86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



easily and with pleasure a couple of years later. It is possible to teach 

 an infant to walk two months before the body is ready, but bow legs 

 are likely to be the only permanent result. So it may be that the 

 premature use of numbers apart from any real interest is actually 

 harmful. The school work in arithmetic is certainly of very little use. 



Exploitation of the conventional spelling and grammar is one of 

 the insignia of the classes, which, like their dress and etiquette, is 

 imitated by the masses without profit. The accuracy of spelling 

 secured by school drill is useless; the syntactical limitations injure 

 expression and style. Nothing much can be said in favor of geogra- 

 phy, history and literature as they are taught, or for such science as 

 now and then appears. We have a book method, essential for certain 

 purposes, extended far outside the limits of its usefulness. The clerk 

 or priest becoming teacher regards the elements of those subjects in 

 which he is expert as the only ones proper to education, and the great 

 mass of the people are ready to imitate those who have assumed 

 authority over them. The futile system is supported ex post facto by 

 a bad psychology, which claims that the methods used will teach chil- 

 dren to observe, remember and reason. Primary education is planned 

 as a preparation for the high school, and the high-school course as a 

 preparation for college; the college is for students preparing for the 

 professions and at the same time a club for the idling classes. 



It is not at all clear why the public should pay a thousand dol- 

 lars for the expenses of each boy who goes through college to enjoy 

 the pleasures of drinking clubs and betting on athletics ; and it is surely 

 absurd to let the conventional courses of the college distort every ele- 

 mentary school. As Franklin said, there is a good deal of difference 

 between a good physician and a poor physician, but not much difference 

 between a good physician and no physician ; and the same is true of the 

 lawyer, the clergyman, the journalist and even the university president. 

 We could get on tolerably well without all these gentlemen, except 

 only the few who are working to advance knowledge and its applica- 

 tions; and it is, in any case, needless to make their production the 

 principal aim of our educational system. The good ones are born fit 

 for their work, and will do equally well whether they learn to read at 

 twelve or at six. 



The imprisoned hope of Pandora is the only justification of our 

 educational system. We look forward to getting some day professional 

 men who will serve a better civilization, and schools that will make 

 children happier, wiser and more useful. In the meanwhile we con- 

 sume on the altars of our schools more property than the lawyers can 

 guard, more health than the physicians can restore and more unborn 

 souls than the clergymen can save. 



The unborn children due to the schools have been too little regarded. 



