A like view begins to show itself in the writings of some of the English educationists. The object-teaching is recognized as being, in most instances, at least, too promiscuous and disorderly for the ends of a true discipline and development, and certainly, therefore, even for securing the largest amount of information. It too much excludes the later, systematic study of the indispensable branches, and supplants the due exercise of the reasoning powers, by too habitual restriction of the mind's activities to the channels of sense and perception. Isaac Taylor, in his Home Education, admits the benefits of this teaching for the mere outset of the pupil's course, but adds: 'For the rest, that is to say, whatever reaches its end in the bodily perceptions, I think we can go but a very little way without so giving the mind a bent toward the lower faculties as must divert it from the exercise of the higher.' This thought is no mere fancy. It rests on a great law of derivation, true in mind as in the body; that inanition and comparative loss of one set of powers necessarily follows a too habitual activity of a different set. Thus it is that, in the body, over-use of the nervous, saps the muscular energies, and excessive muscular exertion detracts from the vivacity of the mind. Logically, then, when carried to any excess over just sufficient to secure the needed clear perceptions and the corresponding names for material objects and qualities, the object-lesson system at once becomes the special and fitting education for the ditcher, the 'hewer of wood,' the mere human machine in any employment or station in life, where a quick and right taking to the work at the hand is desirable, and any thing higher is commonly thought to be in the way; but it is not the complete education for the independent mind, the clear judgment and good taste, which must grow out of habits of weighing and appreciating also thousands of non-material considerations; and which are characteristics indispensable in all the more responsible positions of life, and that in reality may adorn and help even in the humblest. In a recently published report or address on a recommendation respecting the teaching of Sciences, made by the English 'Committee of Council on Education,' in 1859, Mr. Buckmaster says:
'The object-lessons given in some schools are so vague and unsystematic, that I doubt very much if they have any educational or practical value. I have copied the following lessons from the outline of a large elementary school; Monday, twenty minutes past nine to ten, Oral Lesson—The Tower of Babel; Tuesday, The Senses; Wednesday, Noah's Ark; Thursday, Fire; Friday, The Collect for Sunday. What can come of this kind of teaching, I am at a loss to understand. Now, a connected and systematic course of lessons on any of the natural sciences, or on the specimens contained in one of Mr. Dexter's cabinets, would have been of far greater educational value, and more interesting to the children. This loose and desultory habit of teaching encourages a loose and desultory habit of thought; it is for this reason that I attach great value to consecutive courses of instruction.... I think, it will not be difficult to show that the study of almost any branch of elementary science not only has a direct bearing on many of the practical affairs of every-day life, but also supplies all the conditions necessary to stimulate and strengthen the intellectual faculties in a much greater degree than many of the subjects now taught in our elementary schools.'
All the lines of our investigation, as well as the most competent testimony, thus converge in showing that the object-lesson and common-things teaching is but a partial and preliminary resource in the business of education; that, to avoid working positive harm, it must be restricted within due limits of age, capacity, and subject; that it is not, therefore, the real and total present desideratum of our schools; and that, subsequently to the completion of the more purely sensuous and percipient phase of the mind, and to the acquirement of the store of simpler ideas and information, and the degree of capacity, that ought to be secured during that period—hence, from an age not later than eleven, or according as circumstances may determine, thirteen years—all the true and desirable ends of education, whether they be right mental habits and tastes, discipline and power of the faculties, or a large information and practical command of the acquisitions made—all these ends, we say, are thenceforward most certainly secured by the systematic prosecution, in a proper method, of the usually recognized distinct branches or departments of scientific knowledge. Let then, 'common things,' et id genus omne, early enough give place to thorough-going study of the elements of Geometry, of Geography, Arithmetic, Language, (including Grammar,) of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Botany, Physiology, and something of their derivations and applications. Thus shall our schools produce a race not of mere curious gazers, but of conscious and purposive investigators; not a generation of intellectual truants and vagabonds, but one of definitely skilled cultivators of definite domains in handicraft, art, or science.
We are compelled to take issue, therefore, with Mr. Spencer's recommendation, indorsed in the Chicago Report, to the effect that object-lessons should, after a 'different fashion,' 'be extended to a range of things far wider, and continued to a period far later than now.' Not so: after any possible fashion. But let us, as early as the child's capacity and preparation will allow, have the individualized, consecutive studies, and the very manner of studying which shall be made to do for the higher and the lower intellectual faculties together, what well-conducted object-lessons can and now do perform, mainly for the lower. Of all school-method, this we conceive to be the true end and consummation. This would be the ultimate fruitage of the Baconian philosophy, and of philosophy larger than the Baconian—by as much as the whole is greater than any part—in the school-life and work of every boy and girl admitted to the benefits of our courses of instruction.
