Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

'Had I my way, I would confiscate the property of all traitors,
work the slaves three or four years under overseers, on the land of
their masters, sell the crops thus raised, and pay the war debt;
this would save the people from taxation. The fifth year's crop
give to the slaves, and send them to Texas or elsewhere; give them
a governance, buy up the slaves of the loyal men, and let them be
sent to their brethren. The land confiscated, I would divide among
the soldiers of the North and the widows and orphans of those
deluded poor men of the South who fell victims to false notions of
'Southern Rights;' compel the Northern man to settle on his grant,
or to send a settler of true, industrious habits, and give him no
power to alienate his title for ten or more years. This will insure
an industrious, worthy, patriotic people for the South. One man
will make one bale of cotton, others ten; your spindles and looms
will be kept running by free men, and slavery will cease forever,
as it should do. Slavery is a curse, a crime, a mildew, and must
end, or war will blast our fair heritage for all time to come.'

Such are the views of one who seems to know what a real Southern-sympathizing secessionist is made of. Let it not be forgotten that there are thousands of native Tennesseeans, as of other borderers of intelligence, character, and influence, who have offered to raise regiments to fight for the Union; and this fact is urged by the doughface democrats as a reason for increased leniency to traitors. We confess we do not see what connection exists between the two. If these loyal borderers are sincere in their professions, they have certainly no sympathy for the wretches around them, who visit with death or pillage every friend of the Union. But it is idle to argue with traitors. Either we are at war, or we are not; and if the history of the past eighteen months has not taught the country the folly of procrastinating, nothing will do it. 'When you feel the knife in your heart, _then_ wish that you had fought!'

_THE EDUCATION TO BE._

II.

A right intellectual education presupposes three essential features: the selection of the most suitable subjects for study; the proper presentation of these, in the order of their dependence, and in view of the gradual growth of the pupil's powers of comprehension; and, not less important than either of these, the finding out and following of the best method and order of presenting the truths belonging to each subject to be studied. These are the problems with which, as something apart from Metaphysics or Logic, the possible but yet unachieved pedagogical science has to deal. To the first of these questions, What shall we teach? or, as he phrases it, 'What knowledge is of most worth?' Mr. Spencer (presuming the child already supplied with his bare implements, reading, spelling, and penmanship) is led, after a long discussion, to conclude that 'the uniform reply is, Science.' The 'counts' on which he bases this verdict, are, the purposes of self-preservation; the gaining of a livelihood; the due discharge of parental functions; qualification for political responsibilities; the production and enjoyment of art; and discipline, whether intellectual, moral, or religious. Taken at his own showing, Mr. Spencer seems to contemplate, as his model of an educated man, a prodigiously capable and efficient mute. But can he deny that the ability _to express_ what one may know, and in speech, as well as in production, is at once the final proof, and in a very real sense the indispensable consummation of such knowing? _Language_ is the counterpart and complement of _Science_. The two are but two sides, and either separately an incomplete one, of one thing; that one thing we may name _definite and practical knowledge_; and it is the only sort of knowledge that has real value. Language is yet larger than all the sciences proper which it embodies, namely, those clustering about Philology, Grammar, and Rhetoric. Of these, all deal with words, or those larger words--sentences; but under these forms they deal, in reality, with the objective world as perceived or apprehended by us, and as named and uttered in accordance with subjective aptitudes and laws. In language, then, there stands revealed, in the degree in which we can ascend to it, all that is yet known of the external world, and all that has yet evolved itself of the human mind. Can we decry the study of that which, whether as articulate breath, or through a symbolism of visible forms, mirrors to us at once all of nature and all of humanity? But if we yield this claim in behalf of language, noting meanwhile that the mathematics are already well represented in our courses of instruction, then much of Mr. Spencer's eloquent appeal is simply wasted by misdirection. All that he had really to claim is, that a disproportionate time is now surrendered to the studies of the symbols, as such, and too often to characteristics of them not yet brought in any way into scientific coördination, nor of a kind having practical or peculiarly disciplinary value. If Mr. Spencer had insisted on a more just division of the school studies between the mathematical, physical, biological, and linguistic sciences, he would have struck a chord yielding no uncertain sound, and one finding response in a multitude of advanced and liberal minds. If he had gone yet deeper, and disclosed to his readers the fact that the fundamental need is, not that we study what in the more restricted sense is known as _Science_, but that we begin to study all proper and profitable subjects, as we now do hardly any of them, _in the true scientific spirit and method_, he would not merely seem to have said, but would have succeeded in saying, something of the deepest and most pressing import to all educators.

