USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > Town of Newton annual report 1872 > Part 17
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Much care and labor were used in the preparation of our present course of study. It was prepared by the Superin- tendent in conjunction with the masters of the several dis- tricts and of the High School, was submitted to the appro- priate Sub-Committees, and, with such modifications as seemed to them to be necessary, was reported to the full Board, by whom it was unanimously approved and adopted. It occupies a period of thirteen years. Its practical working has revealed many excellences, and few defects.
Nevertheless, our labors in this direction are by no means completed. More will be expected of our school in the fu- ture than in the past. There is a growing feeling that our school work should be made more practical. I believe it is a just demand ; and, in the interest of this demand, I would interpret and carry out our present curriculum. I believe we have a right to expect from our schools such training as will bear the rich fruits of manhood and womanhood. They should furnish opportunities for the acquisition of such knowledge as will be useful for the guidance of daily con- duct in the discharge of daily duties, - such knowledge, in short, as will lead to " complete living." They should train the mind to judge, the eye to see, and the hand to execute, so that the boy who goes out from them may more skilfully and more intelligently do the work of the farm, the shop, and the counting-room ; and that the girl who has enjoyed their advantages may find her range of possibilities enlarged, and new avenues to usefulness and independence opened. Nay, more, they should teach the youth of both sexes that labor is honorable, ignorance a disgrace, and idle- ness a crime. They should teach the responsibilities of the individual to himself, to society, and to God. The ob- ject of common schools, like that of a republican govern- ment, is to secure the greatest good of the greatest number. To secure this object their work should be broad and prac- tical, touching upon daily life at every point. Mental discipline, the regular, full, and symmetrical development of the faculties of the mind, is the grand aim of elementary
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as well as higher education. But mental discipline alone is not enough; and that curriculum of study that makes dis- cipline its sole aim will fail to meet the wants of this practical, busy age. I believe that the highest mental training may be secured, and at the same time this practi- cal element may be introduced into our school work. In- deed, I believe that the fullest mental training cannot be secured without this element.
Upon this point, then, -the work which our schools are intended to accomplish, - there is a general agreement. The real question is, By what means and methods may this work be best accomplished? "That which our school courses leave almost entirely out," says Herbert Spencer, " we find to be that which most nearly concerns the busi- ness of life.
"All other industries would cease, were it not for that information which men begin to acquire as they best may after their education is said to be finished. The vital knowl- edge - that by which we have grown as a nation to what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence - is a knowledge that has got itself taught in nooks and corners ; while the ordained agencies for teaching have been mum- bling little else but dead formulas."
These remarks were intended to apply to the schools of England ; but there is too much in them that is applicable to the schools of Massachusetts to-day. I believe that our elementary schools have come far short of accomplishing the object for which they were established, and that our higher education is susceptible of much improvement. I do not underrate the value of mental culture ; but I believe that the knowledge which will be most useful to the adult in after-life is that whose acquisition is attended with the most pleasure to the child, and that the knowledge whose acquisition is attended with the most delight and interest is that which is best fitted to discipline the mind.
" It would be utterly contrary to the beautiful economy of Nature," says the author quoted, " if one kind of culture
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were needed for the gaining of information, and another kind were needed as a mental gymnastic."
Here, then, is the vital principle upon which a scheme of education should be constructed. It must be in harmony with the mental constitution of the child. The quantity and quality of the mental food prescribed should be such as the mind can easily assimilate in the different stages of its growth. No waste should ensue in consequence of mental nausea or dyspepsia. Nature's processes of education, carried on so successfully in the first years of life, must be fol- lowed implicitly in the school-room. Those methods must be pursued whose quickening influence is seen in the sparkling eye and eager interest of the child : those methods that re- sult in mental stagnation and disgust must be avoided. The mind of the child, like his body, naturally craves that which will best contribute to its growth.
SUBJECTS AND METHODS.
How shall these principles be applied ? By omitting the abstract technicalities and useless details of the present branches of study, and substituting in their place those prac- tical subjects, a knowledge of which prepares one for the business of life. I hope to see a larger infusion of the natu- ral sciences in our school course. The study of " The Child's Book of Nature," introduced during the past year, is a step in the right direction. The study of such a book in the lower grades of our grammar schools supplements in an admirable manner the oral instruction of the primary classes. Of the importance and value of the study of Nature Dr. Hooker thus speaks in his preface to this little work : " Children are busy observers of natural objects, and have many questions to ask about them; but their inquisitive observation is commonly repressed. instead of being encour- aged and guided. The chief reason for this unnatural course is, that parents and teachers are not in possession of the in- formation which is needed for the guidance of children in the observation of Nature. They have not themselves been
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taught aright ; and so they are not able to teach others. In their own education the observation of Nature has been almost entirely excluded; and they are, therefore, unpre- pared to teach a child in regard to the simplest natural phenomena.
