MISCEJ.LANEOUS PAPERS. 137 



PROFESSOR Tracy's opiniox. 



What is the use of a district school house at nearly every corner? Why do 

 your people tax themselves so lieavily to establish and maintain them? The 

 answer comes from the statesman, to make good citizens ; from the moralist, 

 to make honest men ; from the educator, to make Ijroad-minded, intelligent 

 men. No one wlio has carefully considered the matter will admit for a moment 

 that the simple storing of the mind with absolute knowledge, constitutes more 

 than a small part of the proper work of the school-room. The language of a 

 college professor in addressing a class about to commence a two years' course 

 in chemistry: '^Gentlemen, I shall not try to give you a knowledge of chemis- 

 istry, but simply to teach you how to acquire and how to use such knowledge," 

 is the true spirit of school-room work, and we have a right to ask a place in it 

 for anything that will make our children broader minded, more intelligent men 

 and women, or prepare them to do better work and get greater good from the 

 incidents of their every-day life. No matter how much we may have ignored 

 it, it is none the less true that we all have an esthetic nature which is capable 

 of development, and God has certainly indicated by the beauty which he has 

 bestowed upon all his work that we, made in his image are to use and enjoy 

 this nature in our daily life, and we have no more right to neglect this element 

 in the education of our children than the training of their mental, moral, or 

 physical natures. The Indian child grows up with nothing but a physical 

 training, and looking upon his splendid physique, but dwarfed and undevel- 

 oped moral and mental character, we will not admit that the perfection of the 

 first excuses his parents in having neglected the other, but is our sin of any 

 different nature when we allow^ our children to grow up with no appreciation of 

 the marvellous beauty God has spread all about us? Have not the parents of 

 the man to whom "a yellow cowslip a yellow cowslip is and nothing more," 

 failed in the same way if not to the same degree, as those of the man who 

 knows not how to sign his name? This education, like every other, comes 

 from experience of and contact with the things of which it partakes. The 

 mathematician gains his power by solving difficult problems. The moral 

 character gains strength from overcoming temptation and every effort to de- 

 velop and increase the beauty of our surroundings makes us more capable of 

 appreciating the beauty that surrounds us. But you say this is the proper 

 work of the home, not of the school-house. Is it any more so than the train- 

 ing of the moral nature? Who would approve of the moral atmosphere of 

 the school-room being no better than that of the worst of the homes from 

 which its children come, or of the teacher who goes into a district where im- 

 morality and vice are the rule, and yet makes no effort to train his scholars in 

 a better way? Yet this is just the position of most of our schools in regard 

 to esthetic culture. Our district schools are not better than the worst of the 

 homes about them. Our school yards have not a beautiful thing around them. 

 Our school children never have their attention called to nor are asked to make 

 a single addition to the beautiful things of house or field. Have we not a 

 great Avork to do in this direction before we reap the full reward of our com- 

 mon school system in rearing up broad-minded, cultured men and women. 

 How to commence this work is a question not easily answered. The German 

 workman enters upon active labor with more schooling than the American, 

 but is far below him in intelligence and ability to use what knowledge he has, 

 and I think this result may be fairly attributed to the fact that the Gernian's 

 education is largely compulsory during an enforced and irksome service in the 

 army, while that of the American is voluntary and gained during the bright 