The volume of republished papers from Mr. Barnard's able _Journal of Education_--the first of a series of five under the general title of 'Papers for the Teacher'--will afford to those desirous of investigating the second of the problems above proposed, some useful material and hints. Especially will this be true, we think, of the first series of articles, by Mr. William Russell, on the 'Cultivation of the Perceptive, Expressive, and Reflective Faculties;' and of the second, by Rev. Dr. Hill, now President of Antioch College, upon the 'True Order of Studies.' In the outset of his first essay, (which appeared in March, 1859,) Dr. Hill takes it '_for granted_ [postulating, we think, a pretty large ground, and one that analysis and proof would better have befitted] that there is a rational order of development in the course of the sciences, and that it ought to be followed in common education.' The order he finds is that of five great studies, Mathesis, [mathematics;] Physics, or Natural History; History; Psychology; and Theology. 'We also take it for granted,' he continues, 'that there is a natural order of development in the human powers, and that studies should be so arranged as to develop the powers in this order.' Here two very difficult problems are undertaken--the hierarchy of the sciences, and the analysis of the intellect--and though we seem to find in the elucidation of the subject traces of that 'harmony of results of the two lines of inquiry,' on which the author relies as one source of confirmation of the results themselves, yet we can not admit that the solutions given us remove all, nor even all the main difficulties of the case. While we regard the mathematics, physics, psychology, and theology as quite well individualized and distinct lines of scientific research, we can not help feeling that the day has hardly come for embracing _physiology_ under either physics or psychology; the forming of the bile and the growing and waste of brain are yet, to our apprehension, too far removed from the gravitation of planets or the oxidation of phosphorus, on the one hand, as they are from the scintillations of wit or the severe march of reason on the other, for ready affiliation with either. We question decidedly whether Theology proper can, at the most, be more than a very restricted subject; and quite as decidedly whether the heterogeneous matters grouped under History, namely, Agriculture, Trade, Manufactures, the Fine Arts, Language, Education, Politics, and Political Economy, are or can be shown to be linked by any principle of essential unity. Most of these have their historical side; but their unhistorical and scientific side most interests the great body of learners. And this latter aspect of some of them, Education and Politics especially, belongs after, not before Psychology. Then, the great fact of expression--Language--has not adequate justice done it by the position it is here placed in. Want of space is the least among our reasons for forbearing to attempt here a classification of the sciences--a work which Ramus, D'Alembert, Stewart, Bentham, and Ampère successively essayed and left unfinished. But the principle that the faculties in their order are called out by the branches named in their order, is quite given up as the writer proceeds, and distinctly so in his Tabular View of the studies adapted to successive ages. In actual life, usually the first set teaching the infant receives is in language; and even though it previously is and should be getting its ideas of forms, colors, and other qualities, in the concrete, yet it remains far from true that we should 'pay our earliest attention to the development of the child's power to grasp the truths of space and time.' Dr. Hill has, however, taken in these papers a step in a needful direction; and perhaps the best we could at first expect, are hints and an approximation toward a much desired result.

We may fairly assume that Mr. Willson's answer to the question, What to teach? is in some good degree embodied in his elaborate series of 'School and Family Readers,' of which the first six of the eight contemplated volumes have already appeared. These Readers aim to replace in a good degree the more purely literary materials of most of their predecessors, with a somewhat systematic and complete view of the more generally useful branches of human knowledge. They begin, where the child is sure to be interested, with studies of animals, illustrated with good and often spirited drawings, and proceed through Physiology, Botany, Architecture, Physical Geography, Chemistry, etc., up at last, as is promised, to Mental and Moral Philosophy, Natural Theology, Rhetoric, Criticism, Logic, the Fine Arts, including that one of those arts, as we presume we may class it, with which pupils of the rural schools will have best cause to become acquainted, namely, Gardening! Readers on this plan have long been known in the schools of Prussia and Holland, and are even lately well received in England, in the form of Mr. Constable's popular series; though apparently, when finished, the American series will be more full and complete in topics and treatment of them than any preceding one. Of course, restricted space, and the range of maturity of talents addressed, compel the presentation in simplified form of scarcely more than 'a little learning' under the several heads; and the compiler sensibly tells us his aim is not to give a full exposition of any theme, but rather, 'to present a _pleasing introduction_ to science.' We may grant, in the outset, that most pupils will really comprehend, in and through the reading of it, but a modicum of all the high and large fields of knowledge here intimated to them; but who that can now look on his school-days as in the past, does not remember how many grandiose sentences he was then called on to utter in cadence duly swelling or pathetic, but of the meaning of which he had not the most distant approach to a true comprehension? It was _ours_ once to be of a class whose enunciative powers were disciplined by repeated goings 'through' of the 'Old English Reader,' and well do we remember how the accidental omission of the full pause after 'shows' in the quotation ending the piece entitled 'Excellency of the Holy Scriptures,' caused a certain teacher to understand(!) and direct us to read the whole sentence thus: 'Compared, indeed, with this, all other moral and theological wisdom

'Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows' BEATTIE.'

Now, it is true, the whole sentence, in its best state, would have shown to our green understandings like enough to 'folly,' if we had once made the effort to find meaning of any sort in it; nor can it be considered the most profitable use of school time, thus to 'like folly show' to unknit juvenile brains the abstract and high thought of mature and great minds, who uttered them with no foolishness or frivolity in their intentions! We see reasons to expect substantial advantages from Mr. Willson's books; and we believe teachers will appreciate and use them. We could wish they had not gone so far to mechanicalize the pupil's enunciation; by too freely introducing throughout the points of inflection; but it is safe to predict that most pupils will take up with interest the simplified readings in science; that they will comprehend and remember a useful portion of what they read; that the lessons will afford both them and the teachers points of suggestion from which the mind can profitably be led out to other knowledge and its connections; and that they who go through the series can at least leave school with some more distinct ideas as to what the fields of human knowledge are, and what they embrace, than was ever possible under the _régime_ of merely fine writing, of pathetic, poetic, and generally miscellaneous selections.