" Here is a radical error in education. When we put a child into the school-room, to be drilled in spelling, reading arithmetic, geography, &c., we effectually shut him in from all the varied and interesting objects of Nature, which he is so naturally inclined to observe and study. These are very seldom made the subjects of instruction in childhood. And, even at the fireside, the deficiency is nearly as great as it is in the school-room.
" The same defect appears, to a great extent, throughout the whole course of education. The study of the wonder- ful phenomena which are all around us and within us is, for the most part, neglected, except by the few whose in- clinations to it are so strong that they cannot be repressed. This defect is well illustrated in a remark which was made by a mother in relation to her own education. When at school she stood above all others as a scholar, and excelled particularly in mathematics : her remark was, that she re- gretted every day of her life, that much of the time that was consumed in training her in mathematics was not spent in teaching her what would enable her to answer the con- tinual questions of her children.
" There should be a thorough change in this respect in the whole course of education, beginning in childhood. In the different departments of natural science there are mul- titudes of facts or phenomena, in which children readily become interested when they are properly explained."
The results thus far obtained are, in the main, satisfac- tory. I have no doubt that they will be improved as the teachers become more skilful in giving instruction in these branches.
But this is only the beginning of the work: the range of these studies should be extended and enlarged. One or more of them should be required of each class in the gram-
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mar grade. Our curriculum makes provision for a large choice of studies on the part of the pupilin the High School : it provides for special departments of study, with reference to the native tastes of the pupil, and the special business of life for which he is preparing. But the advantages of such a course will be in a large measure lost, unless the early education of the child is such as will lead to the discovery and development of his natural bent. Hence I plead for a greater variety of subjects in the lower grades. Unless this opportunity to develop the natural tendencies of the child is allowed, the pupil cannot make choice for himself, nor can the parent or teacher choose for him ; at least, not understandingly. Let us not imitate the colleges in this particular, which have made liberal provision for election on the part of the student, while the standard of admission still dooms him to the old treadmill round of classics and mathematics, and thereby unfits him for the intelligent ex- ercise of the choice which is offered.
The introduction of systematic instruction in drawing is another step in the right direction. There is no branch of study in our whole curriculum better fitted than this to train the eye, hand, and judgment of the pupil, and so prepare him for the practical duties of life. The object of this study is not to make artists, but to put more intelligence, more skill, more brain, into the various depart- ments of human industry. That it has commended itself to the instincts of the children - which, let me remark, should under no circumstances be disregarded - is proved by the interest which they manifest in its pursuit.
The plan pursued is that of Walter Smith, the able and accomplished State Director of Art Education. For the particulars of this plan, I refer you to the Report of the special instructor in this department.
But it is said our school work is already too full. The high pressure system already reckons its victims by thou- sands. Will you increase the work, and the danger attend- ing it? By no means. I am aware that the young pulse of this nation is beating far too quickly ; and this is one
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reason why I plead for the larger variety of school work. I maintain that it is because its range has been too limited that these disastrous results have ensued. The work has been too exclusively brain work. It has lacked that variety that is essential to health. Hence I claim that " the high pressure brain work should give way to the low pressure sensual work." To make room for this change, I would eliminate all the useless details whose acquisition brings weariness and disgust. That they are found in the text- books, that they were laboriously learned in the past, are facts of no importance to us. The question is, Are they needed now? Are they essential to that education which will best meet the demands of to-day. Our methods of in- struction should be dealt with in a similar manner. Those that are in harmony with psychological laws - the laws which underlie the true philosophy of education - should be retained: those that fall short of this standard should be rejected.
The application of these principles to the several branches of study will reveal, if I mistake not, the defects in our present mode of teaching, and suggest the remedies to be applied. I first invite your attention to the subject of
ARITHMETIC.
Full success in this branch of study will never be real- ized until there is a complete emancipation from the slave- ry of the text-books. Our new curriculum, which prescribes the subjects to be taught, rather than the pages to be studied, is already felt in this direction. I have endeavored still further to secure this result by carefully avoiding all reference to the prescribed text-book in conducting the examination that I have made in this department. There is much in every text-book, connected with the subjects prescribed, of no value except as it indicates the profundity of the author, or helps to swell the profits of the publisher. It is almost impossible to secure the rejection of this on the part of the teacher, so long as the use of any particular text-book is allowed; and thus much time is wasted upon
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useless abstractions, while the practical knowledge required in daily life is neglected.
