AMUSEMENTS A COMPANION VOLUME TO KING'S "SCHOOL ESPECIALLY FOR TEACHERS' READING CIRCLES BY CHARLES W. MANN, A.M. DEAN OF THE CHICACO ACADEMY NEW YORK .:. CINCINNATI .:. CHICAGO APE4513 PREFACE TRUE education is the symmetrical and harmonious development of the various powers and faculties of the human body and soul. Education of some sort begins with the infant in the cradle, and is stopped only by the hand of death. In this fact is the seriousness of the subject. If education were not a continuous process, the teacher might hope to build a new structure upon a new foundation. As a fact, however, he is always building with the materials or upon the substructure of another. Any system of education is faulty which does not take this fact into account. A training confined almost exclusively to the physical nature gave to the world the rugged, narrow-minded, and venal Spartan. A training of the body and mind produced the fickle and unscrupulous Athenian. The broader education of modern times is threefold, concerning itself with physical, mental, and moral training. For many and weighty reasons, the greater part of the time and attention of the teacher is given to the training of the minds of his pupils. This is his special function, and the training of the teacher is designed to fit him for this work. School appliances and books have multiplied and improved until, in respect of these, our schools are the best equipped in the world. In the general desire to make the training of the mind as complete as possible, other considerations equally important have been in a measure overlooked. This book is based upon two ideas. First, that the surroundings and the various elements of school life should accord as closely as possible with the needs of the unfolding nature and the growing abilities of the child, and that they should be a source of constant and increasing pleasure to the pupil. Second, that school life is a period in which the training of youths should possess harmony, unity, and completeness, including not only instruction in books, but much of nature, of social life, and of physical culture. The hope of reward and the fear of punishment are the two great guiding motives of life. Of the two, the first is much the more potent and important. Yet it would seem that our schools are often managed upon the other basis, and that the fear of punishment is the motive chiefly relied upon for the government of many of the pupils. We cannot dispense with this fear of pun |