OF EDUCATION 37 



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great assumption, because nothing is more difficult. 

 For, first, you must know the subject. Now, if one 

 would know how ignorant he is of a subject he thought 

 he understood, let him try to give a child an expla- 

 nation of it. One may lecture to grown persons, and 

 succeed in concealing his ignorance from himself as 

 well as his hearers ; he cannot do so from a child. 

 He will have nothing but real knowledge, and you 

 cannot give it to him in any shape in which he can 

 comprehend it without possessing it yourself. . . . 



11 Here is where, I confess, I think our teachers 

 are too apt to come short of what ought fo be required 

 of them. I speak from personal experience as a 

 teacher. Having learned from books themselves, 

 they know only how to teach from books, unless, by 

 putting themselves to school over again, the} 7 learn a 

 better method. 



11 Shall I be thought very extravagant, if I say, so 

 impressed am I with the necessity of a better selec- 

 tion of studies and better methods of teaching, that I 

 am almost ready to affirm that the common school of 

 America, as I believe it will exist in the future, is an 

 institution yet to be created ? . . . The common school 

 is an institution not intended first and foremost to pre- 

 pare a minority of pupils for higher seminaries of 

 learning, and then devote what time can be spared to 

 those whose education is to end with it. The district 

 school should be, and can be, the people's college, 

 though great changes must be made in it before it 

 can become so. 



"Life is education. Shall we send them from 