Notwithstanding that eight ears are given to the study of this subject, it is by no means uncommon to find pupils who are unable to tell how many yards of carpeting it will take to cover our parlor-floor; how large a bin we must make to hold a given amount of coal ; how large our cistern must be to hold a given amount of water; how much we must pay our neighbor for the load of hay he has just sent to our stable ; how much money must be discounted at a bank to yield a given sum; how to make a bill, or write a note, check, or receipt ; and to answer a hundred other questions with which the farmer, mechanic, or merchant who went to school but six months in the year, and left school altogether at the age of twelve, or earlier, is per- fectly familiar. Is it to be wondered at that the practical man criticises our school system ?
Too much time has been given to mental arithmetic. This exercise should be used mainly to familiarize the pupil with principles, and the processes by which they are applied. It should precede and prepare the way for the slate exercises. When this purpose has been accomplished, it may be suspended till a new principle is to be developed and a new process to be explained. Under no circum- stances, should this exercise degenerate into a means of strengthening the memory. The too common practice of reading a long and complicated question, and requiring the pupil to repeat it from memory, to go through with its solution step by step, and finally to give a second repetition of the question itself, should not be tolerated for a moment. The effect of such an exercise is to generate stupidity in the pupil, and to create in him a distaste for a study that is in itself interesting.
The attempt to teach logic in connection with arithmetic should be discouraged, especially in the lower classes. Long explanations, involving a chain of reasoning, should not be attempted. The mind is not yet ready for this kind of work. A pupil, even in the lowest grades, may go through
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a long chain of reasoning, using the " hences " and " there- fores " with the accuracy of a professional logician ; but, after all, it is not an exercise of the reasoning faculty, but of the memory. Such training consumes much time, and is barren of any valuable results. The fundamental opera- tions of arithmetic should be intelligently performed until rapidity and accuracy have been secured ; but the logic of the subject should be left to the advanced classes of the grammar schools and the high school. Furthermore, I think that some of the topics - such as "averaging of accounts," " partnership," and " exchange " - now assigned to the grammar grades would be included more appropriately in high-school work.
GEOGRAPHY.
Geography has hitherto occupied more time than its impor- tance would justify. Until within a few years, it has been the almost universal custom to use a series of text-books, - three or four in number, - whose chief difference consisted in the amount of wearisome and useless details they contained. The study of these books extended over a period of from four to eight years. Your recent action in reducing the text- books to one, and the number of years to two, deserves and will ere long receive, the hearty approval of every friend of education. It has been a great benefit to the general system, in that the time thus saved has been given to those parts of the system that needed broadening and strengthening. The work of the year has been more satisfactory by reason of this timely action of your Board.
SPELLING.
What is the object of this exercise ? Is it to teach the orthography of such words as form the vocabulary of common life, such words as the mass of the pupils will have frequent occasion to use ? or is it a species of mental gymnastics ; the words being selected because their orthography is irregular, and their meaning incomprehensible ? The study of orthog- raphy, if I understand it rightly, is simply a study of form. We learn words just as we learn geometrical figures ; that is,
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by their form. Each word constitutes a separate and distinct picture. We may be assisted in learning by associating words that have a greater or less similarity ; but, after all, the most difficult words in our language have forms peculiar to them- selves, and must be learned as individual forms. And here I will remark, that the words to be spelled should always be written by the pupil. So few advantages can be shown to re- sult from oral spelling, that I seriously doubt whether it is wise to give any time to it, except in the lowest primary classes, which are not yet able to write. Our first object, then, is to cultivate in the pupil the habit of observation. The training of the eye to see, the forming of correct habits of observation, have been sadly neglected in our American sys- tem of education. We spend much time in teaching the words in the Speller, thousands of which are meaningless to the child, such as "ichneumon," " lachrymose," " exchequer," "eleemosynary," " hypochondriac," "idiosyncrasy," and hun- dreds of others equally incomprehensible. And what have we resulting? The habit of observation unformed, and a lamentable ignorance of the orthography of some of the com- monest words of daily life. " Which " is still spelled with a t, and "sure " with an h; while "mamma," " biscuit," and " twelfth " are beyond the limits of orthographic knowledge.
And now what is the remedy ? Require the pupils to spell any of the words that occur in the regular lessons of the day, -in the Reader, the Geography, the History, &e. In this man- ner, the child will be led to observe the words which he uses ; and there will be this additional advantage, viz., the words whose orthography he is required to learn will be such as his mind can comprehend, and to which he has already attached a meaning. I would supplement these lessons with a list of from one to two thousand words that are in common use, - such words as occur in ordinary correspondence, in letters of busi- ness and friendship. These I would make the subject of fre- quent and careful review, until their orthography is indelibly fixed in the mind. Under no circumstances should the pupil be required to learn the orthography of words which to him are meaningless. The knowledge thus acquired will hardly
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compensate for the bad habits that will be formed. I ask your careful consideration of this subject, as I feel that the plan hitherto pursued has been attended with a great waste of time, and quite unsatisfactory results.
