On Technical Education . 
405 
1883.] 
become or be appointed a teacher ; seldom has he to produce 
the requisite credentials that he has even exact knowledge of 
the subject he has to teach, and he is never required to 
prove that he has the power or faculty for training the mind ; 
and yet it is only those who have that facultj' who can 
rightly train and educate each individual mind so that the 
reasoning-power is expanded by causing the information 
acquired to be converted into knowledge. 
When knowledge extends to a methodical comprehension 
of general laws and principles, it is called science ; this is the 
highest stage of mental development, and many minds are 
unable to reach it ; the many being apparently incapable of 
being cultured beyond a particular point. This is especially 
the case with the inferior human races. Mr. Herbert 
Spencer has in his first volume (“ The Principles of Psycho- 
logy ”) collected together a series of most interesting ex- 
amples on this most important and interesting subject. 
From what has been stated it will be apparent to all that 
the method the teacher adopts for imparting information is 
of the highest importance, more important for training and 
expanding the mind of the learner than the kind of informa- 
tion conveyed. If the wrong method is adopted — wrong 
because it does not correspond with the order of the un- 
folding of the mental faculties — the mind of the taught 
revolts; but if the right method is adopted, the taught — - 
especially the young — delight in acquiring knowledge. One 
fundamental principle in all sound teaching is to commence 
with some particular the learner knows or can readily com- 
prehend, and so ascend, from the simple to the complex, by 
a series of easy and natural gradations, to what at the com- 
mencement the learner did not know; so that he becomes, 
as it were, his own instructor, as he discovers apparently of 
himself the knowledge conveyed. This is the reason why 
children delight in picking up information themselves, but 
are stupid , drowsy, and sulky, in school, if the mechanical 
routine system of teaching prevails. The late Dr. John 
Brown in the article “Education through the Senses,” in 
his work “ Horae Subsecivae,” humorously describes the 
difference in feeling children exhibit in acquiring information 
themselves, with that which they exhibit in a school where 
the mind is tortured by the system of teaching adopted. The 
superiority of Pestalozzi’s system and Frobel’s Kindergarten 
method of education over all other systems for teaching 
children is due in my opinion to the fact that they have 
systematised the method children themselves adopt in 
acquiring information. In the Platonic dialogue where 
