Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

pioneer work in this field of technical training, yet who are practically unknown today.

The commercial school is peculiarly the result of an evolutionary process. It would be interesting and instructive, if space permitted, to trace in detail those influences which led to its inception. Among such influences we might well class the publication of texts on those subjects which now are recognized as distinctly commercial in their character.

The American Colonies, particularly Virginia with its tobaccoraising enterprises, were engaged in trading and commerce, and consequently there was a demand for a book which treated of mercantile accounts. The earliest work which seems to have been at all extensively used in the colonies was entitled "Bookkeeping Methodiz'd; a Methodical Treatise on Merchant Accounts, according to the Italian form. By John Mair, Edinburgh." The first edition appeared in 1736. The sixth edition, which I have examined, was published in 1760, being greatly enlarged by the addition of an Appendix, comprising, as the Preface puts it, a "vast amount of useful information," a chapter being added "for the benefit of the young merchants, who trade to, or settle in Virginia and Maryland, exhibiting at great length the commerce of those colonies, with the method of keeping accompts used by the Storekeepers there." Another chapter was added "to answer the purpose of merchants in the West Indies setting forth the commerce of the sugar colonies, with the method of keeping accompts used by the factors there."

An even more interesting book appeared in the year before Mair brought out his sixth edition, the title page of which reads, "The Modern Elements of Numeral Arithmetic, containing so much of common and decimal arithmetic as is necessary to perform the various calculations of the Compting-House and the Custom-House with the greatest ease and dispatch together with the demonstration of the Theory and Practice of the several branches of Commercial Arithmetic so disposed as to suit the convenience and capacities of children." Real, Simon-pure, practical commercial arithmetic in 1759! The book contains chapters on Fellowship, Custom and

Excise, and "Tret and Tare," which is defined as "that process by which merchants compendiously find and deduct their allowance and commissions."

Another step forward in the development of a practical education was made by the publication, in 1772, of a pamphlet entitled an "Essay on Bookkeeping in the ture Italian method of Debtor and Creditor by William Webster, Writing-Master and Accomptant." This contains a highly interesting appendix entitled "An Essay towards rendering the instruction of Youth more easy and effectual with regard to the Studies at the Writing-School." In an almost prophetic vein Webster arraigns the educational practices of the day in the following terms:

"Education is a word of large extent; but certainly every part is not applicable to every person, and the compting-house and compter require qualifications very different from those which fit a man for the pulpit or bar. Yet, notwithstanding, the prevailing method of education at present is without any regard to the child's capacity or destination, with respect to the future figure we intend he shall make in the world. The present method, I say, is, as soon as he can stammer over a chapter in the Bible, and before he hath well lost the uncouth tone of pronunciation which he hath larnt from his mistress, immediately to send the boy to the Latin-School; where, instead of studying his own language and improving in the necessary qualifications of reading it distinctly and with proper emphasis, he is unreasonably entered upon a Latin grammar, and not only perplexed with abstruse terms of art, but confounded with rules written in a language he is altogether a stranger to." "This course of study," Webster observes, "is as fruitless as it is difficult, for, after it may be seven years' pains are past, and the youth somewhat advanced in learning, either discouraged by experienced hardships or determined by his friends' inclinations, his studies are suddenly changed, and he is immediately removed to the Writing-School to be qualified for trade or other business;" (there is your business school of the eighteenth century, "The writing-school, to be qualified for trade or other business")—"where, entirely neglecting his former application,

the little Latin he has learned is lost; and for all his time and labor past, he is perhaps unable to give the sense of a motto or inscription; nay, it may be, is still uncapable of reading or writing."

How often have we heard this same line of argument, slightly re-vamped, applied to those schools which represent the modern version of the Latin-School of Webster's time.

I shall now mention certain other books in the order of their appearance, each one of which represents a distinct advance in the cause of practical education. The first is "The Young Bookkeeper's Assistant," published by Thomas Dilworth at Philadelphia in 1789. I advert to the preface of this book for the following quotation:

"Some instructors of youth propose to teach Bookkeeping in six weeks; some in a month, and some in twenty-four hours; and all of them, in their own proposed times, engage to make their pupils master of the art. But whatever their pretensions may be, it cannot be done in so short a time; such hasty performances in bookkeeping, or in any other branch of literature, being more likely to produce a crazy and tottering building subject to fall at every blast if not wholly undermine it, rather than make it firm and lasting."

