Chapter V: Part 5

The first historic glimpses of the study of astronomy we find among the peoples occupying the Nile Valley and Chaldea, say 6000 B. C.

But this study had to do with the fixing of the length of the year, and the determination of those times in it in which the various agricultural operations had to be performed. These were related strictly to the rise of the Nile in one country and of the Euphrates in the other. All human activity was, in fact, tied up with the movements of the sun, moon, and stars. These, then, became the gods of those early peoples, and the astronomers, the seers, were the first priests; revered by the people because as interpreters of the celestial powers they were the custodians of the knowledge which was the most necessary for the purposes of life.

Eudemus of Rhodes, one of the principal pupils of Aristotle, in his History of Geometry, attributes the origin of geometry to the Egyptians, "who were obliged to invent it in order to restore the landmarks which had been destroyed by the inundation of the Nile," and observes "that it is by no means strange that the invention of the sciences should have originated in practical needs."[34] The new geometry was brought from Egypt to Greece by Thales three hundred years before Aristotle was born.

When to astronomy and geometry we add the elements of medicine and surgery, which it is known were familiar to the ancient Egyptians, it will be conceded that we are, in those early times, face to face with the cultivation of the most useful branches of science.

Now, although the evidence is increasing day by day that Greek science was Egyptian in its origin, there is no doubt that its cultivation in Greece was more extended, and that it was largely developed there. One of the most useful and prolific writers on philosophy and science who has ever lived, Aristotle, was born in the fourth century B. C. From him, it may be said, dates a general conception of science based on _observation_ as differing from experiment. If you wish to get an idea of the science of those times, read his writings on Physics and on the Classification of Animals. All sought in Aristotle the basis of knowledge, but they only read his philosophy; Dante calls him the "master of those who know."[35]

Why was Aristotle so careful to treat science as well as philosophy, with which his master, Plato, had dealt almost exclusively?

The answer to this question is of great interest to our present subject. The late Lord Playfair[36] in a pregnant passage suggests the reason, and the later history of Europe shows, I think, that he is right.

"We find that just as early nations became rich and prosperous, so did philosophy arise among them, and it declined with the decadence of material prosperity. In those splendid days of Greece when Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno were the representatives of great schools of thought, which still exercise their influence on mankind, _Greece was a great manufacturing and mercantile community_; Corinth was the seat of the manufacture of hardware; Athens that of jewelry, shipbuilding, and pottery. The rich men of Greece and all its free citizens were actively engaged in trade and commerce. The learned class were the sons of those citizens, and were in possession of their accumulated experience derived through industry and foreign relations. Thales was an oil merchant; Aristotle inherited wealth from his father, who was a physician, but, spending it, is believed to have supported himself as a druggist till Philip appointed him tutor to Alexander. Plato's wealth was largely derived from commerce, and his master, Socrates, is said to have been a sculptor. Zeno, too, was a traveling merchant. Archimedes is perhaps an exception, for he is said to have been closely related to a prince; but if so, he is the only princely discoverer of science on record."

In ancient Greece we see the flood of the first great intellectual tide. Alas! it never touched the shores of western Europe, but it undoubtedly reached to Rome, and there must have been very much more observational science taught in the Roman studia than we generally imagine, otherwise how account for Pliny, the vast public works, their civilizing influence carried over sea and land from beyond Bab-el-Mandeb to Scotland? In some directions their applications of science are as yet unsurpassed.

With the fall of the Roman Empire both science and philosophy disappeared for a while. The first wave had come and gone; its last feebler ripples seem to have been represented at this time by the gradual change of the Roman secular studia wherever they existed into clerical schools, the more important of which were in time attached to the chief cathedrals and monasteries; and it is not difficult to understand why the secular (or scientific) instruction was gradually replaced by one more fitted for the training of priests.

It is not to be wondered at that the ceaseless strife in the center of Europe had driven what little learning there was to the western and southern extremities, where the turmoil was less--I refer to Britain and South Italy--while the exiled Nestorians carried Hellenic science and philosophy out of Europe altogether to Mesopotamia and Arabia.

The next wave--it was but a small one--had its origin in our own country. In the eighth century England was at its greatest height, relatively, in educational matters, chiefly owing to the labors of two men. Beda, generally called the Venerable Bede, the most eminent writer of his age, was born near Monkwearmouth in 673, and passed his life in the monastery there. He not only wrote the history of our island and nation, but treatises on the nature of things, astronomy, chronology, arithmetic, medicine, philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, poetry, music, basing his work on that of Pliny. He died in 735, in which year his great follower was born in Yorkshire. I refer to Alcuin. He was educated at the Cathedral School at York under Archbishop Egbert, and, having imbibed everything he could learn from the writings of Bede and others, was soon recognized as one of the greatest scholars of the time. On returning from Rome, whither he had been sent by Eaubald to receive the pallium, he met Karl the Great, King of the Franks and Lombards, who eventually induced him to take up his residence at his court, to become his instructor in the sciences. Karl (or Charlemagne) then was the greatest figure in the world, and although as King of the Franks and Lombards, and subsequently Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, his court was generally at Aachen, he was constantly traveling throughout his dominions. He was induced, in consequence of Alcuin's influence, not only to have a school always about him on his journeys, but to establish, or foster, such schools wherever he went. Hence it has been affirmed that "France is indebted to Alcuin for all the polite learning it boasted of in that and the following ages." The universities of Paris, Tours, Fulden, Soissons, and others were not actually founded in his day, but the monastic and cathedral schools out of which they eventually sprang were strengthened, and indeed a considerable scheme of education for priests was established--that is, an education free from all sciences, and in which philosophy alone was considered.

