PEDAGOGVES 
 & PARENTS 
 
 ELLA CALISTAWILSON 
 
Class^ 
 
 Book 
 
 GqcyrightH? 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
tv' $** 
 

 
PEDAGOGUES AID PARENTS 
 
 BY 
 
 ELLA CALISTA WILSON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1904 
 
WIS 
 
 LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Coyies Received 
 
 NOV 18 ISHM 
 
 Copyiifiin tfitry 
 
 SS A. XXc. 
 
 CUSS 
 
 copy 
 
 Kc. No; f 
 
 u 
 
 Copyright, 1904 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 Published November, 1904 
 
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 TO 
 
 My dear Mother living, 
 
 AND TO 
 
 My equally dear and pedagogic Father 
 
 long since passed on ; 
 
 and to all other parents 
 
 " Whose concern for their dear little ones makes them 
 
 so irregularly bold that they dare consult their 
 
 OWN REASON IN THE EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILDREN, 
 RATHER THAN WHOLLY TO RELY UPON OLD CUSTOM." 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Introduction . vii 
 
 I. The Fountain-head 1 
 
 II. Still Farther Back 8 
 
 III. "New Education" in New England . . 29 
 
 IV. School Curricula 45 
 
 V. Points op View . . . . . .73 
 
 VI. Individuality 89 
 
 VII. Big Things .114 
 
 VIII. The Method of Limits 137 
 
 IX. " Natural Method" 155 
 
 X. Arithmetic 173 
 
 XI. Child Morality 204 
 
 XII. Practical Morals 223 
 
 XIII. The Children Themselves . » . . 246 
 
 XIV. Pedagogues and Parents .... 265 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 It is fitting that one should render a reason for 
 sending forth another book on the subject of Edu- 
 cation when so many excellent ones are already in 
 the field. In this case the reason is a simple one; 
 it is now, and ever has been, the custom, for trea- 
 tises on Education to be written by Pedagogues and 
 celebrities, for and among themselves. Scarce one 
 of the really wise and worthy ones is an affair for 
 the ordinary Parent. This little book is intended 
 as a comment on Education and the present edu- 
 cational situation, from the point of view of a 
 Parent, and is, as they say in the colleges, pri- 
 marily for Parents, but open to Pedagogues and 
 others. 
 
 It may be said that many Pedagogues are them- 
 selves Parents. But, in matters educational, Peda- 
 gogues are usually, and, in the case of fathers, 
 almost surely, Pedagogues first and Parents sec- 
 ondarily. Students of educational history cannot 
 fail to observe that distinguished Pedagogues have 
 
 vii 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTION 
 
 not always been brilliant successes as Parents, or 
 even Parents at all. Elizabeth Peabody, New Eng- 
 land's beloved " Kindergarten Mother/' was a spin- 
 ster; John Locke was a bachelor; so was Herbert 
 Spencer; Froebel was childless. Of Pestalozzi's 
 children history remains silent, or speaks in whis- 
 pers. On the other hand, we know too much of 
 the fate of Eonsseau's offspring. Writes Francis 
 Bacon: 
 
 " Surely a man shall see the noblest works and 
 foundations have proceeded from childless men, 
 which have sought to express the images of their 
 minds, where those of their bodies have failed — so 
 the care of posterity is most in them that have no 
 posterity." 
 
 We marvel that the greatness of great men is 
 not more frequently transmitted to their children. 
 John Stuart Mill tells us that the children of ener- 
 getic parents frequently grow up unenergetic. One 
 cannot help wondering if over-abounding nervous 
 force is not too often possessed at the expense, pre- 
 natal and post-natal, of offspring. As for Peda- 
 gogues, they nearly always live at high nervous 
 tension. An alert educator, if he finds time at all 
 to attend to the education of his own children, is 
 seldom sufficiently patient and reposeful to sit 
 
INTRODUCTION IX 
 
 quietly by and see them enjoy the large amount of 
 let-alone-ness which Nature plainly indicates to be 
 their birthright. Miss Peabody had in mind this 
 same thought when she once said to me, " It really 
 seems to take one order of mind to discover edu- 
 cational theories, and quite a different one to apply 
 them." 
 
 Be all that as it may, there will yet, for a long 
 time to come, continue to exist, two distinct classes 
 in the rearing of children — Pedagogues and Parents. 
 But Pedagogues and other savants dwell apart with 
 the Muses on Parnassus, and have thoughts and 
 methods of thinking peculiarly their own. Thus it 
 results that they have also a language of their own. 
 Their ideas come down to us clothed in this lan- 
 guage Parnassian, and not in the homely speech of 
 the plains where we Parents dwell. Their works, 
 therefore, although in substance containing what 
 should be most nourishing soul-food for Parents, 
 are not appetising to them. An example or two 
 will make plain what I mean. It is in the following 
 words that a magazine for parents and teachers 
 enlightens its readers concerning the interest- 
 ing " Culture Epochs " of the race and the indi- 
 vidual: 
 
 "This, the so-called theory of the Culture 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 Epochs, is an application to the psychical develop- 
 ment of the child of the theory of recapitulation 
 which the doctrine of Evolution regards as estab- 
 lished for the physical development of the indi- 
 vidual." 
 
 This is solid educational food. It is, doubtless, 
 a portion easily digested and assimilated by stu- 
 dents. The idea contained in it is simple 
 enough, too; but would even the well-educated 
 among the great mass of parents and teachers be 
 likely to be tempted by it in that form? 
 
 Once upon a time there was appointed, among 
 the Pedagogues of our day, a committee to confer 
 and report upon the question as to what are the 
 most desirable subjects to be taught in our schools, 
 and the relative amount of time which may be 
 profitably devoted to each; in other words, to devise 
 a course of studies for our public schools. The 
 story of that committee, and the course of study 
 which they devised, will be told in our chapter on 
 " School Curricula." At present we are only to con- 
 cern ourselves with the fact that this important 
 committee was made up solely of Pedagogues. 
 Does it not seem an infinite pity that the parental 
 view should not have been represented in discussing 
 a matter of so much import to the well-being of 
 
INTRODUCTION XI 
 
 our children? We Parents have not yet, we do 
 readily acknowledge, in the mass of us, education 
 and training to render us well fitted for such work. 
 Nevertheless, it does seem that at least one layman, 
 one Parent as such, should have been looked up 
 among us and appointed to serve on that committee. 
 If our children come out to our discredit, it is the 
 Parents, not the long-forgotten teachers, who are 
 held responsible. "Is this your son, my Lord?" 
 not, "was this your pupil?" 
 
 Moreover, who should have been looking with 
 interest to the publication of that report? Parents, 
 too, as well as so-called educators. And some of 
 us were, indeed, eagerly interested. But when, at 
 last, the pamphlet came forth, thoughtful and com- 
 plete beyond criticism, it was uncompromisingly an 
 affair solely among Pedagogues. There was not a 
 single sop to us Parents in the whole long extent 
 of it. Nor was it much more fitted to be profit or 
 enjoyment for our teachers, who are but our sisters 
 and daughters, and are not of the savants of Par- 
 nassus. 
 
 A little after the publication of this report, I 
 was riding on a trolley-car out into one of the 
 beautiful suburbs of Boston, on a day when time 
 and place and weather should have kept every soul 
 
Xll INTRODUCTION 
 
 at peace with itself. On the seat before me, a 
 sweet-faced young woman, with worried brow, was 
 poring over a yellow-covered pamphlet. A little 
 pardonable craning of the neck convinced me of 
 what I had already guessed; my neighbour was a 
 young teacher wrestling conscientiously with that 
 report on " Correlation of Studies," page 6. Im- 
 mediately on arriving at home I looked up my 
 copy and turned to page 6. My eye fell upon the 
 following passage: 
 
 "The psychological ideal which has prevailed to 
 a large extent in education has in the old phrenol- 
 ogy, and in the recent studies in physiological psy- 
 chology, sometimes given place to a biological ideal. 
 Instead of the view of mind as made up of faculties 
 like will, intellect, imagination, and emotion, con- 
 ceived to be all necessary to the soul if developed 
 in harmony with one another, the concept of nerves 
 or brain-tracts is used as the ultimate regulative 
 principle to determine the selection and arrange- 
 ment of studies." 
 
 Poor, baffled, earnest girl teacher! Could all that 
 help her the least bit in her endeavours to cooper- 
 ate with the " ultimate regulative principle " at the 
 basis of her work? 
 
 Again: a bright, enthusiastic young teacher of 
 
INTRODUCTION Xlll 
 
 Maine, a neighbour of ours in this town where we 
 are spending the summer, showed me the text-book 
 from which she and her fellow-teachers are study- 
 ing Pedagogy under their superintendent. She 
 wore a woful face. 
 
 "I hate the book," she said. "I suppose the 
 ideas are all right, but the language of it! These 
 are not at all the words we use; I don't understand 
 half of them." 
 
 It takes a long apprenticeship to acquire the art 
 of being inspired by ideas expressed in Parnassian 
 English, even although one may know the literal 
 meaning of every word. The text-book used by 
 this class gives definitions of all the important 
 duties and departments of teaching; is, indeed, a 
 fine topical analysis of pedagogy in pedagogical 
 language. I give you a few examples. Teaching 
 is once defined " in its own terms "; then we have 
 the following paragraph, its definition "in terms 
 of learning acts ": 
 
 "Learning Acts: — Stated explicitly in terms of 
 learning acts, the teaching acts are: (1) Causing 
 the formation of clear individual percepts and con- 
 cepts; (2) Causing the formation from these of 
 correct general concepts and conclusions, together 
 with a quickening and strengthening of motives; 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION 
 
 (3) Causing an apt and skilful application of the 
 knowledge and power thus gained to the demands 
 of practical life, or to the increase of needful knowl- 
 edge." 
 
 Now I appeal to you: is it not disheartening to 
 a young district school-teacher, with some forty or 
 fifty pupils of almost as many grades, to have to he 
 taught to stop and analyse her faithfulness in that 
 fashion, and in language of that sort? And to go 
 to class and recite it! 
 
 One other example from this text-book; — the 
 teachers are instructed that curriculum-making "is 
 a subject in management rather than methodology." 
 And the lesson goes on, — 
 
 "It is intended here to take the principal and 
 typical subjects that are common to school cur- 
 ricula, as they now exist, and discuss briefly their 
 relative values as acquisitional, assimilational, and 
 expressional, preliminary to a treatment of the 
 methodology of each." 
 
 In fulfilment of this promise the definition of 
 "acquisition" is as follows: "It comes near 
 enough to say that, as here used, acquisition is the 
 operation that involves the activity of the senses 
 and memory, and of judgment in its elementary 
 function of forming concrete concepts "! 
 
INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 Much marvelling, I asked a successful teacher 
 friend of mine what she would define " acquisition " 
 to mean, when she spoke of the acquisition of 
 knowledge. "Why, it means the getting of knowl- 
 edge," she answered, in surprise at the question; 
 and I pondered upon the simplicity of our language 
 of the plains, as compared with that of Parnassus. 
 "Interest," in this marvellous book, is defined as 
 a "summation of feeling." 
 
 But to return to our troubled teacher who is 
 studying the book. This young woman takes an 
 individual interest in— perhaps I should say, "has 
 a summation of feeling," for — each pupil in her 
 large school. She even came over the other day 
 to see if our lad had any outgrown clothing which 
 would do for a little pupil of hers who, she was 
 sure, " would have more self-respect if he had whole 
 clothes." Now that young woman is going up to 
 Bangor in' January to learn stenography, and I 
 cannot help feeling that she would not have been 
 lost to our teaching force if her weekly classes in 
 Pedagogy had been made sources of inspiration and 
 comradeship, instead of weariness and a long, bur- 
 densome lesson to learn. Moreover, I cannot help 
 asking myself if those classes would not have been 
 far more likely to be encouraging and inspiring if 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION 
 
 Parents were hand in hand, as they should be, in 
 the management — or is it methodology — of school 
 affairs, and the training of teachers. 
 
 Once, on one of the timid little visits which I 
 occasionally make to Parnassus, I expostulated on 
 this custom of handicapping simple, every-day 
 ideas, by sending them forth for the use of teachers 
 so heavy-laden with ponderous language. I re- 
 ceived the mildly reproachful reply: 
 
 "Why, scientists must express themselves in 
 terms of their own sciences; they cannot be 
 bothered by the syncretic circumlocutions and re- 
 dundancies of the uneducated." 
 
 "True! true!" I exclaimed appeasingly, "but 
 pray, might there not be appointed a commission 
 to translate the best of the Parnassian works into 
 the homely, every-day vernacular of the plains, lest 
 their really helpful and elevating thoughts be lost 
 to us by the simple accident of their being in a 
 different dialect? — even as the beautiful tales of 
 Chaucer might have been lost to the mass of us, 
 had they not been translated from old into modern 
 English." 
 
 Ever since that conversation my mind has again 
 and again occupied itself with visions of interlinear, 
 parallel-column, or, better still, free, translations 
 
INTRODUCTION XV11 
 
 of the best of these works, for the use of Parents. 
 Such an achievement in our behalf would be a 
 great boon, as many of us would like to educate our- 
 selves to the point of co-operating with Pedagogues 
 on a subject which is even nearer to our hearts than 
 to theirs. 
 
 The point of view of the Parent is, indeed, a 
 vastly different one from that of the Pedagogue. 
 Each of us likes to make his calling a success. It 
 is no disparagement to the Pedagogue or school- 
 teacher that his ambition is almost invariably for 
 a successful school; while a Parent's ambition is 
 always for the success of the individual pupil — his 
 own particular boy or girl. 
 
 The Pedagogue studies the laws of childhood; 
 the Parent the temperament and needs of his par- 
 ticular child. The school-teacher advances the 
 children in regiment, lock-step; the Parent in their 
 natural gait, in their stragglings and self-directed 
 sprawlings. Which deals with the real children? 
 The motive, too, is different. The Pedagogue is 
 influenced by high moral purpose; the Parent by 
 passionate love. Neither is sufficient, yet who does 
 not know how far love transcends all other springs 
 of judgment and action? "Love is a celestial 
 torch, flooding us with light in our holy work of 
 
XV111 INTRODUCTION 
 
 clearing for loved ones, the highroads and bypaths 
 to ideals." 
 
 Parents should feel that to them alone is given 
 the supreme and divine responsibility of the culture 
 of their children. Educators and others can be 
 valuable assistants, but they are rightly the assist- 
 ants, not the principals. Every chapter in this book 
 is penned with earnest desire to do a small share 
 in hastening the day when the wisdom of the Parent 
 shall be welcomed in the councils of the Peda- 
 gogues. Only by the union of parental love, and 
 pedagogic zeal and high purpose, can the present 
 new, widespread interest in Education attain to 
 fullest blossoming and fragrance. 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 I 
 
 THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD 
 
 (Emile) 
 
 " Who, then, shall educate my child ? I have already told 
 you,— yourself . "—Rousseau. 
 
 As they came to him one after another, Jean 
 Jacques Kousseau consigned his children to the 
 care of the great Foundling Hospital of Paris, uni- 
 versal foster-mother of orphans and undesired chil- 
 dren; consigned them to namelessness and oblivion. 
 Thus only might he obtain peace and repose to 
 bring forth and rear Emile, the child of his brain; 
 the renowned Emile, whose mission was to give 
 world-wide inspiration to parents in the bringing 
 up of their children. In vain does the lamenting 
 Therese plead for the keeping of one, just one of 
 their children, to solace the cravings of her mother- 
 heart. Jean Jacques will not be able to rightly 
 educate the child of his imagination with the dis- 
 
2 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 turbance of even one offspring of his body " puking 
 and puling" under his roof. 
 
 Whatever the fate of Rousseau's actual children, 
 the vivid story of the childhood of his fancy-born 
 Emile was to overturn all existing ideas on the sub- 
 ject of Education. Red-hot from his revolutionary 
 pen, it was a firebrand in the educational and family 
 world of Europe. It kindled men and women not 
 only to emotion, but to action. 
 
 Education had long been at a wearisome, monoto- 
 nous, life-killing standstill. The evangel of Emile 
 persuaded even the elegant ladies of society to forget 
 their lapdogs, and put themselves to the task of 
 personally conducting the education of their chil- 
 dren. It became the fad and fashion of society, as 
 well as the earnest aspiration of educators, to be- 
 come tutor and guide to some small child who could 
 play for them the role of an Emile. 
 
 Here is, indeed, a book written for Parents. In 
 language simple, fervent, direct, passionate, it ad- 
 dresses itself to any one, Parent or Pedagogue, who 
 wishes to develop a child to the full stature of a 
 man. Were I a parent newly coming into the 
 knowledge that it is the first duty of parents to 
 secure for their children a full, free development of 
 their possibilities and powers, and wished to land 
 
THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD 6 
 
 myself in the promptest way among those in the 
 van of Education to-day, I would, first of all, devour 
 this book, Emile. Payne styles it "The greatest 
 educational classic in the world." It is the head- 
 water of the whole system of later streams and 
 torrents of "New Education" theories, "Natural 
 Methods," "Nature's Method of learning all 
 things," methods for acquiring " Complete mastery 
 of a foreign language in six weeks," etc., etc. 
 
 If you do but once get into your understanding, 
 the simple, fascinating principles of this book, you 
 will scarce ever again meet with new ideas on the 
 subject of Education; you will meet only varieties 
 and manipulations of these. Do not fear the pas- 
 sion of it; nor the inconsistencies; nor stop to exam- 
 ine into the ridiculousnesses of it. Get into the on- 
 rushing current of it, and steam on and on; turn 
 not to right or to left to pick up the odd things in 
 the stream. Eeturn later for flotsam and jetsam. 
 
 Possibly this book made its impression, not in 
 spite of having its pearls discovered in all sorts of 
 impossible shells, but by the very fact of it. The 
 " New School " will tell you that you cannot know 
 white without knowing black; beauty except along- 
 side of ugliness; that virtue is not virtue until it 
 has known and resisted evil; in a word, that we get 
 
4 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 our knowledge through contrasts. So read steadily 
 on and catch the spirit, even more than the often 
 contradictory principles. After Emile read any- 
 thing which will help you educate your children; but 
 first read Emile — at all events a good deal of it. 
 Historians say that the French Eevolution was 
 fought with the sword in the right hand, and the 
 works of this " Censor of Civilisation " in the other, 
 and that the left hand was the one more feared. 
 We do not fear Rousseau. We are a democracy. 
 
 It goes without saying that, while Emile may be 
 called the head-water of the " New Education " 
 system, this head-water had many feeding-springs. 
 All the intuitively wise and gentle, from ancient 
 child-lovers down to "the great John Locke," con- 
 tributed to the full-flooding of this fountain-head 
 of modern educational ideas and ideals. 
 
