Chapter XXVII

PROGRESS OF THE NEW EDUCATION -- 1883-1899.

Educational Revolution in 1883-4. -- Urgent Demand for Reform. --
Existing Schools denounced as Superficial, their Methods as Automatic,
their System as a Mixture of Cram and Smatter. -- The Controversy
between the School-master of the Old Régime and the Reformer. -- The
Leaders of the Movement, Col. Parker, Dr. MacAlister, and others --
followers of Rousseau, Bacon, and Spencer. -- “The End of Man is an
Action, not a Thought.” -- The Conservative Teachers fall into Line.
-- The New Education becomes an Aggressive Force pushing on to
Victory. -- The Physical Progress of Manual Training -- its Quality
not equal to its Extent. -- The New System of Training confided to
Teachers of the Old Régime. -- Ideal Teachers hard to find. --
Teachers willing to Learn should be Encouraged. -- The effects of
Manual Training long antedate its Introduction to the Schools. --
Bacon’s Definition of Education. -- Stephenson and the Value of
Hand-work. -- Manual Training is the union of Thought and Action. --
It is the antithesis of the Greek methods, which exalted Abstractions
and debased Things. -- The Rule of Comenius and the Injunction of
Rousseau -- few Teachers comprehend them. -- The Employment of the
Hands in the Arts is more highly Educative than the acquisition of the
rules of Reading and Arithmetic. -- What the Locomotive has
accomplished for Man. -- Education must be equal, and Social and
Political Equality will follow. -- The foundation of the New Education
is the Baconian Philosophy as stated by Macaulay. -- Use and Service
are the Twin-ministers of Human Progress. -- Definitions of Genius. --
Attention. -- Sir Henry Maine. -- Manual Training relates to all the
Arts of Life. -- Mind and Hand. -- Newton and the Apple. -- The Sense
of Touch resides in the Hand. -- Robert Seidel on Familiarity with
Objects. -- Material Progress the basis of Spiritual Growth. -- Plato
and the Divine Dialogues. -- Poverty, Society, and the Useful Arts. --
Selfishness must give way to Altruism. -- The Struggle of Life. -- The
Progress of the Arts and the final Regeneration of the Race. -- The
Arts that make Life sweet and beautiful. -- The final Fundamental
Educational Ideal is Universality. -- Comenius’s definition of Schools
-- the Workshops of Humanity. -- That one Man should die ignorant, who
had capacity for Knowledge, is a Tragedy. -- Mental and Manual
Exercises to be rendered homogeneous in the School of the Future. --
The hero of the Ideal School. 370