Karl the Great died in 814, and after his death the eastward traveling wave, thus started by Bede and Alcuin, slightly but very gradually increased in height. Two centuries later, however, the conditions were changed. We find ourselves in presence of interference phenomena, for then there was a meeting with another wave traveling westward, and this meeting was the origin of the European universities. The wave now manifested traveling westerly, spread outward from Arab centers first and finally from Constantinople, when its vast stores of Greek lore were opened by the conquest of the city.

The first wavelet justified Eudemus's generalization that "the invention of the sciences originated in practical needs," and that knowledge for its own sake was not the determining factor. The year had been determined, stone circles erected almost everywhere, and fires signaled from them, giving notice of the longest and shortest days, so that agriculture was provided for, even away from churches and the festivals of the Church. The original user of geometry was not required away from the valleys of the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates, and therefore it is now medicine and surgery that come to the front for the alleviation of human ills. In the eleventh century we find Salerno, soon to be famed throughout Europe as the great medical school, forming itself into the first university. And medicine did not exhaust all the science taught, for Adelard listened there to a lecture on "the nature of things," the cause of magnetic attraction being one of the "things" in question.

This teaching at Salerno preceded by many years the study of the law at Bologna and of theology at Paris.

The full flood came from the disturbance of the Arab wave center by the crusades, about the beginning of the twelfth century. After the Pope had declared the "Holy War," William of Malmesbury tells us "the most distant islands and savage countries were inspired with this ardent passion. The Welshman left his hunting, the Scotchman his fellowship with vermin, the Dane his drinking party, the Norwegian his raw fish." Report has it that in 1096 no less than six millions were in motion along many roads to Palestine. This, no doubt, is an exaggeration, but it reflects the excitement of the time, and prepares us for what happened when the crusaders returned. As Green puts it:[37] "The western nations, including our own, 'were quickened with a new life and throbbing with a new energy.' ... A new fervor of study sprang up in the West from its contact with the more cultured East. Travelers like Adelard, of Bath, brought back the first rudiments of physical and mathematical science from the schools of Cordova or Bagdad.... The long mental inactivity of feudal Europe broke up like ice before a summer's sun. Wandering teachers, such as Lanfranc or Anselm, crossed sea and land to spread the new power of knowledge. The same spirit of restlessness, of inquiry, of impatience with the older traditions of mankind, either local or intellectual, that drove half Christendom to the tomb of its Lord, crowded the roads with thousands of young scholars hurrying to the chosen seats where teachers were gathered together."

_Studium generale_ was the term first applied to a large educational center where there was a guild of masters, and whither students flocked from all parts. At the beginning of the thirteenth century the three principal studia were Paris, Bologna, and Salerno, where theology and arts, law and medicine, and medicine almost by itself, were taught respectively; these eventually developed into the first universities.[38]

English scholars gathered in thousands at Paris round the chairs of William of Champeaux or Abélard, where they took their place as one of the "nations" of which the great middle-age university of Paris was composed.

We have only to do with the arts faculty of this university. We find that the subject-matter of the liberal education of the middle age there dealt with varied very little from that taught in the schools of ancient Rome.

The so-called "artiens," students of the arts faculty, which was the glory of the university and the one most numerously attended, studied the seven arts of the trivium and quadrivium--that is, grammar, rhetoric, dialectic and arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy.[39]

This at first looks well for scientific study, but the mathematics taught had much to do with magic; arithmetic dealt with epacts, golden numbers, and the like. There was no algebra, and no mechanics. Astronomy dealt with the system of the seven heavens.

Science, indeed, was the last thing to be considered in the theological and legal studia, and it would appear that it was kept alive more in the medical schools than in the arts faculties. Aristotle's writings on physics, biology, and astronomy were not known till about 1230, and then in the shape of Arab-Latin translations. Still, it must not be forgotten that Dante learned some of his astronomy, at all events, at Paris.

Oxford was an offshoot of Paris, and therefore a theological studium, in all probability founded about 1167,[40] and Cambridge came later.

Not till the Reformation (sixteenth century) do we see any sign of a new educational wave, and then we find the two which have had the greatest influence upon the history of the world--one of them depending upon the Reformation itself, the other depending upon the birth of experimental inquiry.

Before the Reformation the universities were priestly institutions, and derived their authority from the Popes.

The universities were for the few; the education of the people, except in the various crafts, was unprovided for.

