Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions

by George S. Boutwell

It is stated that a distinguished modern philosopher often says, "I don't know," when the curiosity or science of his pupils suggests questions that he has not considered. If we respect and admire the wisdom of the wise, how ought we to be humbled, intellectually, by the reflection that the unknown far exceeds the known, and that all become as little children when they enter the temple of the sages! The ancients prized schools, teachers, and learning, because they were essential to wisdom; and wisdom enabled them to live temperately, justly, and happily, in the present world; while we prize schools, teachers, and learning, because they contribute to what we call success in life. The population of New England, is composed of skilful artisans, intelligent merchants, shrewd or eloquent lawyers, industrious and intelligent farmers; and to these results our system of education is too exclusively subservient. These results are not to be condemned, nor are the processes by which they are secured to be neglected. But our schools ought to do something always and for every one, for the full development of a character that is essential to artisans, merchants, lawyers, or farmers. Learning should not be prized merely as an aid to the daily work of life,—though this it properly is and ever ought to be,—but for its expansive power in the mind and soul, by which we attain to a more perfect knowledge of things human and divine. There are many persons who accomplish satisfactorily the tasks assigned them, but who do not always comprehend the processes of life, in its political, social, literary, scientific and industrial relations, by which the affairs of the world are guided.

Something of this is due, speaking of America, and especially of New England, to the universal desire to be engaged in active business. Young men destined for the farm or the shop, the counting-house or the store, leave home and school so early that their apprenticeship is ended long before their majority commences; and they are thus prepared to enter early and vigorously upon the business of life. This course has its advantages, and it is also attended by many evils. Our youth have but little opportunity for observation, and a great deal of time for experience. They fall into mistakes that should have been observed, and consequently shunned. Moreover, this custom tends to make business men too exclusively and rigidly technical and professional; that is, in plain language, speaking relatively, they know too much of their own vocation, and too little of everything else. Business life follows so closely upon home life and school life, that the lessons of the latter fail to exert an immediate and controlling influence, and it is often only in maturer years that the fruits of early training are seen. The connection is such that the boy or youth becomes a devotee of business before he is developed into complete manhood. This is movement, but not true progress; activity, but not culture; appropriation and accumulation, but not natural development. This peculiarity is less prominent in England, and it is hardly known in the central states of Europe. It is to some extent a national, and especially is it a New England characteristic. It is a manifestation of the forward moving spirit of our people, and it is also at once a promise and the security for the ultimate supremacy of the American race and nation in the affairs of the world. In Athens young men attained their majority when they were sixteen; but they usually prosecuted their studies afterwards, and Aristotle thought them unfit for marriage until they were thirty-seven years of age. This rule was observed by Aristotle in his own case; but we are unable to say whether the rule was made before or after his marriage, which is a fact of much importance when we consider the wisdom of the precept, and the real principles and philosophy of its famous author. Moreover, regardless of one-half of creation, he has neither stated the age at which females are marriageable, nor given us that of his own wife. This neglect justly detracts from his authority; and it will not be strange if young men and women view with distrust an opinion that is so manifestly partial and one-sided. If schools make merely learned people, in a narrow and technical sense, they are not doing their whole work. Such learning makes an efficient population, which is certainly desirable; but it ought also to be a well-educated population in a broad, comprehensive, philosophic sense. By the force of nature and the developing influences of society, including the church, the school, and the home, we ought first to be educated men and women, and then apply that education to the particular work we have in hand. By learning, in this connection, I do not mean the learning of Agassiz as a naturalist, the learning of Choate as a lawyer, or the learning of Everett as an orator; but a more general and less minute culture, by which men are prepared to form an accurate judgment upon subjects that usually attract public attention.

In the gardens of the wealthy, we often see peach-trees and pear-trees trained against brick or stone walls, to which they are attached by substantial thongs. These trees are carefully and systematically trained, and they are trained so as to accomplish certain results. They present a large surface, in proportion to the whole, to the sun and air; in addition to the direct rays of the sun, they receive the reflected and accumulated heat of the walls to which they are fastened; and they furnish ripe fruit much in advance of trees in the gardens and fields of the common farmers. Here art and nature, in brick walls, manure, the germinating power of the peach or pear, and rigid training and pruning, have produced very good machines for the manufacture of fruit; but for the full-grown, symmetrically developed tree, or even for the choicest fruit in its season, we must look elsewhere. And who does not perceive, if all the trees of the gardens, fields, and forests, were treated in the same way, that the world would be deprived of a part of its beauty and glory, and that many species of trees would soon become extinct? Who would not give back the luscious pear and peach to their native acritude, rather than subject the highest forms of vegetable life to such irreverence? And, upon reflection, we shall say that such cruelty to inanimate life can be justified only as we justify the naturalist who dexterously and suddenly extracts a vital organ from a reptile, that he may observe the effect upon that form of animal existence.

