60 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



The process usually descends into one of blind memory 

 work on the part of the better pupils, and of slipshod half- 

 learning on the part of the rest. 



Of course, a good memory is an asset in any field of 

 activity and quite indispensable in many. And if the 

 system did nothing but train an accurate and tenacious 

 memory, it would have certain recommendations. Most 

 of us will admit that it does not do this; everything is 

 skimmed over too rapidly and too many things are 

 skimmed for the mind to get a fact hold. But supposing 

 it did do this efficiently, could this be accepted as the 

 rational aim of the educational process"? After all, the 

 memory is only the raw material warehouse of the mental 

 factory, and if we spend so much of our time piling ma- 

 terial into the warehouse that we cannot even sort it and 

 label it, much less polish and align the mental machinery 

 which is to employ it, how can we expect any results? To 

 use another analogy, it is like providing a vehicle with a 

 tank filled with a mixture of oil, water, and gasoline, and 

 an engine in the form of the rough castings from the 

 foundry. The oil, water and gasoline must be separated 

 and put into separate compartments ; the various parts of 

 the engine must be milled, fitted and assembled. Then, 

 and then only, this vehicle is ready to proceed somewhere 

 other than down hill. 



Just what our system fails to accomplish the develop- 

 ment of the "mind-training" system of education real- 

 izes, at least in the main. The dogged insistence on thor- 

 oughness which is so characteristic a part of it, and the 

 length of time devoted to each study insure the retention 

 of a large number of connected facts and allow their be- 

 ing organized and more or less digested in the student's 

 mind. The large attention paid to mathematics, and in 

 this to original problem solving lacks its complete coun- 

 terpart with us, as does also the general types of work 

 usually designated by us as mental gymnastics. We are 

 inclined to become rather impatient when anyone men- 

 tions the translating of difficult meters into Greek hexa- 

 meters or the composing of original poems in Latin. We 

 fail to see what an accurate training is necessary before 

 they can be attempted and hence what a stage of develop- 