The idea of a general education in secular subjects at the expense of the state or of communities is coeval with the Reformation. In Germany, even before the time of Luther, it was undreamed of, or rather, perhaps, one should say, the question was decided in the negative. In his day, however, his zeal first made itself heard in favor of education, as many are now making themselves heard in favor of a better education, and in 1524 he addressed a letter to the councils of all the towns in Germany, begging them to vote money not merely for roads, dikes, guns, and the like, but for schoolmasters, so that all children might be taught; and he states his opinion that if it be the duty of a state to compel the able-bodied to carry arms, it is _a fortiori_ its duty to compel its subjects to send their children to school, and to provide schools for those who without such aid would remain uninstructed.

Here we have the germ of Germany's position at the present day, not only in scientific instruction but in everything which that instruction brings with it.

With the Reformation this idea spread to France. In 1560 we find the States-General of Orleans suggesting to Francis II a "levée d'une contribution sur les bénéfices ecclésiastiques pour raisonablement stipendier des pédagogues et gens lettrés, en toutes villes et villages, pour l'instruction de la pauvre jeunesse du plat pays, et soient tenus les pères et mères, à peine d'amende, à envoyer les dits enfants à l'école, et à ce faire soient contraints par les segnieurs et les juges ordinaires."

Two years after this suggestion, however, the religious wars broke out; the material interests of the clerical party had predominated, the new spirit was crushed under the iron heel of priestcraft, and the French, in consequence, had to wait for three centuries and a revolution before they could get comparatively free.

In the universities, or at all events alongside them, we find next the introduction not so much yet of science as we now know it, with its experimental side, as of the scientific spirit.

The history of the Collége de France, founded in 1531 by Francis I, is of extreme interest. In the fifteenth century the studies were chiefly literary, and except in the case of a few minds they were confined merely to scholastic subtleties, taught (I have it on the authority of the Statistique de l'Enseignement Supérieur) in barbarous Latin. This was the result of the teaching of the faculties; but even then, outside the faculties, which were immutable, a small number of distinguished men still occupied themselves in a less rigid way in investigation; but still these studies were chiefly literary. Among those men may be mentioned Danès, Postel, Dole, Guillaume Budé, Lefèvre d'Étaples, and others, who edited with notes and commentaries Greek and Latin authors whom the university scarcely knew by name. Hence the renaissance of the sixteenth century, which gave birth to the Collége de France, the function of which, at the commencement, was to teach those things which were not in the ordinary curriculum of the faculties. It was called the Collége des Deux Langues, the languages being Hebrew and Greek. It then became the Collége des Trois Langues, when the king, notwithstanding the opposition of the university, created in 1534 a chair of Latin. There was another objection made by the university to the new creation: from the commencement the courses were free; and this feeling was not decreased by the fact that around the celebrated masters of the Trois Langues a crowd of students was soon congregated.

The idea in the mind of Francis I in creating this Royal College may be gathered from the following edict, dated in 1545: "François, etc., savoir faisons à tous présents et à venir que Nous, considérant que le sçavoir des langues, qui est un des dons du Saint-Esprit, fait ouverture et donne le moyen de plus entière connaissance et plus parfaite intelligence de toutes bonnes, honnêtes, saintes et salutaires sciences.... Avons fait faire pleinement entendre à ceux qui, y voudraient vacquer, les trois langues principales, Hébraïque, Grecque, et Latine, _et les Livres esquels les bonnes sciences_ sont le mieux et le plus profondément traitées. A laquelle fin, et en suivant le décret du concile de Vienne, nous avons piéça ordonné et establi en nôtre bonne ville de Paris, un bonne nombre de personnages de sçavoir excellent, qui lisent et enseignent publiquement et ordinairement les dites langues et sciences, maintenant florissantautant ou plus qu'elles ne firent de bien longtemps ... auxquels nos lecteurs avons donné honnêtes gages et salaires, et iceux fait pourvoir de plusieurs beaux bénéfices pour les entretenir et donner occasion de mieux et plus continuellement entendre au fait de leur charge, ... etc."

The Statistique, which I am following in this account, thus sums up the founder's intention: "Le Collége Royal avait pour mission de propager les nouvelles connaissances, les nouvelles découvertes. Il n'enseignait pas la science faite, il la faisait."

It was on account of this more than on account of anything else that it found its greatest enemy in the university. The founding of this new college, and the great excitement its success occasioned in Paris, were, there can be little doubt, among the factors which induced Gresham to found his college in London in 1574.

These two institutions played a great part in their time. Gresham College, it is true, was subsequently strangled, but not before its influence had been such as to permit the Royal Society to rise phoenixlike from its ashes; for it is on record that the first step in the forming of this society was taken after a lecture on astronomy by Sir Christopher Wren at the college. All connected with them felt in time the stupendous change of thought in the century which saw the birth of Bacon, Galileo, Gilbert, Hervey, Tycho Brahe, Descartes, and many others that might be named; and of these, it is well to remark, Gilbert,[41] Hervey, and Galileo were educated in medical schools abroad.

