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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 670 



of all countries are necessarily engaged, 

 and endeavor to construct thereon a system 

 with all such additions and improvements 

 as, may be needed to adapt it to the varied 

 requirements of modern life. By this 

 process — one of simple evolution adjusted 

 to everyday needs— a national system of 

 education might be built up fitted for the 

 nation as a whole — a system founded on 

 ideas very different from those which, 

 through many centuries, have governed the 

 teaching in our schools. In the practical 

 pursuits connected with the field, the work- 

 shop and the home, and in the elementary 

 teaching of science and letters incidental 

 thereto, we might lay the foundation of a 

 rational system of primary education. 



These three objects— the field, the work- 

 shop and the home— should be the pivots 

 on which the scheme of instruction should 

 be fixed, the central thoughts determining 

 the character of the teaching to be given 

 in rural and urban schools for boys and 

 girls. It was Herbart who insisted on the 

 importance of creating a sort of center 

 around which school studies should be 

 grouped with a view to giving unity and 

 interest to the subjects of instruction. I 

 have elsewhere shown how a complete sys- 

 tem of primary education may be evolved 

 from the practical lessons to be learned in 

 connection with out-door pursuits, with 

 workshop exercises and with the domestic 

 arts, and how, by means of such lessons, 

 the child's interest may be excited and 

 maintained in the ordinary subjects of 

 school instruction, in English, arithmetic, 

 elementary science and drawing. In the 

 proposals I am now advocating I am not 

 suggesting any narrow or restricted cur- 

 riculum. On the contrary, I believe that, 

 by widening the child's outlook, by closely 

 associating school work with familiar ob- 

 jects, you will accelerate his mental de- 

 velopment and quicken his power of ac- 

 quiring knowledge. I would strongly 



urge, however, that the child should re- 

 ceive less formal teaching, that opportuni- 

 ties for self-instruction, through out-door 

 pursuits, or manual exercises, or the free 

 use of books, should be increased, so that 

 as far as possible the teacher should keep 

 in view the process by which in infancy 

 and in early life the child's intelligence is 

 so rapidly and marvelously stimulated. 

 Already we have discovered that our un- 

 scientific attitude towards primary educa- 

 tion has caused us to overlook the essential 

 difference between the requirements of 

 country and of town life, and the training 

 proper to boys and girls. Our mechanical 

 methods of instruction, as laid down in 

 codes, make for uniformity rather than 

 diversity, and we are only now endeavor- 

 ing, by piecemeal changes, to bring our 

 teaching somewhat more closely into rela- 

 tion with existing needs. But the inherent 

 defect of our system is that we have started 

 at the wrong end, and, instead of evolving 

 our teaching from the things with which 

 the child is already familiar, and in which 

 he is likely to find his life's work, we have 

 taken him away from those surroundings 

 and placed him in strange and artificial 

 conditions, in which his education seems to 

 have no necessary connection with the 

 realities of life. 



The problem of primary education is to 

 teach by practical methods the elements of 

 letters and of science, the art of accurate 

 expression, the ability to think and to con- 

 trol the will ; and the ordinary school les^ 

 sons should be such as lead to the clear 

 apprehension of the processes that bring 

 the child into intimate relation with the 

 world in which he moves. During the last 

 few years the importance of such teaching 

 has dimly dawned upon our educational 

 authorities, but, instead of being regarded 

 as essential, it has been treated as a sort 

 ii extra to be added to a literary cur- 

 riculum, already overcrowded. What JM 



