The Philosophy of Teaching Part 2

A museum and a library would be necessary adjuncts to such a school as we have described. It would need but a few seasons to get together in the various excursions taken by pupils and teachers, quite a collection of botanical, entomological, and geological specimens. These would serve as objects for ill.u.s.trating the teacher's lessons, and for examination by the pupils. The drying, preservation, and arrangement of plants, animals, and minerals, in which the pupils would a.s.sist, would serve to impart to them a skill and dexterity, which they would know how to value, and would be eager to acquire, and, together with their frequent visits to the museum, would serve to cultivate a love of nature and devotion to the study of her works.

The library, besides containing treatises on science and for reference, would be filled with books of travels, and the n.o.bler English and foreign cla.s.sics; the books would be loaned to the pupils as in ordinary circulating libraries, and a pleasant reading-room would be furnished with the better cla.s.s of periodicals and newspapers.

To be deprived for a time of the right to visit the museum or reading-room, or to borrow books from the library, would be one of the severest punishments known in the school.

It is hardly necessary to say that the selection of the princ.i.p.al of such a school as we have indicated is among the most difficult problems of its establishment. His qualifications should be as near the perfection of manhood as can possibly be found. Invited by a large and generous salary (to be dependent, beyond a stated sum, on the number of the pupils), it is to be hoped such a teacher could be found.

Such a princ.i.p.al, after a fixed period of probation, should not be removable except on a very large vote of the proprietors of the school to that effect, but his office should be vacated on his attaining the age of 60 or 65 years. The selection of teachers to a.s.sist him in his duties should be left to himself. The remuneration of the a.s.sistant teachers should also be large, and should be such as not only to enable them to live in comfort, but to make ample provision for their future when the age of labor shall have pa.s.sed.

The chief position in society should be a.s.sured to the princ.i.p.al and his a.s.sistants by the proprietors of the school.

The visits of the former to the houses of the latter should be regarded as an honor, the greatest respect and deference should be paid to them, and the pupils should be taught to look upon them with love and respect next only to that they pay their parents.

The best investment a parent can make of his wealth is in the proper education of his children. Life is not merely to be born, to grow, to eat, to drink, and breathe. Noise is not music. Life is such as we take it and make it, or rather as it is taken hold of and made for us by those to whom the care of our youthful days is intrusted.

Let us endeavor to picture to ourselves the being likely to be produced by a system of teaching and training, continued for successive generations, such as we have indicated above. Let us imagine the full development of the most complex of nature's organisms--a part of the one living organism of the Universe, the latest product of her laboratory; considered, as a part of the great Cosmos, the most perfect, yet but an integer in the whole; the ultimate development of nature's chemistry, yet forming an atom of her living unity; combining and possessing the widest relationships, even embracing therein the entire volume of that nature whose true relationships comprise all knowledge, truly "the n.o.blest study of mankind." Let us try and draw the picture of the developed man!

Robust and supple of limb, symmetrical of shape, his muscles swelling beneath their healthy development; with head erect, conscious of his strength and skill, which he puts forth for the protection of the weak, and for the purpose of drawing from nature her bounteous stores; free from sickness or disease, in harmony with nature, at peace with his fellow-men, possessing a competent knowledge of nature's laws, and guiding his conduct to be in accord therewith, "sitting beneath his own vine and fig-tree,"

"blessed in all the works of his hands," and diffusing blessings and happiness around. Such is the picture of THE HEALTHY MIND IN A HEALTHY FRAME, which it is in man's power to procreate and rear!

_APPENDIX._

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION,} CORNER OF GRAND AND ELM STREETS, } NEW YORK, June 5th, 1869. }

TO MAGNUS GROSS, Esq.,

_Chairman of the "Executive Committee for the Care, Government and Management of the College of the City of New York:"_

DEAR SIR,--I have observed with surprise, and with a sense of deep regret, that the proposition is entertained by a large number of the Trustees of filling the chair of Latin and Greek, now vacant, and even of establishing separate chairs for each, at the College of the City of New York; involving, with the necessary tutors, an outlay of not less than $20,000 per annum. The subject in all its bearings is one of too vast importance to be treated in the ordinary method of discussion by the Committee, and I therefore beg leave to place my views in writing, to insure their receiving more matured consideration than oral observations could secure.

I pa.s.s over the question (on which considerable difference of opinion exists) as to the propriety of sustaining at all, at the enforced expense of the public, an educational inst.i.tution to supply the needs which the College of the City of New York is intended to meet. The College exists by law; we are its guardians, and the only question we have to consider is, how most efficiently and most economically to secure the attainment of the ends desired by the Legislature.