Bacon was not only the first to lay down _regulæ philosophandi_, but he insisted upon the far-reaching results of research, not forgetting to point out that "_lucifera experimenta, non fructifera quærenda_,"[42] as a caution to the investigator, though he had no doubt as to the revolution to be brought about by the ultimate application of the results of physical inquiry.

As early as 1560 the Academia Secretorum Naturæ was founded at Naples, followed by the Lincei in 1609, the Royal Society in 1645, the Cimento in 1657, and the Paris Academy in 1666.

From that time the world may be said to have belonged to science, now no longer based merely on observation but on experiment. But, alas! how slowly has it percolated into our universities.

The first organized endeavor to teach science in schools was naturally made in Germany (Prussia), where, in 1747 (nearly a century and a half ago), Realschulen were first started; they were taken over by the Government in 1832, and completely reorganized in 1859, this step being demanded by the growth of industry and the spread of the modern spirit. Eleven hours a week were given to natural science in these schools forty years ago.

TEACHING THE TEACHERS.--Until the year 1762 the Jesuits had the education of France almost entirely in their hands, and when, therefore, their expulsion was decreed in that year, it was only a necessary step to create an institution to teach the future teachers of France. Here, then, we had the École Normale in theory; but it was a long time before this theory was carried into practice, and very probably it would never have been had not Rolland d'Erceville made it his duty for more than twenty years, by numerous publications, among which is especially to be mentioned his Plan d'Education, printed in 1783, to point out not merely the utility but the absolute necessity for some institution of the kind. As generally happens in such cases, this exertion was not lost, for in 1794 it was decreed that an École Normale should be opened at Paris, "ou seront appelés de toutes les parties de la République, des citoyens déjà instruits dans les sciences utiles, pour apprendre, sous les professeurs les plus habiles dans tous les genres, l'art d'enseigner."

To follow these courses in the art of teaching, one potential schoolmaster was to be sent to Paris by every district containing twenty thousand inhabitants. Fourteen or fifteen hundred young men therefore arrived in Paris, and in 1795 the courses of the school were opened first of all in the amphitheater of the Museum of Natural History. The professors were chosen from among the most celebrated men of France, the sciences being represented by Lagrange, Laplace, Haüry, Monge, Daubenton, and Berthollet.

While there was this enormous progress abroad, represented especially by the teaching of science in Germany and the teaching of the teachers in France, things slumbered and slept in Britain. We had our coal and our iron, our material capital, and no one troubled about our mental capital, least of all the universities, which had become, according to Matthew Arnold (who was not likely to overstate matters), mere _hauts lycées_, and "had lost the very idea of a real university";[43] and since our political leaders generally came from the universities, little more was to be expected from them.

Many who have attempted to deal with the history of education have failed to give sufficient prominence to the tremendous difference there must necessarily have been in scientific requirements before and after the introduction of steam power.

It is to the discredit of our country that we, who gave the perfected steam engine, the iron ship, and the locomotive to the world, should have been the last to feel the next wave of intellectual progress.

All we did at the beginning of the century was to found mechanics' institutions. They knew better in Prussia, "a bleeding and lacerated mass";[44] after Jena (1806), King Frederick William III and his councilors, disciples of Kant, founded the University of Berlin, "to supply the loss of territory by intellectual effort." Among the universal poverty money was found for the Universities of Königsberg and Breslau, and Bonn was founded in 1818. As a result of this policy, carried on persistently and continuously by successive ministers, aided by wise councilors, many of them the products of this policy, such a state of things was brought about that not many years ago M. Ferdinand Lot, one of the most distinguished educationists of France, accorded to Germany "a supremacy in science comparable to the supremacy of England at sea."

But this position has not been obtained merely by founding new universities. To Germany we owe the perfecting of the methods of teaching science.

I have shown that it was in Germany that we find the first organized science teaching in schools. About the year 1825 that country made another tremendous stride. Liebig demonstrated that science teaching, to be of value, whether in the school or the university, must consist to a greater or less extent in practical work, and the more the better; that book work was next to useless.

Liebig, when appointed to Giessen, smarting still under the difficulties he had had in learning chemistry without proper appliances, induced the Darmstadt Government to build a chemical laboratory in which the students could receive a thorough practical training.

It will have been gathered from this reference to Liebig's system of teaching chemistry that still another branch of applied science had been created, which has since had a stupendous effect upon industry; and while Liebig was working at Giessen, another important industry was being created in England. I refer to the electric telegraph and all its developments, foreshadowed by Galileo in his reference to the "sympathy of magnetic needles."

Not only then in chemistry, but in all branches of science which can be applied to the wants of man, the teaching must be practical--that is, the student must experiment and observe for himself, and he must himself seek new truths.

It was at last recognized that a student could no more learn science effectively by seeing some one else perform an experiment than he could learn to draw effectively by seeing some one else make a sketch. Hence in the German universities the doctor's degree is based upon a research.

Liebig's was the _fons et origo_ of all our laboratories--mechanical, metallurgical, chemical, physical, geological, astronomical, and biological.--_Nature._

[_To be continued._]

FOOTNOTES:

[33] An address delivered at the Royal College of Science on October 6, 1898.

