CORRESP OXDENCE. 



841 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



INDIVIDUALITY IN OUR SCHOOLS. 



Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



BY the common consent of mankind, in- 

 dividuality is considered one of man's 

 highest characteristics. During the early 

 history of the republic, it was a much more 

 common possession of our people than at 

 the present time. In looking for the causes 

 that have produced this loss of a prominent 

 trait, the mind involuntarily stops to dwell 

 upon our system of grading in the common 

 schools of the country. By this system 

 there is established a level to which it is 

 believed all can attain. I am willing to 

 concede that it tends to stimulate the dull 

 scholars to rise to a higher level than they 

 would naturally reach ; but unfortunately it 

 also prevents the bright ones from going 

 forward to higher standards. It is said 

 that the greatest good to the greatest num- 

 ber is the desired object, but this is a false 

 statement of the facts, for it is to the bright 

 scholars that we must look to finally carry 

 all to higher attainments. This system of 

 grading at once prevents the working out of 

 the law of evolution ; and we may truly as- 

 sert that some, at least, of the graduates of 

 our schools have reverted to common types, 

 instead of developing to ever-higher stand- 

 ards. We can not stand still : if the schol- 

 ars in our conmion schools do not go for- 

 ward, then there is reversion. The world 

 goes on and leaves them. 



Perhaps the most glaring fault of the 

 system is, that it turns out graduates with 

 minds all cast in the same mold. Many of 

 them are bright and capable young men and 

 women, but they have been so educated that 

 the girl graduates all want to be teachers, 

 or marry rich men for a career in life, with 

 now and then one who enters the pulpit or 

 the medical profession; while the male 

 graduates seldom see any other career open 

 to them than law or medicine, with now and 

 then one that enters the pulpit. At the 

 same time the services of these young men 

 are in demand as surveyors or engineers 

 upon our railroads, and in the new avenues 

 of employment created by the many won- 

 derful recent inventions, especially in handi- 

 craft and industrial pursuits. It is just 

 here that our schools are deplorably de- 

 ficient. They ought to educate the hand as 

 well as the head of the pupils, for indus- 

 trial employments must, in the end, be the 

 life-work of the majority of them. There 

 is one lesson of the late civil war that I 

 think has not been properly studied. The 

 Southern States have never made use of 



graded schools, or had not done so before 

 the war of the rebellion. That there was 

 far more individuality in the South than at 

 the North the history of the war abundant- 

 ly shows. The Southern people had a sur- 

 plus of able commanders for their armies, 

 while we of the North, with resources and 

 numbers far superior to theirs, saw our 

 armies turning from one point of the com- 

 pass to another, making no progress, be- 

 cause our commanding generals were rou- 

 tine men, most of them graduates of our 

 common schools, without the ability and 

 genius for command, or foresight to plan a 

 great and comprehensive campaign. We 

 made little or no progress until President 

 Lincoln, a grand, self-educated Western 

 man, saw the reasons of our constant de- 

 feat, and changed his commanders from 

 Eastern common-school graduates to West- 

 ern men, who had been trained in the non- 

 graded, log-housed schools of the West, 

 where the individuality of the pupils had 

 not been repressed by this dwarfing process. 

 We sometimes hear a phrase in New 

 York and in the New England States, " The 

 Ohio idea," and there are often an inflection 

 and a tone of the voice indicating contempt 

 in connection with it. The tone and in- 

 flection are nothing but the same sneer that 

 was observed during the civil war upon the 

 countenances of these Eastern common- 

 school graduates when Mr. Lincoln turned 

 them out, and put Grant, Sherman, and 

 Sheridan in their places. The meaning of 

 " the Ohio idea " then was individual devel- 

 opment in contrast with the system of re- 

 pression in the common schools of the East ; 

 for in Ohio, previous to the war, there had 

 been but little of that grading process now 

 conforming the schools of the West to 

 Eastern standards. Would it not be well 

 for our educators to study this topic, and 

 try to find out a system that develops the 

 individual as an individual, and not as one 

 of a class or grade ? Individuality can not be 

 repressed without final disastrous results. 

 The system of common schools of a State 

 that developed Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, 

 McPherson, and Garfield was not paralleled 

 by any State in the East, where graded 

 schools have existed the longest. In short, 

 the point that I desire to present is that 

 it is a violation of individual and natural 

 rights for the State to make one individual 

 smaller that another may be larger. Gen- 

 eral Grant was worth more to the nation 

 than an army of common men. 



D. S. Marvix. 

 ■Watertown, New Toek, February 25, 1S38. 



