Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

(2) Growing out of this changed attitude toward school life and its duties there arises, by operation of the law of transference of interest, a greater liking for the ordinary literary studies of the school.

If this, indeed, were the only gain by incorporating manual training into the school curriculum it would be a sufficient consideration for the expenditure of time and money.

(3) Lastly, the training acquired by a judicious course of manual instruction in a well-ordered school and under competent instructors is, per se, of great intrinsic value.

Drawing, for instance, lies at the foundation of all the industrial arts. It is the prime study of the manual training school. Its admitted failure heretofore, in the elementary schools especially, to produce any wholesome and valuable results has been due largely to the abstract character of the instruction given. Taught in relation to and in connection with the industrial arts it becomes vivified, and affords to the pupil a sense of gratification while giving him a valuable knowledge and power.

I am disposed to believe that carving and wood joinery are most valuable forms of manual training in the upper grades of grammer schools, first, because especially enjoyable to the pupils, and, second, because the results obtained are exact as well as obvious.

The knife and the saw, for instance, cut to an exact line. Precision as well as facility is acquired. Accuracy of eye and nicety of touch are cultivated. All these powers appeal to the self-satisfaction of the pupil; he can measure his own progress; his ideal is attainable; he knows when he reaches it.

The satisfaction of having made an original demonstration in geometry or a correct translation in Latin is by no means so intense as that of having made a wooden box with accurate measurements and perfect joints.

As a proof of this, observe the lad who on the same day has done both. Which does he exhibit to his instructor, fellow-pupils, or parents with the greatest show of delight? I grant that the demonstration in geometry exhibits a higher reach of trained faculty than is required to make a box of wood; it is not intended to disparage the demonstration; it is intended merely to call attention to the moral and spiritual elevation or, still better, exaltation that arises from the sense of honorable achievement.

Our schools are doing their best work when arousing such laudable feelings of a higher self-appraisement. Scholarship is one of the ends of the people's schools, but not the only one; for usefulness in its highest sense, i. e., the ability to secure for one's self and for others all that life is worth living for, falls not a whit below scholarship as an appropriate end for school instruction. The boy or girl imbued with the feeling of capacity for usefulness in the simple activities of life will become a better citizen than the boy or girl who is taught to look for honorable distinction only in the attainment of encyclopedic book knowledge. The simple arts of sewing, cooking, and other handicraft are real elements of intellectual as well as of economic education.

Indirectly upon the moral life they are no less valuable than direct formal instruction in duty to one's self and society.

It is my conviction, after much careful observation of the results obtained, that manual training is a legitimate and invaluable addition to the common school curriculum; and this on social, political, and economic grounds. The individual is made happier; society is benefited; the State is made more secure; and the wealth of all is increased by shaping to some extent the instruction of the schools along industrial lines.

The adaptation of manual training to the needs of pupils of the last year's grammar and of the high school age is well advanced. What is best for pupils of a lesser age is not so well ascertained.

It has been the policy of the department to discourage, for the time being, State appropriations to schools not having a high school department; and this for the reason that it is not clear as yet how manual training instruction of a sufficiently specific kind upon which to base an appropriation can be carried on in the lower grades.

Applications for manual training appropriations from several large and important cities and school districts are pending. As soon as the wisdom of its introduction into the school curriculum becomes settled in the minds of the people at large, the rapidity of increase in number of manual training schools in the State will be great.

Below is given the amount of money granted by the State to the several schools receiving an appropriation on account of manual training for the year 1892–93:

[blocks in formation]

[From the report of State Superintendent James F. Crooker, 1894.]

THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF EDUCATION.

The first duty of the State in educational matters seems to me to be to provide sound, useful instruction to all children within its borders; such instruction as will lay a firm, thorough foundation for any structure of education which time and opportunity may afterwards design.

The majority of school children, about 90 per cent, can not enjoy the advantages of advanced education at the expense of the State, since necessity compels their parents to withdraw them from school about the time they have completed the study of the elementary branches. The elementary schools should therefore be the first and chief solicitude of the State until their needs are supplied and their efficiency in the remotest country district assured. They are conspicuously the schools of the people, the nurseries of future citizens.

