FOKKSTKK, AND NEGLl-X'TKD FACTORS IN EDUCATION. 235 



Other educationists have dweh upon the same topic, and have 

 warned us against a hard intellectuahsm in the training of our 

 children. A mere insistence upon the three R's will lead to 

 nowhere or else to a fourth R. Rascaldom, as Florence Nig-htin- 

 gale is supposed to have said. 



Formally treated, as they too often have been, they are not the ele- 

 ments of an education at all, but merely instruments which have not seldom 

 been put to ill use in later life. . • . The bare acquisition of the 

 three R's is comparable to the starving birds' possession within its stomach 

 of bits of grit and sand swallowed to aid in digestion, but witli no food 

 for the instruments of digestion to work upon. 



In that curious book, "A Domine's Log," by A. S. Neill, 

 certain home-truths are held up which confirm what has just been 

 said: " The three R's spell futility." " Education," he continues, 

 " should aim at bringing up a new nation, a generation that will be 

 better than the old. The present system is to produce the same 

 kind of man as we see to-day." 



Much has been said of our own educational system. In the 

 manifesto issued by the so-called Nationalist party in South 

 Africa that system is condemned in the most merciless way pos- 

 sible. Stress is laid on a thorough system of education suited to 

 the circumstances and character of the people — words which 

 might mean everything, but also mean nothing. Vocational teach- 

 ing is insisted upon ; provision should be made for technical, 

 industrial, commercial, and agricultural education ; our schools 

 are to be dominated by the ideals of Christian patriotism — a pro- 

 gramme excellent on paper, but if worked out in detail, bristling 

 with difficulties and not free from danger to the child as well as 

 the community. 



When Bishop (jrundtvig undertook his educational crusade 

 in Demark, he did not insist on all the particulars mentioned in 

 the manifesto alluded to above. His one aim was not to impart 

 information on all possible subjects — dc omnibus rebus ct quibus- 

 dam aliis — but to train the man. the youth, the child, to discipline 

 the mind, to call forth the dormant energies of the soul. And he 

 succeeded. The value of mental training was recognized by the 

 Danish peasant. He was roused from spiritual lethargy to mental 

 activity, and applied his new-found energies to the economic and 

 agricultural elevation of his country. And he, too, succeeded ! 



By ethical training Foerster does not mean the mere incul- 

 cation of ethical principles in a dry, formal, didactic way, not an 

 educational or ethical Code Napoleon which will open the way to 

 an educational or ethical paradise. 



Foerster insists first of all upon the proper attitude to be 

 assumed by the educator towards the child. The man's life must 

 tell ; character is to impress character, for education is a clash 

 of personalities, on the one side impressing, on the other side 

 impressionable. A teacher who does not recognize the tenderness 

 of a child's soul fails miserably in the end. Common sense is the 

 most uncommon thing in ordinary training, sanctified comrhon 

 sense an unheard-of luxurv. It has been well said : 



