436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



first. The majority of thoughtful people, if questioned, would, I 

 believe, make answer that their own spiritual enlightenment had 

 come from literature that happened to fall within their reading 

 rather than from either pulpit or college chair. It looks very- 

 much as if we were leaving to chance — if there be such a thing — 

 what ought to be the object of our mightiest effort. 



I should deeply regret any exaggeration of the deficiencies of 

 the school, but I think that I do not err in stating that in many 

 of these institutions the work of true education would be better 

 accomplished were the formal instruction now in vogue entirely 

 abolished, and the children simply brought into daily contact with 

 some living, spiritually-minded man or woman, and through them 

 with the questions of life and with the rich literature of the race. 



The end of education being discipline, it is manifest that the 

 subjects chosen for study are less important than the spirit in 

 which the study is pursued. In the atmosphere of a school where 

 this sentiment prevails, almost any curriculum will produce living 

 men. But there are certain branches of study which, better than 

 any others, are calculated to provoke thought and serve the ends 

 of education. There are certain ways of spending the time that 

 promise the richest harvest. To select such studies and employ 

 such modes is indisputably the function of those who attempt to 

 guide the course of education. In this all are certainly agreed. 

 Yet that old notion of the ideal school still hinders the search 

 after these admittedly good things. In many schools the course 

 pursued is much the same as if we mixed the colors on our palette 

 with our eyes shut, and still expected to get the tint desired. The 

 discrepancy between the end sought and the method employed 

 would discourage any one less sophisticated than the average 

 school-man. Hygiene, for example, is taught in rooms so ill-ven- 

 tilated that the children are fairly pale. Grammar and parsing 

 are inflicted in the blind hope that they may in some occult way 

 influence the language of the child. They rarely do. On some 

 unaccountable theory of culture years are devoted to languages 

 that one will never use, and precious moments squandered on the 

 geography of places one will never see or hear of. And so one 

 might follow the entire list of studies undertaken in the majority 

 of schools. They seem hopelessly inadequate. 



In the face of such wide-spread failure it would appear that 

 this search after a suitable scheme for the disposition of the time 

 of children must be very difficult. The truth is, that it is difficult 

 to the verge of the impossible, if one proceeds in this credulous 

 fashion, selecting studies and occupations which bear no relation 

 whatever to the result it is desired to produce, and then calmly 

 trusts that by some alchemistic process these base metals will be 

 transmuted into gold. But the task is not difficult if one goes 