 Is there, then, so vast a difference between the 
 New and the Old in Education? Let us see a little. 
 First, we must bear in mind that the Old is of the 
 spirit of total-depravity theory of human nature, 
 and of the natural state of alienation between God 
 and Man; and that the New is filled with the in- 
 spiration which comes of the belief that Man is the 
 noblest work of God, is made in his image, and 
 has within him the promise of ultimately develop- 
 
THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD 
 
 ing into a being worthy to be called a Son of God. 
 " Spare the rod and spoil the child/' exhorts the 
 Old; " Spoil the rod and spare the child," retorts 
 the New. 
 
 "Keceive the child at six and load him like an 
 ox," enjoins the Talmud; and not only our Puritan, 
 John Milton, but most master-spirits of the past 
 keep full pace with the Hebrew, as we shall show 
 in our chapter on " School Curricula." 
 
 Montaigne, writing of the gentleness of his 
 father's method of educating him, tells how that 
 fond parent avoided the violence of a sudden awak- 
 ening in the morning, " which doth greatly trouble 
 and distemper their brains." "He would every 
 morning cause me to be awakened by the sound of 
 some instrument, and I was never without a servant 
 who to that purpose attended upon me." 
 
 Compare this with the more usual old-time cus- 
 tom of giving such orders as, to " truly belash him 
 till he will amend," illustrated by the twenty-three 
 whippings received by poor little Martin Luther in 
 one day! 
 
 The old-time idea was that the more a child was 
 kept at his book, and whipped up to it, the greater 
 scholar he would become; that that, indeed, was the 
 surest way of compelling his salvation. One gets 
 
6 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 a fair idea of the wide gulf between the Old and 
 the New by reminding himself of the beautiful, 
 attractively illustrated, over-abundant juvenile lit- 
 erature of to-day, and then recalling to mind that in 
 the olden days there was seldom any children's lit- 
 erature at all. The Book of Proverbs was for gen- 
 erations the book from which juvenile Scotland was 
 taught to read. John Buskin learned to read by be- 
 ginning at the first chapter of the Bible, reading 
 it through to the end, hard words, genealogies and 
 all, and then immediately beginning it over again. 
 We are all familiar with our own New England 
 Primer, with its Bible-texts and warnings, and its 
 dreadful little wood-cuts. At one time it was the 
 regular thing to begin a boy's education with the 
 reading of Latin. Why not? All the great works 
 were in Latin. Moreover, the school reading, in 
 Latin or in English, was arranged for practical in- 
 struction as well as for learning to read, and was 
 often diversified by awful warnings concerning the 
 horrors of hell and the counter-attractions of harp- 
 playing, psalm-singing heaven. They did, indeed, 
 put the big end of the wedge in first, those sturdy 
 educators of the past! That it is safe to treat 
 children rationally, or even humanly and humanely 
 in the schools, is an idea of very recent times. If 
 
THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD 7 
 
 the gods had the habit, as the ancients believed 
 they had, of passing their leisure in observing the 
 doings of mortals, they must have felt that they 
 had a continuous performance for their edification, 
 in the tragi-comic drama presented by the conflict 
 of these rival lines of thought and feeling all through 
 the Middle Ages, and even down to the present 
 time. Munroe, in his History of Education, writes: 
 
 " The sins committed in the name of liberty pale 
 before those committed under the guise of educa- 
 tion. The school world was filled, in the old days, 
 with the wails of children, tortured in body and 
 mind, with the strife of barbarous art contending 
 with outraged Nature; with the wrecks of fine souls 
 ruined by mal-education." 
 
 Is it not an infinite pity that victims could not 
 have been furnished for these wranglings and ex- 
 perimentations, other than tender, helpless little 
 children? We have banished " tortures of the body " 
 from our schools, also "tortures of the mind," — 
 somewhat. Yet have we not still about us too 
 many "wrecks of fine souls ruined by mal-educa- 
 tion"? — ruined by over-education, under-education, 
 and by education against the grain? 
 
II 
 
 STILL FARTHER BACK 
 
 " We play the fools with the times, and the spirits of the 
 wise sit in the clouds and mock us." — Shakespeare. 
 
 No thought is wholly our own until we are 
 familiar with the biography of it. It is profitable 
 for us Parents, as well as for so-called educators, to 
 look over the educational field as far back as we 
 may. Putting aside the temptation to return to 
 classical antiquity, let us take a brief glance at the 
 beginnings of Modern Education. 
 
 "At the mid-point between ancient and modern 
 history stands the commanding figure of Charles 
 the Great/' writes West, one of Alcuin's biog- 
 raphers, "finisher of the old order of things and 
 beginner of the new." Likewise, at the mid-point 
 between the old and the new in education,, stands 
 Charles's famous "Palace School," that "Pioneer 
 school for the nobles of the realm," and the two 
 more humble schools for the clergy and the peas- 
 antry. Modern Education, we may, indeed, fancy, 
 
 8 
 
STILL FARTHER BACK 9 
 
 began about the year 800 with this "University 
 of Aachen/' which by stretch of courtesy may be 
 called the first university of France, or of Germany, 
 as you please. The august and puissant emperor, 
 Charlemagne, having got the whip hand of all his 
 enemies, had determined that his capital should 
 become a centre of learning. We read how he en- 
 ticed hither Alcuin, the foremost of English 
 scholars, to establish a school in his palace. We 
 hear this Palace School spoken of in terms of rever- 
 ence and awe. We read Charlemagne's imposing 
 edict which he sent out all over Frankland, and we 
 picture to ourselves, — well, a Harvard or a Yale 
 University. This edict has been called the first 
 general charter of education for the Middle Ages. 
 
 "It is our wish," runs this famous edict, "that 
 you may be what it behooves the soldiers of the 
 Church to be — religious in heart, learned in dis- 
 course, pure in act, eloquent in speech; so that all 
 who approach your house in order to invoke the 
 Divine Master, or to behold the excellence of the 
 religious life, may be edified in beholding you, and 
 instructed in hearing you discourse or chant, and 
 may return home rendering thanks to God most 
 High." 
 
 What more than that can our colleges of to-day 
 
10 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 expect of their sons? It is interesting to get a 
 glimpse of how they attempted to fulfil these high 
 ideals in this long-ago university. "Let it be re- 
 membered/' writes West, "that the tall, blue-eyed 
 barbarians, whom Alcuin was aiming to civilise, 
 were but little children when it came to school 
 learning. . . . Even his master Charles had to toil 
 painfully to bend his fingers, stiffened with long use 
 of the sword, to the clerkly task of writing, and 
 confessed that he acquired the art with great diffi- 
 culty." West quotes for us interesting bits from 
 the dialogues written by Alcuin for his pupils. 
 This one, on " Ehetoric and the Virtues," was com- 
 posed in response to a request from the King: 
 
 " What art thou? " asks Alcuin, and after Charles 
 answers, "I am a man" (homo, for of course this 
 is all in Latin), the dialogue goes on as follows: 
 
 Alcuin. See how thou hast shut me in. 
 
 Charles. How so? 
 
 Alcuin. If thou sayest I am not the same as 
 thou, and that I am a man, it follows that I am not 
 a man. 
 
 Charles. It does. 
 
 Alcuin. But how many syllables has Homo? 
 
 Charles. Two. 
 
 Alcuin, Then art thou those two syllables? 
 
STILL FARTHER BACK 11 
 
 Charles. Surely not; but why dost thou reason 
 thus? 
 
 Alcuin. That thou mayest understand sophis- 
 tical craft and see how thou canst be forced to a 
 conclusion." 
 
 A similar dialogue was written for two of Alcuin's 
 young pupils who had " but lately rushed upon the 
 thorny thickets of grammatical density." The fol- 
 lowing was composed for the sixteen-year-old Prince 
 Pepin: 
 
 " The Disputation of Pepin, the Most Noble and 
 Eoyal Youth, with Albinus, the Scholastic. 
 
 Pepin. What is writing? 
 
 Alcuin. The guardian of history. 
 
 Pepin. What is language? 
 
 Alcuin. The betrayer of the soul. 
 
 Pepin. What generates language? 
 
 Alcuin. The tongue. 
 
 Pepin. What is the tongue? 
 
 Alcuin. The whip of the air. 
 
 Pepin. What is air? 
 
 Alcuin. The guardian of life. 
 
 Pepin. What is life? 
 
 Alcuin. The joy of the happy; the expectation 
 of death. 
 
 Pepin. What is death? 
 
12 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Alcuin. An inevitable event: an uncertain jour- 
 ney; tears for the living; the probation of wills* the 
 stealer of men. 
 
 Pepin. What is man? 
 
 Alcuin. The slave of death; a passing traveller; 
 a stranger in his place." 
 
 Here is one on what we should now call Physics: 
 
 "What is snow? 
 
 Dry water. 
 
 What is winter? 
 
 The exile of summer. 
 
 What is spring? 
 
 The painter of the earth. 
 
 What is autumn? 
 
 The barn of the year." 
 
 "After more of the same sort, the dialogue 
 rapidly runs into puzzles and then closes." 
 
 There are problems for "whetting the wit of 
 youth "; for instance, a king is " gathering an army 
 in geometric progression; one man in the first town, 
 two in the second, four in the third, eight in the 
 fourth, and so on through thirty towns. The total 
 is 1,973,748,823 soldiers, an army which might well 
 amuse the imperial pupil! " 
 
 No rule for geometric progression! Simple 
 counting up and adding! And the only figures used 
 
STILL FARTHER BACK 13 
 
 are the Koman numerals! Try it yourself! In- 
 teresting it surely is, but it cannot fail to summon 
 up a smile of amusement and wonder when we re- 
 gard it as the serious "content" of a university 
 course! 
 
 Time spent among these crude beginnings may 
 not at first seem well spent for us Parents of to-day. 
 But psychologists are telling us that the child must 
 go through the same " Culture Epochs " (so clearly 
 defined in our Introduction), as the race has gone 
 through. With that thought in our minds, is it 
 not instructive, even for Parents, to throw a search- 
 light over educational beginnings? Does it not at 
 least tend to make us patient and submissive over 
 the elementary ways of our children? For, surely, 
 if the greatest ruler of his time, in council with the 
 wise men of his realm, no farther back than a 
 thousand years, aimed to establish a " more excellent 
 Athens " on such mental diet as that with which 
 Alcuin satisfied Charlemagne and the pupils of his 
 court schools, then are we not encouraged to regard 
 with sympathy and patience the exceedingly rudi- 
 mentary ways of our little barbarians, and their in- 
 tense interest in trivialities? I well remember how, 
 years ago, we youngsters of the Boston High School 
 used to wage hot warfare over the old school-men's 
 
14 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 questions: "Could God make two mountains with- 
 out a valley between? " " Could he locate a million 
 angels on the point of a needle ? " " Could he have 
 in his universe two irresistible forces?" 
 
 Vital questions these! If he could not do these 
 things where was his omnipotence? And if he 
 could — well, it was plain that he couldn't, for they 
 couldn't be done! And yet? And so the cycle of 
 reasoning began all over again. Childish? Cer- 
 tainly; we were passing through the Charlemagne 
 age, were we not? My dear old mother has often 
 told me that such littlenesses were quite necessary 
 to the right development of children's minds. It has 
 evidently been necessary for the Eace as well! How 
 those old Christian theologians of the fourth cen- 
 tury, in their fierce factions, waged triangular war- 
 fare on the ecclesiastical battle-field, the Homo- 
 ousians maintaining that Christ was of the same 
 substance as the Father, the Homoiousians that he 
 was of similar substance as the Father, and the 
 Heteroousians that he was of a different substance 
 from the Father! 
 
 By all means let us allow our children to pass 
 comfortably through as many of the " Culture 
 Epochs " as is necessary for their full development. 
 With love and tenderness all about thenx, and 
 
STILL FARTHER BACK 15 
 
 schools and churches, and modern civilisation gen- 
 erally, we do not see how they can be expected to 
 get at things exactly as poor, unassisted Human 
 Eace had to do it; nevertheless, it is a comfort to 
 have in reserve this theory, which shall reassure 
 us, in their seasons of mental and moral lapses. We 
 can say to ourselves, " This is but the tooth-and- 
 claw age; they'll soon be out of it." Or, " This is 
 but the Dark Age of self-centred animalism; we 
 have only to hopefully hurry them on to the Modern 
 Age of intellect and ethics," recalling the fact that 
 in the earliest stages, self-preservation was the first 
 law of Nature, and that the most vigorous in self- 
 protection had a promise in him beyond his fellows. 
 And, — mournfully I admit it, — I have observed 
 again and again, concerning this law, and the law 
 of "Natural Selection," that things often do seem 
 to come out, as an old nurse of mine used to say, 
 "'cordin' tew." Some little lawless, but vigorous 
 savage of a boy, seemingly all animal, develops, for 
 our discouragement, into a fine doctor or lawyer, or 
 even minister of the Gospel, while his " good," more 
 restrained comrade winds up — a nonentity, or 
 worse. 
 
 We hear a good deal about mental precocity. 
 Moral precocity is as dangerous a disease in child- 
 
16 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 hood as mental precocity. No precocity, indeed, is 
 wholly to be trusted. Children ought not to know 
 enough to be too good. When the ten-year-old son 
 of a friend of ours announced to us that he meant 
 to be a minister we were pleased. But when, on 
 being asked his reason for that decision, he replied 
 with fervour, "Because I love religion," I felt that 
 there was no hope for him in this world unless 
 some gang of bad boys — of the T. B. Aldrich 
 calibre, be it understood — should get hold of him 
 and straighten him out into healthy boyhood. A 
 dirty boy lying on his stomach by the brookside, 
 devouring a dirty apple from his dirty right hand, 
 and from his left a thumb-soiled story of Captain 
 Kidd, the one with as lusty appetite as the other, 
 is, I do most honestly believe it, more probably on 
 the road toward the presidency of a college or of a 
 mercantile association, than your immaculate, 
 daintily-attired, governess-attended little nabob, 
 doing — not much of anything. Frankly, is he not 
 more likely to grow up manly, truthful, courageous, 
 and even chivalrous? It is a pity that rich people 
 — some rich people — cannot be forced to give their 
 children the advantages of poverty! Fortunately 
 there is that " middle course," which the old Greeks 
 declared the best. I know of one man who had a 
 
STILL FARTHER BACK If 
 
 man nurse for his little boys. His orders were to 
 " let them go wherever they please, and do whatever 
 they like, provided they do not come to harm or 
 get into serious mischief! " 
 
 But we are wandering! Let us return to our 
 brief history of Modern Education. 
 
 Modern Education, inaugurated by Charlemagne, 
 took, after the manner of the Old Testament patri- 
 archs, several centuries for its childhood and youth. 
 It may be said to have arrived at majority in the 
 splendidly organised, kindly, but soul-suppressing 
 schools of the Jesuits. The really Modern Educa- 
 tion, — Charlemagne's University was but an an- 
 cient beginning of Modern Education, — was a re- 
 volt, Protestant, secular, or both, from these Jesuit 
 schools. Limited as is our space, we must pause 
 for a very brief glimpse of the most interesting 
 story of Education up to the time of this revolt. 
 
 For many centuries after Alcuin's university, 
 Education went on with many and varying fortunes 
 under the guidance of the Church, as did everything 
 else. But when Luther appeared upon the scene, 
 trailing the Protestant Eeformation after him, the 
 children of the Eeformers must not, of course, any 
 more attend the Eomish schools. The fiery Luther, 
 once under full headway as a reformer, was a Ee- 
 
18 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 former to the heart's core. He Hurled missiles, 
 right and left, against any " devils " in the path of 
 reform, with as undaunted a spirit as he hurled his 
 inkstand at the person of the original Devil him- 
 self, who, he believed, came into his presence 
 bodily, to tempt him. Of course there must be 
 Protestant Schools! The children must be saved. 
 Luther's Essay on Education is an interesting docu- 
 ment: 
 
 " Married people should know that they can per- 
 form no better and no more useful work for God, 
 Christianity, the world, themselves, and their chil- 
 dren than by bringing up their children well. . . . 
 Hell cannot be more easily deserved, and no more 
 hurtful work can be done, than by neglecting chil- 
 dren, letting them swear, learn shameful words and 
 songs, and do as they please." 
 
 Protestant schools sprang up to meet Luther's 
 appeal. With the co-operation of men like Melanc- 
 thon, Erasmus, and the Electors of Saxony and Wur- 
 temburg, these schools could not fail to become a 
 power. The Protestants triumphantly established 
 schools and founded and reorganised several univer- 
 sities. "For the first time in Germany," writes 
 James E. Eussell, in his German Higher Schools, 
 " schools were provided for all the people and in a 
 
STILL FARTHER BACK 19 
 
 series that permitted of orderly progression from 
 the elementary grades to the universities. And 
 here was the real beginning of the common schools 
 of Germany." 
 
 Being familiar with the law of action and re- 
 action, we shall know what next to expect. The 
 Catholic Church was not of a character to look idly 
 on at this undoing of her centuries of work. It 
 was just at this point that Ignatius Loyola, with all 
 the zeal of Holy Church in that age, bestirred him- 
 self and gave his wonderful personality to the stem- 
 ming of this widespreading success of its arch- 
 enemy. The result was the world-famous Jesuit 
 Schools, the revolt from which, as I have said above, 
 may be regarded as the true beginning of Modern 
 Education. " It is safe to say," writes Mr. Eussell, 
 " that the world over has never seen a more power- 
 ful religious order than this society of the Jesuits." 
 But they paid their enemy the compliment of 
 "borrowing the devil's artillery to fight the devil 
 with. And they used it to good effect." They 
 modelled their schools on the well-studied-out plans 
 of the Protestants. The one idea in these schools 
 was "Authority." No words can express too 
 strongly the utter subjection to Authority, in which 
 their pupils seem to have been always held. The 
 
20 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 interesting article upon the Jesuit schools in the 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica says: 
 
 " The Jesuit polity is almost a pure despotism. 
 ' The sacrifice of the intellect/ a familiar Jesuit 
 watchword, is the third and highest grade of obedi- 
 ence, well-pleasing to God, when the inferior not 
 only wills what the superior wills, but thinks what 
 he thinks," etc. 
 
 One of the maxims oftenest quoted to which the 
 student subscribes is this: 
 
 "I ought to be like a corpse, which has neither 
 will nor understanding, or like a small crucifix, 
 which is turned about at the will of him who holds 
 it, or like a staff in the hands of an old man, who 
 uses it as best may assist or please him." 
 