[34] Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid, p. 2. Allman.

[35] Inferno, canto iv, p. 130 _et seq._

[36] Subjects of Social Welfare, p. 206.

[37] History of the English People, vol. i, p. 198.

[38] See Histoire de l'Université de Paris. Crévier, 1791, _passim_.

[39] Enumerated in the following middle-age Latin verse:

"Lingua, tropus, ratio, numerus, tonus, angulus, astra."

[40] Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, by Rashdall, vol. ii, p. 344.

[41] William Gilbert, of Colchester, on the Magnet. Mittelag, p. x.

[42] Novum Organum, vol. 1, p. 70. Fowler's edition, p. 255.

[43] Schools and Universities on the Continent, p. 291.

[44] University Education in England, France, and Germany, by Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, p. 25.

SHOULD CHILDREN UNDER TEN LEARN TO READ AND WRITE?

BY PROF. G. T. W. PATRICK.

There are certain propositions about education so evidently true that probably no parent or teacher would question them. For instance, the best school is one in which the course of study is progressively adapted to the mental development of the children. Again, certain subjects are adapted to children of certain ages or stages of development, and others are not. One would not recommend the study of logic or of the calculus to the average child of ten, nor would the teaching of English be wisely deferred until the age of fifteen. Finally, if the courses of study in our present school system shall be found to be arranged without regard to the order of mental development, they will sooner or later be modified in accordance with it.

Now the educational system in practice in the two or three hundred thousand public schools in the United States is a somewhat definite one, with a somewhat fixed order of studies through the different years or grades. In a majority of the States children are admitted to the schools at the age of six; in more than one third of the States children of five are admitted. In a general way we may say that during the first four years of school life the principal subjects occupying the time of the children are reading, writing, and arithmetic. To be more exact, we may cite, for instance, the city schools of Chicago.[45] Exclusive of recesses and opening exercises, there are in these schools thirteen hundred and fifty minutes of school work per week. Of this time, in the first and second grades, six hundred and seventy-five minutes are devoted to reading, seventy-five minutes to writing, and two hundred and twenty-five minutes to mathematics. Seventy-two per cent of the total time is therefore consumed by these subjects. In the third grade the proportion is the same; in the fourth grade it is somewhat more than fifty per cent. I have mentioned the Chicago schools because this is one of those school systems where a liberal introduction of other subjects, such as Nature study, physical culture, singing, and oral English, has somewhat lessened the time given to reading, writing, and arithmetic. Other cities, with few exceptions, will be found to give more rather than less time to these subjects. In the country schools, and indeed in a vast number of town and city schools, practically all the time during these early years is given to reading, writing, and arithmetic.

We must conclude, therefore, if our educational system is a rational one, that reading, writing, and arithmetic are the subjects peculiarly adapted to the mind of the child between the ages of five and ten. It is worth while to inquire from the standpoint of child psychology whether this be true. It should be observed, in the first place, that the manner in which our educational system has grown up is no guarantee that it rests upon a psychological basis. Our schools are exceedingly conservative. Any innovations or radical changes are resisted by the parents of the children even more strenuously than by school boards, superintendents, and teachers. Notwithstanding numerous and important minor improvements, the school system as a whole remains unchanged. Our children of seven and eight years are learning to read and write because our grandfathers were so doing at that age.

We can not here discuss the origin of our present school curriculum, but, as explaining the prominence given to reading, writing, and arithmetic, it is worthy of notice that originally the elementary school existed to teach just these three subjects. The primitive schoolmaster was not superior to the parents of the child, usually not their equal, in anything except his knowledge of "letters." So the child was sent to school for a short time to learn letters. It was not at all the function of the school to _educate_ the child in all that was necessary to fit him for the duties of life. Afterward, as the scope of the school was enlarged, other subjects were added, and these were put _after_ the original ones, and the schoolmaster, furthermore, came rather to take the place of an educator than a mere teacher of letters. It is conceivable, therefore, that the present accepted order of studies in our elementary schools rests upon an accidental rather than upon a psychological basis. It is true that modern educators have expressly considered the subject of the order and correlation of studies, as, for instance, in the case of the Committee of Fifteen, and that, while recommending minor changes in the school curriculum, they have not usually thought of questioning the position so long held by reading, writing, and arithmetic. In the report of the committee just referred to we find this expression: "The conclusion is reached that learning to read and write should be the leading study of the pupil in his first four years of school." But, again, it was not the function of this committee to suggest sweeping changes, nor to raise the inquiry whether the system itself rests upon a psychological basis. Even if it did not rest upon such a basis, expressions like the above would not be unnatural on the part of committees appointed by bodies representing the system as a whole.

We may not, then, conclude _a priori_ that our system of primary education is a sound one. There have indeed been other wholly different systems giving excellent results in their time, as, for instance, that of the ancient Greeks, where music and gymnastics, not reading, writing, and arithmetic, were the principal subjects occupying the time of the pupils.

