12 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
an imploring and perplexing cry — "Mamma, what can I do now ? " and much of 
the sleepless anxiety over wayward children in later years. " As the twig is bent, 
the tree's inclined." 
A most pressing need of every child, as his opening mind begins to inquire 
into the mysteries of nature, is some one at hand to encourage his inquiring spirit 
by judicious and well-directed assistance, and to stimulate his mind to an activity 
which will increase and strengthen through life. Those who know enough of 
nature to teach it properly to the young, and to encourage them to acquire the 
habit of observation, are justly said to be a desperate need of the present age. 
But how soon are their childish inquiries on these points rebuked, — often with 
the command to cease their troublesome questions, — and thus their innate curi- 
osity, which is only a thirst for knowledge, is checked, their youthful ardor with 
its mental stimulus changed to indifference and often to stupidity, because those 
who should give the help needed are unable to do so. The real and only prac- 
ticable remedy is in the ability of the parent to give the child the help he craves. 
In the absence of this, his next best recourse for assistance is to his teacher. But 
how or where is either parent or teacher to acquire the ability ? If not at home, 
then certainly at school, if at all. And educational institutions of all kinds which 
do not supply this lack are manifestly remiss in a most essential line of work. 
Does a child's education commence when he first begins to learn from 
books ? According to the present method of reversing the order of nature, it is 
far more likely to end there, and to be henceforth nothing but a servile accept- 
ance, for absolute and unquestioned truth, of the statements and opinions of 
text book and teacher. Every teacher who has honestly endeavored to educate 
his pupils, in the proper sense of the term, has been painfully impressed with the 
fact that the first, and usually the last and only, effort of nine-tenths if not of 
ninety-nine hundredths of his pupils, to whom he has given a question requiring 
independent thought and the use ot their own eyes and minds, is to seek help 
from the printed page; this failing, the parent or teacher, the big brother or 
sister, is implored to impart the needed information. If these fail the pupil is 
sure he has exhausted every conceivable resource, and confidently gives the all- 
conclusive reply : " I can't answer that question because I couldn't find it in 
the book, and mamma didn't know." Or if he propounds a question requiring 
individual study to an adult Bible-class, the first response, if not the only one, 
is likely to be : " What do you think about it? " or "I will look it up in the 
commentary." 
The bane of the education system of to day is its obsequious subserviency to 
authority. The popular craving to be imposed upon is an attractive demand 
which many hasten to supply ; and the rich abundance of both supply and demand 
react upon each other and both to an alarming extent are thereby increased. 
And I lay largely at the door of the common method of exclusive text-book and 
lecture instruction in various branches, and especially in the natural sciences, 
with its servility to the words and opinions of the author, without personal inves- 
tigation or inquiry, and the cramming of undigested and indigestible statements 