 I know that there are even to-day, reverent 
 friends and admirers of the Jesuits, who believe 
 that the yielding of the will to superiors in no 
 manner interferes with the freedom of development 
 in education. The story of the Jesuits by the Eev. 
 Thomas Hughes, edited by so eminent an authority 
 as Nicholas Murray Butler, fills one with a deep 
 desire that judgment upon the Jesuits shall not 
 be a one-sided one. Nevertheless, "six grades" 
 of this sort of obedience to their Order, passed 
 through by its students, should prepare the mind 
 
STILL FARTHER BACK 21 
 
 of even so friendly a historian as Father Hughes, 
 for ultimate catastrophe. The Order, refusing 
 obedience to the Pope, became " dangerous " to 
 Holy Church, itself. Father Hughes should not 
 marvel that "a scene of such a kind as has seldom 
 occurred in history" at last took place, in the 
 "universal and instantaneous suppression of the 
 Order," and that by a manifesto of its own church. 
 The Order, itself, was of such a kind as has " seldom 
 occurred in history"! There should be surprise, 
 rather, that two hundred and thirty-five years of 
 such absolute sway should have gone on, before the 
 end came. 
 
 Leaving aside the Jesuit Schools, the story of 
 Education, from Luther's time down to the present 
 day, has been the story of a succession of noble- 
 minded men who, believing in the god-like possi- 
 bilities wrapped up within each individual child, 
 have striven for the highest possible means of 
 enabling the child to attain them. Almost at the 
 head of this long and honourable list stands the name 
 of that celebrated Bohemian exile, Comenius. Of 
 all the wonderful searchers after Nature's methods 
 in Education, none was more wonderful than he. 
 For us "Americans there is a romance about him 
 which none of the others possess on account of 
 
22 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Cotton Mather's story, that "that brave old Man, 
 Johannes Amos Comenius," was invited by "our 
 Mr. Winthrop, in his Travels through the Low 
 Countries, to come over into New England, and 
 Illuminate this College and Country, in the quality 
 of a President: But the Solicitations of a Swedish 
 Ambassador, diverting him another way, that in- 
 comparable Moravian became not an American." 
 
 Probably no one believes that Comenius was 
 seriously invited to become the President of our 
 young Harvard College. Still, it is not difficult to 
 fancy that perhaps our wise Governor Winthrop, 
 meeting the fascinating educator, did have 3 long- 
 ing to procure his services for his beloved In- 
 stitution of Learning. Why not? Everybody else 
 who had any educational work to do wanted Co- 
 meniuft! Why not Governor Winthrop? At all 
 events, the very rumour helps to take that proces- 
 sion of educators out of Phantom-land, and makes 
 them seem more like actual and living men. 
 
 The aim of this ambitious man was to teach chil- 
 dren — simply everything! He was the first to in- 
 culcate the principle that education begins at the 
 mother's knee. Of a set of text-books planned for 
 the use of schoolboys, the first, intended for boys 
 in their seventh year, is "The Violet-bed of the 
 
STILU farther back 23 
 
 Christian Youth, containing the pleasantest 
 flowerets of scholastic instruction. " The second is, 
 " The Eose-bed of the Christian Youth, containing 
 Nosegays of the most fragrant Flowers of Knowl- 
 edge "; for the third year, " The Garden of Let- 
 ters and of Wisdom," which contains a pleasantly 
 written account of " everything necessary to be known 
 in heaven and earth"! His twelve chapters on 
 Physics begin with "I. Sketch of the creation of 
 the world," and end with "XL Of Man," and 
 "XII. Of Angels." Ever longing to be occupied 
 with writing his historical and philosophical works, 
 he nevertheless keeps at this text-book writing, dur- 
 ing all his exile wanderings. It well may need a 
 life-time to write a " Pansophia/' all wisdom. 
 
 There have been, certainly, in all ages, perceiving 
 spirits who have instinctively revolted from soul- 
 suppressing methods in dealing with children; but 
 it was, perhaps, more than any other, the " Great 
 John Locke," quoted in our dedication, who, by his 
 Thoughts on Education, set the ball of universal 
 revolt a-rolling, to which Eousseau's Entile com- 
 municated an almost infinite momentum. Locke 
 was greatly indebted, of course, to Montaigne and 
 Bacon, and to many others, but his Thoughts on 
 Education has been styled the " First English 
 
24 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Classic on Education." Locke was a reasoner. 
 He would render you a reason for everything; and 
 he convinced many, not only in England, but in 
 other countries. We read of our own Josiah Quincy, 
 in his life by his son, the following passage: 
 
 "Locke was the great authority on all subjects 
 which he touched, and, in conformity with some 
 suggestions of his, as my father supposed, Mrs. 
 Quincy caused her son, when not more than three 
 years old, to be taken from his warm bed, in winter 
 as well as in summer, and carried down to a cellar 
 kitchen and there dipped three times in a tub of 
 water cold from the pump. She also brought him 
 up in utter indifference to wet feet, — usually the 
 terror of anxious mammas, — in which he used to 
 say that he sat more than half the time during 
 his boyhood, and without suffering any ill conse- 
 quences. This practice he also conceived to be in 
 obedience to some suggestion of the bachelor phi- 
 losopher." 
 
 John Locke's reasoning, however, never aroused 
 the educational world from torpor to activity. His 
 book was read and complacently applauded. It won 
 him consideration. But all went on much as be- 
 fore. Have you not often observed that reason, 
 while it convinces, seldom influences actual con- 
 
STILL FARTHER BACK 25 
 
 duct? You wag your head gravely and respond, 
 " True; true; it is undoubtedly true." And then, 
 after a moment's complimentary, respectful silence, 
 you add jauntily, " But never mind! We won't stop 
 to bother this time! " And you go on in your old 
 way. That is just what happened in the case of 
 John Locke. The world read his book, — it's worth 
 an annual reading, — and was convinced, but it 
 didn't "bother." It was the passion, the human- 
 ness of Kousseau's teachings, and probably, more 
 than all, the story of a life illustrating them, that 
 set the educational world a-bothering. 
 
 Eousseau died in 1778. It would be most de- 
 lightful to linger, if for ever so short a time, over 
 the story of the growth and development of this 
 New Education during the century and a quarter 
 which has since elapsed, during which time, almost, 
 if not quite, every popular educational scheme has 
 been founded on the principles embodied in Kous- 
 seau's Emile. Inspiring it would be to the thought- 
 ful Parent to commune with some of the wisest in 
 that procession of reformers, who passed on the 
 torch through all these years, each adding to the 
 brilliance of it, the lustre of his own individual 
 light. Fascinating it would be to dwell for a time 
 on the sad enthusiasm of the good, incompetently 
 
26 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 competent Pestalozzi, genius of the cumulative 
 method; to dream for a while with the dreamy 
 Froebel, genius of infancy and of symbolism, and 
 father of the ethereal kindergarten; to visit the 
 schools of the rugged Basedow, the " Object-lesson " 
 genius, who brings into his school the prospective 
 mother (whether living specimen or by picture I 
 forget), as " object " for his lesson with his boys on 
 filial piety. During the last score of years a num- 
 ber of interesting accounts of the thoughts and say- 
 ings and doings of these devoted educators have 
 been published for the benefit of teachers. Parents, 
 interested in the subject of Education, will find 
 some of them profitable and interesting reading. 
 Concerning Emile, an abridged edition is, perhaps, 
 better for the average reader, the portions omitted 
 being, for the most part, only the tiresome philoso- 
 phisings with which Rousseau did too truly mar his 
 work. 
 
 It is one of my most cherished hopes that the 
 Story of Education will one day be written in a 
 manner especially to interest Parents; drawing for 
 them from the struggles of the past, valuable les- 
 sons for the present. No one dreams of calling 
 himself thoroughly equipped in Law, Medicine, Di- 
 vinity, Science, Commerce, Political Economy, 
 
STILL FARTHER BACK 27 
 
 Statesmanship, or any other department of useful- 
 ness, without gathering up the accumulated wisdom 
 of the past, as a starting point for his education; 
 without, in a word, knowing something of the his- 
 tory of his chosen profession. Why should it be 
 otherwise with so important a profession as Educa- 
 tion? And it will go without saying in this book, 
 that whoever indulges in the luxury of children, 
 enters that profession. Moreover, it will be main- 
 tained, from start to finish, in this work, that the 
 Parent and not the Pedagogue, is the chief 
 Educator. 
 
 Companionship with these zealous reformers 
 along the line of education, should be an inspira- 
 tion to parent and to teacher; when indulged in 
 with sympathetic abandon, it cannot fail to arouse 
 an attitude of mind charitably observant of the 
 motives which govern the mental and moral gyra- 
 tions of the human spirit, especially in childhood; 
 cannot fail to stir up an interest in the vital sources 
 of education. They give you, these Reformers, the 
 sensation of being in the company of reposeless, 
 soul-unsatisfied people. Busy they were in their 
 day, in eager pursuit of Nature's Method of dealing 
 with her children. They sacrificed life and fortune 
 in the search, even as many restless explorers of 
 
28 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Columbus' time, sacrificed all in feverish search for 
 the Fountain of Perpetual Youth. 
 
 Well, they were Kef owners! Was there ever a 
 serene, calm-minded reformer? We are creatures 
 of ideals, all of us. Most of us pursue our ideals 
 silently: a reformer is one of us who cannot be 
 silent. 
 
Ill 
 
 "NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 
 
 " Old Europe groans with palaces, 
 
 Has lords enough and more ; 
 We plant and build by foaming seas 
 
 A city of the poor; 
 For day by day could Boston Bay 
 Their honest labour overpay. 
 
 We grant no dukedoms to the few, 
 We hold like rights, and shall ; 
 
 Equal on Sunday in the pew, 
 On Monday in the mall, 
 
 For what avail the plough or sail, 
 
 Or land or life, if freedom fail? " 
 
 —Emerson. 
 
 The "New Education" entered our country 
 through the gate-way of Boston, our " American 
 Athens," vaunted centre of culture and education. 
 It came in the form of the Kindergarten, bright, 
 sparkling, effervescent, pure as a crystal spring. 
 FroebePs dream was realised. His gospel of in- 
 fancy, with the sacredness of childhood for its 
 inspiring truth, had turned its back upon the 
 Old World, where it had been frowned upon by 
 
 29 
 
30 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 caste and by the pride of royalty and aristocracy. 
 It had come, according to Froebel's last wish, to this 
 New World democracy, where all are supposed to be 
 born free and equal. This idealised America was 
 the one and only country on earth where he believed 
 that his ideals could have opportunity to grow to 
 full fruition. It is well known how, after the Rev- 
 olution, European eyes turned longingly toward 
 this over-the-sea infant republic where, for the first 
 time in modern history, ideal freedom was being 
 enjoyed on a large scale. Surely, this was the very- 
 soil upon which to sow the seeds of a New Educa- 
 tion of which freedom for individual development 
 was the quickening power. It does credit to Froe- 
 bel's sagacity that he left his heirs inspired with 
 the duty and necessity of transplanting his beloved 
 Kindergarten to America. 
 
 It is sorrowful to relate, however, that the 
 Kindergarten did not meet with the reception in 
 cultivated Boston, which would have given joy to 
 the expectant heart of Froebel. Emerging from 
 the cold, reluctant sunshine of European royalty, 
 it entered into the colder electric light of the " cul- 
 tured aristocracy " of Boston, which had a money- 
 to-burn desire for a perfect education of its chil- 
 dren — its own particular children. Some went even 
 
"NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 31 
 
 so far as to attempt to secure the benefit of this 
 New Education in the privacy of the home nursery. 
 I was acquainted with one mother who actually 
 tried, by lavish offers of money, to induce a kinder- 
 gartner to come to her home " after hours " and 
 give " the gist of it " to her one little boy! The 
 gist of it! That very gist of it is loving comrade- 
 ship with others, and unselfish adjustment to them! 
 My well-beloved native city amply deserves her title 
 of "American Athens." She is open-minded to- 
 ward high ideals in religion, music, politics, social 
 ethics, education; but she did not do herself proud 
 when the Few Education came from over sea, con- 
 fident that her latch-string would be out to it. 
 Some have even dared to imply that the freer West 
 would have given it a more hospitable reception. 
 Be that as it may, Boston seemed to be passing 
 through a phase — a " Culture Epoch " possibly. 
 Whatever it was, she was in an attitude little favour- 
 able for the reception of a joyous, jubilant thing 
 like Eroebel's Kindergarten. The "cultured" of 
 Boston did really seem at that time, under a spell 
 of fear lest enthusiasm were a defilement to re- 
 spectability, even to religion and education. " Ee- 
 pose in all things " was the watchword. A body of 
 clergymen in and around Boston actually discussed, 
 
32 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 through the whole of one of their sessions, the ques- 
 tion "Is enthusiasm consistent with Pure Reli- 
 gion? " and I could never find out that those 
 ministers of the Gospel afterwards felt ashamed of 
 the fact. Speaking of it to a friend, in expectation 
 of sympathy with my disturbed feelings, I received 
 the simple reply, " Well, is it, do you think? " 
 
 Let the Boston " Brahmin Caste " eliminate en- 
 thusiasm from religion and from life, if so they elect, 
 but fancy childhood without enthusiasm! Childhood 
 is enthusiasm! Enthusiasm, if we may trust ac- 
 counts, was the very breath of life of the Kinder- 
 garten when the grave, philosophical Eroebel 
 left his study and became the gay, Hessian- 
 booted, beplumed centre of his happy children. 
 And enthusiasm was of course to be admitted into 
 the Boston Kindergarten; Froebel had so decreed it! 
 The time allotted to it, if I remember correctly, was 
 from 10 to 10.30 and from 11.30 to 12, always, of 
 course, being duly regulated! "H-a-v-e a 1-i-t- 
 t-l-e m-o-r-e a-n-i-m-a-t-i-o-n " reposef ully exhorted 
 the master of one of the advanced kindergartens. 
 Even he, himself, felt the mumedness of things. At 
 the blackboard a small boy, with a worried look on 
 his little face, was doing an example for the learning 
 of short division and subtraction: 
 
"NEW EDUCATION " IN NEW ENGLAND 33 
 
 "If one-sixth of a certain quartz rock is pure 
 silex and the rest is native oxide of silicon, how 
 much of each is there in 1,863,605 pounds of the 
 quartz?" 
 
 Does not every one know that the New Education 
 teaches abstract processes through concrete applica- 
 tions? So the master reminded us. Was this a 
 flower of Froebel's sowing? We longed to send the 
 little victim into the open air for a bit, to brush the 
 cobwebs from his brain, and then to tumble him 
 down somewhere, care-free, to do a lot of examples 
 in short division till he should feel proud mastery 
 of them. One thing at a time. It is as much a 
 natural method to make and sharpen your tools 
 before you go to work as it is to do it while you are 
 working. He was so very small! 
 
 It is to the credit of human nature in general, 
 and of Boston human nature in particular, that 
 these first unnatural "natural" methods did not 
 score a success. Not until the truth dawned that 
 the Kindergarten was the evangel of all childhood, 
 and that enthusiasm and free activity were the basic 
 facts of it, did the Kindergarten score any success 
 in Boston or elsewhere. Nor may we ever, indeed, 
 hope to achieve brilliant success in the culture of 
 young children, where these twin principles are not 
 
34 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 recognised as foundational, — enthusiasm and the 
 democracy of childhood. Boston, as I have inti- 
 mated, was not at that time in a mental attitude to 
 prize these qualities at their proper valuation. She 
 thereby lost a glorious opportunity. It is Quincy, 
 an adjoining town, to which must be accorded the 
 honour of having become the " New Education " 
 centre. This town it was, which caught up the - 
 beautiful Nature-methods of the "New Education," 
 and got itself, almost in a day, so influential as to 
 very nearly, if not quite, revolutionise the manner 
 of teaching throughout the country. 
 
 Mr. C. F. Adams, in Three Episodes of Massa- 
 chusetts History, has given a short but graphic ac- 
 count of the " New Departure " in Quincy. He 
 writes: 
 
 "The average graduate of the Grammar School 
 in 1870 could not read with ease, nor could he write 
 an ordinary letter in a legible hand and with words 
 spelled correctly. 
 
 " Boys were no longer compelled by way of pun- 
 ishment to clasp each other's hands across the top of 
 an overheated stove until holes were burned in their 
 clothes; nor, supplied with raw-hides, were they 
 made to whip each other, while the master stood 
 over them and himself whipped that one who 
 
"NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 35 
 
 seemed to slacken his blows. Scenes like these, 
 worthy of Dotheboys' Hall, were reminiscences of 
 the past. But there was no reason to suppose that 
 the children, when they left school, read more 
 fluently, or wrote more legibly, or computed with 
 more facility than had their fathers and mothers 
 before them. . . . The whole thing needed to be re- 
 formed." 
 
 Mr. Adams' statements are reinforced by the 
 testimony of many; in Scudder's biography of 
 Lowell we read that Mr. Wells, a noted Latin 
 teacher of the time of LowelPs boyhood, always 
 " heard a recitation with the book in his left hand 
 and a rattan in his right, and if the boy made a 
 false quantity or did not know the meaning of a 
 word, down came the rattan on his head." In A 
 New England Boyhood, Dr. Edward Everett Hale, 
 with his usual directness, writes of his school 
 years: 
 
 " There was not a public school of any lower 
 grade [than the Boston Latin School] to which my 
 father would have sent me any more than he would 
 have sent me to jail." 
 And again: 
 
 "There was constant talk of e hiding' and 
 'thrashing.' Why the Boston people tolerated 
 
36 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 such brutality ... I do not know and never 
 have known, but no change came for many years 
 after/' 
 
 It is no marvel that, even after the elimination 
 of physical brutalit} r , such a condition of things 
 should at last come up against a demand for a 
 reckoning. This reckoning was demanded in that 
 " New Departure " of 1870 in a manner not to be 
 evaded. There is but one thing to be regretted in 
 Mr. Adams' account of the " Quincy System/' 
 namely, the suppression of his own active part in 
 the movement. Mr. Adams was, indeed, chairman 
 of the Quincy School Committee at the time, and 
 it was to himself, perhaps, more than to any one 
 else that was due the dissatisfaction with the schools 
 which culminated in the " New Departure." So 
 conscious were we all of this at the time, that when 
 Mr. James H. Slade, to whom Mr. Adams refers in 
 his account, was once asked how many there were 
 on the committee, he quite expressed the public 
 feeling when he answered promptly, " 10,000, — 1 
 and four zeroes," and then, with enthusiasm, showed 
 how it was from Mr. Adams that the whole thing 
 received and retained its momentum; albeit Mr. 
 Slade himself, if the story be told by any other, was 
 no zero. He was, indeed, the one who, as secretary 
 
"NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 37 
 
 of the committee, discovered and installed Colonel 
 Parker as head of the movement. 
 
