An exercise in composition developed the following specimen errors: “The was two boys; They was two boys; How is all the boys? Things that was good; They is not many here I know; He come to school; I see him yesterday; He asked cyrus what he done that day; I had saw him; he had wore a coat,” etc.
The examinations in mathematics yielded similar results to those developed in reading, writing, spelling, and composition. Mr. Walton says, “If instead of this [the routine method of the school] the pupil should be compelled to deal with real things, and to find his answer by studying the conditions of his problem, the fiction which arithmetic now is to most pupils would become to them a reality.”[45]
[45] “The New Departure in the Common Schools of Quincy,” by Charles F. Adams, Jr., and the “Report of Examination of Schools in Norfolk County, Mass.,” by George A. Walton. Boston: Estes & Lauriat, 1881.
The prime difficulty is here stated. The schools deal in “fictions.” In the language of the Norfolk County committee, “The memory is cultivated and the reason allowed to slumber.” Now, if to every fact memorized the pupil were required to apply the test of reason to analyze it and find out its relation to other facts, and fix it with all its relations in his mind, he would possess certain solid information of an ascertained practical value. It is very simple. It is making the pupil think for himself by showing him how to think for himself instead of thinking for him. Of course this is object-teaching. In the reading-lesson the pupil is required to know the meaning of the words of which it is composed in order to read with correct expression. When required to spell a word orally he is also required to write it. In the study of arithmetic he is shown certain objects, blocks of cubical and other forms, and required to apply the rules of the book to the ascertainment of their contents. In grammar the analysis of the sentence is followed by the writing of it, and the construction of other sentences involving similar principles in the art of composition, and so on.
This is the kindergarten system now rapidly coming into high favor as an essential preliminary step in education. It is also the system of the manual training school. Under this system the pupil is not merely told that the saw is a thin, flat piece of steel with teeth used for cutting boards and timbers; a saw is placed in his hand and he is taught to use it: and so of all the hand and machine tools of the trades. He stands at the forge, bends over the moulding-form, shoves the plane in the carpenter-shop, presides at the turning-lathe, that ingenious invention of Maudslay—an automaton truer than the human eye, more cunning and more accurate than the human hand; executes plans for patterns and then makes the patterns, and finally, from the faint lines he has traced on paper, constructs a machine, breathes the breath of life (steam) into its veins, and with it moves mountains!
In further support of the charge that the schools educate automatically, and hence superficially, the following intelligent opinions are cited:
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., remarks that the common schools of Massachusetts cost $4,000,000 a year; and adds, “The imitative or memorizing faculties only are cultivated, and little or no attention is paid to the thinking or reflective powers. Indeed it may almost be said that a child of any originality or with individual characteristics is looked upon as wholly out of place in a public school.... To skate is as difficult as to write; probably more difficult. Yet in spite of hard teaching in the one case and no teaching in the other, the boy can skate beautifully, and he cannot write his native tongue at all.”[46]
[46] “Scientific Common-school Education.”—Harper’s Magazine, November, 1880 (see note [E12] at end of chapter).
Mr. Edward Atkinson says, “We are training no American craftsmen, and unless we devise better methods than the old and now obsolete apprentice system, much of the perfection of our almost automatic mechanism will have been achieved at the cost not only of the manual but also of the mental development of our men. Our almost automatic mills and machine-shops will become mental stupefactories.”[47]
[47] “Elementary Instruction in the Mechanic Arts.”—Scribner’s Monthly, April 1881, p. 902.