Much attention has recently been given to the subjects of the physiology and psychology of children. These studies have been systematic, painstaking, and exact. It seems, indeed, to many people improbable that anything very new or very remarkable should just at this time be found out about children, and there have not been wanting either prominent educators or psychologists who have given public expression to warnings against the new "child study." But this, again, is not conclusive, for students of history may recall that every advance in science has met just such opposition--for instance, bacteriology, organic evolution, chemistry, and astronomy. Furthermore, when we reflect that scientific advance in this century has ever been, and inevitably, from the simple to the complex, and, further, that the brain of the child is the most complex thing in the whole range of natural history which science will ever have to attempt, it is not difficult to understand that scientific knowledge of it with its pedagogical implications has not belonged, at any rate, to the past. It will belong to the future, having, perhaps, its beginnings in the present. An educational system which has not reckoned with an accurate knowledge of the brain of the child may by accident be a correct one, but until such reckoning is made we can not be sure.

Our increasing knowledge of the child's mind, his muscular and nervous system, and his special senses, points indubitably to the conclusion that reading and writing are subjects which do not belong to the early years of school life, but to a later period, and that other subjects now studied later are better adapted to this early stage of development. What is thus indicated of reading and writing may be affirmed also of drawing and arithmetic. The reasons leading to this conclusion can be only very briefly summarized here.

As regards reading, writing, and drawing, they involve, in the first place, a high degree of motor specialization, which is not only unnatural but dangerous for young children. Studies in motor ability have shown that the order of muscular development is from the larger and coarser to the finer and more delicate muscles. The movements of the child are the large, free movements of the body, legs, and arms, such as he exhibits in spontaneous play. The movements requiring fine co-ordination, such as those of the fingers and the eyes, are the movements of maturer life. If we reverse this order and compel the child to hold his body, legs, and arms still, while he engages the delicate muscles of the eyes and fingers with minute written or printed symbols, we induce a nervous overtension, and incur the evils incident to all violation of natural order. The increasing frequency of nervous disorders among school children, particularly in the older countries, is probably due in part to these circumstances. If we consider the brain of the child of seven or eight years, our conclusions are strengthened that he should not be engaged in reading and writing. At this age the brain has attained almost its full weight, and is therefore large in proportion to the body. Its development is, however, very incomplete, particularly as regards its associative elements--that is, the so-called association fibers and apperception centers. Such a brain constantly produces and must expend a large amount of nervous energy, which can not be used centrally--that is, psychologically speaking--in comparison, analysis, thought, reflection. It must flow out through the motor channels, becoming muscular movement. The healthy child is therefore incessantly active in waking hours, the action being of the vigorous kind involving the larger members. Hence we can understand that, of all the ways in which a young child may receive instruction, the method through the printed book is pre-eminently the one ill fitted to him.

The evil of this method is aggravated by the fact that, before the child can receive instruction through the book, a long time--several years, in fact--is spent in the confining task of learning to read. It comes about, therefore, that the child, at the very age when he should be leading a free and expansive life, is obliged to fix his eyes upon the narrow page of a book and decipher small printed symbols, in themselves devoid of life and interest. With respect to writing and learning to write the case is worse. A considerable amount of motor specialization is involved in forming letters upon the blackboard, but when the pencil and pen are used it becomes of an extreme kind. In the whole life history of the man there are no movements requiring finer co-ordination than those of writing with pencil or pen, yet our school system requires these of the child of six or seven years, makes them, indeed, a prominent part of elementary school life. In addition to the motor specialization of reading and writing is the physical confinement in the narrow seat and desk which is necessarily connected with them. The child of six or seven has not reached the age when such confinement is natural or safe.

The injuries which I have mentioned relate to the nervous system as a whole. There are other injuries resulting from the reading habit in young children which concern the eyes directly. So much has been said and written lately about the increase of myopia and other defects of the eye among school children, that I shall merely refer to this subject here. Upon entering school, children are practically free from these defects. Upon leaving school, a strikingly large percentage are suffering from them, more, however, as yet, in European countries than in America. The causes are many, but it is scarcely doubted that the chief cause is found in bending over finely printed books and maps, and fine writing, pencil work, and drawing. If pencils, pens, paper, and books could be kept away from children until they are at least ten years of age, and their instruction come directly from objects and from the voice of the teacher, this evil could be greatly lessened.