The educational interest that grew up in our country between the years 1810 and 1828, about the year 1835 gave place to a stagnation that has marked nearly the whole of the period intervening between the last-named and the present date. In the year 1858, the _New-York Teacher_ was made the first medium of some thoughts in substance agreeing with those set forth in the earlier part of this paper, claiming the indispensableness to true education of a more true and liberal _work_ on the part of the learner's intellectual faculties, and of a more true and logical _consecution_ than has yet been attained, and one corresponding to the natural order of the intellectual operations, in the books and lessons through which the usual school studies are to be mastered. 'Make'--said the first of the articles setting forth this thought--'the [form of the] facts and principles of any branch of study as simple as you choose, and unless the order of their presentation be natural--be that order, from observation to laws and causes, in which the mind naturally moves, whenever it moves surely and successfully--the child, except in the rare case of prodigies that find a pleasure in unraveling complexity, will still turn from the book with loathing. He will do so because he must. It is not in his nature to violate his nature for the sake of acquiring knowledge, however great the incentives or threatenings attending the process.' 'The child's mind ... with reference to all unacquired knowledge ... stands in precisely the attitude of the experimenters and discoverers of riper years. It is to come to results not only previously unknown, but not even conceived of. Because their nature and faculties are identical, the law of their intellectual action must be the same.' 'Study is research.' In subsequent articles, it was claimed that the law here indicated is for intellectual education, the one true and comprehensive law; and it was expressed more fully in the words: 'All true study is investigation; all true learning is discovery.'

We say, now, that when the first of these articles appeared, the leading thought it contained, namely, that our pupils can and should learn by a process of _re-discovery_, in the subjects they pursue, had not in distinct nor in substantial statement in any way appeared in the educational treatises or journals; and further, that it was not, so far as their uttered or published expressions show, previously occupying the attention of teachers or of educational writers, nor was it the subject or substance of remarks, speeches, or debates, in the meetings of Teachers' Associations. We say further, and because history and justice require it, that in our country, especially in the educational movements in the State of New-York, and in the several national associations of educators, a marked change and revolution in the course of much of the thought and discussion touching matters of education has, since the year 1858, become apparent, and that to the most casual participant or observer, and in the precise direction in which the thought above referred to points. The essential issue itself--the practicability and desirableness of casting our studies into the form of courses of re-discovery is somewhat distantly and delicately approached, incorporated into speeches by an allusion or in the way of _apercû_, or thrown out as a suggestion of a partial or auxiliary method with the younger learners, all which is of a fashion highly patronizing to the thought, spite of the scruples about confessing who was the suggester of it. But other questions, which spring up in the train of this, which by themselves had received attention long since, but had been mainly dropped and unheard of among us during the past twenty-five years, have come again into full and unconcealed prominence. Such are the questions about the natural order of appearance of the faculties in childhood, as to what are the elementary faculties of the mind, as to the adaptation of the kinds and order of studies to these, etc. And thus, all at once, is disclosed that Education itself, which many had thought quite a 'finished' thing, well and happily disposed of, or at least so far perfected as to leave no work further save upon the veriest outskirts of details, is in truth a giant superstructure with foundations in sand, or so almost visibly lacking underneath it, that it threatens to fall. For, in the name of the simplest of all common sense, how are we to educate to the best, _not yet knowing_--and that is now acknowledged--_what are the_ FACULTIES _of the very minds we are dealing with, nor what are the_ PROCESSES _by which those minds begin and keep up their advance in knowledge?_ So, also, those who in the most charitable mood could see in education only something too hum-drum and narrow for their better fancies, find it now rising and expanding into a new and large field for intellectual effort, full of interesting problems, and fraught with realizations as yet undreamed of.

It may be said, that the young mind had always learned what it did learn, by discoveries; we answer, our methods and our books have not in any sufficient degree recognized the fact, provided for it, nor taken advantage of it. It may be said, that writers had previously acknowledged that the mind learns well--some of them even, that it learns best--when it discovers: we answer, that nevertheless, no one had recorded it as a well-grounded, universal conclusion and positive law, that the mind only can learn, in all strictly scientific matters, as it discovers, and that hence, the canons of the method of discovery become rules for directing, in studies of this character, the education of the young. Aristotle and Bacon have recognized and enforced upon the adult mind its two master methods of advance by reasoning. But our children have their knowing also to attain to, their discoveries to make, their logic of proof, on occasions, to employ. Shall we lavish all the treasures of method on those who have passed the formative stage of mind, and acquired the bent of its activities? Rather, we think, the true intellectual method--combining both Baconian _induction_ and Aristotelian _deduction_--yet waits to realize some of the best of the application and work for which its joint originators and their co-workers have been preparing it; and that perhaps one of the highest consummations of this one method of thought may yet appear in the carrying forward, with more of certainty, pleasure, and success in their attaining of knowledge, the lisping philosophers of our school-rooms and our firesides.