Verily, verily, the educational fakir have we always with us! Seven years later appeared the "American Accountant; containing the principles of Mercantile Arithmetic, or all the rules necessary for forming a complete accountant; methodically arranged and largely exemplified, the whole adapted to the commerce of the United States. By Benjamin Workman, Philadelphia." The chief merit of this book, the author contends, lies in its large number of practical examples. I cannot refrain from quoting one such practical example:

No. 11.

When first the marriage knot was tied

Betwixt my wife and me,

My age did hers as far exceed

As three times three do three;

But after ten and half ten years

We man and wife had been,
Our ages then appeared to be
As eight is to sixteen.

Now, Tyro skilled in numbers, say,

What were our ages on the wedding day?
Ans. Sir, forty-five years you had been,

Your bride no more than just fifteen.

Merely mentioning William Mitchell's "System of Bookkeeping," "The Ready Reckoner," published at York, Pa., 1797, and William Jackson's "Bookkeeping in the true Italian form of Debtor and Creditor from the Precepts of the ingenious D. Dowling, author of Mercantile Arithmetic," published in 1801 (that same "Jackson's Bookkeeping" which Mr. Bartlett, thirty-five years later, declared he knew by heart), I pass on to "The Student's Assistant, containing a concise method of Bookkeeping by James Maginness, Harrisburg," prepared for the use of his students in 1817. It seems by this time that bookkeeping had become a course in the curricula of the schools and academies of the day; indeed, all but one of the books mentioned above bore the name of a school, written evidently by the student who originally owned the book.

Once more, and in even stronger terms, the plea for a practical education crops up in Maginness's work. He has added to the book, "Observations," as he puts it, "on the management of youth in conducting them through a Useful Education." Let me quote:

"Excellent plans of a liberal education have been laid down by writers in almost all ages of the enlightened world. Notwithstanding this, many people are mistaken about what it requires to constitute a liberal education. Men are said to possess a liberal education who have acquired little more than a smattering of the Latin and Greek languages; without a competent knowledge of anything else. I consider such an education a very illiberal and useless one. How many young men have we seen coming from the colleges with their honorary titles of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts without being master of either art or science;

such geniuses," he remarks with fine sarcasm, "are said to have liberal educations." Continuing, he asserts that "it is not uncommon for boys to have an opportunity of jabbering here and there through a few classical school-books without learning to spell, read, write or understand their own language as they should do." "My plan," he tells us, "is to commence with a boy in our own language and point out to him the course which I consider necessary for him to pursue to acquire a useful English education strongly bordering on liberality."

Peace to the departed Maginness, preacher in the cause of a Practical Education, who could so clearly detect the educational shams of his times, and for that matter, our own times as well.

He goes on at some length with directions as to the teaching of every subject in the curriculum of his school. Penmanship, Grammar, Bookkeeping, Arithmetic, each in turn is well and wisely treated. In Penmanship his ideas were strikingly sound. He advises the boy to sit in a proper position at his writing desk, "keeping the edge and heel of his hand always off the paper and free of it when writing. He should first be practiced to make a straight and parallel strokes of about and inch and a half, with a natural slope, till he can make them pretty clean, straight, and regular."

I am now going to introduce to you one of those four pioneer commercial school men whom I mean to resurrect from obloquy. He is James Bennett, "Accountant, Lecturer on Bookkeeping, and President of the Accountants' Benevolent Society of the city of New York." Let me quote his advertisement, published in 1833:

"The Annual Commencement of Bennett's Public Lectures on Book-keeping is on the first Monday in October, at his office in New York at seven o'clock in the evening; and a New Class commences on the first Monday of each of the succeeding months, including April. The Evening Lectures close annually on the first day of May.

"TERMS. For an unlimited attendance (the perpetual scholarship device later adopted by the Bryant and Stratton chain), with the practice, $15.00, to be paid in advance.

« AnteriorContinuar »