If the above reasons for not teaching reading and writing to young children were the only ones, the objections could to a certain extent be overcome. Writing might, for instance, be practiced only on the blackboard with large free-hand movements, and letters could be taught from large forms upon charts. But we have to consider the questions whether reading and writing are in themselves branches of instruction which belong to the early years of school life, whether they may not be acquired at a great disadvantage at this period, and whether more time is not spent upon them than is necessary. It is a well-known fact that a child's powers, whether physical or mental, ripen in a certain rather definite order. There is, for instance, a certain time in the life of the infant when the motor mechanism of the legs ripens, before which the child can not be taught to walk, while after that time he can not be kept from walking. Again, at the age of seven, for instance, there is a mental readiness for some things and an unreadiness for others. The brain is then very impressionable and retentive, and a store of useful material, both motor and sensory, may be permanently acquired with great economy of effort. The imagination is active, and the child loves to listen to narration, whether historical or mythical, which plays without effort of his will upon his relatively small store of memory images. The powers of analysis, comparison, and abstraction are little developed, and the child has only a limited ability to detect mathematical or logical relations. The power of voluntary attention is slight, and can be exerted for only a short time. All this may be stated physiologically by saying that the brain activity is sensory and motor, but not central. The sensory and motor mechanism has ripened, but not the associative. The brain is hardly more than a receiving, recording, and reacting apparatus. It would be inaccurate, however, to express this psychologically by saying that perception, memory, and will are the mental powers that have ripened at the age of seven. This would be true only if by perception we mean not apperception, which involves a considerable development of associative readiness, but mere passive apprehension through the senses, and if by memory we mean not recollection, but mere retentiveness for that which interests, and if by will we mean not volition, but only spontaneous movement and readiness to form habits of action, including a large number of instinctive movement psychoses, such as imitation, play, and language in its spoken form.

Following out, then, somewhat as above, the psychology of the child, what kind of education would be particularly adapted to his stage of development? We ask not what _can_ the child be taught, but what studies are for him most natural and therefore most economical. In the first place, from the development of the senses and the perceptive power above described, we infer that the child is ready to acquire a knowledge of the world of objects around him through the senses of sight, hearing, touch, temperature, taste, and smell. His education will have to do with real things and their qualities, rather than with symbols which stand for things. If we wish a general term for this branch of instruction, we may call it natural science, or, to distinguish it from science in its more mature form as the study of laws and causes, we may call it natural history, or, more briefly, Nature study. Although the appropriateness and economy of this study for young children has been known and proclaimed for more than a century, it is still in practice the study of later years, while young children study _letters_.

In the second place, from the development of the retentive powers of the child we infer that he is qualified to gain acquaintance not only with the real world around him, but with the real world of the past. We may call this history. History is now studied later by means of text-books. It may be studied with far greater economy during earlier years by means of direct narration by parent or teacher. It is wonderful how eagerly a child will listen to historical narration, and how easily he will retain it. This method of teaching history forms a striking contrast to the perfunctory manner in which it is often studied in the upper school grades, with the text-book "lesson," "recitation," and the "final examination." Upon the minds of many young people the study of history has a deadening effect when the history epoch is passed and the mathematical epoch has arrived. It has already been proposed, at a conference of educators lately held in Chicago, to extend the study of history downward into the lower grades, a proposition fully sanctioned by psychological pedagogy. In what I have here said about history for young people I refer not to the philosophy of history, which comes much later in the life of the student, but to history as a mere record of facts and events, the kind of history which is now studied in the grammar and high schools, the kind which many educators who would make all children philosophers are now saying should not be studied at all.

In the third place, what studies correspond to the development of the will in the child from five to ten? It is the habit-forming epoch. It is the time when a large and useful store of motor memory images may be acquired, and when permanent reflex tracts may be formed in the spinal cord and lower brain centers. This is the time to teach the child to do easily and habitually a large number of useful things. If we use the term in its broadest sense, we may call this branch of instruction morals, but it will also include, besides habits of conduct, various bodily activities, certain manual dexterities, and correct habits of speech, expression, and singing. But here some restrictions must be observed. The habit-forming period begins at birth and continues far beyond the age of ten, and the period from five to ten is not the time for the formation of all habits. The order of muscular development must be observed, and all dexterities involving finely co-ordinated movements of the fingers, or strain of the eyes, should be deferred beyond this period, or at most begun only in the latter part of it; such, for instance, as writing, drawing, modeling, sewing, knitting, playing upon musical instruments, and minute mechanical work, as well, of course, as the plaiting, pricking, stitching, weaving, and other finger work still practiced in some kindergartens and primary schools.

We have thus seen that there are certain branches of instruction for which the mind of the child from five to ten has ripened, and which may therefore be taught most economically and safely during this period. Concerning the teaching of language I shall speak presently, but thus far we have found that from the psychological standpoint there are at any rate three subjects which are strikingly adapted to this period, namely, natural science, history, and morals, using these terms with the latitude and restriction already explained. Certain branches of Nature study and one branch of what we have called morals--namely, manual training--have in recent years been introduced into our best elementary city schools, and in a few schools history is taught systematically in the lower grades by means of stories. They have not, however, crowded out reading, writing, and arithmetic so much as crowded into them. But if we consider the great mass of schools in city, town, and country throughout the land, the subjects which practically complete the elementary school curriculum--reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography--are, with the exception of the latter, found to be subjects which do not naturally belong to this period at all. Mathematics in every form is a subject conspicuously ill fitted to the child mind. It deals not with real things, but with abstractions. When referred to concrete objects, it concerns not the objects themselves, but their relations to each other. It involves comparison, analysis, abstraction. It calls for a fuller development of the association tracts and fibers of the cerebral hemispheres. The grotesque "number forms" which so many children have, and which originate in this period, are evidence of the necessity which the child feels of giving some kind of bodily shape to these abstractions which he is compelled to study. Under mathematics I do not of course include the mere mentioning or learning a number series, such as in the process called "counting," or the committing to memory of a multiplication table. Furthermore, in this and in all discussions of this kind it must be remembered that there are exceptional children in whom the mathematical faculty, or musical faculty, or literary faculty, develops much earlier than with the average child. If possible, they should have instruction suited to their peculiarities. But it is evident that, so long as children are educated in "schools," there must be a general plan of education, and that it can not be based upon exceptional children.