 Just what was this famous "New Departure"? 
 It was simply this, — a whole New England town, 
 rich and poor, learned and ignorant, doctors, law- 
 yers, ministers, school-teachers and parents, all 
 alike were set ablaze over the one project of rooting 
 out of schools the old method of " cramming," and 
 putting in place of it the idea of developing the 
 faculties of the pupils; of teaching by "Nature's 
 Method." In the shops, in the home, on the train, 
 in the pulpit, in society, the best-discussed subject 
 was the schools. For Colonel Parker, whom the 
 " committee of 10,000 " had set to lead and guide 
 the movement, was, as Mr. Adams naively puts it, 
 " A man possessed in a marked degree with the in- 
 describable quality of attracting public notice to 
 what he was doing." 
 
 Colonel Parker had travelled in Germany for the 
 purpose of studying the school systems there, and 
 was full to overflowing of the idea which had been 
 the inspiration and rallying cry of that long line of 
 educational reformers following Eousseau, namely, 
 the idea of teaching by "Nature's Method," as 
 opposed to rule and rote teaching; developing rather 
 than cramming. They dwelt caressingly on the 
 
do PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Latin origin of the word education, from e and 
 ducOy — a leading forth. 
 
 Here was dethroned enthusiasm come again to its 
 own! All was life, stir, noise. Not any more could 
 " Repose in all things " be the watchword. Half a 
 dozen watchwords, veritable war-cries they were, 
 sprang into use simultaneously. Chief among them 
 was "Natural Method," which is the one that has 
 survived, although at the time the movement was 
 called the " New Departure," and the " Quincy 
 System." 
 
 "Away with the grammar!" "Away with the 
 spelling-book! " " Away with all books! " " There 
 has been enough of books! And words! and com- 
 mitting to memory! " Members of Colonel Parker's 
 psychology class were objects of envy, and every one 
 was examining himself to discover if he knew how to 
 make " mental pictures," the one performance in 
 which the teachers were to perfect themselves and 
 their pupils. A whole new educational vocabulary 
 was swiftly developed. Grammar became " Lan- 
 guage Lessons." Arithmetic, "Number Lessons," 
 all oral or from the blackboard. There were but- 
 tons, and shoe-pegs, and little sticks, and flags, for 
 "busy-work"; "study" being one of the words 
 ruled out. Quincy teachers, to their credit, rallied 
 
"NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 39 
 
 enthusiastically about the Colonel's standard. One 
 of them, Mrs. Follett, who, with native instinct, 
 caught the spirit of these new ideals from the very- 
 start, might with much justice be called the true 
 author of the beginner's readers which he published 
 at that time. 
 
 Colonel Parker had full control of language phil- 
 osophic and pedagogic, and knew how to so wrap up 
 an idea in big words as to awe all into a certainty 
 that, if once got at, the idea would have a size in 
 proportion to its wording. And he kept half 
 Quincy busy trying to get at these big ideas. 
 
 Not only in Quincy but in Boston and vicinity, 
 education was as universally discussed as inter- 
 collegiate ball games are at the present time. 
 " What do you think of the Quincy System? " " Is 
 Colonel Parker a crank or a genius ? " " Will it be 
 possible that our children can be played into an 
 education?" And Mr. Adams himself, by his 
 famous Phi Beta Kappa Oration, A College 
 Fetich, delivered at Harvard University, fanned the 
 fire of discussion into a conflagration, over the 
 already mooted question as to whether colleges were 
 justified in discriminating so decidedly in favour of 
 an education which made Greek and Latin its 
 foundation. On this question party spirit ran high; 
 
40 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 it was no unusual thing to quote insistently the old 
 aristocratic English assertion that a man could not 
 be a true gentleman without a knowledge of Latin 
 and Greek. 
 
 Meanwhile the " Old School/' particularly in 
 Boston, held steadily and scornfully on its way, 
 patiently awaiting the passing of this " fad " which 
 irritated it like a bevy of gad-flies. One of the 
 Old-School men well expressed the conservative 
 sentiment when he dismissed the whole matter by 
 remarking grimly: " There's just one way to get an 
 education," and turning an imaginary crank with 
 his right hand, uttered the one word, "grind." 
 They dubbed the new movement " froth " and " persi- 
 flage "; it brings up a smile now to recall the ex- 
 pressive pet names they indulged in for Colonel 
 Parker. 
 
 While Boston became the conservative centre for 
 exhibiting the " Splendid results of our magnificent 
 school system founded by Horace Mann," Quincy, 
 eight miles away, became the Mecca of the "New 
 Education," whither flocked pilgrims from every 
 part of our country and from abroad, even to such 
 an extent as to seriously hinder the work of the 
 schools. 
 
 And did it all do good? Surely. Incalculable 
 
"NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 41 
 
 good. It did, we must admit, turn out a class or 
 two of poor spellers before it could be realised that 
 children cannot learn English, and English spelling, 
 by paddling around in their own little childish 
 vocabularies. They shortly brought back their lists 
 of hard words. Soon they began to discover, too, 
 that they could not " away with books " without 
 having the children fail to learn the infinitely use- 
 ful and pleasurable art of handling books, and them- 
 selves getting the good from them. They found out 
 a good many things when that pendulum started on 
 its backward swing. And, perhaps, no true reform 
 was ever effected without having the pendulum swing 
 fast and far at the outset. 
 
 The great result accomplished in this " New De- 
 parture " was that, in spite of the vagaries and 
 extravagances of it, perhaps even because of them, 
 as was suggested in the case of Emile, people, 
 parents as well as teachers, got thoroughly aroused 
 on the important subject of the education of their 
 children, a subject over which they had long been 
 ignominiously slumbering. They were set thinking 
 and discussing and doing, and this with a force that 
 is still in operation. 
 
 It was, of course, select minds that were impelled 
 to come up to head-quarters for real knowledge of 
 
42 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 the movement, and they carried abroad the ideas 
 and ideals of the reform, winnowed of their extrav- 
 agances, and sowed them broadcast over the coun- 
 try, where they took root and grew into quiet, 
 dignified efficacy. The rapidity with which the new 
 conceptions of Education were disseminated was 
 phenomenal. A pamphlet was published setting 
 them forth, and the whole movement was, of course, 
 discussed in the educational magazines and papers 
 and even in the dailies. Visitors and letters of 
 inquiry came from the far West and the South, as 
 well as from New England. 
 
 The immediate results of Colonel Parker's work 
 might have been much greater than they were, had 
 it not been for the usual drawback in such cases. 
 He never ceased lamenting that he could not find 
 teachers, nor train them fast enough, to intelli- 
 gently carry out his ideas. How many can, indeed, 
 intelligently seize and carry out another's ideas? 
 How many can rightly distinguish between liberty 
 and license? To rightly carry out Colonel Parker's 
 conception of school work it was necessary to do 
 both these difficult things. 
 
 In a visit to one of Colonel Parker's schools we 
 found teacher and pupils hilariously enthusiastic; 
 all was confusion and noise. We asked gently; 
 
'" NEW EDUCATION " IN NEW ENGLAND 43 
 
 " Don't you think the children would learn more if 
 they were a little more orderly? " 
 
 Alas! we had employed two firebrands, " learn" 
 and " order"! The expression on that young girl's 
 face was a transfiguration as she turned to enlighten 
 us. " Oh, you don't understand! " she explained, 
 "we used to feel like that, but Colonel Parker 
 doesn't like order! And we don't want children to 
 learn, we want to wake up their minds! " And our 
 hearts went out with a great sympathy for this 
 same Colonel Parker! 
 
 The fundamental principles of this "New De- 
 parture " were practically the same as those of the 
 Kindergarten. They got themselves expressed in 
 short phrases which came into daily use. "First 
 the known, then the unknown." " First the whole, 
 then the parts." " From the simple to the complex." 
 "From the abstract to the concrete." If these 
 principles are now but an old story, it is because they 
 were at this time so thoroughly instilled. 
 
 And what, for Parents, is the lesson of all this? 
 It may seem that this is an affair solely for teachers 
 and the educational world. But the exact point is 
 that Parents should be a part of the educational 
 world; that it should be equally interesting to par- 
 ents and to teachers, to be familiar with the genesis 
 
44 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 and exodus, the wanderings and final deliverance of 
 right educational ideals. This New Education 
 movement gave the final stroke which smote off 
 the shackles and narrow limitations imposed upon 
 Education by the Middle Ages. Henceforth, Educa- 
 tion, in this country at least, will be carried on as a 
 science, along with other sciences, in the light of 
 research in psychology and child-study. 
 
 Shall not Parents, as well as Pedagogues, crave 
 the enlightenment which ought to come from 
 sympathy with the growth of our inspiring modern 
 educational ideals? Parents, even more than 
 Pedagogues, should deeply feel the words of Plato: 
 
 " Every sprout of things born, once started 
 toward the virtue of its nature, fulfils it in prosper- 
 ous end, this being true of all plants and of animals, 
 wild or gentle; and man, as we have indeed said, is 
 gentle if he only receive right education together 
 with fortunate nature; and so becomes the divinest 
 and gentlest of things alive; but if not enough or 
 rightly trained, he becomes, of all things the earth 
 brings forth, the savagest." 
 
IV 
 
 SCHOOL CURRICULA 
 
 "He pays too high a price 
 
 For knowledge and for fame 
 Who sells his sinews to be wise, 
 
 His teeth and bones to buy a name, 
 And crawls through life a paralytic 
 To earn the praise of bard and critic." 
 
 —Emerson. 
 
 "The sovereignty of Man lieth hid in knowl- 
 edge," writes Bacon. But how much may we pay 
 that it shall not he " too high a price for knowledge 
 and for fame"? How much of ourself shall we 
 sell to he wise? And, how many of us would like 
 to live our life over again, that, hy right education, 
 we might save ourselves from " crawling through 
 life a paralytic"! How many of us feel that we 
 are small when we might have heen big; and all hy 
 reason of godlike possibilities in us undeveloped! 
 " Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment 
 which is at once best in quality and infinite in 
 quantity." Infinite in quantity! There is the 
 puzzle of it! Life is short and art is long. We 
 
 45 
 
46 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 may have but a tiny share of the feast of infinite 
 knowledge. What, then, shall we choose for our 
 little portion? And what price shall we be willing 
 to pay for it? 
 
 For centuries Pedagogues have been strenuously 
 occupying themselves with answering this question 
 for childhood and youth. In spite of childhood's 
 differing point of view, the past has never conceived 
 the idea of letting youth answer the question for 
 itself, or even help in the answering. Nor has it 
 ever been the custom to invite Parents to assist in 
 the answering of it. From adult, and from ped- 
 agogical adult, point of view, has been brought forth 
 curriculum after curriculum of school studies. 
 
 The evolution of the school curriculum, in the 
 hands of a competent historian, would be a treatise 
 instructive, saddening, even pathetically amusing. 
 Intensely interesting as they are, we may not pause 
 to examine these curricula. We must content our- 
 selves with taking a look at just one of them, Mil- 
 ton's Tractate on Education, which is, perhaps, as 
 strong a type as we have, of the maximum of 
 " Great Expectations " in education. Viewed with 
 the eyes of the pleasure-seeking, athletic youth of 
 to-day, it must seem almost like a brilliant curiosity 
 in the educational literature of the past, rather than 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 47 
 
 a seriously proposed school programme. I once 
 set a whole company roaring with laughter by read- 
 ing aloud to them these great expectations. And, 
 be it said, Milton was not by any means the first, 
 or only one, to ambition exceeding great things for 
 youth. It is far more profitable to understand 
 somewhat thoroughly one of these schemes of educa- 
 tion, than to get a misty idea of many of them. Let 
 us, therefore, pause to take a fairly comprehensive 
 look at this renowned Tractate of Milton's. He 
 sets forth at the outset that he will " point you out 
 the right path of a virtuous and noble education; 
 laborious, indeed, at the first ascent, but else so 
 smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and 
 melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of 
 Orpheus was not more charming." 
 
 " First they should begin with the necessary rules 
 of some good grammar [Greek or Latin be it under- 
 stood]. Then, some easy and delightful book of 
 education would be read to them [in Greek] whereof 
 the Greeks have store, as Cebes, Plutarch, and other 
 Socratic discourses. Also some few in Latin." In 
 this manner they are to be " enflamed with the 
 study of Learning and the admiration of Virtue." 
 They are also to be taught " the rules of Arithmetic, 
 and soon after the Elements of Geometry." " Aiter 
 
48 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 evening repasts, till bed-time, their thought will 
 best be taken up in the easy grounds of Eeligion and 
 the story of Scripture. The next step would be to 
 the Authors of Agriculture, Cato, Varro and Colu- 
 mella [all in the Latin of course], for the matter is 
 most easy, and if the language be difficult, so much 
 the better; it is not a difficulty above their years/' 
 After learning the use of the Globes and all the 
 maps with the old names and the new, they " might 
 then," reading Latin fluently by this time, "be 
 capable to read any compendious method of Natural 
 Philosophy. And at the same time they might be 
 entering into the Greek tongue, after the same 
 manner as was prescribed in the Latin; whereby the 
 difficulties of Grammar being soon overcome, all the 
 Historical Physiology of Aristotle and Theophrastus 
 are open before them." " The like access will be to 
 Vitruvius, to Seneca's Natural questions, to Mela, 
 Celsus, Pliny or Solinus " etc., etc., etc. 
 
 Afterwards come Physics, Trigonometry, and 
 from thence to Fortification, Architecture, Enginery 
 or Navigation. " The History of Meteors, minerals, 
 plants and living creatures," "as far as Anatomy," 
 follows. " The helpful experiences " of hunters, 
 fowlers, fishermen, shepherds, gardeners, apothe- 
 caries, architects, engineers, mariners and anato- 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 49 
 
 mists are to be introduced to give a " real tincture 
 of natural knowledge." 
 
 " Then also those poets which are now counted 
 most hard, will be both facile and pleasant, 
 Orpheus, Hesiod, Theocritus, Arastus, Meander, 
 Oppian, Dionysius, and, in Latin, Lucretius, 
 Manilius, and the rural part of Virgil." Enough 
 Ethics so that they may, "with some judgment, 
 contemplate upon moral good and evil," "while 
 their young and pliant affections are led through 
 all the moral works of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, 
 Plutarch, Laertius and those Locrian Kemnants." 
 Scriptures, remember, always in the evening! 
 
 " Being perfect in the knowledge of personal duty, 
 they may then begin the study of Economics. And 
 either now or before this, they may have easily 
 learnt, at any odd hour, the Italian tongue." They 
 are then to "taste some choice comedies, Greek, 
 Latin, or Italian; Those tragedies, also, that teach 
 on household matters, as Trachiniae, Alcestis and 
 the like. The next move must be to the study of 
 Politics." And here come in the Grecian Law- 
 givers, Lycurgus, Solon, Zaleucus, Charonidas, and 
 thence to all the Eoman Edicts and Tables with 
 their Justinian Theology and Church History. 
 " And ere this time the Hebrew tongue at a set hour 
 
50 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 might have been gained, that the Scriptures may be 
 now read in their own original; where it would be no 
 impossibility to add the Chaldean and the Syrian 
 Dialect. When all these employments are well con- 
 quered,, then will the choice Histories, Heroic 
 Poems, Attic Tragedies of stateliest and most regal 
 argument, with all the famous Political Orations 
 offer themselves," and it is recommended that "some 
 of them be got by memory." Then Logic; "and 
 ornate Ehetoric, taught out of the rule of Plato, 
 Aristotle, Phalereus, Cicero, Hermogenes, Lon- 
 ginus." 
 
 " Then Poetry, (in all languages), Epic, Dramatic, 
 Lyric etc.; and the art of Composition and Elo- 
 quence." 
 
 " These are the Studies wherein our noble and 
 our gentle youth ought to bestow their time in a 
 disciplinary way from twelve to one-and-twenty; 
 unless they rely more upon their ancestors dead, 
 than upon themselves living." 
 
 What think ye of that educational menu for your 
 sons, "from twelve to one-and-twenty years of 
 age"? Milton, himself, waxes enthusiastic over it: 
 " Perhaps then the other nations will be glad to visit 
 us for their breeding, or else to imitate us in their 
 own country." He realises, too, the full magnifi- 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 51 
 
 cence of his scheme and exclaims: "Only I believe 
 that this is not a bow for every man to shoot in that 
 counts himself a teacher "! 
 
 If I remember correctly, school hours in those 
 days were the same as the mechanics' working hours, 
 from six to six. And is not the picture a pathetic 
 one of poor little John Bunyan, fretting his baby 
 conscience over the sin of loving a game of hockey 
 on the village green during his short noon hour? 
 
 Legions upon legions are the curricula that have 
 preceded and succeeded that of the earnest Puritan 
 Milton. And many are as ambitious as this one. 
 They are past history, past history of pedagogic 
 ambition. Pathetically interesting they are, but we 
 must not linger with them. It is in the Present 
 that we are interested. In fertility, and in per- 
 sistence of devising and setting down long lists of 
 things for children and youth to learn, the present 
 day surpasses all preceding ages. The practice used 
 to be confined chiefly to Pedagogues; in our day it is 
 universal. Every nation, state, town, school, every 
 Parent indeed (if he be a pedagogical one), formu- 
 lates an educational theory. The curriculum re- 
 ferred to in the Introduction is unquestionably the 
 one of most interest to-day. The story of its mak- 
 ing will easily convince us of that. 
 
52 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Our National Educational Association, which we 
 are wont to regard with pride bordering on affec- 
 tion, was instituted in 1857. It has ever been 
 possible to say of it, as was said of it by one of its 
 secretaries, " that chicanery, politics and wicked- 
 ness have never held sway in this great organisa- 
 tion." The Educational Review tells us, that " The 
 National Educational Association is the largest 
 body of school-teachers in the world. Its annual 
 sessions, held during midsummer, assemble a 
 throng of thousands of men and women, all directly 
 engaged in teaching. Representatives of every 
 phase of instruction then come together, and for 
 several days, in groups and conventions, com- 
 municate, one to another, the experiences, dis- 
 coveries, and interests of the country in the field of 
 American educational effort." The object of this 
 annual meeting is to " concentrate the wisdom and 
 power of numerous minds, and distribute among all 
 the experiences of all." 
 
