Farmers' Week in Agricultural College. 87 



your mouth, ' ' while we lay on his tongue a sugar-coated spoonful of the 

 sure-cure for ignorance. He may writhe under the administration, but 

 we cheerfully continue it, just as Squeers doped his hopefuls with 

 treacle and sulphur, and then tapped them on the head with the wooden 

 spoon when they showed symptoms of vertigo. But you remember there 

 were some goods things even in Squeers' methods. He always gave his 

 boys a practical application of eveiything he taught. When a boy had 

 learned to spell ' ' window, ' ' he was immediately set to wash the windows 

 of the school building — and thus had the lesson "rubbed in," as it were. 

 We get the boy to spell, if we can, and then we hire a janitor to wash 

 the windows. And so there were some redeeming features in Squeers' 

 system, even in comparison with our own. 



The great fault of our public school work, speaking broadly, is its 

 failure properly to relate the student to his present and future work 

 and surroundings. The boy or girl who is really destined, if he finds 

 himself, to a life of business or industrial activity, is too often coerced 

 by the school — if he does not rebel — into a line of study for which he 

 has no natural aptitude or interest. The school machine fails to dis- 

 cover him to himself, because its course of study offers little or no op- 

 portunity for his own natural reactions. And all because of the old and 

 false doctrine of the ' ' disciplinary value ' ' of the traditional curriculum. 

 Ex-Governor Hoard of Wisconsin has recently characterized this 

 educational superstition most aptly. He says: 



' ' Teachers have a great responsibility placed before them, for theirs 

 is the task, not only of building up the human mind, but also of saving 

 it from the appalling fate of a life of misdirected effort. We do not 

 believe in much of the criticism that is showered upon teachers, for it 

 is manifestly narrow, unphilosophical and imjust, and for these reasons, 

 is worse in its unreasonableness than the teacher. But we do think 

 that about all of this talk that teachers indulge in concerning the pur- 

 suit of any study for the sake of "mental discipline" is without merit. 

 It is about as reasonable as would be the idea of loading dowTi a horse 

 and cart with a useless burden for the sake of the animal and vehicle. 

 Teachers should be well versed in the physiology of the mind they deai 

 with. They ought to know that there is such a thing as the "wear and 

 tear" of study, which is always increased greatly, in proportion as there 

 is less appetite for the contemplation of school subjects. It costs the 

 student, who is forced into certain studies for the sake of mental disci- 

 pline, vastly more of mental effort, often amounting to the reaction of 

 hate, than it does him to whom the study is a pleasure. The assimilation 

 of food by the stomach and brain is almost parallel in its methods of 

 action. In the former there is such a thing as the influence of the 



