STUDY MERELY FOR DISCIPLINE A WASTE.

It seems to be the aim of some text-book-makers, and some teachers too, to make every study as difficult as possible, for the sake of the discipline. No doctrine is more fallacious. Get your discipline by doing a greater amount of work and doing it in a better style. What sensible man would turn aside to ride over quagmires and stone heaps for the sake of more exercise for himself or horse? An oak tree might be felled with a stone hatchet, and one would get a deal of exercise in doing the job; but the same time and strength with a good steel ax would give as much exercise and leave something to show for the labor. Leave stone hatchets to savages; let civilized men use the sharpest steel axes they can find. They will thus do the most work and do it in the best manner. This principle of dealing with essentials mainly should prevail in all the work of education. We have too much to do to spend time fooling over complicated arithmetical puzzles which abound in some books-questions which no one should undertake to solve till well versed in algebra and geometry. At the proper stage of education, such puzzles, which are a discouragement to the young scholar because he thinks them essential to the subject, will be solved in the natural progress of his work. They are an annoyance and discouragement simply because they are introduced before their time, before the study of the principles on which their solution depends.

MENTAL DEVELOPMENT GRADUAL AND RETARDED BY PREMATURE

FORCING.

In this connection I ought to speak, not only of the attempts to teach the child before he is prepared for the subject by previous study conditional for it, but also of that forcing-system by which things are taught, or the attempt is made to teach them, before the pupil's mind is mature enough to grapple with them. I speak here of the natural maturity of mind through age. In the first place, there is a great difference in children as to the age at which they can profitably engage in the same studies. There is a difference in children belonging to different families, as to the time of the development of their mental powers as a whole and also as to the order of their development. This is plain enough to those who have compared successive classes from year to year and have studied the history of families. Parents ought to understand this, but the majority of them do not. Teachers should study the mental condition of their pupils as carefully, to say the least, as they do the subjects they are to teach. The successful husbandman knows when the ground is ready for the seed, that germination may be sure and the plant become a vigorous grower. The inexperienced farmer or gardener, ambitious for an early crop, puts his seed, at the earliest moment, into the soil, only to find the seed wasted or his plants weakly in growth and failing in quantity and quality of fruit. Some whole schools are samples

of this forcing-system. Parents and teachers both join in the work, and rejoice together over the precocious scholars who learn by rote and explain beautifully without ever comprehending what they explain. Such unfortunate prodigies of learning lose by this cramming system all the pleasure and healthful stimulus to vigorous growth that come to the one who, with powers fitted for the work, incorporates the studies of each day into his intellectual life, because he is able to comprehend them fully without weariness to mind or over-draft upon the body. The growth of every day is to the latter healthful; and thus it happens that so many who commence study late in life soon outstrip those who have been delving for years.

TO PREVENT WASTE, STUDIES MUST BE ADAPTED TO AGE AND DEVEL· OPMENT OF PUPILS.

Do not charge me with undervaluing early education. It is a great thing for the child from the first to breathe a literary atmosphere, and in rare instances the crowding I have spoken of makes real prodigies of learning, of which John Stuart Mill was an example-"a fine example," some would say; a sad warning, I should suggest.

In all the early years, say to the age of 14, the studies should be light-just enough to keep the appetite for learning keen-while the physical system has no strain brought upon it by over-confinement or hard mental labor. In these early years, the simple studies of spelling and reading and the simple forms of mathematics, in which the large majority of students who apply for admission to college are wofully deficient, should occupy the chief attention as studies in the class-room. The outlines of geography and history should be so fully given that the reading of the newspaper shall be intelligent work, because the scholar knows where events transpire; and such training in natural history should be secured that the senses may be on the alert for every new form and phenomenon in the natural world. By those who have the opportunity, French or German might be learned orally, without the details of grammar. If this is done, with no more labor than is often wasted in teaching grammar and some parts of mathematics, when the scholar is utterly unprepared for the work; if this is done, and a taste for choice reading secured, at the age of 14 or 15 you are ready to begin the continuous work of education in earnest, so that the student shall not only acquire knowledge rapidly, but shall remember the processes by which he acquires it. And this remembrance of the processes is hardly less valuable than the knowledge itself, especially to one who is to engage in the work of instructing.

WASTE FROM WANT OF PROPERLY GRADING SCHOOLS.

The waste of labor that comes from imperfect classification of schools is so apparent that all understand and deplore it. This evil in country schools cannot be completely remedied, although much can be done by

the skill and tact of the teacher in bringing together all the elementsthat can be combined and in providing in the most efficient manner for the exceptional studies that often range from the primer to rhetoric and physics. In schools that are classified, there is often no little waste in the excess of machinery and multiplicity of rules. We criticise here. with great caution, for every military man and every presiding officer in a deliberative body and every experienced teacher will tell you, and tellyou truly, that many rules have borne the test of time as a means of rapid and efficient labor that, to the inexperienced, seem useless or burdensome.

RULES OF DISCIPLINE SHOULD BE FEW AND SIMPLE.

