Thinking and learning to think

by Nathan Christ Schaeffer

In 1840 Harriet Martineau visited the United States and reported only seven occupations open to women,—teaching, needlework, keeping boarders, working in cotton factories, typesetting, bookbinding, and household service. The school has been blamed for causing the rising generation to underestimate the last named in comparison with the other occupations open to women. When anything goes wrong in American life the school is not only blamed, but also expected to supply the remedy. It must be admitted that there is much false thinking on the subject of household service in so-called polite society. A woman may cook for herself and her own household without losing caste. As soon as she becomes the cook in another woman’s kitchen she is banished from the parlor of fashionable society. She can stand in a store or work in a factory without losing her place in the social scale; but if she works for hire in the kitchen, she is thenceforth treated as belonging to a lower caste. Is thinking in the culinary art less valuable or less difficult than the thinking involved in selling ribbons and laces? Does the preparation of a palatable meal require less brains and less skill than the setting of type or the making of yarn? Does good cooking add less to the welfare of the race than playing on the piano or painting in oil- or water-colors? The teaching of domestic science is calculated to change public opinion and to add to the sum of human happiness by emancipating the home from the tyranny and the caprices of the servant girl and by securing to deserving help a juster appreciation of efficient thinking in household service.

America the paradise of woman.

America has been aptly named the paradise of woman. The American woman is not expected to break stones upon the highway, to carry market-baskets on the top of her head, to pull the milk-cart alongside of the dog, to do all kinds of rough manual labor, whilst strong-armed and able-bodied men have charge of the elementary schools. Fully two-thirds of the teachers in America are women. Her sphere of activity has been greatly enlarged in other directions. She may be the inferior of the stronger sex in original and creative work,—time will settle that question,—but in ability to carry college work and to do practical thinking she has shown herself the equal of her brother and in every respect deserving of the exalted position assigned to her in the New World. She has attained her standing in America through her ability to think and to apply thought in the useful arts.

The liberal arts.

The liberal arts were subdivided into the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, sought to teach the art of thinking correctly, of expressing thought in correct language, and of presenting it in forceful, persuasive discourse.

Quadrivium.

Discovery.

The quadrivium, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, was composed of thought-studies, and furnished material for the thinking of generations of the best men. The enlargement of the boundaries of human knowledge has increased the number of studies to such an extent that no student need weep like Alexander because there are no more worlds to conquer. Moreover, in many directions the human race is simply on the border-land of discovery. At the beginning of this century a professor lamented that the age of discovery had passed. The professor who quoted him in the middle of the century could point to the steam-engine, the electric telegraph, and the use of anæsthetics. In the closing year of the century we can point to a record of inventions and discoveries unsurpassed in the thought-achievements of the race. Man has learned to put thought into machines that do work with a speed and accuracy impossible of attainment by the human hand. His thought is changing the face of the earth and developing a civilization based upon a degree of physical well-being and comfort of which the man of the last century had not the faintest conception. To follow in thought the achievements of a single year in the improvement of machinery and the resulting additions to our material wealth is to fill the soul with wonder at the marvellous powers of the race. All is due primarily to the exercise of the power of thought, and secondarily to the manifold ways of expressing and realizing thought. Never were there such magnificent opportunities for those who have learned to combine thought and action, intelligence and skill, brains and the handicrafts. The tradesman deserves honor and recognition with those who earn their bread by their wits. Both can live the higher life of thought and culture.

Trivium.

The relation of the trivium to the art of thinking is often misconceived. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric furnish valuable food for thought, excellent discipline for the mind, especially for the understanding; but they do not beget the power of thinking in new fields of investigation. Their function is corrective, not creative. Those who hope to learn the art of composition by the study of English grammar are sure to be disappointed. Grammar furnishes the tests and rules by which one may determine the correctness of sentences. It may furnish discipline for the understanding, and thus prove valuable as a means of culture. It utterly fails to produce thinkers beyond the thinking required in the interpretation of language. Parsing, analysis, and diagramming often become a mechanical iteration of set phrases, resulting in mental apathy. Questions in unexpected forms may then be needed to rouse the slumbering powers of the intellect.