From one source, disconnected latterly from those to which I have thus far called attention, there has arisen a decidedly progressive movement in the direction of right teaching, and one that, at least in geographical studies, promises soon to result in a consummation of great importance. Though Pestalozzianism, as further developed by the Prussian educators and schools, has never yet realized the completely inductive and consecutive character here contended for, it has been tending in a degree toward such a result; and this is perhaps seen in the most marked way in the method of teaching geography developed by Humboldt and Ritter, and represented in this country by their distinguished pupil, Professor Guyot. This method subordinates political to physical geography, proceeding from facts to laws, and by setting out with the grand natural features of the globe, leads the learner to comprehend not only the existence, boundaries, capitals, and strength of nations, but the reasons why these have come to be what they are. As tending in the same true direction, we should not fail to mention also the faithfully-executed series of raised or embossed maps of the late Mr. Schroeter, presenting not only the profile but the comparative elevations of the land-surfaces or continents and islands, and, in detail, of the several political divisions of the globe, thus at once making the ocular study of geography _real_, and not as formerly, leaving the right conception of the land-surfaces to the pupil's unaided imagination.

Among the decisive and important steps marking the revival of educational interest among us, is that looking to the introduction into our primary schools of the simple lessons for what is called the 'education of the senses,' and what is in fact the solicitation of the perceptive faculties, and the storing of them, with their proper ideas, through the avenues of sense. When employed about observing or finding and naming the parts or qualities and uses of objects, as _glass, leather, milk, wood, a tree, the human body_, etc., this sort of teaching takes the name of 'Object Lessons;' when it rises to philosophizing in the more obvious and easy stages about natural phenomena, as _rain, snow,_ etc., or about parts of the system of nature, as _oceans, mountains, stars,_ etc., it is sometimes termed 'Lessons in Common Things.' In the year 1860, Mr. E.A. Sheldon, the enterprising superintendent of the schools of that city, first introduced with some degree of completeness and system, this sort of teaching into the primary schools of Oswego. In March, 1861, under the leadership also, as we infer, of their superintendent, Mr. William H. Wells, the Educational Board of the city of Chicago adopted a still more minutely systematized and more extensive course of instruction of this sort, arranged in ten successive grades, and intended to advance from the simple study of objects, forms, colors, etc., gradually to the prosecution of the regular and higher studies. The greater naturalness, life-likeness, and interest of this kind of mental occupation for young learners, over the old plan of restricting them mainly to the bare alphabet, with barren spelling, reading, definitions, and so on, is at once obvious in principle and confirmed by the facts; and for the younger classes--a stage of the utmost delicacy and importance to the future habits of the learner--the fruits must appear in increased readiness of thought and fullness of ideas, and in a preparation for more true and enlarged subsequent comprehension of the proper branches of study; provided, we must add, that these also, when reached, be taught by a method best suited to their subject-matter and to the higher range of mental activity required to deal with it. Whether, now, the object-lesson system and plan is the one competent to carry on the learner through those later studies, is another and larger question, and one to which we shall presently recur.

Under the recall of the minds of educators among us to fundamental principles of methods and tendencies in teaching, which we have pointed out, it was but natural to expect attempts to be made toward remedying the defects and supplying the needs that could not fail to be detected in our teaching processes. Naturally, too, such attempts would result in the bringing forward, sooner or later, of novelties in the topics and form of the school-books. What the pen--which, in the outset, proposed the necessity of molding the school-work into a course of re-discoveries of the scientific truths--should reasonably be expected to do toward supplying the want it had indicated; or what it may, in the interim, have actually accomplished toward furnishing the working implements requisite to realizing in practice the possible results foreshadowed by the best educational theories, it may be neither in place nor needful that we should here intimate. Sometimes, indeed, there is in our social movements evidence of a singular sort of intellectual _catalysis;_ and a mute fact, so it _be_ a fact, and even under enforced continuance of muteness, through influence of temporary and extraneous circumstances, may yet, like the innocent _platinum_ in a mixture of certain gases, or the equally innocent _yeast-plant_ vegetating in the 'lump' of dough, take effect in a variety of ways, as if by mere presence.

We shall remember how even Virgil had to write:

'Hos ego versiculos scripsi: tulit alter honores!'

And the veriest bumpkin knows the force of the adage about one's shaking the tree, for another to gather up the fruit. But Virgil was patient, and did well at the last; though the chronicles do not tell us how many pears ever came to the teeth of him that did the tree-shaking. At all events, it is satisfying to know that time spins a long yarn, and comes to the end of it leisurely and at his own wise motion!