What we learn from physiology and psychology about the ripening of the child's mind is confirmed by the theory of the "culture epochs." I can not discuss here the doctrine of "recapitulation," with its great truths and its minor exceptions, but it is well known that in a general way the development of the child, both physical and mental, is an epitome of the development of the race. If we compare the physical and mental activities of the modern civilized man with those of the more primitive member of the race, we may learn what forms of physical and mental activity are natural in the different periods of child life. Some of the things which are characteristic of the modern as contrasted with the primitive man are sedentary habits, manual dexterities requiring finely co-ordinated movements both of the eyes and fingers, increasing devotion to written language and books as contrasted with spoken language, the lessened dependence upon the memory, the increasing subjectivity of mental life as contrasted with the purely objective life of the savage, and the increased importance of reflection, deliberation, and reasoning, with decrease of impulsive and habitual action. These things, then, we should expect to belong to the later period of child life, and studied which involve these activities will not be economically pursued in the elementary school grades. These laws are wholly overlooked in our traditional school curriculum. In practice we are saying to the young child: "Man is a sedentary, reading, writing, thinking, reasoning being, possessing the power of voluntary attention. I am to educate you to be a man. Therefore you must learn to sit still, to read, write, think, reason, and give attention to your work." The child of six or eight years is therefore given a book or pen, and put into a closely fitting seat and left to give attention to his work. This is precisely as if the mother should say to the infant at the beginning of the period of creeping: "You are a man, not a brute. Men go upright, not on all fours. You must walk, not creep."

I wish to call especial attention to the fact that it is only late in the history of the race that language has passed to its written form. Man is indeed now a reading and writing animal, but only recently has he become so. It is only since the invention of printing and the wide dissemination of books, magazines, and newspapers that reading has become a real determining factor in the life of the people. Even now the human organism is engaged in adapting itself to the new strain brought upon the eyes and fingers in reading and writing. We can understand, therefore, that it will demand a considerable maturity in the child before he is ready for that which has developed so late in the history of the race. The language of the child, like that of the primitive man, is the language of the ear and tongue. The child is a talking and hearing animal. He is ear-minded. There has been in the history of civilization a steady development toward the preponderating use of the higher senses, culminating with the eye. The average adult civilized man is now strongly eye-minded, but it is necessary to go back only to the time of the ancient Greeks to find a decided relative ear-mindedness. Few laboratory researches have been made upon the relative rapidity of development of the special senses in children, but such as have been made tend to confirm the indications of the "culture epochs" theory, and to show that the auditory centers develop earlier than the visual.

More and more attention is given in our elementary schools to the subject of language--more, as some think, than the relative importance of the subject warrants; but without discussing this question, it is indubitably shown by child psychology that it is the spoken language which belongs to the elementary school. The ear is the natural medium of instruction for young children, and all the second-hand knowledge which it is necessary that the child should receive should come to him in this way. It should come from the living words of the living teacher or parent, not through the cold medium of the printed book. In the elementary school, then, the child may be instructed in language as it relates to the ear and the tongue, and this is the real language. He may be taught to speak accurately and elegantly, and he may be taught to listen and remember. He may study in this way the best literature of his mother tongue, and get a living sympathetic knowledge of it, such as can never come through the indirect medium of the book. Indeed, this language study need not be limited to the mother tongue. There is no age when a child may with so great economy of effort gain a lasting knowledge of a foreign language as when he is from seven to eleven years old.

When the spoken language has been mastered in this way, and when the child has arrived at the reading and writing age, language in its written form may be acquired in a very short time, and that which now fills so many weary years of school life will sink into the position of comparative insignificance in which it rightfully belongs. Reading and writing have usurped altogether too much time. In the schools of to-day there is a worship of the reading book, spelling book, copy book, and dictionary not rightfully due them. By dropping the study of letters from the lower grades much needed time may be found for other timely and important subjects, such as Nature study, morals, history, oral language, singing, physical training, and play.

One of the greatest goods which would follow the banishing of the book from the primary and elementary schools would be the cultivation of better mental habits. Children suffer lasting injury by being left with a book in their seats and directed to "study" at an age when the power of voluntary attention has not developed. They then acquire habits of listlessness and mind-wandering afterward difficult to overcome. They read over many times that which does not hold their attention and is not remembered. Lax habits of study are thus acquired, with the serious incidental result of weakening the retentive power which depends so much upon interest and concentration. With the substitution of the oral for the book method, reliance upon the memory during the memory period will permanently strengthen the child's power of retention.