READING.
The purposes to be accomplished by the pursuit of this branch of study, are, first, to acquire a knowledge of words so as to be able to understand the thoughts which they express : second, to gain the power to express these thoughts to others with proper tones, inflections, and emphasis ; third, to acquire a love for reading. That mode of instruction in reading that gives to the pupil a treasury of words, with their various shades of meaning, and thereby enables him to extract mental nutrition from the printed page, and puts him in possession of the key to the thoughts and experiences of the ages, - such a mode of instruction addresses itself to the intelligence of the pupil. It assists the pupil in the acquisition of knowledge. It results in genuine, thorough mental training.
The second object of this study, viz., the power to express the thoughts of others, is of minor importance. It is impor- tant that the mass of mankind should learn how to acquire knowledge: it is not important that they should have special training in the means of communicating it. To how few of the pupils now in our public schools would such training have any practical value ! Again, the study of elocution, with the nice distinctions of tone, emphasis, and modulation that it in- volves, requires a good degree of maturity, and finds its appro- priate place at the very close of our school course. If it is attempted sooner, at least to any considerable extent, the ex- ercise becomes purely imitative, and in no manner contributes to the intellectual culture of the pupil. There are two rea- sons why this imitative art has been cultivated so largely in our schools, viz., the prominence that has been given it in most of our Readers, and the willingness of teachers to substi- tute the showy but shallow results of voice-training for the substantial but less easily attained fruits of mind-training. I know not how it may be with others; but for myself I am
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obliged to confess that the best results of this artificial training have failed to please me as much as the simple, artless manner of the child, who, having patiently worked his way to the meaning of the words, gives utterance to the thought he has discovered. I have never seen a child fail to give intelligent expression to a thought which he thoroughly comprehended.
It is plain, then, that reading should be taught primarily
as a means acquiring knowledge. To carry ut this plan, and accomplish this object in its fulness, the amount to be read must be increased, and the time given to elocu- tionary drill diminished. Time and energy have been given to the subject; but they have not been expended judiciously. The reading and re-reading of a piece until the exercise has become a memoriter recitation must be discontinued. The old idea, that thoroughness requires a book to be read year after year, even though all life and freshness have long since gone out of it, must be aban- doned. The vocabulary of the pupil should be enlarged, and his intelligence developed, until it can no longer be said that the average graduate from our grammar schools is incapable of reading intelligently an article from a monthly magazine, or an editorial from a morning paper. We need to supplement the reading-books now in use with at least an equal amount of matter suited to the capaci- ties of the child. "The Nursery " is admirably adapted to meet the wants of the primary classes. n the gram- mar classes the study of the natural sciences may be com- bined with this course of general reading. For this purpose I would recommend such books as Miss Hall's " Our World," Guyot's " Introduction to Geography," and Hooker's " Child's Book of Nature," to be used in the fifth and sixth grammar classes. If read intelligently, they will furnish the pupil with a store of valuable information of the world in which he lives, and his relations to it. For similar use in the higher grammar classes, I would name " Water and Land," "Heat," and "Force," by Jacob Abbott; the " Wonders of Water," translated from the French of Tis- sandier ; the " History of a Mouthful of Bread," and the
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" Servants of the Stomach," translated from the French of Macé ; Mckenzie's "History of the United States ; ", and Anderson's " Historical Reader." I believe that such a plan of reading, if carried out in a proper spirit, will lead to the acquisition of much valuable information, and, by making its acquisition pleasurable, will create in the child a love of knowledge, and a taste for reading as a means of obtaining it.
LANGUAGE.
The object of the study of language is to acquire the art of speaking and writing correctly. The first step in this work is the study of words. A knowledge of words must precede the use of them. The ideas which they ex- press must be clearly understood, before we can use them correctly in the acquisition of new knowledge, or in the communication of our thoughts to others. To teach the pupil to form clear ideas, and to express them clearly, is an important part of our school work ; and the progress of the pupil in his other studies depends in a great measure upon the completeness with which this work is done.
I have already spoken of one exercise in the study of lan- guage, - reading. Synonomy is another valuable exercise. This exercise, if intelligently pursued, introduces the pupil to new words, and to new meanings of old words, and thus, by enlarging his vocabulary, enlarges his range of thought. The object of this exercise is to give the pupil the ability to substitute one word for another with- out changing the meaning, and thus to avoid the repetition of the same word. Whenever the proper word is wanting, an equivalent phrase or clause may be used ; and, whenever neither can be found, the definition should be given. This careful study of words is indispensable as a preparation for every exercise in reading. If this is neglected, read- ing degenerates, from an intelligent exercise of the mind, to a parrot-like repetition of meaningless words. The complete mastery of the thought can come only from a thorough knowledge of its symbols. In reading, as in
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