The English object-lesson system being now fairly and successfully domesticated among us, and to such an extent as to call for the invitation and temporary residence among us, in the city of Oswego, of a distinguished lady-teacher from the English Training Schools, it is again but natural that the system should call forth books adapted to its purposes; and it was scarcely possible, under the circumstances we have now shown to exist, that such books should come forth without presenting a more conscious aim toward embodying something of the principle and order of _discovery_ than has marked even their English prototypes. These anticipations we find exactly realized in the first book of the new pattern that has yet made its appearance--the 'Primary Object-Lessons' of Mr. Calkins. Of this book, issued June, 1861, the author thus states the motive: 'With an earnest desire to contribute something toward a general radical change in the system of primary education in this country--a change from the plan of exercising the memory chiefly to that of developing the observing powers--a change from an artificial to a natural plan, one in accordance with the philosophy of mind and its laws of development, the author commenced the following pages.'

Acknowledging his indebtedness to the manuals of Wilderspin, Stow, Currie, the Home and Colonial School Society, and other sources, the author tells us that the plan of developing the lessons 'corresponds more nearly to that given in Miss Mayo's works than to either of the other systems;' and we understand him to claim (and the feature is a valuable one) that in this book, which is not a text-book, but one of suggestive or pattern lessons for teachers, he directs the teacher to proceed less by telling the child what is before it and to be seen, and more by requiring the child to find for itself what is present. Again, an important circumstance, the purpose of the book does not terminate in describing right processes of teaching, but on the contrary, _'in telling what ought to be done, it proceeds to show how to do it by illustrative examples,' (sic.)_ Now, spite of some liberties with the President's English, which may properly be screened by the author's proviso that he does not seek 'to produce a faultless composition,' so much as to afford simple and clear examples for the teacher's use, we are compelled to inquire, especially as this is matter addressed to mature and not to immature minds, which it is the author really meant us to understand; that is, whether, in fact, the book 'proceeds to show _how to do it by_ illustrative examples;' or whether, in reality, it does not aim _to show by illustrative examples how to do it_--that, namely, which ought to be done. If we still find Mr. Calkins's philosophy somewhat more faultless than his practice, perhaps that is but one of the necessary incidents of all human effort; and we can say with sincerity that, in some of its features, we believe this a book better adapted to its intended uses--the age it is designed to meet being that of the lowest classes in the primary schools, or say from four to seven or eight years--than any of its predecessors. It will not, we hope, therefore, be understood as in a captious spirit, that we take exception to certain details.

The author is clearly right in his principle that 'The chief object of primary education is the development of the faculties;' though doubtless it would have been better to say, _to begin_ the development of the faculties; but then, he recognizes, as the faculties specially active in children, those of 'sensation, perception, observation, and simple memory,' adding, for mature years, those of 'abstraction, the higher powers of reason, imagination, philosophical memory, generalization,' etc. But that any one of all these is in the true psychological sense, a _faculty_--save, it may be, in the single instance of imagination--we shall decidedly question; and Mr. Calkins will see by the intent of his very lessons, that he does not contemplate any such thing as 'sensation' or 'observation,' as being a faculty: but, on the other hand, that he is so regarding certain individual powers of mind, by which we know in nature Color and Form and Number and Change and so on.

We must question whether 'in the natural order of the development of the human faculties, the mind of the child takes cognizance first of the _forms_ of objects.' Form is a result of particular _extensions:_ evidently, extension must be known before form can be. But again, visibly, form is revealed through kinds and degrees of light and shade; in one word, through _color_. Evidently, then, color also must be appreciated before visible form can be. But this 'natural order of the development of the human faculties,' is a seductive thing. In phrase, it is mellifluous; in idea, impressively philosophical. It would be well if this book, while cautiously applying developing processes to the little learner, were to _dogmatise_ less to the teacher. But when the development-idea is carried into the titles of the sections, it becomes, we think, yet more questionable. Thus, a section is headed, 'To develop the idea of straight lines.' First, would not the idea of _a straight line_ come nearer to the thing actually had in view? Again, 'To develop the idea of right, acute, and obtuse angles.' 'The idea,' taking in all these things, must be most mixed and multifarious; it could not be _clear_, though that is a quality mainly to be sought. Is not the intention rather, to develop _ideas_ of _the right, the acute,_ and _the obtuse angle?_ Instances of this sort, which we can not understand otherwise than as showing a loose way of thinking, are numerous. But then, again, it is assumed that the lessons _develop_ all the ideas successively discoursed about. Far otherwise, in fact. In many instances, of course, a sharper, better idea of the object or quality discussed will be elicited in the course of the lesson. This is, at best, only a sort of quasi-development, individualizing an idea by turning it on all sides, comparing with others, and sweeping away the rubbish that partly obscured it. In others of the topics, the learner has the ideas before we begin our developing operations. But the great misfortune of the usage of the term here is, that _develop_ properly implies to _unroll, uncover, or disclose_ something that is infolded, complicate, or hidden away; but mark, something that is always THERE before the developing begins, and that by it is only brought into light, freedom, or activity! Thus, we may develop faculties, for they were there before we began; but we simply can not develop _objective ideas_, such as this book deals with, but must impart them, or rather, give the mind the opportunity to get them. First, then, this term thus employed is needlessly pretentious; secondly, it is totally misapplied. Would it not help both teacher and pupil, then, if we were to leave this stilted form of expression, and set forth the actual thing the lessons undertake, by using such caption as for for example, _To give the idea, of a triangle,_ or to insure, or _to furnish the idea of a curve?_ We think the misnomer yet greater and worse, when we come to such captions as 'To develop the idea of God, as a kind Father;' especially when the amount of the development is this: 'Now, children, listen very attentively to what I say, and I will _tell you_ about a Friend that _you all have_, one who is kind to all of you, one who _loves you better_ than your father or your mother does,' and so on. All this, and what precedes and follows, is 'telling,' as the author acknowledges; of course, then, it is not developing. How is the child here made to _find_ and _know_ that it has such a Friend?--that this Friend _is_ kind to all?--that this Friend loves it better than do parents, or, in fact, at all? This is the way the nursery develops this and kindred ideas, and if the child be yet too young for its own comprehension of the most obvious truths of Natural Theology, then better defer the subject, or at least cease to call the nursery method by too swelling a name!

