Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, by Harper & Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District Court of New York.
[PREFACE.]
Daniel Webster, in his Autobiography, speaks thus of his entering upon the study of law: "I was put to study in the old way—that is, the hardest books first, and lost much time. I read Coke on Littleton through without understanding a quarter part of it. Happening to take up Espinasse's Law of Nisi Prius, I found I could understand it; and arguing that the object of reading was to understand what was written, I laid down the venerable Coke et alios similes reverendos, and kept company for a time with Mr. Espinasse and others, the most plain, easy, and intelligible writers. A boy of twenty, with no previous knowledge on such subjects, can not understand Coke. It is folly to set him on such an author. There are propositions in Coke so abstract, and distinctions so nice, and doctrines embracing so many conditions and qualifications, that it requires an effort, not only of a mature mind, but of a mind both strong and mature, to understand him. Why disgust and discourage a boy by telling him that he must break into his profession through such a wall as this? I really often despaired. I thought that I never could make myself a lawyer, and was almost going back to the business of schoolkeeping. Mr. Espinasse, however, helped me out of this in the way that I have mentioned, and I have always felt greatly obliged to him."
Here is most graphically depicted a defect which is now, as it was then, very prominent in all departments of education. It is even more so in early education than in that of the college and the professional school. Even in tender childhood pupils are put to studying books of which, as was true of Webster with his Coke on Littleton, they do not understand "a quarter part." If the rule is not "the hardest books first," there are many things in the books that it is not only hard but impossible for them to understand. And the hardest things are often put first. For example, in a very popular primary geography which lies before me the pupil is introduced to the world and its grand divisions at the outset, while he is taught about his own state and country only at the conclusion of the book. And this unnatural mode is the one very commonly pursued. Similar criticism can be passed upon most of the books used in teaching young children. Some of them are wholly useless. This is true of the grammars for primary schools. The formal statements, called the rules of grammar, are beyond the understanding of very young scholars, and therefore are useless burdens upon their memories. They are as useless to them as the three-fourths of Coke which Webster could not understand was to him.
If we follow education, upward from the primary school we find the same defect throughout the whole course. In the books which are used in teaching natural science it is especially prominent. Even in the elementary books, or compendiums, so called, formal propositions and technical terms render the study uninviting, and to a great extent unintelligible. The pupil is apt to be disgusted and discouraged, as Webster was with Coke on Littleton, and for the same reason.
Another defect intimately connected with that of which I have spoken is the very sparing and late introduction of the physical sciences. They are generally postponed to the latter part of the course of education, and then but little time is devoted to them. Generally, when a pupil designs to go through college, the study of these sciences is wholly neglected in his preparation, because a knowledge of them is not required for admission. Then in the college they are not attended to till the latter part of the course, and in the short time allotted to them there is so much to be learned that the teaching of them is a failure. Especially is this true of Chemistry and Geology.