 Enthusiasm at these meetings has always been at 
 high pitch. "It seems to be impossible," writes 
 one of its secretaries, " for the National Educational 
 Association to reach a permanent high-water mark." 
 Each meeting is always felt to be " the best meeting 
 possible." The meeting of 1893 "was successful 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 53 
 
 beyond expectation. It was easily the best educa- 
 tional meeting ever held by that great body." It 
 was at this meeting, after thirty-five years of papers, 
 addresses, and discussions, that enthusiasm cul- 
 minated in a desire to "undertake some specific 
 pedagogical investigation." 
 
 The report goes on, "After a careful discussion 
 extending over three days, it was decided that a 
 specific study should be made to improve and sys- 
 tematise the work of the secondary schools," and a 
 Committee of Ten was elected to do the work. " To 
 carry authority, however, the specialists must be 
 selected with great care," and President Eliot and 
 William T. Harris head the list, all the others being 
 college presidents, professors, and others of high 
 standing. This Committee of Ten had " eminently 
 successful" meetings. They appointed nine con- 
 ferences of ten persons each, also selected with great 
 care, distributed all over the country, "to ad- 
 vise with them and to make suggestions." They 
 issued a list of eleven questions concerning an ideal 
 school course of study, to be answered by these ten 
 conferences. I should like to give the questions, 
 but space will not permit. By monthly reports, 
 published in the Educational Review interest in the 
 work of this Committee was kept lively for nearly 
 
54 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 a year and a half, when at last, it was announced 
 that the Committee of Ten " are about to assemble 
 at Columbia College to prepare its report/' and adds, 
 "No committee appointed in this country to deal 
 with an educational subject has ever attracted so 
 much attention as this one." In the December 
 number (1893) it is finally announced, that " When 
 the Committee of Ten adjourned sine die on the 
 11th of November, the most systematic and im- 
 portant educational investigation ever undertaken 
 in this country was brought to a conclusion." 
 
 The report was published immediately by the 
 United States Bureau of Education in a volume of 
 two hundred and fifty pages. In the next Review 
 is Mr. Harris' detailed report of it all, at the end of 
 which he exclaims, " I feel confident that we shall 
 enter upon a new era of educational study with the 
 publication of this report." 
 
 It was felt that Mr. Harris' prophecy was fulfilled. 
 We have not, however, yet arrived at the final evolv- 
 ing of that curriculum whose history we promised to 
 relate. Let us continue to the end. Even before 
 the disbanding of the Committee of Ten, the Com- 
 mittee of Fifteen was appointed which was to bring 
 forth this curriculum. 
 
 The December number of the Educational Review 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 55 
 
 of that same year reports: "No more important 
 meeting of the Department of Superintendence of 
 the National Educational Association was ever held 
 than that which concluded its sessions February 
 3d, at Boston. State and city superintendents 
 representing over thirty States of the Union, were 
 in attendance." 
 
 Undoubtedly inspired by the thrill of new life 
 which was permeating the pedagogical study of 
 Secondary Schools, this meeting appointed a Com- 
 mittee of Fifteen, with Superintendent Maxwell, of 
 New York, as chairman, to do a somewhat similar 
 work for the elementary schools. This committee 
 was divided into three sub-committees, and it was 
 the one on " Correlation of Studies," Wm. T. 
 Harris, chairman, which evolved the yellow-covered 
 pamphlet which so much wrinkled the brow of my 
 young school-teacher neighbour of the trolley-ride, 
 for whom I expressed so much sympathy in my 
 Introduction. 
 
 Again and again I have wished that Commissioner 
 Harris would write a treatise for us Parents, ex- 
 pressing up-to-date ideas and ideals, aspirations and 
 inspirations, as strongly and as finely as he has the 
 habit of doing it for Pedagogues. Some one cer- 
 tainly ought to do it- I believe I have written the 
 
56 PEDAC40GTJES AND PARENTS 
 
 long story of this curriculum, mainly for the purpose 
 of expressing my profound regret that it was 
 so purely pedagogical. It seems to me a matter of 
 reproach that enthusiastic meetings of the highest 
 educators in the land should be held to consult upon 
 the well-being of childhood; that committees should 
 be appointed to decide upon what children shall 
 learn and how they shall learn it, — to regulate, in a 
 word, the whole educational life of children, from 
 the nursery to college, and that it should all be 
 done without a single representative from the great 
 body of the parents of those children. Not a single 
 voice from the Home, that realm of childhood's free 
 activities, ever seems to have entered those councils 
 and round-table conferences! Every note proceeded 
 from the schoolroom! The parents of the country 
 were all unconscious, indeed, of the educational 
 revival which was going on in behalf of their chil- 
 dren. But can the highest ideals of child-culture 
 possibly be attained without the complementary 
 wisdom of school and home? of Pedagogue and 
 Parent? I cannot think so. 
 
 Let us examine the curriculum given on the op- 
 posite page, which is the result of this high-water- 
 mark of pedagogical enthusiasm. The five names 
 subscribed to it are a guarantee of its being a not- 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 
 
 57 
 
 Branches 
 
 Ut 
 year 
 
 2d 
 year 
 
 3d 
 year 
 
 4th 
 year 
 
 5th 
 year 
 
 6th 
 
 year 
 
 7th 
 year 
 
 8th 
 year 
 
 Reading . . . 
 
 10 lessons 
 a week 
 
 5 lessons a week 
 
 Writing . . . 
 
 10 lessons 
 a week 
 
 5 lessons 
 a week 
 
 3 lessons 
 a week 
 
 
 Spelling Lists . 
 
 
 
 
 4 lessons a week 
 
 
 
 English Grammar 
 
 Oral, with composition lessons 
 
 5 lessons a week 
 with text-book 
 
 
 Latin .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 les- 
 sons 
 
 Arithmetic . . 
 
 Oral, 60 min- 
 utes a week 
 
 5 lessons a week with 
 text- book 
 
 
 
 Algebra . . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 lessons 
 a week 
 
 Geography . . 
 
 Oral, 60 minutes 
 a week 
 
 *5 lessons a week with 
 text-book 
 
 3 lessons 
 a week 
 
 Natural Science 
 +Hygiene 
 
 Sixty minutes a week 
 
 U. S. History . 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 5 lessons 
 a week 
 
 
 U. S. Constitut'n 
 
 
 
 
 
 | 
 
 
 
 *5 
 les. 
 
 General History 
 
 Oral, sixty minutes a week 
 
 Physical Culture 
 
 Sixty minutes a week 
 
 Vocal Music 
 
 Sixty minutes a week divided into four lessons 
 
 Drawing . . . 
 
 1 
 
 
 Sixty minutes a week 
 
 
 Manual Training 
 
 or Sewing+ 
 
 Cookery 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 One-half day 
 each 
 
 No. of Lessons 
 
 20+7 
 daily 
 exer. 
 
 20+7 
 daily 
 exer. 
 
 20+5 1 24+5 
 daily daily 
 exer. | exer. 
 
 [27+5 
 dail.y 
 exer. 
 
 27+5 
 daily 
 exer. 
 
 [23+6 
 daily 
 exer. 
 
 23+6 
 daily 
 exer. 
 
 Total Hours of 
 Recitations 
 
 12 
 
 12 
 
 im 
 
 13 
 
 16^ 
 
 16M 
 
 17M 
 
 17% 
 
 Length of Recita- 
 tions 
 
 15 
 min. 
 
 15 
 min. 
 
 25 
 
 min. 
 
 25 
 min. 
 
 30 
 min. 
 
 30 
 min. 
 
 * Begins in second half year. 
 
58 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 to-be-questioned illumination of the up-to-date 
 pedagogical spirit and current of thought, especially 
 if the ninety pages of comment be taken along with 
 it. To the eyes of Pedagogues it must, I am sure, 
 appear to be a soul-satisfying feast. If little chil- 
 dren must enter, all upon the same hard-and-fast, 
 every-hour-of-the-day-prescribed, eight-year curric- 
 ulum of studies, almost wholly exclusive of manual 
 training, this one does surely seem a most wisely 
 thought out and arranged one. Indeed, to the un- 
 wary, visiting the best ordered of our curriculum- 
 dominated schools, it is quite as Mr. Henderson 
 says: 
 
 " The intention is so good, the teachers are so 
 devoted, the place is so clean, the children are so 
 clever and so lovable, that the effect is to create the 
 impression that we have attained what we have not 
 attained." 
 
 But thoughtful parents, if they once begin seriously 
 to reflect, must gasp at the presumption which 
 relentlessly applies the same course of studies 
 exactly alike, to all children for eight years. Every 
 lesson the same, and of the same length, for each! 
 Each encouraged to keep abreast in all things; to 
 keep " full grade " in some class. The expansive, 
 volatile, totally differing little creatures, must sup- 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 59 
 
 press themselves along the lines of their natural 
 bent, in order to slow down to the pace of the things 
 they "hate" and can't do well, — oftenest arith- 
 metic. Or they must struggle along with inferior, 
 half-done work, in some directions, in order to pull 
 themselves up to the same grade in their poor as in 
 their best studies. Alas! what would you have? 
 Our schools must be " graded "! 
 
 We had occasion at one time to have a hand in 
 placing a child at school, who had removed from one 
 city to another. She had, by some unavoidable 
 irregularities, outstripped the average twelve-year- 
 old in some things, but had fallen far behind what 
 is ordinarily accomplished, or rather, attempted to 
 be accomplished, in arithmetic at that age. Our 
 school visits in her behalf were most depressing. 
 We came continually up against two most dismaying 
 facts; the absolute necessity which every teacher 
 felt to get the child, with the utmost promptness, 
 fitted to some " grade," to get her brought up to the 
 same stage in all her lessons. The second fact was 
 the universality with which arithmetic was looked 
 upon as the grade-regulator. Our experience was 
 nearly the same everywhere. The first question 
 always asked was, how far she had gone in arith- 
 metic. Moreover, in attempting to determine what 
 
60 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 grade she might enter, the chief concern, was not of 
 her general intelligence and maturity, but whether 
 she was " grounded in what the class had previously 
 gone over." One of the principals of an endowed 
 semi-public school expressed the general verdict 
 quite explicitly. After hearing our story he said 
 the case seemed very simple. 
 
 " If," said he, " she is, as you say, so far advanced 
 in some things, she can afford to drop those now 
 and give attention to those in which she is deficient. 
 She could enter such a grade conditionally, take 
 arithmetic with her own class and the class below, 
 and by the end of the year she could, perhaps, enter 
 the next class full grade." 
 
 I do not know what other thing that principal 
 could easily have done and maintained his " system." 
 But see what it meant to that earnest, enthusiastic 
 little idealist; the abandonment of all lines in which 
 she was so far advanced that the pleasures of 
 achievement were beginning to loom up delightfully 
 in the near future. Having cultivated the tree till 
 the fruit had grown, the fruit was now to be ruth- 
 lessly snatched from her. In this case, visions 
 splendid were to be ruthlessly brushed aside to gain 
 two or three periods at school, with their attendant 
 home-work, for the hated arithmetic! — which would, 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 61 
 
 very likely, if left to itself, grow a sufficient harvest 
 to get through the world on. And what was to be 
 gained by all this self-denial? A conventional 
 knowledge of true and bank discount, and square 
 root, and the like, and, more than all, the sentiment 
 of being " Full Grade." 
 
 These "visions splendid," the personally chosen 
 and loved ambitions of the child-heart, are the very 
 mainsprings and inspiration of fine and fruitful 
 results. The setting them aside for pursuits in 
 which the student is unhappy or even indifferent, is 
 a prominent element in the " wrecking of so many 
 fine souls by mal-education." But more of this else- 
 where. 
 
 Of the schools which we visited, but one single 
 principal expressed no concern about examining the 
 child. She made a proposition to her, which could 
 have originated in the mind of no person not an 
 educational genius, namely: that the child herself 
 should visit about among the rooms for a day or two, 
 and then try in any grade where she thought she 
 could do and enjoy the work. This woman's lib- 
 erality is the one bright spot in our remembrance of 
 that discouraging time. It may be said that the 
 case of this child was a special, not a typical one. 
 The principal above mentioned had not seemed 
 
62 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 troubled by that' consideration. She was the only 
 one of them all who seemed to feel, as a matter of 
 course, what Professor Search has so well expressed: 
 
 " The school which has difficulty in placing chil- 
 dren received from other schools, or who have been 
 out of school for a time, is not simply out of joint 
 with other schools, but is, itself, out of joint with 
 Nature." 
 
 He repeats the thought with emphasis in another 
 place: 
 
 "If the child from necessity enters school late, 
 or if he must be absent a day or a week or a month 
 or a term, his loss should never be disproportionate. 
 He has a right to expect that the school shall fit 
 his individual needs, associate him with those who can 
 help him most, and permit him to advance as 
 naturally as grow the trees of the forest. There 
 should be no time element. He should be per- 
 mitted to accomplish as he may be individually 
 capable." 
 
 No normal child should be special in the schools. 
 Perhaps it would be better to say, that every child 
 should be special. All children mature more 
 rapidly in some things than in others. The schools 
 should be so flexibly adapted to that fact that every 
 child may have individual benefit from it. Should 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 63 
 
 it be necessary, I ask you, that a child be forced to 
 proceed rapidly in arithmetic in order that he may 
 be allowed to stride at his own swift pace in history, 
 or literature, art, or science? I have known of 
 several pupils who have been kept back for a whole 
 term, or year, in all their studies on account of 
 deficiency in arithmetic. It is cruel and most dis- 
 heartening to deprive a child of the glory of his own 
 particular talents because Nature has not bestowed 
 all the others on him in equal brilliancy. 
 
 I entreat you, my fellow-parents, to go forth and 
 visit your children's schools. Force the inclination, 
 if it is not in you. Make the time, if you have it 
 not. If you will but do that, observantly, reflec- 
 tively, looking for the thing your child is doing 
 and becoming, rather than for the quantity of book- 
 learning he is getting, you will feel the full 
 force of this chapter. You will feel the pedagogic 
 one-sidedness of the atmosphere your children 
 breathe during the most impressionable five or six 
 hours a day of the most impressionable five or six 
 years of their life. The first, most all-pervading ele- 
 ment you will notice, is this very insistence upon 
 conformity, or, as President Eliot calls it, "Uni- 
 formity," and then unqualifiedly terms it, the 
 " curse of our schools." 
 
64 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 I quote Professor Search once more: 
 
 "Before the teacher, frequently of limited hori- 
 zon and questionable motive, there gather in the 
 school fifty children. Side by side in the same 
 school sit the children of wealth and of poverty, of 
 native and of foreign descent, the well-fed and the 
 meagrely nourished, the warmly clad and the 
 scantily protected from the storm, the refreshed by 
 adequate sleep in rooms of pure air, and those worn 
 from meagre hours of rest in a crowded, unventi- 
 lated room, the child of luxury and the one of heavy 
 responsibilities, the spoiled by indulgent parents 
 and the independent through forced self-reliance, 
 the robust in physical health and the incapacitated 
 by past sicknesses and injuries, the well-taught and 
 the ill-taught, the child of virtue and the one whose 
 whole life is a moral struggle, the child of encour- 
 agement and ambition, and the one heart-sick and 
 of little expectancy. . . . How can any system of 
 uniformity answer the responsibility which it 
 assumes?" 
 
 Is not this insatiate desire for uniformity most 
 especially pedagogic, and not in the least parental? 
 The conviction most common to parents is, that 
 though they had a dozen children, no two would be 
 alike, or do the same things, or do them in the same 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 65 
 
 way. Parents take delight in this variety, seeking 
 always to accentuate it. The more thoughtful and 
 advanced educators are themselves conscious of this 
 " curse " of uniformity in the schools. Mr. George 
 B. Martin, a former supervisor of the Boston schools, 
 in an address before the Massachusetts Teachers' As- 
 sociation, once drew forcible attention to it. He puts 
 it as the result of the systematising of education. It 
 goes without saying that Mr. Martin exults in the 
 immense progress education -has made in the last 
 half century, but he has the true exultation of wis- 
 dom, which can see the dangers ahead and the 
 progress still necessary to make. He says earnestly: 
 
 " The development of the city education system has 
 closely parallelled the development of the factory 
 system. The elements of the two have been the 
 same, specialisation of function, with regular grada- 
 tion of authority and responsibility. Once one 
 man made a whole shoe, now thirty men make it, 
 but one man directs the thirty. Once one man 
 schooled a boy from primer to college, now twenty 
 men and women work on him, but one man directs 
 the twenty. 
 
 " The system is not wholly good in making shoes. 
 It tends to make of the workmen mere adjuncts of 
 the machines they use. 
 
66 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 " It has not been an unmixed good in educating 
 children. The essential element of a system is uni- 
 formity of action of corresponding parts. As in an 
 army, so in a factory, irregularity, eccentricity, or 
 individuality is a blemish. So it has been regarded 
 in modern systematic schoolkeeping. One of the 
 earliest and one of the most persistent results of the 
 grading of schools under superintendents has been 
 uniformity of organisation, uniformity of discipline, 
 uniformity of instruction, and so far as possible uni- 
 formity in attainment in knowledge and skill. 
 
 "Under the old system no two shoes were alike, 
 though made by one man. Under the new system 
 all shoes of a kind are alike, though made by many 
 men. 
 
 " Under the old systemless method of educating no 
 two children came out alike from the same teacher's 
 hands, nor were they expected to. Under the new 
 system many salt tears have been shed because all 
 children have not come out alike from the hands of 
 all the teachers in a great system. 
 
 " It will be the work of the twentieth century to 
 avoid the evils while reaping the benefits of or- 
 ganised industry and organised education." 
 
 Do we want machine-made men and women? 
 We do not. We want individualised human beings; 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 67 
 
 men and women with robust conscience-led person- 
 alities. Our schools have emerged from the con- 
 fusion and chaos, inefficiency and illiteracy, of the 
 first half of the century just closed. Horace 
 Mann's noble work was the first revolt. 
 
 When, after his time, things swung back into in- 
 difference and deadness, the " New Education/' and 
 the " Quincy System," wrought for us almost a 
 revolution. The force of that great forward move- 
 ment is not yet spent; it has been applied, during 
 the last decade or more, of years, to the organising 
 and systematising of the schools. We have now as 
 a result, a beautiful and imposing "system," the 
 harmony of whose working is being every day more 
 and more felt all along the line, from kindergarten 
 to college. It should be the especial mission of the 
 next decade to see to it that the evils are avoided 
 while we reap the benefits, of this magnificent or- 
 ganisation. The evils are in full working force in 
 the present curriculum-crazy age, and it does seem 
 preeminently the function of the Parent rather 
 than of the Pedagogue, to lead in this matter of 
 rescuing the children from "machine work." I 
 read of one of the Swiss cantons, I think, but it will 
 fit many localities, that the supervisor had on the 
 wall of his office a chart showing what was going 
 
68 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 on during every hour under his charge. He exulted 
 over the fact that, by means of this chart and his 
 list of pupils, he could tell you at any specified 
 moment what every individual child in his juris- 
 diction was about. The future artist, physician, 
 engineer, stagedriver, college professor, were all at 
 work upon exactly the same tasks, — each according 
 to his " grade/' A fine bit of machinery, well-oiled 
 and in good running order! 
 