As to arrangement of topics, though the geographical lessons properly come late, as they stand, the idea of _place_, as well as those of _weight and size_, all belong earlier than the positions they are found in; and _number_, later. Such mental anachronisms as talking of _solids_ before the attempt has been made to impart or insure the idea of a solid, should, where practicable, be avoided; and more notably, such as bringing a subsequent and complex idea, like that of 'square measure,' before scarcely any one of the elementary ideas it involves, such as _measure, standard_, or even _length or size_, is presented. As to the substance of the teaching, we will indicate a few points that raise a question on perusal of them. What will the little learner gain, if the teacher follows the book in this instance? 'Where is the skin of the apple? _On_ its surface.'' This is in the lesson for 'developing the idea' of surface. When, by and by, the young mathematician gets the true idea of a surface, as extension in two dimensions only, hence, without thickness, then will follow this surprising result, that the whole thickness of the apple-skin is _on_--outside--the apple's surface, and hence, is nowhere: a singular converse of the teaching of those smart gentlemen who waste reams of good paper in establishing, to their own satisfaction, that even the mathematical surface itself has thickness! In the lesson on 'perpendicular and horizontal,' the definition of perpendicular is correct; but all the developing, before and after, unfortunately confounds the _perpendicular_ with the _vertical_--a bad way toward future accuracy of thought, or toward making scientific ideas, as they should be, definite as well as practically useful. If we judge by the brevity and incompleteness of the lesson on 'Developing ideas of Drawing'(!), ideas of that particular 'stripe' must be scarce. The Object Lessons at the close of the book we find generally very good models of such exercises, clear and to the purpose. Once in a while there is a _lapsus_, as in this: The criterion of a _liquid_ is presented as being in the circumstances that it does not '_hold together_' when poured from a vessel, but 'forms drops.' Now, since it forms drops, it _has cohesion_, and the criterion is wrongly taken; In fact, the same thing appears in that the liquid, even in pouring out, does hold together in a stream, and a stream that experiments with liquid jets show it really requires considerable force to break up.

Finally, Mr. Calkins's book, in the bands of discerning and skillful teachers, can be made the instrument of a great deal of right and valuable discipline for primary classes; but without some guarding and help from the teacher's own thought, it will not always do the best work, nor in the best way. It is an approach to a good book for early mental development; but it is not the consummation to be desired. Many of its suggestions and patterns of lessons are excellent; but there is too large a lack of true consecution of topics, of accuracy of expression, and of really natural method of handling the subjects. We say this with no unkindly feeling toward the attempt or the author, but because, though no matter by how fortuitous circumstances, it comes to us as in this country the _first effort_ toward a certain new style of books and subjects, and certain more rational teaching; and we hold it, as being the privilege of teachers whose time may be too much consumed in applying, to criticise minutely, as no less our right and duty, and that of every independent man, to recognize and point out wherein this new venture meets, or fails to meet, the new and positive demand of the pupils and the teachers in our time. If, in a degree, the working out shows defects such as we have named, is it not yet a question, whether we have in the book an illustration 'how this system of training may be applied to the entire course of common school education'?--to say nothing now of the question whether, even in its best form, it is a system that ought to be so applied.

