THE BEST BOOKS, THE FEWEST IN THE SERIES, AT THE LEAST EXPENSE. While various gradings and different methods create demands for numerous textbooks, the following selection is presented as an equipment containing all the essentials for "THE COMMON BRANCHES." READING: SWINTON'S SERIES OF READERS. Five Books. SPELLING: SWINTON'S WORD BOOK OF SPELLING. One Book. ARITHMETIC: FISH'S SERIES. Two Books. GEOGRAPHY: SWINTON'S SERIES. Two Books. GRAMMAR: WELL'S SHORT COURSE. One Book. HISTORY: SWINTON'S CONDENSED United States. One Book. PENMANSHIP: SPENCERIAN COPY-BOOKS. Series. Write to us for a circular showing how this fresh, bright, thorougb, and popular series may be introduced into your school at merely nominal prices. Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co., 753-755 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. Address of Superintendent B. A. HINSDALE, Cleveland, Ohio, before the recent meeting of the Michigan State Teachers' Association. II. This is President Elliot's second paragraph: "This idea, I know, if carried out thoroughly, runs directly counter to another very common idea-namely, that there is a considerable number of subjects which everybody ought to know. Now the longer I live the greater experience and wider observation I have, the more I settle to the conviction that there is no one thing that a liberally-educated man must know. In arithmetic, for example, what stumbling blocks to children are least common multiple and greatest common divisor; but we have all discovered that common people have no use for either of these matters. And so on throughout much of school education. It is not at all necessary for everybody to know what air is made of, where the river Charles rises, how the pump draws water, or the names of the stars, or of any of the kings of Egypt. Not one of these things is, in the slightest degree, essential to a liberal education. Hence the notion that there is a certain number of subjects which everybody should know, ought never to be allowed to interfere with or counteract the general principle that the best training for every individual lies in the pursuit of those subjects for which he is best fit and which he enjoys." Unfortunately, this language is not as clear as could be desired. In one sentence the president denies "that there is a considerable number of subjects which everybody ought to know," thereby apparently admitting, by implication, that there are some subjects which everybody ought to know, and in the next sentence he affirms "that there is no one thing that a liberally-educated man must know." The denial and the admission can be harmonized only by holding that the term "thing" applies to a single fact or object, and is not the same as a "subject " or branch of knowledge. But we are cut off from making this distinction by the last sentence, where what has before been affirmed of "thing" is affirmed of "subject." Apparently, then, the President of Harvard expects us to understand him in the most absolute sense: there is no thing or subject which a liberally-educated man need know. This is a surrender of reading, writing, and arithmetic, unless, indeed, we are to suppose that these are instruments or methods for learning things and subjects, and not such themselves, which seems a forced construction. One's view of the whole paragraph will depend somewhat upon the sense that he attaches to the expression "a liberally-educated man," a topic that I set aside for the present. No one can fairly claim that such a man must know the elements of the air, the source of Charles river, the action of a pump, the names of the stars, or the names of the kings of Egypt. But the real question is this: What is a liberally educated man's relation to the great departments of knowledge that these facts belong to; to chemistry, geography, physics, astronomy, and history? Admit, for sake of argument, "that the best training for every individual lies in the pursuit of those subjects for which he is best fitted," provided we could only find that out; but since it is a fact that special talents do not, ordinarily, declare themselves at the age of ten or twelve, how are we going to make that discovery? The boy of those ages is quite apt to have a stock of whims and notions of his own; moreover, what he enjoys depends largely upon association and habit, and we cannot relegate his studies to the court of motive and enjoyment. But let us hear the president again : "There is another principle which we should bear in mind, though it runs counter to generally accepted ideas-viz., that uniformity in intellectual training is never to be regarded as an advantage, but as an evil from which we cannot completely escape. We have lately heard a great deal about 'keeping step' as a valuable part of public school training, but I do not know a more unfortunate figure to use with regard to education. Even in military movements, if troops want to get anywhere they never keep step. A large school is almost necessarily a kind of averaging machine. But we should always bear in mind that though this averaging may be in some measure necessary, it is a necessary evil. All would admit that it would be an ineffable loss to mankind if the few great men were averaged with the millions of common people, if by the averaging process the world had lost such men as Faraday and Agassiz, Hamilton and Webster, Gladstone and Cavour. But do we equally well understand that when ten bright, promising childen are averaged with ninety slow, inert, ordinary children, a very serious loss is inflicted, not only upon those ten, but upon the community in which the one hundred children are to grow up. There is a serious and probably an irreparable loss caused by the averaging of the ten with the ninety children. Therefore, I say that uniformity in education all along the line is an evil which we should always be endeavoring to counteract by picking out the brighter and better children, and helping them on by every means in our power." No other paragraph in the address is so exasperating to public school teachers as this one, and no other is so deserving of their attention. But putting aside our resentment at being talked at in this manner, we should candidly inquire what there is in this matter of uniformity and averaging. In a sense, a large public school is "a kind of averaging machine." But the world is full of such machines, and we need not be over-afraid of them A national literature, no matter how rich and varied, is an averaging machine. It tends to produce a certain mental homogeneity, a certain type of culture, that is more or less distinct from all other cultures. The Anglo-American was not reared on the literature of Italy or Persia, and would not have been AngloAmerican if he had been. The Christian church, in the broadest historical sense, is an averaging machine; and so, in a much closer sense, are the State churches of Europe and the great historical Christian denominations of America. One does not need to be a theologian to trace the line of delimitation separating the Christian church from all other churches, as the Jewish, the Mohammedan, or the Buddhist. The Christian denominations rest upon certain doctrinal uniformities and certain spiritual cultures, which uniformities and cultures they tend powerfully to perpetuate. Non-conformity is the loose-fitting name of a multitude of British sects, but it nevertheless marks off some very definite beliefs or non-beliefs which those sects hold in common. Colleges and universities are averaging machines; their function being to provide society with liberallyeducated men, who, even when the name is held in a sense loose enough to please President Elliot, have something in common. Republican government and absolute monarchy are averaging machines, each tending to produce its own type of citizen or subject. Nay, civil society itself, the very civilization of which we boast, is an averaging machine; it is plainly divided from barbarous or savage society, and tends to certain uniform results. Certainly, in this broad sense, large public schools and small public schools, and schools of all kinds, are averaging machines, Moreover, they should be such machines. |