 It is the same in many, perhaps in most, of 
 what are called our best schools. One of the really 
 best schools in one of our large cities, has the 
 following in its prospectus; it seems like a chal- 
 lenge: 
 
 " Diplomas — The diploma of the school is awarded 
 to all those who have completed satisfactorily the 
 entire course. Pupils will be excused from no part 
 of it on account of sickness, accident, lack of 
 earnestness, or inability. This applies to the 
 manual and the physical, as well as to the academic 
 work." 
 
 Enterprising, surely! But does it not sound re- 
 lentless! Are enterprise and relentlessness what 
 are required in dealing with our children in educa- 
 tion, at the sensitive pubescent age? Or at any 
 other age? We may not fear that the hotly-earnest 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA b9 
 
 educators of this day will not furnish power to keep 
 the educational express trains running at full speed 
 and on schedule time, but, as I think I have else- 
 where said, it is the absolute duty of Parents to tend 
 the brakes. 
 
 We Parents should not be terrified by the school- 
 master's phrase, " Full Grade "; phrase beloved by 
 school magnates, but of bodeful import to child- 
 hood! To be "Full Grade" means, as far as I 
 have been able to ascertain, to have been brought 
 forward at an equal pace in a certain number of 
 selected studies. As if that could rightly be! As 
 if it should be, for any human being, child or adult! 
 "As much algebra as would be acquired by three 
 years of five periods per week! " By which child, 
 pray? By my mathematical youngster, or your 
 literary or artistic one? Is knowledge, then, so 
 measurable? 
 
 Do we, one wonders, need to be slaves to hard- 
 and-fast, set-down-in-black-and-white courses of 
 study, presenting the menu of the feasts for years 
 ahead, with no hope of pleasant surprises in the 
 fare? These theory-bound curricula are chafing to 
 liberal-minded teachers, and are always needing 
 amendments and changes in order to keep them 
 satisfied, David Salmon, Principal of a Welsh 
 
70 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 training-school, in visiting our schools, is quoted as 
 saying: 
 
 " In every town I asked for the current course of 
 study, but was almost invariably told that it was 
 under revision. Before visiting one Normal School 
 I was warned not to ask for it because there the 
 courses grew obsolete faster than they could be 
 printed." 
 
 We smile at Dr. Edward Everett Hale's com- 
 placency at having escaped all such machinery: 
 
 " I have always been glad," he exults, " that I was 
 sent where I was — to a school without any plan or 
 machinery, like Miss Whitney's, very much on the 
 go-as-you-please principle, and where no strain was 
 put upon the pupil." 
 
 We all know well enough that that sort of " go- 
 as-you-please " school could not answer our needs 
 to-day with our multitudes of school-children. 
 Order is Heaven's first law. All we are asking for 
 is that a law and order shall be evolved which shall 
 fit the needs of an individual, rather than a regimen- 
 tal, pace; and that the mad drive of each to keep 
 pace with all in every study shall be done away with. 
 
 Let us work and pray then, for a near day when 
 rigid curricula and their accompanying "rush," 
 shall be eliminated from the formative years of 
 
SCHOOL CURRICULA 71 
 
 children's lives; for a day in which there will be no 
 temptation to define education as "the grave of a 
 great mind/' 
 
 Our school systems are guided and controlled by 
 large-minded, earnest, conscientious Pedagogues; 
 but affectionate and cordial as are our sentiments 
 toward them, we cannot help feeling that they 
 " perfect their systems " too much in the study, and 
 in councils assembled, and that hence results a 
 strong tendency to go about things theory end first. 
 We are right in being proud of that pet institution, 
 our Public Schools, but while we take some glory to 
 ourselves for the way in which we " handle the great 
 multitudes of children," we ought not to pass by on 
 the other side at sight of a single little child, suf- 
 fering soul-starvation. Members of the vanguard 
 of education are, indeed, beginning everywhere to 
 search after first-hand knowledge of childhood and 
 childhood's ways, which can be gotten only by 
 actual contact with individual children in their free 
 activities. Now Parents have that contact, daily 
 and continuously; they are the natural great " other 
 half" in the educational world, which, like the 
 western continent, has been a long time in getting 
 itself discovered. Let us now get ourselves dis- 
 covered and forthwith assimilate ourselves with the 
 
72 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 pedagogical half to form a complete educational 
 world. Such a union of the two kinds of wisdom, 
 the theoretic and the practical, or, perhaps more 
 courteously designated, the scholastic and parental, 
 would do much to hasten the time when the educa- 
 tional atmosphere shall not be of a sort to bring 
 forth books with such titles as The Curse of 
 Education, The Lost Art of Reading, The Generation 
 of Artificial Stupidity in the Schools, and the like. 
 The time is surely near at hand when Parents will 
 not, with so easy conscience, relegate the whole educa- 
 tional well-being of their children to Pedagogues, 
 ' even to faithful ones, but will exercise jealous super- 
 vision and cooperation, in the entire career of those 
 whom Nature has confided to their care. 
 
POINTS OF VIEW 
 
 " All the world I saw or knew 
 Seemed a complex Chinese toy- 
 Fashioned for a barefoot boy." 
 
 — Whittier. 
 
 " We are but children of a larger growth." The 
 converse, however, is not so true. It is not sound 
 theory to regard children, except in body, as men 
 and women of a lesser growth. Children are so 
 unlike us in the points of view from which they 
 look at things, as to be almost of a different species. 
 They do see the things which we see, but not as 
 we see them. So true is this, that, under the 
 guidance of our different-seeing eyes, they are much 
 of the time travelling blindly, even as an obedient 
 horse unquestioningly follows the guidance of his 
 master. 
 
 " Take our dogs and ourselves," writes Professor 
 James, " how insensible each of us to all that makes 
 life significant to the other! We to the rapture 
 of bones under hedges, . . . they to the delights of 
 Literature and Art! " 
 
 73 
 
74 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 We are wise enough to train our dog from his own 
 point of view. But alas: the human child, who loves 
 so well to blaze his own way through the enchanting 
 labyrinths of this big world in which he finds himself, 
 must follow, too unswervingly, in the paths which 
 have long ago been made for him, by minds far, far 
 away from his habits of thinking and feeling and 
 doing. 
 
 " I hafter do this and I haf ter do that and I keep 
 a-haftering and a-haftering all the time," wailed a 
 small six-year-old in a letter to a friend. He had 
 newly removed to the city, and he longed to be let 
 alone and to acquaint himself in his own wise, re- 
 flective, childish way, with the throng of new people 
 and wonders about him. 
 
 Fortunately, a child will not, for he cannot, come 
 up to our height, and view things from our larger 
 horizon. He is thus in a measure self-protected. 
 We may nag and bother and delay him, even to the 
 point of preventing his full development, as we 
 oftenest do, but, in spite of us, he remains for his 
 allotted time, sui generis, a child. 
 
 How widely different a child's point of view is 
 from ours, will be a constant surprise to us, but will 
 delight and refresh us, if we keep ourselves in 
 sympathetic attitude toward him, ever ready to 
 
POINTS OP VIEW 75 
 
 slip with him into his tiny but enchanting horizon. 
 So simple is the vision of childhood! So clear and 
 confiding, so uncompromisingly direct! Childhood 
 has truly, what Arlo Bates calls, "A gifted sim- 
 plicity of vision." 
 
 There had been a slight fire on our street. The 
 next day as we passed the place we asked, of a batch 
 of children, hanging about, if they knew who lived 
 there. 
 
 "I do!" exclaimed a little fellow,, running 
 up eagerly. " A little boy does; and he had 
 to go away to his uncle's till his house gets 
 fixed! " 
 
 Surely! Of what account were the details of the 
 little boy's attendant suite of parents and parapher- 
 nalia? Not in the least worth mentioning! A lit- 
 tle boy had lived there, had been burned out, and 
 had been obliged to go away! That was the simple 
 essential fact! 
 
 John Locke tells of being out to dinner one day 
 where he observed the most intent expression of 
 interest on the face of the small son of the house, as 
 Alexander the Great was being discussed. The 
 company were commenting on the oft-repeated tale 
 of the magnanimity and loyalty of Alexander, in 
 swallowing^ potion from the hand of his friend and 
 
76 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 physician, even while putting into that friend's 
 hand an anonymous letter, informing him that his 
 physician was 'seeking an opportunity to poison him. 
 After the dinner was over, Locke took the little 
 fellow aside, desirous of learning the aspect in which 
 the child viewed the matter, to be in so great a 
 reverence of Alexander as he evidently was. He 
 discovered that the child's admiration turned wholly 
 on the point of Alexander's having been so brave 
 and so noble as to be able to swallow at once a dose 
 of nasty medicine! He, himself, had been ill the 
 week before, and he knew how well-nigh impossible 
 a feat it was! 
 
 Teachers will be able to recall many instances of 
 childhood's directness of vision, and Parents who 
 read this chapter can, I am sure, duplicate these by 
 scores. 
 
 The following conversation actually took place 
 between myself and one of our children. Of 
 my own part in it, it is needless to say that I feel 
 heartily ashamed — as, indeed, I am too apt to feel 
 in conversation with children. We were on our 
 way down town of a Sunday at just the hour when 
 people were going home from the different churches. 
 We met a friend and I asked him if church was out, 
 meaning of course our own church. 
 
POINTS OF VIEW 77 
 
 The Boy. Did he say church was out? 
 
 I. Yes. 
 
 The Boy. Well, what's it out of? 
 
 I. Why, he just meant that it was over. 
 
 The Boy. Over? Over what? 
 
 I. There! There! The church is through; that 
 is all. 
 
 The Boy. Through! I don't see what it's 
 through. 
 
 I. Why, stop teasing, child; he just meant that 
 church is all done. 
 
 Probably I had spoken a little impatiently, for the 
 Boy subsided. We walked along quietly for a short 
 time, and I had dismissed the incident from my 
 mind, when suddenly he piped up plaintively: 
 
 " Well, who did it ? I thought it was all done a 
 long time ago." 
 
 The poor child had never thought of the word 
 church as meaning anything but 'the edifice; and 
 now I was all humiliation for my stupidity, and ad- 
 miration for his persistence in getting set straight. 
 
 This unswerving directness has always been to me 
 a most fascinating attribute of childhood. A four- 
 year-old friend of mine had been to a party When 
 she got home her father asked her, " Who was the 
 prettiest child there? " " Marguerite Davis was," 
 
78 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 she replied. "And who was the smartest? " contin- 
 ued the foolish father. "I was," she promptly an- 
 swered. No conceit in that; not a bit! The simple 
 statement of facts in answer to questions, as she had 
 been taught to give them. 
 
 "We need never expect children to see things as we 
 see them. They will never do it. Recall how 
 wrong (?) a child's sense of proportion is by our 
 reckoning. He reckons with his own little self as 
 a standard of size. I once visited a town in Ver- 
 mont where I had lived for a couple of years when a 
 small child. I remembered the exciting times we 
 children used to have climbing up and scrambling 
 down a big, high, long, hill, on our way to and from 
 school, and I expressed a wish to my host to revisit 
 the " little red school-house." But he could not 
 locate it. "It must be such and such a school- 
 house," he said at last, "but there is no hill near 
 it." However, we drove over to it. I recognised 
 the place, but where was our " big, high, long, hill " ? 
 It was a gentle, not-to-be-noticed slope! Verily, a 
 child's eyes are not as a man's eyes! It used to be 
 huge and frightful, with its army of geese at the top 
 ready to waylay you and gobble you up! 
 
 How this difference in point of view takes the 
 naturalness out of many of our " Natural Methods," 
 
POINTS OF VIEW 79 
 
 is sometimes pathetic, sometimes amusing. There 
 was once upon a time an enthusiastic vender of 
 "Natural-Method" maps who appeared in our 
 neighbourhood. He had a beguiling pictorial map of 
 the United States, which showed at sight, the 
 various conditions of things all over our country. 
 It was a very speaking map. There were pictures 
 of mines, of ship-building yards, of factories, all 
 located in their appropriate states. Scarce one of 
 us in the vicinity but bought that map! We spread 
 ours out triumphantly before our little girl and 
 awaited comments. She looked at it long and 
 speculatively. Calculation was in her eye as it 
 travelled back and forth between Mexico and the 
 picture of Brigham Young, with his family of 
 wives and children, standing up in a row in Utah to 
 represent Mormonism. She drew a sigh of content- 
 ment and remarked, " Well, I'm glad I've got a map, 
 at last, big enough to show the people on it. It 
 would take just about six men, taking hold of hands, 
 to reach across Mexico/' 
 
 But this incident belongs in the "Natural 
 Method " chapter, in dealing with which, our ability 
 to go over to childhood's point of view will be put 
 to severe test, for no method is a natural one which 
 does not do that. 
 
80 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Do you never dream away valuable time looking 
 back and viewing things from the centre of your 
 long-ago child horizon? I smile again and again as 
 I recall my first lesson in History. I had 
 " skipped " the class which " began " History. I 
 was looking forward with eager importance to the 
 great event of adding this very dignified study to 
 my already imposing list. " Worcester's Universal 
 History/' — my contemporaries will remember it, — 
 was put into my hands, and I was directed to learn a 
 page of it. 
 
 "In 1770 Lord North was appointed Prime 
 Minister of England and all the duties were re- 
 pealed except a tax of three pence a pound upon 
 tea." 
 
 It remains with me to this day, as do so many 
 things which I memorised literally. First, I 
 reverently looked the book through. A history of 
 the whole world! I reflected, that if I should but 
 commit that book to memory entire, I should know 
 all history, and I then and there resolved to do it. 
 History, at least, should be settled once and forever 
 for me. But it wouldn't do to fail in my first 
 lesson, so, with elbows on desk and chin in hands, 
 I got me down to work. " In 1770." How pretty 
 those twin 7's looked! That was easy to remember. 
 
JOINTS Otf VIEW 81 
 
 "Lord North." Were there also Lords South and 
 East and West? Probably. And what was a 
 Lord, anyway? I thought there was but one Lord, 
 the one who made Heaven and Earth. No matter, 
 I had better go ahead and learn it. "Was ap- 
 pointed Prime Minister." Deeper and deeper. Of 
 course I knew what a minister was; I saw ours 
 every Sunday, but I didn't know whether he was a 
 prime one or not. " Of England/' Ah, now I 
 was on familiar ground. I knew all about Eng- 
 land; it was that little red country up in the top 
 left-hand corner of the map, with Scotland for a 
 head and Wales in its lap, and Ireland close by. 
 " And all the duties were repealed." Oh, dear! Of 
 course I knew what duties were; I had had that 
 dinned into me often enough, but what did "re- 
 pealing " them mean? And by the time I had got 
 to that "tax of three pence upon tea," I knew I 
 was utterly beyond all possibility of comprehend- 
 ing things. So I concluded that the best thing 
 I could do was to hurry up and learn the whole 
 thing as fast as I could; which was an exceedingly 
 wise decision, and, which, half an hour later, 
 brought sweet solace in the form of praise for learn- 
 ing my lesson so well! 
 
 What better was to be expected of me with 
 
82 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 the judgment of but twelve years at my service? 
 Judgment is the result of experience, and this was 
 my very first experience in history! I think it was 
 Jean Paul who declared that he "would as soon 
 require a child to have five feet in height as to have 
 judgment and proportion at the age of ten." 
 Much so-called naughtiness is simply inability to 
 judge of what adults call right and wrong. It is 
 not wrong in itself, for little boys to dig caves and 
 live romantic, fancy-free lives in them, — provided 
 they know how and when and where to do it, to fit 
 the convenience of their elders. But how are the 
 little things to judge of all that? If they are left 
 to themselves, and they judge wrongly of the how 
 and the where and the when, or don't think to judge 
 at all, but just follow play instinct and go ahead, 
 should they then be punished? Or should they be 
 lovingly taught? I give you the story of it and 
 you shall judge. I quote it from Jane Addams' 
 most instructive book, Democracy and Social 
 Ethics. 
 
 " Three boys, aged seven, nine, and ten, were once 
 brought into a neighbouring police station under the 
 charge of pilfering and destroying property. They 
 had dug a cave under a railroad viaduct in which 
 they had spent many days and nights of the summer 
 
POINTS OF VIEW 83 
 
 vacation. They had i swiped ' potatoes and other 
 vegetables from hucksters' carts which they had 
 cooked in true brigand fashion; they had decorated 
 the interior of the excavation with stolen junk, 
 representing swords and firearms to their romantic 
 imaginations. The father of the ring-leader was a 
 janitor, living in a building five miles away in a 
 prosperous portion of the city. The landlord did 
 not want an active boy in the building, and his 
 mother was dead. The janitor paid for the boy's 
 board and lodging to a needy woman living near the 
 viaduct. She conscientiously gave him his break- 
 fast and supper and left something in the house for 
 his dinner every morning when she went to work in 
 a neighbouring factory; but she was too tired at 
 night, to challenge his statement that he would 
 rather sleep outdoors in summer, or to investigate 
 what he did during the day. In the mean time the 
 three boys lived in a world of their own, made up 
 from the reading of adventurous stories and their 
 vivid imaginations, steadily pilfering more and more 
 as the days went by, and actually imperilling the 
 safety of the traffic passing over the street on the 
 top of the viaduct. In spite of vigorous exertions 
 on their behalf, one of the boys was sent to the 
 Beform School, comforting himself with the con- 
 
84 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 elusive remark, 'Well, we had fun, anyway, and 
 maybe they will let us dig a cave at the school. It 
 is in the country, where we can't hurt anything.' " 
 
 Poor little fellows! They ought, of course, to 
 have been chidden; no, on second thought, remem- 
 bering that they had never been taught, I am not 
 so sure of that. I think their doings should have 
 been ignored; that they should simply have been 
 taken care of. Who could help inwardly admiring 
 their skill, and their good taste in not sitting pas- 
 sively on the filthy door-steps of their inhospitable 
 " homes " and idling away their time ? It was so 
 much more manly to provide themselves a place to 
 live in! These children should have been put 
 where they could have passed through their cave- 
 dwelling epoch under sympathy and guidance. 
 Was it not, I ask, a crime to send that ten-year-old 
 boy to a Eeform School? A stain left for life on 
 his good name! He did not need reform! He 
 needed opportunity! Shame upon civilisation! 
 How bewildered children must become when we deal 
 with them like that! These boys were regarding 
 things directly from their own point of view; they 
 were instinctively following out the law of self- 
 interest. So mature an element as judgment did 
 not even enter in! "Childhood," says Kousseau, 
 
POINTS OF VIEW 85 
 
 " has ways of thinking and feeling peculiar to itself; 
 nothing is more absurd than to wish to substitute 
 ours in its place." Nothing is more absurd than to 
 think that we can. 
 