After the author of a book for young learners is sure of the comprehensibility of his subjects, and the accuracy of his ideas and expressions of them, the highest need--and one the lack of which is fatal to true educative value--is that of a natural and true synthesis and consecution of the successive steps of fact and principle that are to be presented. We would not be understood that every successive lesson and every act of voluntary thinking must thus be consecutive: to say this, would be to confine the mind to one study, and to make us dread even relaxation, lest it break the precious and fragile chain of thought. Our growth in knowledge is not after that narrow pattern. We take food at one time, work at another, and sleep at a third: and so, the mind too has its variations of employment, and best grows by a like periodicity in them. This is our point--that it is a peculiarity and law of mind, growing out of the very nature of mind and of its knowings, that no truth or knowledge which is in its nature a _consequent_ on some other truths or knowledge, can by any possibility be in reality attained by any mind until after that mind has first secured and rightly appreciated those _antecedent_ truths or knowings. No later or more complex knowledge is ever comprehensible or acquirable, until after the elements of knowledge constituting or involved in it have first been definitely secured. To suppose otherwise, is precisely like supposing a vigorously nourishing foliage and head of a tree with neither roots nor stem under it; it is to suppose a majestic river, that had neither sufficient springs nor tributaries. Now, for the pupil, the text-book maker, the educator, no truth is more positive or profoundly important than this. He who fails of it, by just so much as he does so, fails to educate. Let the pupil, as he must, alternately study and not study--go even on the same day from one study to a second, though seldom to more than a third or fourth. By all this he need lose nothing; and he will tax and rest certain faculties in turn. But then, insist that each subject shall recur frequently enough to perpetuate a healthy activity and growth of the faculties it exercises, usually, daily for five days in a week, or every other day at farthest; that each shall recur at a stated period, so that a habit of mind running its daily, steady and productive round with the sun may be formed; and that in and along the material of every subject pursued, whether it be arithmetic, or grammar, or chemistry, or an ancient or modern language, the mind shall so be enabled to advance consecutively, clearly and firmly from step to step--from observation to law, from law to application, from analysis to broader generalization, and its application, and so on--that every new step shall just have been prepared for by the conceptions, the mental susceptibility and fibre, gotten during the preceding ones, and that thus, every new step shall be one forward upon new and yet sure ground, a source of intellectual delight, and a further intellectual gain and triumph. Need we say, this is the _ideal_? Practice must fall somewhat short of it; but Practice must first aim at it; and as yet she has scarcely conceived about the thing, or begun to attempt it. In truth, Practice is very busy, dashing on without a due amount of consideration, striving to project in young minds noble rivers of knowledge without their fountains; and building up therein grand trees of science, of which either the roots are wanting, or all parts come together too much in confusion.

First, then, we are not to make the presentation of any topic or lesson, even to the youngest learner, needlessly inconsecutive; but with the more advanced learners--with those in the academic and collegiate courses--we should insist on the display, and in so doing best insure the increase of the true _robur_ of the intellect, by positive requirement that all the topics shall be developed logically; that sufficient facts shall come before all conclusions; and rigid, sharp, and satisfactory analysis before every generalization or other synthesis. So, the more advanced mind would learn induction, and logic, and method, by use of them upon all topics; it would know by experience their possibilities, requirements, and special advantages; and it would be able to recognize their principles, when formally studied, as but the reflex and expression of its own acquired habitudes. Such a mind, we may safely say, would be _educated_. But secondly, the foregoing considerations show that we are not unnecessarily to jumble together the topics and lessons; to vacillate from one line of study to another; to wander, truant-like, among all sorts of good things--exploiting, now, a _color_; then _milk_; then in due time _gratitude_ and _the pyramids_; then _leather_, (for, though 'there's nothing like leather,' it may be wisest to keep it in its place;) then _sponge_, and _duty to parents, lying_, the _points of compass_, etc.! And here, for all ages above nine or ten years, is a real drawback, or at the least, a positive danger, of the Object-Lesson and Common-Things teaching. Just here is shadowed forth a real peril that threatens the brains of the men and women of the--we may say, 'rising' generation, through this fresh accession of the object-lesson interest in our country. _Objects_, now, are unquestionably good things; and yet, even objects can be 'run into the ground.'

We had put the essential thought here insisted on into words, before object-lessons had acquired the impetus of the last and current year.

'The 'object lessons' of Pestalozzi and his numerous followers, had,
in a good degree, one needed element--they required WORK of the
pupil's own mind, not mere recipiency. But they have [almost]
wholly lacked another element, just as important--that of
CONSECUTION in the steps and results dealt with. In most of the
schools in our country--in a degree, in all of them--these two
fundamental elements of all right education, namely, true work of
the learner's mind, and a natural and true consecution in not only
the processes of each day or lesson, but of one day on another, and
of each term on the preceding, are things quite overlooked, and
undreamed of, or, at the best, imperfectly and fragmentarily
attempted. But these, in so far as, he can secure their benefits,
are just the elements that make the thinker, the scholar, the man
of real learning or intellectual power in any pursuit.--_New-York
Teacher, December,_ 1859.

A like view begins to show itself in the writings of some of the English educationists. The object-teaching is recognized as being, in most instances, at least, too promiscuous and disorderly for the ends of a true discipline and development, and certainly, therefore, even for securing the largest amount of information. It too much excludes the later, systematic study of the indispensable branches, and supplants the due exercise of the reasoning powers, by too habitual restriction of the mind's activities to the channels of sense and perception. Isaac Taylor, in his _Home Education_, admits the benefits of this teaching for the mere outset of the pupil's course, but adds: 'For the rest, that is to say, whatever _reaches its end in the bodily perceptions_, I think we can go but a very little way without so giving the mind a bent _toward the lower faculties as must divert it from the exercise of the higher._' This thought is no mere fancy. It rests on a great law of _derivation_, true in mind as in the body; that inanition and comparative loss of one set of powers necessarily follows a too habitual activity of a different set. Thus it is that, in the body, over-use of the nervous, saps the muscular energies, and excessive muscular exertion detracts from the vivacity of the mind. Logically, then, when carried to any excess over just sufficient to secure the needed clear perceptions and the corresponding names for material objects and qualities, the object-lesson system at once becomes the special and fitting education for the ditcher, the 'hewer of wood,' the mere human machine in any employment or station in life, where a quick and right taking to the work at the hand is desirable, and any thing higher is commonly thought to be in the way; but it is not the complete education for the independent mind, the clear judgment and good taste, which must grow out of habits of weighing and appreciating also thousands of _non_-material considerations; and which are characteristics indispensable in all the more responsible positions of life, and that in reality may adorn and help even in the humblest. In a recently published report or address on a recommendation respecting the teaching of Sciences, made by the English 'Committee of Council on Education,' in 1859, Mr. Buckmaster says:

