SCHOOL-CULTURE OF OBSERVING FACULTIES. 169 

 SCHOOL-CULTUKE OF THE OBSEEYING FACULTIES.* 



By J. C. GLASHAW. 



WHY should children be sent to school ? Is it merely that they 

 may learn to read, to write, and cipher ? Reading, writing, 

 and ciphering are no doubt very important, but are they all-impor- 

 tant, or even most important ? The man who reads may be said to 

 hear from the past and the distant ; the man who writes speaks to the 

 future and the far away. Reading and writing are indeed important, 

 for they enable us to converse untrammeled by the shackles of time 

 and space. But the man who reads learns only what others already 

 know, and he learns it, mayhap, not even as they know it, but only as 

 they express their knowledge, and as he understands that expression. 

 He looks at things through other men's spectacles, without knowing 

 whether those spectacles magnify, minify, color, or distort. Surely 

 more important than learning and blindly accepting the opinions of 

 other men is it to be able to form opinions for one's self, and at the 

 same time to know that these opinions have been properly arrived at. 

 and are correct. 



If a boy is to be a carpenter, it is all very well for him to read 

 about the different kinds of wood he will have to work upon, and 

 about the various tools employed in his future trade, but he will learn 

 to use these tools only by using them ; he will learn to distinguish the 

 different kinds of wood, and to select the kind and the piece suitable 

 for his purpose in each case, only by actual practice of his trade. And 

 what is true of the carpenter is true, mutatis mutandis, of every other 

 handicraft, of every business, of every profession. However much 

 one may learn by reading, it is but little and unimportant compared 

 to what must be learned by actual practice. But even if we desired 

 it we can not, during the short time our pupils are at school, exercise 

 them in all the trades and professions. What, then, can we do ? We 

 can so teach them that this practice, when it must begin, will not be 

 set about in a blind, hap-hazard way. We can and we ought to teach 

 our pupils now to learx ; we can train them and we ought to train 

 them to observe and to use the results of their observation. 



But, the handicraft, the business, or the profession once learned, is 

 the boy, now grown a man, done with observation ? By no means. 

 Every time he is called upon to make application of the knowledge he 

 possesses, the skill he has acquired, he must observe, draw inferences, 

 and reason therefrom ; and his success in his calling will depend on 

 the accuracy with which he does all this. Reading will supply him 

 with other men's observations and reasonings, but these will be useless 



* Read before the Ottawa Teachers' Association. 