 It is on account of his limited horizon, beyond 
 which a child can only dream, that he cannot be 
 much influenced by promises of distant rewards. 
 His life is lived almost strictly in the present. " A 
 bird in the hand is worth twa' fleein' by! " and the 
 more so, that the limited vision does not even see 
 the " twa' fleein' by/' Nor would we wish it other- 
 wise. Who would like free-hearted, spontaneous 
 childhood weighted with the care which we are 
 forced to carry? It is right for childhood, even as 
 it is disgrace for maturity, to 
 
 ' ' Take the cash and let the credit go 
 Nor heed the rumbling of a distant drum." 
 
 "Woe to him who deprives childhood of its birth- 
 right, which is opportunity to unfold and develop it- 
 self in the midst of freedom and love and beauty. 
 It is not because children are " little animals," that 
 they are so intent upon present and material things. 
 The physical part must develop first. It is Nature 
 taking care of her own; she is right in not trusting 
 us; we are not yet to be trusted. We have not yet 
 
86 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 educated ourselves to follow the call of the good 
 Froebel, " Come, let us live with our children." It 
 it easier, and it takes less wisdom, to call our 
 children to come and live with us; and we think it 
 amounts to the same thing. 
 
 It is, however, fixed decisively, that children can- 
 not come up and see things from our higher point of 
 view. If we are wise, we may and must come down 
 to theirs. Children see things in which they them- 
 selves are interested, and they will with difficulty 
 be made to see much of anything else. Moreover, 
 each one sees things in his own way and will with 
 difficulty be made to see it in any other way. Let 
 us, then, hold ourselves in responsive, sympathetic 
 attitude in our communings with children, and 
 slowly and leisurely invite confidence. We shall 
 then get glimpses into a most refreshing child- 
 world; shall behold things again with the eyes which 
 used to be ours so long ago. We shall become little 
 children again, perhaps, and so be able to enter into 
 the kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 One of our children expressed himself earlier and 
 more fully than the others, and his little speeches 
 were veritable revealings of baby points of view. 
 Out on the water in a row-boat at fifteen months of 
 age, he waved his wee hand to take in the scene and 
 
POINTS OF VIEW 87 
 
 said in awe-struck tone, " Big tub! Full o' water! " 
 — his conception of the ocean! 
 
 We had been accustomed to let this child take the 
 glass, in his own hand with an inch of water in it 
 and manage the business himself, when he wanted a 
 drink. One day a visiting friend offered him his 
 "jink o' water." He did not immediately take it, 
 but stood gazing at it solemnly with big eyes. 
 Finally he stretched forth his tiny hands and ex- 
 claimed, with drawn-out emphasis on the word 
 " big ": " B-i-g water! Baby jink it all up! " Sure 
 enough! The glass was a third full! Suppose 
 yourself to have been accustomed to drink from a 
 glass gallon measure with a pint of water in it, and 
 to have all at once been promoted to having two or 
 three quarts! ISTo wonder the little man rolled up 
 his sleeves and took both hands to it! 
 
 A moment's reflection will quickly lead one to 
 realise how the material world about a child is not 
 at all of the same proportions or perspective that it 
 is to us. How can a child, for instance, see things 
 as we do, in a home-world where the rooms are four 
 times his height, more or less; pictures hung high 
 up over his head, tables on a level with his chin or 
 the crown of his head? — everything arranged to 
 fit, not him, but the adults? Out rowing the other 
 
88 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 day I got hold of an extra heavy pair of oars, and 
 being annoyed by it, I reflected, very likely on ac- 
 count of having been at work upon this chapter, 
 that, after all, they were of about the same size 
 proportionately, as the pair the boy rows with all 
 the time! 
 
 It is fair to conclude that children's mental and 
 moral perspectives are as much at variance with 
 ours as is their material. How that thought, 
 sympathetically applied, illumines many an other- 
 wise inexplicable saying or performance of child- 
 hood! Oftentimes makes even praiseworthy, what 
 had seemed like naughtiness! 
 
 But enough. We may not wonder that children 
 fashion worlds of their own to live in; surely very 
 little of ours is fitted to them. Civilisation is for 
 " grown-ups." That is right, too, only let us realise 
 it as we deal with the children, and ever bear in 
 mind that we are at home while they are in an alien 
 land. 
 
VI 
 
 INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 " A farmer in Bungleton had a colt 
 
 That couldn't be taught to moo, 
 And he kept his cow under lock and bolt 
 
 Till the smith could make her a shoe. 
 His ducks wouldn't gobble, his geese wouldn't quack; 
 
 His cat wouldn't bark at all ! 
 ' I'm clean discouraged,' he cried, 'Alack ! 
 
 I'll give up my farm in the Fall ! ' " 
 
 " To teach men how they may grow independently and for 
 themselves, is, perhaps, the greatest service that one man can 
 do for another." — Jowett, in a letter to Palgrave. 
 
 Bungleton is a most discouraging place in which 
 to get an education. Would that every Bungleton 
 teacher would give up his school in the Fall! 
 
 " What knowledge is of most worth? " asks 
 Spencer. President Jordan answers it in his little 
 book, The Voice of the Scholar: " It is clear that the 
 knowledge is of most worth which can be most 
 directly wrought into the fabric of our lives. That 
 discipline is most valuable which will best serve us in 
 quietly unfolding our own individualities." 
 
 The passionate longing of every true educator, 
 69 
 
90 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 whether Pedagogue or Parent, is that our schools 
 may become the place where children shall be as- 
 sisted, each individually, to attain to his highest 
 possibilities of power and enjoyment. This longing 
 is apparent in every worthy book on the subject of 
 Education. It is an anxious concern in the heart 
 of every worthy Parent. This chapter, it shall be 
 announced at the outset, is a plea for the children 
 to be allowed, both at home and at school, to be and 
 act themselves in the present, and be helped to 
 become, each his own particular ideal self, in the 
 future. What but that, is true Education? 
 
 In Mr. Adams' before-mentioned account of the 
 schools at the time of the " New Departure " in 
 Quincy, he gives an account of an examination by 
 the state authorities of Massachusetts, which was 
 held to probe into the condition of school affairs. 
 He affirms, that in the papers returned by the 
 children, there were actually employed fifty-eight 
 wrong ways of spelling " which," one hundred and 
 eight of " whose," and two hundred and twenty-one 
 of "scholar"! Concern for the youngsters is lost 
 sight of in curiosity about this puzzle. Some of us 
 set about making a list of those possible spellings. 
 " Which, whitch, wich, wch, wuch, whuch, whutch, 
 wuch, wutch, wach, watch, wech, wetch; " then all 
 
INDIVIDUALITY 91 
 
 these over again beginning with "hw" instead of 
 " wh," for «you will admit that it is pronounced 
 " hw " and not " wh." Then duplicate again, begin- 
 ning with "her," as "herwich," then still again, 
 beginning with " hur "; and still again with " hu " 
 (pronounced huh), etc. No one but a teacher in the 
 North End of Boston, or the East Side of New 
 York, would instinctively realise the number of 
 ways that word "which" can be pronounced, and 
 children spell as they pronounce. 
 
 Much amusement may be got from all that, cer- 
 tainly, but also much more than amusement. One 
 gets from it a revelation of the many and marvellous 
 ways there are of coming at a thing. And I main- 
 tain that if children, left to themselves, show up so 
 many ways of coming at the sound of a simple word 
 like "which," then surely we ought to be humble 
 about believing that we can invent for them a one 
 and only way by which they may all be brought 
 " naturally " to the appreciation of any idea. Does 
 not the incident throw a flood of illumination upon 
 the workings of a child's mind? 
 
 Although educated people have been allowed the 
 privilege of doing it up to within a few generations, 
 we know that we cannot allow children to spell 
 "which," and other words, each according to his 
 
92 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 particular fancy, during too many of their years. 
 For all that, many of us Parents would like to see 
 children come at things more after their own 
 fashion, and to come at more things which are 
 their own heart's desire. We are waiting with pa- 
 tience for the coming of the child millennium, when 
 the Committee-of-fifteen, hard-and-fast, no-sop-to- 
 individuality curriculum, shall he a thing of the 
 past; when the fine educational " plant," — the 
 beautiful buildings and apparatus, which the zeal 
 of the past generation has given us, — shall be devoted 
 to the education of children, not en masse, but of 
 each particular child. This should be the next step 
 in educational progress. Childhood starts out in 
 infinite variety, which is its chief charm. Your 
 boy, perhaps, has lively fancies and poetic imagin- 
 ings and delights in worlds of his own creation; is, 
 maybe, intended by Nature for a Hawthorne or a 
 Kipling. Mine, an incipient Edison, possibly, goes 
 into rapt ecstasies over batteries, and motors, dis- 
 courses easily of death currents and safe ones, and 
 spends all his surplus time and money on things 
 electrical. Let each have his opportunity. Give 
 Nature free scope to work her will with these self- 
 impelled children of hers. Alas! It may not be. 
 The programme of the august Committee must 
 
INDIVIDUALITY 93 
 
 gather them, all alike, into its machinery. For were 
 not these men two long years fashioning and perfect- 
 ing this curriculum? And "Are they not all hon- 
 ourable men? " 
 
 How we hammer away at our children! Never 
 mind which iron is hot or cold, strike! Then we 
 wonder, in our " adult egotism," why our pounding 
 does not fashion our model! And whose is it to 
 see that this wrong is righted? Certain it is, that 
 the Pedagogues will keep the educational machinery 
 well oiled and running at full speed; but it is we, 
 not the Pedagogues, to whom it is given to protect 
 the individual child. The Pedagogue at the 
 throttle, the Parent at the brake! We should slow 
 down! 
 
 Who would not like to return to the charming 
 simplicity of the old Greeks? Is it Huxley, or is it 
 Davidson, — no matter who it is, many say it, — who 
 avers that the intellectual development of the 
 ancient Greeks was as much above ours, as ours is 
 above that of the South African negro. Can we 
 resist the temptation to account partly for that 
 fact, if fact it be, by the exceeding simplicity of 
 their methods of Education? No foreign languages 
 to acquire, little geography, no arithmetic worth 
 mentioning, no two-year courses of five periods per 
 
94 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 week each in algebra and geometry. For history 
 and literature, the beautiful stories of Homer, 
 recited to the eager youth. For lessons in govern- 
 ment, silent attendance upon the law-makers. 
 Plenty of time for growing; for thinking one's own 
 fresh young thoughts! for developing! 
 
 The most pathetic figure within the educational 
 horizon during this past four years, has been, per- 
 haps, the deaf and blind Helen Keller pursuing her 
 way, all unconscious of her own heroism, through 
 Kadcliffe College. I quote you one of her themes, 
 fingered forth upon her type-writer, and ask you if 
 the pathos pervading it is not a thing for which we 
 others, with our full number of senses, should ask 
 her forgiveness. 
 
 " There are disadvantages, I find, in going to 
 college. The one I feel most is lack of time. I 
 used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and 
 I; we would sit together of an evening and listen to 
 the inner melodies of the spirit which one hears 
 only in leisure moments, when the words of some 
 loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul 
 that has been silent until then. But in college 
 there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. 
 One goes to college to learn, not to think, it seems. 
 When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves 
 
INDIVIDUALITY 95 
 
 the dearest pleasures; — solitude J books and imagina- 
 tion, — outside with the whispering pines and the 
 sun-lit, odorous woods. I suppose I ought to find 
 some comfort in the thought that I am laying up 
 treasures for future enjoyment; but I am improvi- 
 dent enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches 
 against a rainy day. 
 
 " It is impossible, I think, to read four or five dif- 
 ferent books in different languages and treating of 
 widely different subjects in one, and not lose sight 
 of the very ends for which one reads, mental stimulus 
 and enrichment. When one reads hurriedly and pro- 
 miscuously, one's mind becomes encumbered with a 
 lot of choice bric 7 a-brac for which there is very 
 little use. Just now my mind is so full of hetero- 
 geneous matter that I almost despair of ever being 
 able to put it in order. Whenever I enter the 
 region that was the kingdom of my mind, I feel like 
 the proverbial bull in the china-shop. A thousand 
 odds and ends of knowledge come crashing about 
 my head like hail-stones, and when I try to escape 
 them, theme-goblins and college nixies of all sorts 
 pursue me, until I wish, — Oh, may I be forgiven 
 the wicked wish! — that I might smash the idols 
 that I came to worship." 
 
 Under the guidance of a seeing mind, Helen 
 
96 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Keller has, up to the present time, developed with a 
 rapidity which seems a miracle. She is like a child 
 of the entire public; so affectionately interested are 
 we all in her progress and welfare. We look on in 
 a sort of dazed wonderment. If we are still to be 
 allowed to follow her career, we shall watch with 
 desire to know whether she profits by this hail- 
 storm of knowledge, whether she succeeds in escap- 
 ing from the goblins and nixies which pursue her, 
 or, whether she smashes her idols, — as so many of 
 our youth ultimately do. Will it all arrest her past 
 wonderful rate of development? Will it, as is 
 the function of Education to do, bring to fulfilment 
 the rich promise of childhood? Personally I gasp 
 with reverent awe as I ask myself these questions. 
 
 Previous to the time of her entering into the toils 
 of college-preparatory work, Miss Keller's education 
 had proceeded along lines natural and delightful 
 to her own particular self. Every iron struck had 
 been a hot one; and time had been taken for the 
 hammering of each iron exactly to its need; then 
 suddenly she entered into a contract with a stiff, 
 prescribed " course." I experienced a feeling of 
 genuine dismay when I came upon her statement 
 that her principal, in spite of her having "no 
 aptitude in mathematics," "had agreed that that 
 
INDIVIDUALITY 97 
 
 year I should study mathematics principally. I had 
 physics, algebra, geometry, astronomy, Greek and 
 Latin." Was it not almost a foregone conclusion 
 that her principal's next duty should be to declare 
 that she was "working too hard," and insist upon 
 the cutting down of her recitations? Possibly if 
 she could have had a small portion of genuine soul- 
 nourishment along with mathematical training, the 
 subsequent unpleasant break need not have oc- 
 curred. At all events, it is to the credit of the 
 human soul that it is so automatically rebellious 
 under certain conditions. Our physical system 
 would be equally rebellious if we were to offer it a 
 diet of all solid meat; no appetising soup, no dainty 
 dessert. Was it any marvel, that, after examina- 
 tions were successfully over, she should write exult- 
 ingly to a friend, "I've said good-bye to mathe- 
 matics forever, and I assure you, I was delighted to 
 see the last of those horrid goblins! " 
 
 It is not a Helen Keller alone who spends hours 
 of seemingly unprofitable study over mathematics, 
 only to exultantly leave them behind forever. It 
 does surely seem an important thing, and is nearly 
 always a pleasurable one, for even unmathematical 
 minds, to make some acquaintance with algebra and 
 geometry, to become a little familiar with the 
 
98 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 harmony and trend of mathematics, to feel a friend- 
 ship with x, y and z, to feel at home in the relation- 
 ship of the diameter, circumference, and area of 
 circles, and the like things, which have connection 
 with the world and life. But, looking at it from 
 any side, it seems to me unpardonable, even cruel, 
 to require the eager student, aiming at success in 
 Art, Music, or Literature; Divinity, the Law, or 
 Medicine, to pause and give valuable, and often ill- 
 afforded hours, to the abstractions of difficult ex- 
 amples in the Binomial Theorem and Simultaneous 
 Quadratics. I am not pedagogically trained, and 
 am perfectly conscious that I am not qualified to 
 offer a professional opinion on such matters. I 
 only offer these opinions as the strong feeling of a 
 practical Parent, in sympathy with ambitious youth 
 who desire to make a career for themselves, in this 
 highly competitive and highly specialising age, and 
 who yet desire to feel that they are liberally 
 educated. Remembering that it is only to "the 
 mind which loves it" that any study gives true 
 discipline, it does seem that in the immensity of 
 knowledge, there should be many other forms than 
 mathematics," which ought to be acceptable alter- 
 natives in entering college. And even for those 
 who do love mathematics, it does not seem to be a 
 
INDIVIDUALITY VV 
 
 study calculated to develop power in thought or 
 action, — except along its own lines. Indeed, I 
 believe it may be questioned whether mathematics 
 does not actually unfit the mind for other and less 
 abstract work. For those not classically minded, 
 there has been provided an alternative whereby 
 students may enter college without Greek. The 
 turn of the unmathematically-minded will yet come. 
 But enough. 
 
 It is written of Browning: " The boy had an in- 
 different experience of formal schooling in his 
 youth. The more fertilising influence of his in- 
 tellectual taste was found in his father's books." 
 
 This fact, — that the boy or the girl got little from 
 the school, — is one of the most common ones in the 
 early chapters of biography. It would be a nar- 
 rowly educated person who left out of his life every- 
 thing not on the track of his particular career; yet 
 in these days one cannot be expert in any direction 
 if he goes to great length in others. A student 
 expressed the idea when he said he hoped to be a 
 jack of all trades and a master of one. A well-indi- 
 vidualised character has, most often unconsciously, 
 power and will to pass by what it cannot assimilate. 
 Such minds are self -impelled along the lines which 
 shall furnish their spirit with real nourishment, even 
 
 LofC. 
 
100 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 though at the expense of school and college honours. 
 Greatness cannot be run into moulds. It is its own 
 ideal toward which it ever aspires. Thus it is that 
 those destined to be the Great Ones of earth do not 
 by any means always le,t their greatness appear while 
 at school. 
 
