That love which is not given to self reveals the beauty of the world.
CHAPTER XXII.
IN SCHOOL.
"Every successive generation becomes a living memorial of our public schools, and a living example of their excellence."—Joseph Story.
In these days we learn many things in our schools—even music. They surely must have a purpose, all the studies and the music as well. Let us in this Talk see if we can find what the purpose is.
It costs our Government a great deal to educate the children of the land. There are now nearly twenty million children in our country. That is a number you cannot conceive. But every morning of the year, when it is not a vacation day, you may think of this vast number leaving home and going to school to be taught. I am sure the picture will make us all think how wise a Government is that devotes so much to making us know more, because by learning more we are able to enjoy more, to do more, to be more. And this makes us better citizens.
Year after year, as men study and learn about what is best to have children taught in school, the clearer it becomes that what is given is dictated because of its usefulness. Arithmetic teaches us to calculate our daily affairs. Grammar teaches us to listen and to speak understandingly. Penmanship and Spelling teach us properly to make the signs which represent speech. Geography teaches us of the earth on which we live, and how we may travel about it. History teaches us how to understand the doings of our own day and makes us acquainted with great men of former times, who by striving have earned a place in our remembrance.
As we go on in our school education, taking up new studies, we find to a still greater degree that what we learn is for usefulness. Arithmetic becomes mathematics in general. Grammar is brought before us in other languages, and branches out into the study of Rhetoric and Literature. History is taught us of many lands, particularly of Greece, Rome, and England. And, bit by bit, these various histories merge into one, until, perhaps not until college years or later, the doings of the countries in all the centuries of which we have knowledge is one unbroken story to us. We know the names of lands and of people. Why Greece could love art, why Rome could have conquest; why these countries and all their glories passed away to give place to others; all these things become clear to us. We learn of generals, statesmen, poets, musicians, rulers. Their characters are made clear; their lives are given to us in biography, and year after year the story of the earth and man is more complete, more fascinating, more helpful to us in learning our own day.
Then, besides all these studies, we are taught to do things with the hands. After the Talks we have already had about doing, we know what it means to have training of the hands. It really means the training of the thoughts. We are training the mind to make the hands perform their tasks rightly. It is the same in the science lesson which teaches us to see; actually to use our eyes until we see things. That may not seem to be a difficult task, but there are really very few people who can accurately and properly use their eyes. If there were more, fewer mistakes would be made.
Thus we can see that school work divides its tasks into two general classes: