NOVEMBEB 1, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



581 



nature. They learned the practical lessons 

 of experience; and as they grew up their 

 trade apprenticeship was an education 

 which we have been trying vainly to re- 

 produce. They gained some knowledge of 

 the arts and sciences, as then understood, 

 underlying their work. Their contact 

 with their surroundings made them 

 thoughtful and resourceful, for nature is 

 the most'exacting and merciless of teachers. 

 The diiBculties they had to overcome com- 

 pelled them to think, and of all occupa- 

 tions none is more diiScult. They were 

 constantly putting forth energy, adapting 

 means to ends, and engaging in practical 

 research. In the field, in the workshop, 

 and in their own homes boys and girls 

 acquired knowledge by personal experi- 

 ence. Their outlook was broad. They 

 learned by doing. It is true that nearly 

 all their occupations were manual, but 

 Emerson has told us, "Manual training is 

 the study of the external world." 



Compare for a moment this training 

 with that provided in a public elementary 

 school, and you can not be surprised to 

 find that our artificial teaching has failed 

 in its results, that our young people have 

 gained very little practical knowledge, and 

 that what they have gained they are un- 

 able to apply ; that they lack initiative and 

 too often the ability to use books for their 

 own guidance, or the desire to read for 

 self-improvement. We seem to have erred 

 in neglecting to utilize practical pursuits 

 as the basis of education, and in failing to 

 build upon them and to evolve from them 

 the mental discipline and knowledge that 

 would have proved valuable to the child in 

 any subsequent occupation or as a basis for 

 future attainments. We have made the 

 mistake of arresting, by means of an arti- 

 ficial literary training, the spontaneous de- 

 velopment of activity, which begins in 

 earliest infancy and continues to strengthen 

 as the child is brought into ever closer con- 



tact with his natural surroundings. We 

 have provided an education for our boys 

 which might have been suitable for clerks; 

 and, what is worse, we have gone some 

 way, although we have happily cried a 

 halt, to make our girls into "ladies," and 

 we have run some risk of failing to pro- 

 duce women. 



If we are to correct the errors into which 

 we have drifted, if we are to avert the 

 consequences that must overtake us 

 through having equipped our children for 

 their life-struggle with implements unfitted 

 for their use, we must consider afresh the 

 fundamental ideas on which a system of 

 elementary education should be based. 

 Instead of excluding the child from con- 

 tact with the outer world we must bring 

 him into close relationship with his sur- 

 roundings. It was given to man to have 

 dominion over all other created things, but 

 he must first know them. It is in early 

 years that such knowledge is most rapidly 

 acquired, and it is in gaining it that the 

 child's intellectual activities are most 

 surely quickened. 



It is unfortunate that we failed to 

 realize this great function of elementary 

 education when we first essayed to con- 

 struct for ourselves a national system. 

 The three R's, and much more than that, 

 are essential and incidental parts of ele- 

 mentary education. But what is needed is 

 a Leitmotif — a fundamental idea under- 

 lying all our efforts and dominating all 

 our practise, and I venture to think that 

 that idea is found in basing our primary 

 education on practical pursuits, on the 

 knowledge gained from actual things, 

 whether in the field, the workshop or the 

 home. 



Instead of fetching our ideas as to the 

 training to be given in the people's schools 

 from that provided in our old grammar 

 schools, we should look to the occupations 

 in which the great mass of the population 