But the tree is not to be left in its native state. By culture its growth is so aided, that it is first and always a tree after its own kind, whether it be peach, pear, apple, elm, or oak; at once ornamental and graceful, stately or majestic, according to the germinating principle which diffuses itself through each individual creation. "For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." So in the human heart, mind, and soul, nature bringeth forth fruit of herself; and it is the work of schools and teachers to aid nature in developing a full and attractive character, that shall yield fruit while all its powers are enlarged and strengthened, as the almond in the peach is not only more luscious in its fruit, but more graceful in its branches. Culture, in a broad sense, is the aid rendered to each individual creation in its work of self-improvement. It is not a noble and generous culture which dwarfs the tree that early ripened or peculiarly flavored fruit may be obtained; and it is not a noble and generous culture of the child which forces into unnatural activity certain faculties or powers that surprise us by their precocity, or excite wonder by the skill exhibited in their use. Rather let the child grow, expand, mature, according to the law of its own being, giving it only encouragement and example, which are the light and air of mental and moral life. I am not conscious that any one has given us a philosophical, logical system of development, that relates to the physical, intellectual, and moral character; and to-day I state the educational want in this particular, but I do not attempt to supply it. Yet in nature such a system there must be, and only powers of observation are needed that we may avail ourselves of it. And in stating this want more particularly, I offer, as my first suggestion, the opinion, common among educators, that, speaking generally and with reference to a system, we have no physical training whatever.

In the days of our ancestors, one hundred or two hundred years ago, this training, as a part of a system of education, was not needed. We had no cities, and but few large towns. Agriculture and the ruder forms of mechanical labor were the chief occupations of the people. Populous cities, narrow streets, dark lanes, cellar habitations, crowded workshops, over-filled and over-heated factories, and the number of sedentary pursuits that tax and wear and destroy the physical powers, and undermine the moral and mental, were unknown. These are the attendants of our civilization, and they have brought a melancholy train of evils with them. In the seventeenth century, men perished from exposure, from ignorance of the laws of health, from the prevalence of malignant diseases that defied the science of the times; and, as a consequence, the average length of human life was not greater than it now is. At present, there is but little exposure that is followed by fatal results; malignant diseases are deprived of many of their terrors; rules of living, founded upon scientific principles, are accessible to all; and yet we daily meet young men and women who are manifestly unequal to the lot that is before them. In some cases, the sin of the parent is visited upon the children, and the measure of life meted out to them is limited and insufficient. In other cases, the individuals, first yielding in their own persons, are the victims of positive vice, or of some of the evils stated. Civilization is not an unmixed good; and we cannot offer to the city or the factory any adequate compensation for the loss of pure water, pure air, and the healthful exercise of body, which may be enjoyed in the country villages and agricultural districts of the state.

Yet even in cities and large towns the culture of home and school should diminish these evils; and it is a pleasure to believe that our system of domestic and public education is doing something at the present moment in behalf of the too much neglected body; but nowhere, either in city or country, do we observe the evidences of juvenile health and strength that a friend of the race would desire to see. And it is, I fear, specially true of schools, and to some extent it is true of teachers, as a class, that too little attention is given to those exercises and habits which secure good health. There are many causes which tend to lower the average health and strength of our people. 1st. The practice of sending children to school at the tender age of five, four, or even three years. Every school necessarily imposes some restraint upon the pupils; and I assume that no child under five years of age should be subject to such restraints. But the education of the child is not, therefore, to be neglected. Parents, brothers and sisters, may all do something for the young inquirer; but he should never have lessons imposed, nor be subject to the rules of a school of any description. The moment of his admission must be determined by circumstances, and the force of the circumstances must be judged of by parents. If a child is blessed with kind, considerate, intelligent parents, the first eight years of his life can be spent nowhere else as profitably as at home. The true mother is the model teacher. No other person can ever acquire the control over her off-spring that is her own rightful possession. When she neglects the trust confided to her, she is guilty of a serious wrong; and when she transfers it to another, she takes upon herself a greater responsibility than she yields up. The instinctive judgment of the world cannot be an erroneous judgment. The mother has always, to a great extent, been made responsible for the child; and the honor of his virtues or the disgrace of his crimes has been traced through him to her.

