If a laugh is fair here, not the struggling child, but the unintelligent teacher—or rather the unintelligent Boards, Committees, and Trustees—are the proper target for it. All through this little book one detects the signs of a certain probable fact—that a large part of the pupil’s “instruction” consists in cramming him with obscure and wordy “rules” which he does not understand, and has no time to understand. It would be as useful to cram him with brickbats; they would at least stay. In a town in the interior of New York, a few years ago, a gentleman set forth a mathematical problem and proposed to give a prize to every public-school pupil who should furnish the correct solution of it. Twenty-two of the brightest boys in the public schools entered the contest. The problem was not a very difficult one for pupils of their mathematical rank and standing, yet they all failed—by a hair—through one trifling mistake or another. Some searching questions were asked, when it turned out that these lads were as glib as parrots with the “rules” but could not reason out a single rule or explain the principle underlying it. Their memories had been stocked, but not their understandings. It was a case of brickbat culture, pure and simple.
There are several curious “compositions” in the little book, and we must make room for one. It is full of naïveté, brutal truth, and unembarrassed directness, and is the funniest (genuine) boy’s composition I think I have ever seen:
ON GIRLS.
Girls are very stuckup and dignified in their manner and be have your. They think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and rags. They cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of guns. They stay at home all the time and go to church on Sunday. They are al-ways sick. They are al-ways funy and making fun of boy’s hands and they say how dirty. They cant play marbles. I pity them poor things. They make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. I don’t beleave they ever killed a cat or anything. They look out every nite and say oh ant the moon lovely. Thir is one thing I have not told and that is they al-ways now their lessons bettern boys.
From Mr. Edward Channing’s recent article in “Science”:
The marked difference between the books now being produced by French, English, and American travellers, on the one hand, and German explorers on the other, is too great to escape attention. That difference is due entirely to the fact that in school and university the German is taught, in the first place to see, and in the second place to understand what he does see.
English as She is Taught.