I am compelled to dwell particularly on this subject, as it is a regretable fact that teachers and pupils in many instances have shown indifference toward the study of the fundamental branches and unreflecting eagerness to reach the higher studies without due preliminary steps.

It is a serious mistake to regard elementary classes in a school as unworthy of the zealous care of any teacher and the unstinted encouragement of any school board. It is to the thousands of children whose education is necessarily limited to the elementary classes that the State must look in the near future for the mass of its citizens; not to the comparative few who are enabled by more fortunate surroundings to graduate from high schools, academies, and colleges.

To attain success in the public schools and to expend to the best advantage the liberal appropriations made by the State for education it appears to me that there is one only practical course, and that is thoroughness in every branch of instruction. The tendency in many schools is, unfortunately, to attempt too much, without a thought as to doing the most necessary part of the work well. It is chargeable to the misdirected ambition of parents as much, if not more, than to the teacher.

When the programme of studies is increased so as to produce mental congestion, the main object of public instruction is lost. To do a few things in school, and to do them well, is preferable to cramming the tender mind with odds and ends of a multitude of subjects-the merest superficial knowledge, which can never be made practical. But it is unhappily the case that parents too frequently lose sight of this vital principle of education, and are prone to insist upon their children being pushed forward into higher studies before they are well grounded in the essential branches. They take pride in repeating the names of the various studies with which their children are vainly laboring, and disregard the necessity of obtaining a thorough knowledge of the elementary branches which must be brought into the walks of ordinary business life.

The teachers, realizing that their efforts for the concentration of energy upon a few requisite subjects do not meet with proper appreciation, are tempted to abandon the true path of thoroughness in elementary instruction by gratifying the unreflecting vanity of parents and loading their pupils with burdens both grievous and useless. The children are taught to regard elementary studies as beneath their notice, and with the merest smattering of the most essential branches they are rushed into higher readers, geometry, algebra, and other studies. Far better for them that they should be taught to read, spell, write, and cipher well, than to be subjected to such a force-pump process in higher studies without having firm ground under them for such education as will be of most service to them in the ordinary occupations of life. The result is apparent in many instances of pupils forced into the most ambitious studies, and yet woefully deficient in spelling, and fair, legible penmanship. We have students in grammar schools in scientific branches who can not add up a simple column of figures without making inexcusable blunders, and who can not write a simple business letter without perpetrating gross ungrammatical solecisms. In attempting to do too much we accomplish but little. Bread-winning knowledge is ignored in the attempt to grasp everything. The promise of the common schools is to give a sound education in the most necessary branches.

There is not the slightest argument in favor of making them all-embracing colleges. The State should not, under any circumstances, hold out any encouragement to the multiplication of unnecessary studies by offering a premium or money inducement to forsake the safe, true course of instruction. Cramming for examinations which hold out such inducements is an evil to be deplored, and it can not fail in the end to injure materially the prospects of the common schools.

The vast field of human knowledge can not be adequately gleaned in the few years in which a child can attend school. When the pupil is hurried from one topic to another there can not be any thorough education. The mind, like the body, requires time to digest its food.

A methodless thinker, a pupil, a parrot repeating set lessons without understanding them, a reflector of indistinct impressions, can not be considered as good a scholar as one who has been benefited by the liberality of the State in public instruction. As an eminent educator has said, "The mind must be fed, judiciously fed, not gorged." The first object of a teacher should be to develop the mental faculties of his or her pupils by making them think. The mind can not be awakened or developed otherwise. The number of books which a boy or girl carries to school is no criterion of advancement. The most ignorant person, endowed with wealth, can have a large library, which might as well be at the bookseller's as in his house. Fewer books and more knowledge of what they contain may be relied upon to produce more practical educational effect.

A few clear thoughts, adaptable at any moment and fully presenting a subject, are preferable to a mass of mere words, even if they are supposed to represent higher education. To think well and intelligently on one question, by having acquired the habit of thoroughness in study, is of more use in practical life than to have committed to memory the ideas of others on a score of different things and not be able to apply them.

