Editorial Notes 



175 



Even as to all-important moral teaching, a Museum which 

 includes portraits and biographical schedules may fairly claim 

 to take a share. Moral teaching is surely based more truly on 

 example than on precept, and whatever expedients may tend 

 to ensure familiarity with the lives and the thoughts of good 

 men, must tend to exalt the moral sense and enlighten the 

 conscience. No one can foresee what triumphs may be in 

 store for the insistent secularist, but it is inconceivable that 

 any Parish Council will ever forbid its schoolmasters to give 

 prominence to the lives of such men as Alfred, St. Louis, 

 Howard, Fenelon, Wesley and Woolman. 



Very similar remarks apply to another Report recently 

 issued by the same body on the adaptation of the teaching 

 in Rural Schools to the wants of those concerned. This 

 Report states that 



" careful selection of matter and methods of instruction, and active 

 sympathy on the part of the people of influence are alike necessary 

 to overcome the apathy of young men and women towards continuing 

 the education they have received in the elementary day school," 



We may be allowed to urge that the education proposed 

 should be made in itself attractive, and that to this end nothing 

 would be more efficient than large and well-arranged Museums. 

 From these the teachers would draw their materials and in 

 them they would give their lectures. After enumerating the 

 various subjects to be taught, it is suggested that, although so 

 various, they are all really associated — 



" The course is really one subject and might find its text in a single 

 reading book." 



Let it find its text rather in a Museum, or at any rate let 

 the Museum be preliminary to the text-book. It is this un- 

 ending substitution of the reading-book and the class-room for 

 opportunities for obtaining familiarity with the things them- 

 selves which induces the apathy which all so much regret. 



As was stated in our outset, we understand the word Museum 

 dn a wide sense. It is intended to comprise much more than 