These ends we shall no doubt all agree to be--first: that any of the youth of this city possessed of special talents, but lacking means for their cultivation, may have placed within their reach an education the best possible for the development of their powers for the benefit of themselves and of the community; and, second, to provide for the comparatively well-to-do the means of pursuing useful studies in compensation for compelling them to provide for the instruction of their less fortunate citizens.

As it is self-evident that whatever course of studies will tend to secure the first of these ends will tend also to secure the second and less important, we are spared the necessity of a two-fold investigation.

A very few statistics suffice to show that neither of these ends has been hitherto attained by the College of the City of New York.

It is immaterial what year we select for examination, the numbers which follow will be found to bear about the same relative proportions in every year. I quote from the Trustees' Report for 1866 merely because it is the latest doc.u.ment at hand which furnishes the numbers in the different cla.s.ses and of the graduates; from this report I find, that while there were three hundred and eighty-one students in the introductory cla.s.s, only twenty-five graduated in that year. The number of graduates in 1867 was thirty, and twenty-nine in July, 1868. Of the three hundred and eighty-one who composed the introductory cla.s.s in 1866, one hundred and fifty-one left the College during the year, and doubtless the two hundred and thirty who remained will have dwindled to about twenty-five or thirty by the year 1871.

Without doubt some proportion of the three hundred and eighty-one leave the College because of the necessity they are under of obtaining, by their labor, the means of subsistence; but when it is remembered that these three hundred and eighty-one are the _picked youth from the many thousands attending the public schools_, and when the sacrifices and privations which men and youth imbued with a love of learning will make and undergo for the acquirement of knowledge are borne in mind, we must look to something in the const.i.tution of the College itself to account for this result. In short, we can but come to the conclusion that the main cause of this falling off is to be found in the feeling which grows upon the pupils and their guardians, of the comparative uselessness of the studies to which they are consigned.

Let us examine the course of studies, as given from pages 8 to 14 of the Report of the Board of Trustees for the year 1866, or from pages 24 to 28 of the Manual of the College.

The first observation which must strike the mind of every thinker is the fact that the primary a.n.a.lysis--the main cla.s.sification which has been adopted of studies which ought to be framed to fit the students for "complete living"--is one of "words," _i. e._, the tools of knowledge, instead of knowledge itself. Or in the words of the Report: "There are two courses of studies--ancient and modern--differing only in the languages studied."

On examining the course for the introductory and freshman cla.s.ses, a feeling of astonishment must fill the mind at the marked want of wisdom by which it was dictated, but which at the same time affords a sufficient explanation for the abandonment of the College by its students.

Even if "_words_" ought to be the real object of education, it would be supposed that English words would be more useful to a people whose mother-tongue is English, than the words of any other language; yet the students of the introductory and freshman cla.s.ses of the ancient course receive instruction _five hours a week through both terms in Latin and Greek_, and _one lesson per week during one term in the English language_.

The students of the modern course subst.i.tute for Latin and Greek the French and Spanish languages.

I purposely abstain from saying any thing as to the method of instruction, which is the converse of that adopted by nature, and as a consequence signally fails. This has been so forcibly put by President Barnard, of Columbia College, that I need only refer the members of our Committee to his essay on "Early Mental Training, and the Studies best fitted for it."

What steps are taken to familiarize the students of, say the freshman cla.s.s, with that great nature of which they form a part? What, for instance, do they learn of the structure of their own bodies, and of the means of preserving health? _One lesson a week_ is given on Physiology and Hygiene, and that is all! The fear of making this letter too long compels me merely to refer the Committee to pages 40 to 42 of Mr. Herbert Spencer's chapter on "What Knowledge is of Most Worth," in his work on Education, in farther ill.u.s.tration of this subject, instead of making extracts from it as I would otherwise like to do.

Attention, it is true, is paid throughout the college course to mathematical studies, yet very little to their practical application; while to Chemistry, the parent of modern physics, the manual (which is our guide) prescribes two lessons per week to the introductory cla.s.s, and to the freshman, soph.o.m.ore, and junior cla.s.ses absolutely _none at all_!

Mining, Mechanical Engineering, Architecture, Theoretical Agriculture, Biology, and Botany are utterly ignored; and no branch of Zoology is even mentioned in the curriculum. We next come to a science more important, because universal in its application and in its need than any other, viz.: The Science of Human Well-being, commonly called Political or Social Economy. Here, too, like exclusion! except that in the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s, for one term, one hour per week is given to it. That is to say, a people who are to live by labor are left by the guardians of their education in ignorance of the laws by which the reward for that labor must be regulated; they who are to administer capital are to be left to blind chance whether to act in accordance with those laws of nature which determine its increase, or ignorantly to violate them!