But, after all, there is too much tendency in large, well-classified schools and colleges to make the machinery of government cumbersome, so that the rules become such a weight upon the student as to depress the mind and repress that spontaneity of individual action so essential to the healthy growth and development of the intellect. Just as soon as a student feels that, instead of being dealt with personally, he is only part of a great machine, that is controlled and worked as a whole, much of his individual responsibility is lost, except to do his part in the machine. Personal responsibility, constant, as though no other student were associated with him, is the true condition of development; and, unless you secure that condition fully, much of the student's time and strength is wasted, and your own strength is wasted in managing the machine, which, when the school dissolves, is worthless. Machinery is as essential in a school as in a cotton-mill, but the simplest machinery possible that will accomplish the work is best in both. Simplicity and directness are doubly essential in a school, because you are dealing with living beings, and it is the contact of the living teacher with the pupil in the whole process of education that arouses activity and makes every germ of knowledge quicken to the fullest development. This is no plea for lax government; for the teacher who cannot govern promptly and perfectly wastes a large portion of his time and strength directly, and does mischief enough to the character of his pupils to overbalance any learning he may impart to them.

WASTE FROM TOLERATION OF OLD ERRORS IN TEXT-BOOKS.

Another source of waste is the copying of old mistakes and absurdities in text-books and methods of instruction and government simply because they are venerable and have been practiced or recommended by those who have been famous in the work of education. We can hardly illustrate this point fully without danger of troubling some one who has written a book or who still clings to some school-tradition that might be denounced. We must be content with stating the principle and giving one or two illustrations.

The Linnæan system of classification of plants was a purely artificial

system, understood to be so by its great author, and yet such was the prestige of a name, and so persistent the custom of copying, that this system held its place in our text-books and schools long after it might have been displaced by a natural system that represented botanical truth.

ABSURDITY OF THE OLD CUSTOM OF EARLY MORNING PRAYERS IN COLLEGES.

The early morning prayers, as formerly conducted in many colleges, were an example of the absurdities even wise men will accept from custom. Students were called out of bed before it was light, on cold winter mornings, to hurry to a chapel without fires, and then pass to the recitation-room to recite by the dim light of oil-lamps.

The ill-temper of the students found expression in rebellions and attacks on chapel and recitation-rooms. And yet it was very difficult to change this old custom, handed down from the dark ages, a custom injurious to health and good morals and opposed to common sense.

WASTE FROM WANT OF FURTHER CLASSIFYING STUDENTS IN COLLEGE.

There are two sources of waste in educational labor over which the teacher has but little control. The first is the natural stupidity of scholars, who find their way into every school and college. It is no waste of labor to spend time on dull scholars, if we attempt to teach them only what they are capable of learning and what it is essential they should learn. They are entitled to extra labor, as are the deaf and blind. But the mischief is, stupid students are often forced, by their parents or by their own over-estimate of their powers, into classes where they are a dead-weight upon the movements of all connected with them. The exhaustion that comes to the faithful teacher from daily lifting and pulling and encouraging and driving such students is known only to those who have toiled long and seen their efforts as useless as attempts to warm snow or make the blind see by describing colors. Book-learning is not the forte of all men. And while some men attempt only those things for which they are well fitted, others are constantly attempting those things for which they are entirely unfit. Their life is a failure because they never understand their own capabilities. Almost every college has students who would make good business men, good specialists in some science, perhaps, but for whom an attempt to acquire a college education means a great waste of time and effort on their part, a waste of strength and patience on the part of their instructors.

WASTE FROM IRREGULARITY OF ATTENDANCE OF PUPILS.

There is a second hinderance from parents that interferes with every teacher's work; this is their encouragement to irregularity in schoolduties. It is marvelous what a number of marriages and special occa

sions occur in some families, as an excuse for taking sons and daughters from school. The sons of some families are almost constantly absent at the beginning of the term. The parent sends an excuse which every teacher feels is no excuse. The student is injured by the loss and the whole class feels the effect. If the lessons are missed or made up there is waste of labor for the teacher, which he can illy afford. His work is hard enough at best, and thus to load him with extra work or depress him by rendering his labors, term after term, defective, through the caprice of the student and the ignorance or inconsiderateness of the parent, is a misfortune to him and a shame to the offenders.

WASTE FROM WANT OF ENTHUSIASM ON PART OF TEACHER.

I have but two points more to make, and these relate especially to the teacher. There is failure to secure energetic work and the best re. sults from lack of enthusiasm. Without this no teacher can have the best success, however learned and faithful and hard-working he may be. Enthusiasm is the heat that softens the iron, that every blow may tell. Enthusiasm on the part of the teacher gives life to the student and an impulse to every mental power. It gives the work of the schoolroom a quickening impulse, and by this impulse makes the student a gatherer wherever he goes. It gives to the student independent power; power to go alone. When this is accomplished, there is no more waste in lifting, dragging, or driving. It was the enthusiasm of Linnæus that filled his lecture-room with students from all parts of Europe, and then sent them over the world to gather new treasures for themselves and their master. It was the enthusiasm of Agassiz that clothed the commonest things with new life and beauty; that charmed every listener and transformed the aged and the young, the ignorant and the learned, into joyful learners. Another man, with the same learning, the same devotion, and equal labor, might not accomplish one-tenth as much, because he failed to enkindle that interest that quickens every mental power and lights the fire of latent genius, which, once enkindled, reveals to its possessor truths far beyond the range of those whose minds have never been touched by this life-giving power of enthusiasm. It is said one loses this enthusiasm after a while. Then he ought to stop teaching. If he cannot grow enthusiastic presenting the plainest rules of arithmetic and Latin for the fiftieth time to a new mind, then he is unfit for his work, and should spend his strength on stone or clay, which can only yield to force, but never take form at the mere glow of enthusiasm in the worker.

WASTE ARISING FROM NEGLECT OF MORAL TRAINING.

But, last of all, there is a waste that brings loss and sorrow to the world. This is neglect of moral and religious instruction in connection with intellectual training. Who are the men who are causing hu