'The object-lessons given in some schools are so vague and
unsystematic, that I doubt very much if they have any educational
or practical value. I have copied the following lessons from the
outline of a large elementary school; Monday, twenty minutes past
nine to ten, Oral Lesson--_The Tower of Babel_; Tuesday, _The
Senses_; Wednesday, _Noah's Ark_; Thursday, _Fire_; Friday, _The
Collect for Sunday_. What can come of this kind of teaching, I am
at a loss to understand. Now, a connected and systematic course of
lessons on any of the natural sciences, or on the specimens
contained in one of Mr. Dexter's cabinets, would have been of far
greater educational value, and more interesting to the children.
_This loose and desultory habit of teaching encourages a loose and
desultory habit of thought_; it is for this reason that I attach
great value to _consecutive courses_ of instruction. I think, it
will not be difficult to show that the study of _almost any branch
of elementary science_ not only has a direct bearing on many of the
practical affairs of every-day life, but also _supplies all the
conditions necessary to stimulate and strengthen the intellectual
faculties in a much greater degree_ than many of the subjects now
taught in our elementary schools.'

All the lines of our investigation, as well as the most competent testimony, thus converge in showing that the object-lesson and common-things teaching is but a partial and preliminary resource in the business of education; that, to avoid working positive harm, it must be restricted within due limits of age, capacity, and subject; that it is not, therefore, the real and total present desideratum of our schools; and that, subsequently to the completion of the more purely sensuous and percipient phase of the mind, and to the acquirement of the store of simpler ideas and information, and the degree of capacity, that ought to be secured during that period--hence, from an age not later than eleven, or according as circumstances may determine, thirteen years--all the true and desirable ends of education, whether they be right mental habits and tastes, discipline and power of the faculties, or a large information and practical command of the acquisitions made--all these ends, we say, are thenceforward most certainly secured by the systematic prosecution, in a proper method, of the usually recognized distinct branches or departments of scientific knowledge. Let then, 'common things,' _et id genus omne_, early enough give place to thorough-going study of the elements of Geometry, of Geography, Arithmetic, Language, (including Grammar,) of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Botany, Physiology, and something of their derivations and applications. Thus shall our schools produce a race not of mere curious _gazers_, but of conscious and purposive investigators; not a generation of intellectual truants and vagabonds, but one of definitely skilled cultivators of definite domains in handicraft, art, or science.

We are compelled to take issue, therefore, with Mr. Spencer's recommendation, indorsed in the Chicago Report, to the effect that object-lessons should, after a 'different fashion,' 'be extended to a range of things far wider, and continued to a period far later than now.' Not so: after any possible fashion. But let us, as early as the child's capacity and preparation will allow, have the individualized, consecutive studies, and the very manner of studying which shall be made to do _for the higher and the lower intellectual faculties together, what well-conducted object-lessons can and now do perform, mainly for the lower_. Of all school-method, this we conceive to be the true end and consummation. This would be the ultimate fruitage of the Baconian philosophy, and of philosophy larger than the Baconian--by as much as the whole is greater than any part--in the school-life and work of every boy and girl admitted to the benefits of our courses of instruction.

Thus we have endeavored, with some particularity of examination and detail, to find and state not only what _are_, but what _should be_, the tendencies of educational thought and effort in our country and times. And we seem to find that those tendencies _are_, in spite of a stand-still conservatism or perplexed doubt in some quarters, and of a conflict of views and practices in others, largely in the direction in which the ends to be sought show that they _should be_. The _Education to be_, as far as the intellectual being is concerned, when time and study shall better have determined the conditions, and furnished the working instrumentalities, is to be, not in name merely, but in fact, an education by simply natural employment and development of all the perceiving, reasoning, originative, and productive faculties of the mind. It is to be such, because it is to insist on proceeding, after proper age, and then upon every suitable topic, by observation and investigation, and so, by discovery of the principles and results the mind is desired to attain; because it will be an education by rigidly consecutive, comprehended and firm lines of advance, employing processes analytic and synthetic, inductive and deductive, each in its requisite place and in accordance with the nature and stage of the topics under investigation. For the like reasons, it will have become, what we have long foreseen and desired that education should be, rightly progressive in form, and in character such as must develop, strengthen, and store the mind; such as must best fit, so far as the merely scholastic education can do this, for practical expression and use of what is learned, showing all our acquired knowledge in the light of its actual and various relationships, and conferring true serviceableness and the largest value, whether for enjoyment or execution.