Restrained again from quotation by the fear of wearying the Committee, permit me to refer them to the lecture of Dr. Hodgson, delivered at the Royal Inst.i.tution of Great Britain, on "The Importance of the Study of Economic Science," which will be found in the work of Professor Youmans, on "The Culture demanded by Modern Life."

I confess to a feeling of deep discouragement at the perusal of such a record as that presented by the course of studies at the College of the City of New York, especially when I find that this is the state of things a large number of the Trustees seem desirous of perpetuating. My views on this subject are confirmed by the following remarks found in President Barnard's Essay on "Early Mental Training, and the Studies best fitted for it."

"Whatever may be the value of the study of the cla.s.sics in a subjective point of view, _nothing could possibly more thoroughly unfit a man for any immediate usefulness_ in this matter-of-fact world, or make him _more completely a stranger in his own home_, than the purely cla.s.sical education which used recently to be given, and which, with some slight improvement, is believed to be still given by the universities of England. This proposition is very happily enforced by a British writer, whose strictures on the system appeared in the London _Times_ some twelve or thirteen years ago.

"Common things are quite as much neglected and despised in the education of the rich as in that of the poor. It is wonderful _how little_ a young gentleman may know when he has taken his university degrees, _especially if he has been industrious, and has stuck to his studies_. He may really _spend a long time in looking for somebody more ignorant than himself_. If he talks with the driver of the stage-coach that lands him at his father's door, he finds he knows nothing of horses. If he falls into conversation with a gardener, he knows nothing of plants or flowers. If he walks into the fields, he does not know the difference between barley, rye, and wheat; between rape and turnips; between natural and artificial gra.s.s. If he goes into a carpenter's yard, he does not know one wood from another. If he comes across an attorney, he has no idea of the difference between common and statute law, and is wholly in the dark as to those securities of personal and political liberty on which we pride ourselves. If he talks with a country magistrate, he finds his only idea of the office is that the gentleman is a sort of English Sheik, as the Mayor of the neighboring borough is a sort of Cadi. If he strolls into any workshop or place of manufacture, it is always to find his level, and that a level far below the present company. If he dines out, and as a youth of proved talents and perhaps university honors is expected to be literary, his literature is confined to a few popular novels--the novels of the last century, or even of the last generation--history and poetry having been almost studiously omitted in his education. _The girl who has never stirred from home, and whose education has been economized, not to say neglected, in order to send her own brother to college_, knows vastly more of those things than he does. The same exposure awaits him wherever he goes, and whenever he has the audacity to open his mouth. _At sea he is a landlubber; in the country a c.o.c.kney; in town a greenhorn; in science an ignoramus; in business a simpleton; in pleasure a milksop_--everywhere out of his element, everywhere at sea, in the clouds, adrift, or by whatever word _utter ignorance_ and _incapacity_ are to be described. In society and in the work of life, he finds himself beaten by the youth whom at college he despised as frivolous or abhorred as profligate."

Take the preparation of our youth for their duties as citizens. Here, again, a knowledge of political and social economy is indispensable. We have seen the attention it receives; and while two lessons a week for one hour, and that only to the senior cla.s.s in its last term, are given to American citizens on the Const.i.tution of the United States and on International Law, _none whatever is given on the science of Government throughout the entire course of five years_!

I might go through the whole course of studies with similar results. Here and there, in this or that cla.s.s, a small amount of attention is given to some of the sciences omitted in the other cla.s.ses; but the entire record is one of the most disheartening character.

_Words! words!_ engross almost exclusively the attention of the students from the hour they enter the College until they leave it; and it is not to the five-and-twenty graduates the palm of useful industry should be awarded, but to the many who, in discouragement, abandon a course which tends to _unfit_ them for the great battle of life!

What, then, are the reasons generally a.s.signed for this perverse conventionalism of devoting the time of youth to the acquirement of dead words, to the unavoidable exclusion of nearly every thing that is of value? First, we are told that we can not understand the English language without a knowledge of Latin, from which it is derived. The inaccuracy of this pretension is at once made manifest by reference to Webster, where he states:

"That English is composed of--

"_First._ Saxon and Danish words of Teutonic and Gothic origin.

"_Second._ British or Welsh, Cornish and Amoric, which may be considered as of Celtic origin.

"_Third._ Norman, a mixture of French and Gothic.

"_Fourth._ Latin, a language formed on the Celtic and Teutonic.

"_Fifth._ French, chiefly Latin corrupted, but with a mixture of Celtic.

"_Sixth._ Greek formed on the Celtic and Teutonic, with some Coptic.

"_Seventh._ A few words directly from the Italian, Spanish, German, and other languages of the Continent.

"_Eighth._ A few foreign words, introduced by commerce, or by political and literary intercourse.

"Of these, _the Saxon words const.i.tute our mother-tongue_, being words which our ancestors brought with them from Asia.