The thorough mastery of a single educational subject, no matter how humble it may be, is the best of introductions to all other questions. It is the best training of the mind, for it develops the essential faculty of getting to the bottom facts in investigating things. The superficial thinker or observer is the one who does not succeed in life.

Education, so far as its effects upon the well-being of the State are concerned, should be practical and general. It should include the entire mass of the people, not solely or particularly a few favored by fortune. It should aim at the thorough instruction of the many, not the special aggrandizement of the few. The university and the college accommodate but a very small proportion of those who go to schoolmuch less than 1 per cent. They are separate and apart from any general practical system of public instruction. Public funds intended for general educational purposes should be primarily devoted to the elementary schools. The people require elementary education before that which is the province of what are known as the higher institutions. They want their children to read, write, spell, and cipher correctly before they seek diplomas and academic honors. They are more interested in their children being well prepared for the duties of life by a solid ground work of public instruction than in wasting their time over a multitude of studies of an advanced kind, which can not, in a period allotted them for school, be learned with any degree of proficiency.

Potential knowledge consists in knowing a few things well, and not a large number of subjects badly. It includes in its broad scope self-reliance, without which education is of little practical utility.

Strength and vigor of mind are depreciated, if not nullified, by any system of public instruction which causes the pupil to rely entirely upon the arm of another. Such a system is that which looks only to the superstructure of public instruction, to the neglect of the foundation.

OHIO.

[From the report of State School Commissioner O. T. Corson. 1893,]

GRADUATION FROM THE DISTRICT SCHOOLS.

The number of examinations under the "Boxwell" law, providing for graduation from the schools of the subdistricts and special districts, shows a marked increase over 1892, when the first examination under the law took place.

There can be no doubt that this law is having a great effect for good upon the subdistrict schools. A careful examination of the following table will furnish abundant evidence of its rapidly increasing usefulness and popularity:

[blocks in formation]

UNIFORM EXAMINATION QUESTIONS-SOME OBJECTIONS STATED.

The law providing for uniform questions for teachers' examinations could not be executed through failure of the legislature to make any appropriation to meet the necessary expense for printing, etc.

The chief reason given for the passage of this law is that in some instances the questions asked by county examiners are of such a narrow, technical character that they can not possibly determine, to any extent, the applicant's knowledge or fitness for teaching, and therefore the questions should be prepared by State authority, and thus made uniform.

To anyone who will give this subject of uniform examinations careful thought some serious difficulties will present themselves. It is true that in several States uniform questions are used with a reasonable degree of satisfaction, but it is also true, as a rule, that in these States the laws have been such in the past as to cause more uniformity in the educational system of the State than is found in Ohio; at least it is true that in our State there is a vast difference in the educational standards of the different counties. In some counties the standard of examination is so high that only those who have thoroughly prepared themselves for the work of teaching can hope to receive certificates; many of these counties are, comparatively speaking, wealthy, and can well afford to pay first-class salaries to first-class teachers for a term of nine or ten months each year. As a result of this condition of affairs, it is very necessary that the questions used by the examiners in these counties shall be of such a nature as to insure the maintenance of this high educational standard.

In other counties, opposite conditions prevail; the educational standard is low; the tax duplicate small; and everything seems to favor low salaries, and as short terms of school as the law will permit. It will be readily seen that questions adapted to the conditions existing in the counties first mentioned will not be suitable at all for other counties with different existing conditions.

Then, all who have given any study to the examination problem will admit that the grading of the answers to the questions is one of the most important elements entering into the success or failure of the examination. So far as this work is concerned, uniform questions furnish no relief. It is difficult to understand how examiners who are charged with being too incompetent and narrow-minded to ask reasonable questions, can be expected to grade intelligently and broadly answers to questions asked by someone else.

Although it will be readily admitted by everyone that some very incompetent persons can be found serving as county examiners, yet it is seriously doubted by many whether uniform questions will remedy to any extent this serious evil.

PENNSYLVANIA.

[From the report of State Supt. N. C. Schaeffer, 1803.]

PERMANENT CERTIFICATES TO COLLEGE GRADUATES.

The law requiring the issue of permanent certificates to college graduates brought to light a state of things truly astonishing. Under the corporation Act of 1874 the county courts have been incorporating business colleges, schools of elocution, and other institutions of learning.

Some of these schools have, upon the basis of such charters, been conferring degrees upon students and others of very limited attainments. A lady, for instance, received the degree of B. A., who had read but five books of Cæsar, four books of Virgil, and four orations of Cicero. Arithmetic and penmanship were reported as part of her four collegiato years of study. A letter sent to the department by the head of the institution abbreviates et cetera several times by the use of "ect." instead of etc., and has pedagogical spelled "pedagochical," not to mention other blemishes, indicative of what Ben Johnson calls "small Latin and less Greek." Another institution was leased with its charter, and, although it is said to have less than a dozen students, and a faculty composed of the president and his wife, it has been conferring degrees from B. A. to LL. D. upon persons who are vain and weak enough to wear titles emanating from such sources. The institution even went so far as to confer a doctorate on its own president. Why should not the wife confer a degree upon her husband, and the husband upon his wife, when a state of things is threatened similar to that which was threatened in France, when a minister declared that he would create so many dukes that henceforth it should be no honor to be a duke, but a disgrace not to be a duke. At the present rate there is danger that literary degrees conferred in Pennsylvania shall become the laughing stock of the civilized world.

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that superintendents and institutions of high grade, whose aim is to do honest and thorough work, entered their protest against the issue of permanent certificates to the graduates of such institutions, under the act of May 10, 1893.

The act was, therefore, referred to the attorney-general for his construction and advice. In an official opinion, dated October 17, 1893, he says that the State superintendent is not required to grant, without examination, permanent certificates under the act of 1893, except to graduates of colleges legally empowered' to confer degrees, and that the general incorporation of a literary institution, under the act of 1874, does not legally empower' it with this right."

The only course open to the department, therefore, is to require, as conditions for issuing the permanent certificate, the following:

(1) The applicant must furnish evidence of a good moral character.

(2) The applicant must be twenty-one years of age, and must have taught at least three full annual terms in the public schools of the Commonwealth, after grad

uation.

(3) The applicant must produce a certificate from the school board or boards, countersigned by the county superintendent of the same county where he or she last taught, showing that the said applicant has been successful as a teacher in the public schools during said term.

(4) His or her course of study, leading to the degree of bachelor of arts (B. A.), master of arts (M. A.), bachelor of science (B. S.), master of science (M. S.), bachelor of philosophy (Ph. B.), must have embraced four collegiate years of study, exclusive of the preparatory work required by our respectable colleges for admission into the freshman class.

(5) The college or university granting the diploma must have been invested with power to confer degrees by an act of the legislature.

GRADUATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

In close connection with the abuse of literary degrees, is the kindred tendency to graduate pupils upon the completion of all sorts of courses, and to give them diplomas in recognition thereof. A burean has even been organized to furnish questions to school officers, and to bestow certificates that look like diplomas upon those who are willing to pay the fees and to take the examination. The temptation for teachers and superintendents to adopt expedients of this kind lies in the fact that a diploma has its chief value for the undergraduate. It sets up a goal upon which he may fix his eye, toward which he may work with unflinching perseverance, and for the attainment of which he may be willing to remain at school a year or two longer. But, after it ceases to exert its influence as a motive to sustained effort, it is apt to prove a snare and a curse. It often leads the so-called graduate and his parents to believe that his education is complete, and thus puts an end to all further growth and study. Graduating exercises in the grammar grade may cause a pupil to be satisfied with that course, who might, otherwise, aspire to go through the high school and the college. In like manner, the high school and the college may aspire to be finishing schools, instead of pointing the brightest minds to subsequent courses of study and reading. In fact, it may be laid down as a universal proposition, that any. institution whose teaching fails to inspire a thirst for further educational advantages, is a dismal failure, and sadly needs a thorough reorganization, as well as the infusion of a different spirit.

« AnteriorContinuar »