Thus we have endeavored, with some particularity of examination and detail, to find and state not only what are, but what should be, the tendencies of educational thought and effort in our country and times. And we seem to find that those tendencies are, in spite of a stand-still conservatism or perplexed doubt in some quarters, and of a conflict of views and practices in others, largely in the direction in which the ends to be sought show that they should be. The Education to be, as far as the intellectual being is concerned, when time and study shall better have determined the conditions, and furnished the working instrumentalities, is to be, not in name merely, but in fact, an education by simply natural employment and development of all the perceiving, reasoning, originative, and productive faculties of the mind. It is to be such, because it is to insist on proceeding, after proper age, and then upon every suitable topic, by observation and investigation, and so, by discovery of the principles and results the mind is desired to attain; because it will be an education by rigidly consecutive, comprehended and firm lines of advance, employing processes analytic and synthetic, inductive and deductive, each in its requisite place and in accordance with the nature and stage of the topics under investigation. For the like reasons, it will have become, what we have long foreseen and desired that education should be, rightly progressive in form, and in character such as must develop, strengthen, and store the mind; such as must best fit, so far as the merely scholastic education can do this, for practical expression and use of what is learned, showing all our acquired knowledge in the light of its actual and various relationships, and conferring true serviceableness and the largest value, whether for enjoyment or execution.
Such an education would be real in its method as well as in its substance. We have fairly entered upon the era in which education must be, and, spite of any temporary recoil of timorous despotisms, must continue to be, popular and universal. But many are too apt to forget that, upon our planet, this thing of popular and universal education is comparatively a new and untried experience; that, so far as its mode and substance are concerned, it is, in truth, still in course of experiment. There is at present a very general and but too just complaint of the popular education, as tending to inflate rather than to inform; as prompting large numbers of young men especially to aim at scaling to positions above those in which the school found them, a thing that would be well enough were it not inevitable that, in the general scramble, the positions aspired to are at the same time too frequently those above their capabilities, and quite too full without them: as, in few words, inspiring youth with a disrelish for those less responsible pursuits to which a large majority should devote their lives, rather than with a desire to qualify themselves for their proper work. The tendency is admitted; and it has become, in overcrowded professions and commercial pursuits, the fruitful source of superficiality, of charlatanry, of poverty at once of pocket and of honor, of empty speculations, and of the worst crimes.
But, appreciating the unquestionable fact that universal education is to be henceforth the rule in the most advanced nations, and that, in spite of its apparent consequences or our fears, and remembering also that the experience is, for the world, a new one, is there not some hope left us in the thought that possibly the alarmists have been attributing to the fact of popular education itself what in truth is only a temporary consequence of a false, an abnormally-educating method and procedure on the part of our schools? Nay, more; does not the latter afford the true solution of the evil? We believe it has been shown that our teaching methods not only fail in great part, but in a degree positively mis-educate; that the very 'head and front' of this failure and non-developing appears in the want of bringing into just prominence the discriminating and the applicative powers of the mind, the judgment, and reason; in a word, the thinking as distinguished from the merely receptive and retentive powers. Now, what are we to expect from a people too many of whom are put in possession of stores of fact quite beyond the degree in which their capacities to discriminate clearly, to judge wisely, and to draw conclusions rationally have been strengthened and furnished with the requisite guiding principles? What but a shallow shrewdness that should run into all the evils we have above named? But discipline all to think and reason more and more justly and assuredly upon their facts, and to men so educated, the very thought of an inordinate crowding of the so-called genteeler avocations, to the neglect of the more substantial, becomes appreciated in its true light, as absurd and unfortunate in every way, and, in all its bearings upon the individual as well as the social welfare.
So, let us have popular education; and let a due proportion of fit minds enter the professions, the posts of office, and commercial pursuits; let a few even live by mere work of thought; but let all enjoy the luxury of a degree of thought and rationality that shall forbid their richest blessing turning to their rankest curse. That such must be the result of a true education, our faith in a wise Providence forbids us to doubt. Such an education being real, and appealing to all the faculties, does not eventuate in vain aspirings; but fits each for his place and work—fits for making that great and happy discovery, that the best talents and the most complete cultivation of them can not only find in every employment scope for real exercise, but in the commonest and simplest occupations will be more expert and successful than uncultured ignorance can possibly be. In this view, the true education tends not to level but to utilize, to make the most of every man's special aptitudes for his special field. Such an education monarchy and aristocracy might dread, and reäctive tendencies have already, indeed, blighted the once pattern school-system of Prussia, while they are believed to threaten a like step in England. But the idea of such an education as we have striven to portray, harmonizes with the spirit and objects of a commonwealth, and if we mistake not, to the perpetuity and perfection of free institutions it may yet be found the condition precedent.