2dly. Some portion of every school-day should be systematically and strictly devoted to recreation, physical exercise and manual labor; and the hours given to study ought to be defined and limited. Some persons say, "Let a child study as much as he will, there is time enough to play." This may be generally true, but it is not universally so. I cannot but think that the practice of assigning lessons and giving the pupil the free use of the four-and-twenty hours is a bad practice. Would it not be better to give to each pupil certain hours for study?—assign him lessons, by topics if possible, allow him to do what he can in the allotted time, and then prohibit the appropriation of an additional minute? Why should a dull scholar, or one who has but little taste or talent for a given study, be required to plod twelve, sixteen, or eighteen hours at unwelcome tasks, while another more favored disposes of his work in six? Why should a pupil, who is laboring under some mental or physical debility, be required to apply his mind unceasingly when he most needs rest and recreation? Why should the pages of a spelling-book, grammar, geography, or arithmetic, be the measure of each pupil's capacity? Lessons are to be assigned, not necessarily to be mastered by the pupil, though they should have just reference to his capacity, but as the subject of his studies for a given period of time. The pupil should be responsible for nothing but the proper use of that time. Two advantages might result from this practice. First, the pupil would acquire the habit of performing the greatest amount of labor possible in the given time; and, secondly, he would naturally throw off all care for books and school when the hour for relaxation arrived. If particular studies are assigned to specified hours, the pupil must master his thoughts, and give them the required direction. This in itself is a great achievement. I put it, in practical value, before any of the studies that are taught and learned in the schools. The danger to which pupils are often exposed, in this connection, is quite apparent. A lesson is assigned for a succeeding day. The attention is not immediately fixed upon it. One hour passes, and then another. Nothing is accomplished, yet the pupil is continually oppressed by the consciousness of duty unperformed, and the result is, that he neither does what he ought to do, nor does anything else. Would it not be better to measure and assign his time, and then require him to abandon all thought of the matter? This practice might give our people the faculty and the habit of throwing off cares and occupations, when they leave the scenes of them. It is a just criticism upon American character, that our business men carry their occupations with them wherever they go. I should put high up among the elements of worldly success the ability to give assiduously, studiously and devotedly, the necessary time to a subject of business, and then to throw off all thought of it. There can be no peace of mind for the business man who does not possess this quality; and I think it will contribute essentially to a long life and a quiet old age. No wise man ever attempts more than one thing at a time; and the man who attempts to do more than one thing at a time has no security that he can do anything well. The statements of biography and history, that Napoleon was accustomed to do several things at once, rest upon a misconception of the operations of the human mind. His facility for the direction and transaction of business depended upon the quality I am now considering. He had the faculty of giving his attention, undivided and strongly fixed, to a subject for an hour, half-hour, minute, half-minute, or second, and then of dismissing the matter altogether, and directing his thoughts, without loss of time, to whatever next might be presented. One thing at a time is a law which no finite power can violate; and ability in execution depends upon the ability to concentrate all the powers of the mind, at a given moment, upon the assigned topic, and then to change, without friction or loss of time, to something else.

The institution is a high school, and the question is now agitated, especially in the State of Connecticut, "How can the advantages of a high school education be best secured?" This question I propose to consider. And, first, the high school must be a public school. A public school I understand to be a school established by the public,—supported chiefly or entirely by the public, controlled by the public, and accessible to the public upon terms of equality without special charge for tuition.

Private schools may be established and controlled by an individual, or by an association of individuals, who have no corporate rights under the government, but receive pupils upon terms agreed upon, subject to the ordinary laws of the land.

Private schools may be founded also by one or more persons, and by them endowed with funds, for their partial or entire support. In such cases, the founder, through the money given, has the right to prescribe the rules by which the school shall be controlled, and also to provide for the appointment of its managers or trustees through all time. In such cases, corporate powers are usually granted by the government for the management of the business. But the chief rights of such an institution are derived from the founder, and the facilities for their easy exercise and quiet enjoyment are derived from the state.