-owners, and
give to them absolute control of the soil of
Russia. For generations nothing is to be
expected from these. The change will come
through circumstances that we cannot now
apprehend; by union, perhaps, of foreign
influence and the effort of popular intelligence, ripe even now for reformn; or by palace intrigue, nmisdirected and inaugurating
a revolutionary movement which it cannot
control. Fortunate will it be for the world
and the Russian people (and under all the
circumstances hardly to be expected) if it be
consummated without tearing to pieces the
very structure of society and shedding oceans
of innocent blood.
By comparison with this-the future of
the Russians at home, the reform of the despotic system which rests upon a hundred
millions of God's creatures as the plagues of
old rested upon Egypt how insignificant
becomes the question as to who shall control the barren uplands of Afghanistan!
S.B. W.
EDUCATIONAL REPORTS.-II.
WE noted last month the most significant
lesson of the educational reports then under
notice: viz, the absolute dependence of the
schools upon the quality of the teacher, and
the extent to which in this country we lack
such active interest in common schools on
the part of the most qualified class (outside
of those actually engaged in the work) as
would compel excellence in the teachers.
Circular 7, 1884, brings this out again even
more effectively. It is a report upon the
teaching of physics, by Professor Wead, of
Michigan University. It embraces a series
of questions sent out to Normal School
teachers, teachers of secondary schools (high
schools and academies) and college professors, as to the desirability, practicability, and
method of teaching physics, first, in the elementary schools, second, in the high schools,
and third, in collegos; the answers to these
questions, and some studies of European
experience in the matter.
Professor Wead sums up the answers as
being with much unanimity in favor of physics in the elementary schools, in very rudimentary form, with much experiment; again
in the secondary schools, by the inductive
method as far as possible, with laboratory
work; and still again in college.
The answers themselves, however, do not
1885.]
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