 But the greatness, the genius, of the mass of 
 youth is not thus self-protected, for the mass of 
 youth is not " great," is not strongly individualised. 
 The hours set apart for education should not be 
 spent in " Bungleton." They should be passed in 
 an atmosphere where pupils may receive " the 
 greatest service that one man can render another," 
 namely, the teaching them how they may grow inde- 
 pendently. To some of us Parents, the seeming loss 
 of personality which the great mass of our youth 
 sustain in the getting of an education, is dismaying 
 in the extreme. In his facetious, but deadly serious 
 manner, Gerald Stanley Lee bemoans the situa- 
 tion: 
 
 " One wonders if there could be such a thing as 
 having all the personalities of a whole generation 
 lost. One looks suspiciously and wistfully at the 
 children one sees in the schools. One wonders if 
 they are going to be allowed, like their fathers and 
 mothers, to have personalities to lose. I have all 
 
INDIVIDUALITY 101 
 
 but caught myself kidnapping children as I have 
 watched them flocking in the street. I have wanted 
 to scurry them off to the country, a few of them, 
 almost anywhere — for a few years. I have thought 
 I would try to find a college to hide them in, some 
 back-county, protected college, a college which still 
 has the emphasis of Persons as well as the emphasis 
 of Things upon it. Then I would wait and see what 
 would come of it. I would at least have a little 
 bevy of great men perhaps, saved out for a genera- 
 tion, enough to keep the world supplied with sam- 
 ples — to keep up the bare idea of the great man, a 
 kind of isthmus to the future/' 
 
 There is indeed, I am perfectly aware, a basic 
 stratum of knowledge which all should acquire, — 
 the knowledge which is necessary to enter social, 
 religious, political, and business life and play our 
 part. But all the first educators of our country, 
 of the world perhaps, now seem to agree (theoreti- 
 cally), that this common foundation is a small one. 
 For instance, concerning Arithmetic, Professor 
 Hanus, of Harvard, says that in about five years, 
 (by eleven years of age), a child can learn all the 
 arithmetic he needs for the ordinary affairs of life 
 and for further progress in mathematics. It is the 
 same with all the fundamental elements in E&uca- 
 
102 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 tion. They should receive less time that more may 
 be given to following out the individual bent. Presi- 
 dent Eliot but voices the sentiment of almost the 
 entire educational van when he writes: 
 
 "I think the safest way in the education of a 
 single individual child, is to find out, if you can, 
 what that individual child likes most in the way of 
 intellectual exertion, and does best in and then to 
 see to it that that child gets instruction in 
 that thing, if he gets nothing else." 
 
 Bacon preceded President Eliot by three hundred 
 years in this thought, — " The natural bent of in- 
 dividual minds should be so far encouraged that a 
 scholar who shall learn all that is required of him, 
 may be allowed time in which to pursue a favourite 
 study." 
 
 " The keys to interest should be individual," 
 writes Professor Search. "If one key will not 
 answer, another should be tried at once. Within 
 every heart is a germ of divinity, which will respond 
 to life when given its own culture; but, to any great 
 extent, this culture is not possible under the in- 
 carceration of uniformity." 
 
 In spite of a strong sentiment to the contrary, 
 which pervades all educational theory, the schools 
 plod steadily on in their relentless grind, putting 
 
INDIVIDUALITY 103 
 
 your gentle poetic Tom, my sturdy mechanical Dick, 
 and that other literary Harry, all through the same 
 paces during their impressible formative years, leav- 
 ing them no time or energy or nerve force for any 
 "favourite study." And soon their years of study 
 are over; it is too late! True, on their atlases they 
 have hunted down the little towns which are the 
 capitals of Idaho and Wyoming and the rest; they 
 have learned that the Congaree and Wateree unite 
 to form the Santee; they have been able at some dim 
 time in the past, though it may be like a dream to 
 them now, to "locate nineteen oriental cities, and 
 tell what each is noted for"; they have worried 
 through some unpractical sort of misty half-knowl- 
 edge of bills of exchange, bank and true discount, 
 and perhaps remember a little of it. They have 
 learned and recited and received due credit for many 
 things which we have decreed that they ought to 
 know, and which we call foundational knowledge. 
 Meanwhile have we troubled ourselves to discover 
 whether there has been any clearing of the channels 
 for the free flowing of the current of each one's own 
 eager thought? Have we answered their own ques- 
 tions or tried to satisfy their individual longings? 
 Have we been a cloud by day and a fire by night to 
 guide each of them to the promised land toward 
 
104 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 which he himself is striving? Or has our " adult 
 egotism " entirely dominated him? These ques- 
 tions are well worth answering. 
 
 In spite of protest after protest from the wisest 
 of every age, why must we forever keep practice 
 trailing so far behind theory? It is b'ecause we 
 believe so fondly in our little worked-out theories. 
 Come right down to it, we hate to give them up. 
 We linger lovingly over them. " The prime ob- 
 stacle to our doing the best that might be done for 
 our children/' writes Patterson Du Bois, "is our 
 adult egotism." Yea, verily. They tell us it is 
 good discipline for our children, to be put relent- 
 lessly through those studied-out curricula. One 
 wonders! Are we not tickling ourselves with a 
 phrase? Is it, then, profitable discipline to follow 
 from hour to hour, day after day, the will and plans 
 of another? Or rather, is not that the divine, 
 character-forming discipline which leads us to 
 educate and control our own will and follow that? 
 " The man who can will is a factor in the universe." 
 Even the brute can follow, can compass blind obedi- 
 ence. Obedience is for slaves; not too much of it 
 for the Sons of God pursuing their far-away ideals! 
 Too long have children been led by our " adult 
 egotism." Let us have a season of humility and 
 
INDIVIDUALITY 105 
 
 follow their lead in their own concerns. " To fit 
 man into schemes of Education has been the mis- 
 take of the past. To fit Education to man is the 
 work of the future/' for "no man was ever well 
 trained whose own soul was not wrought into the 
 process. No student was ever brought to any- 
 worthy work but by his own consent." 
 
 "Under compulsion, pupils respond to external 
 demands only/' says Professor Hanus; " they know 
 little of the joy of achievement and of the pleasure 
 of intellectual activity in general." 
 
 " The best test of the efficiency of an educational 
 method/' says James L. Hughes, " is the amount of 
 true self-activity it requires of the child in the 
 originative, directive, and executive departments of 
 its power." 
 
 And President Jordan tells us that " The fact 
 that any man dares to specialise at all, shows that 
 he has a certain independence of character; for 
 the odds are against it. Specialisation implies 
 thoroughness, and I believe that thorough knowl- 
 edge of something is the backbone of culture." 
 
 Do you dream then from all that, that Parents 
 should go into the schools and make havoc among 
 the really fine and conscientious things that are 
 being done there? Not in the least. I am no 
 
106 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 iconoclast. I know well that nothing can be done 
 too suddenly in the schools. Moreover, I know that 
 some discipline and drill are necessary in the forma- 
 tion of character, some literal obedience to the wis- 
 dom of a trusted leader. But, surely, not seven 
 hours of it a day in childhood! Large bodies move 
 slowly; yet they need not necessarily move too 
 slowly. Many principals and teachers frankly 
 admit the sorrowfulness of the situation with regard 
 to this thing, and confess to us, " All these things 
 are really so; we ourselves have very different and 
 much higher ideals, but they cannot be carried out 
 with so many pupils. When each teacher has forty, 
 or fifty, or, even sixty, pupils in charge, we cannot 
 give attention to individual children. Of course it 
 ought to be done, but it cannot be." Ought to be, 
 but cannot be! Shame on such cowardice! Every- 
 thing that ought to be, can be. This thing ought 
 to be, and it can be. Did it ever occur to any one to 
 give up the building of Brooklyn Bridge, or the 
 Boston Subway, on account of stupendous diffi- 
 culties? 
 
 We do not often, however, give the children in- 
 dividual treatment, even when it is easily possible. 
 The idea is not yet sufficiently in the air. Think 
 of the fine individual care the horse-breeder or 
 
INDIVIDUALITY 107 
 
 trainer gives to each animal from which he hopes 
 bine ribbon or pnrse! 
 
 "It is time/' writes Herbert Spencer, "that the 
 benefits which onr sheep and oxen have for years 
 past derived from the investigations of the lab- 
 oratory, should be participated in by onr children. 
 Without calling in question the great importance of 
 horse-training and pig-feeding, we would suggest 
 that, as the rearing of well-grown men and women is 
 also of some moment, the conclusions indicated by 
 theory, and endorsed by practice, ought to be acted 
 on in the last case as in the first." 
 
 It is difficult, it is well-nigh impossible now, to 
 give a child the proper proportions of knowledge- 
 getting and of free individual development, because 
 the idea is not a prevailing one, and we do not live 
 to ourselves alone. Man is a gregarious animal, 
 and cannot be rightly educated apart from his 
 fellows. But it is from the parental side, and 
 not from the pedagogical, that a new atmosphere 
 must be breezed up. It cannot too often be reit- 
 erated, that it is naturally to the Parent that a 
 child is to look for his individual protection and 
 care. 
 
 If we could but get both Parents and Pedagogues 
 filled with a deep inspiring faith in the impulses 
 
108 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 and longings which may at all times be observed in 
 children, and could then appoint them together on 
 curriculum committees and Normal School faculties, 
 we should not send our teachers forth to meet the 
 spontaneity of childhood, armed with even the best 
 eight-year curriculum of tasks for every fifty- 
 minute period between the ages of five and fifteen, 
 and fortified with half-a-thousand wonder-working 
 "natural methods." We should send them forth 
 with a great reverence for childhood, to begin 
 with, — reverence for all childhood, good and " bad/' 
 attractive and unattractive. We should fill them 
 brim-full of the necessity there is of teaching each 
 child to " let himself go," and then of properly 
 guiding himself. It is only when under headway 
 that skilful steering can be done. We should see to 
 it that the young men and women intrusted with 
 the teaching of our children are filled with the spirit 
 of the New Education, which imparts a love of 
 knowledge; which lifts up the head and the heart 
 and the courage of childhood and youth, and faces 
 them, happy-hearted, towards ideals of their own 
 evolving; which hesitates to tread upon the person- 
 ality of a single pupil, recognising that to destroy 
 or to mar that, is to put future power and mastery 
 in highest jeopardy. 
 
INDIVIDUALITY 109 
 
 I have known several children who, by some acci- 
 dent or occasion, were freed from grown people's 
 schemes and methods, and have almost immediately 
 shown forth brilliant " capability and god-like rea- 
 son " which had been rusting within them. A nine- 
 year-old friend of ours developed a trouble in the 
 eyes, which necessitated either leaving school, or the 
 wearing of glasses. Her parents did not hesitate. 
 She was taken from school, given a very few daily 
 lessons to " keep her going," and turned, free lance, 
 into the open air. Forthwith she set about the 
 writing of animal stories and the drawing of 
 animals, and calmly announced a resolve to follow 
 after Eosa Bonheur, and Eemington, and Thompson 
 Seton! And this to such a degree that the impulse 
 which she then gave herself in that direction bids 
 fair to be the dominating one in her career. 
 
 A young woman of my acquaintance, throwing 
 heart and soul into work along the lines upon which 
 she was " hot," had achieved a triumph in historical 
 research, upon which I was one day congratulating 
 her. She responded to me with regret in her voice: 
 
 " Think what I might have done if I had had the 
 full training in Classics and Mathematics! I am 
 thinking seriously of stopping to get it." And I 
 replied warningly: " At your peril! " 
 
110 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Eespect for " fundamental knowledge," is sound 
 theory certainly; but when a soul's individuality is 
 strong enough to boldly take its own flight, it will 
 usually have magnetic force enough to trail after 
 it the things fundamentally necessary to its particu- 
 lar course. The stronger the soul, the greater its 
 longing, " Oh, to be let alone! " " If it were not for 
 schools, I believe I could get an education! " once 
 moaned a young woman to me, and I knew exactly 
 what she meant. 
 
 A small boy-friend of ours had been in school 
 only about half, or at most two-thirds of the school 
 year, for two successive years, and yet had kept 
 steadily on with his class. Never idle, yet without 
 regular lessons, the four or six months of his vaca- 
 tion time had been largely spent in pursuing his 
 own heart's desires with intelligent track-clearing 
 ahead of his schemes, on the part of his parents. 
 After one of his returns to school, his being able to 
 " catch up " and continue on with the class, was 
 ascribed to his being "an absorptive boy/' and of 
 his having a " reasoning mind." The teacher ex- 
 claimed with enthusiasm mingled with regret: 
 "Where would he have been if he had been kept 
 regularly at school ? " 
 
 "Possibly it is because of his irregularities and 
 
INDIVIDUALITY 111 
 
 his seasons of free activities, and not in spite of 
 them, that he is i absorptive and has a reasoning 
 mind/" we suggested. But that faithful teacher 
 knew arithmetic. Ten times one is ten; ten months 
 of school means ten times as much as one month! 
 
 It cannot be too often reiterated that the main 
 aim in Education is not to get into the child's head 
 the " content " of a curriculum, but through the use 
 of the curriculum to see that he gains a love of its 
 " content," and ■ the power which comes of it, — 
 individual power to think, to act, to feel, to mas- 
 ter, — to be self-directing. Therefore we can often 
 afford to pause in our mad career of cramming, and 
 (President Eliot again), "guide the training of 
 every mind on those subjects which it most affects." 
 All this is not argument for keeping children from 
 school, but for requiring the schools to provide more 
 sympathetically for individual culture; for more 
 spontaneous self -activity; with less of lesson-recit- 
 ing and marking. The fact that we may generalise 
 in the treatment of the bodies of human beings, 
 should not lead to the error of believing that we 
 may do the same thing with their souls. How 
 charming the dual nature of childhood! On one side 
 so healthily animal! How confidently we may pro- 
 vide for bodily needs ! Minimum of clothing, maxi- 
 
112 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 mum of sleep, unstinted supply of simple, nourish- 
 ing food and free outdoor play, absence of care and 
 responsibility, — the same alike for all! But for the 
 soul of a child! Here even angels may fear to 
 tread. Away with confidence and conceit! Be 
 humble now; a child is with us! an embryo, — we 
 know not what. Let us look into the eyes and heart 
 of him and inquire, and obey him. Let us proceed 
 cautiously, gently, and, to quote Hanus once more, 
 " Let us press on more and more in the direction of 
 insisting upon the clearing away of the thick under- 
 brush of unnecessary i knowledge,' to make place for 
 real knowledge and individual training." 
 
 Oh, the swift coming of the millennium for child- 
 hood, when we but get to an understanding of the 
 sacredness of the impulses with which Mother 
 Nature starts off each one of her children when it 
 enters our world! 
 
 " Les hiboux ne peuvent pas voir le vol des 
 aigles!" "Owls cannot even see the flight of 
 eagles." A fine proverb, that! 
 
 Must we, then, clip the wings of the big bold bird, 
 to force him to perch upon a branch and hoot beside 
 the owl? Heaven forbid! Or must we nag and 
 boost the dear little owlet, torture him with arti- 
 ficial wings, in vain attempt to make him follow the 
 
INDIVIDUALITY 113 
 
 eagle's flight? Again, Heaven forbid! Let us 
 strive for faith to allow each individual soul, child, 
 or adult, to 
 
 " press bold to the tether's end, 
 Allotted to this life's intelligence." 
 
 "Owls cannot even see the flight of eagles!" 
 Yet give the owl his free opportunity; and let the 
 eagle soar! 
 
 We may all be humble; many a brilliant youth 
 proves but a flash in the pan. 
 
 We may all be hopeful; Anthony Trollope, the 
 fool of the family, became its star! 
 
VII 
 
 BIG THINGS 
 
 (Versus Galley- Slave Work) 
 
 "As small things hurt the sight, so do small matters him 
 that is intent upon them."— Plutarch. 
 
 11 Oh ! but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
 Or what's a heaven for ? " 
 
 —Browning. 
 
 Were I to locate a child ideally during those first, 
 fresh, eager years, when he is feeling for and find- 
 ing his wings, I would have everything ahout him 
 Big. He should live in a Big house, with Big 
 rooms, in the centre of a Big horizon, with the Big 
 infinite sky above him, and when possible the Big 
 sea before him. 
 
 When Walter Scott was a mere infant he was sent 
 up to the hills with the shepherds to lie all day 
 wrapped in a sheepskin, in the hope that this treat- 
 ment would help his lameness. Some one has ad- 
 vanced the idea, that his having thus lived so much 
 in a wide horizon at this formative period of his 
 life, did much toward giving him his large sweeping 
 
 114 
 
BIG THINGS 115 
 
 way of looking at things. Be that as it may, if you 
 find that yon are wearing yonrself ont over vexa- 
 tious trifles, are magnifying mole-hills into peace- 
 killing mountains, go up to the top of a hill and 
 look at the world in its Bigness. When you come 
 down your real troubles will not be gone; they can- 
 not be gotten rid of so easily, but you will be aston- 
 ished at the minute size to which your obstreperous 
 mole-hills have shrunk. You will find yourself in a 
 condition to manage your real troubles with clearer 
 judgment. 
 
 Have you not noticed that children are nearly 
 always " good " out of doors ? especially children of 
 nervous temperament? There is much truth in the 
 saying that we ought every day to look upon a fine 
 painting, hear a fine song, and climb to the top of a 
 hill. Translated, that means that we need Bigness 
 and Beauty for soul-food, and that we need soul- 
 food every day. 
 
 Ideally, we would, then, have children spend all 
 their days in the midst of Bigness and Beauty, 
 which should permeate the atmosphere of all their 
 activities. And what should these activities be? 
 Lessons? Lessons, surely. The things to be got 
 from books and study in this generation are inspir- 
 ing and ennobling beyond expression, But not too 
 
116 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 many " lessons " in childhood; not five hours a day 
 of them within imprisoning walls^ with one or two 
 hours of attendant home-work! 
 
 For the most part we would have children pass 
 their days among things — real, practical things and 
 doings; among boats and horses, in carpenter shop, 
 machine shop, and smithy; among household af- 
 fairs; in the woods with " Hiawatha's friends," and 
 "brothers," and "chickens." Winters they should 
 be taken to the Big city for a time, there to behold 
 and wonder at, the Big Things to which man has 
 attained, and to have Big thoughts upon when they 
 shall have returned to their home. At an early age 
 they should find introduced into their companion- 
 ship, an entertaining person who talked nothing but 
 French, which they would learn in the Big 
 "natural" way. Three or four years later they should 
 get German in the same way; Latin also, since we 
 are picturing the ideal. The wise, masterful spirit 
 which should be found to preside over this juvenile 
 paradise, should see to it that in leisure hours and 
 moments, Big characters and Big events in History, 
 along with the best in Literature, Music, and Art, 
 should furnish natural recreation. Always among 
 Big Things! And all this alone, each by him- 
 self? By no means, but always in "troops," 
 
BIG THINGS 117 
 
 boys and girls together. Need of companionship 
 is, perhaps, the strongest hunger of a normal 
 child's spiritual life. Moreover, as Professor James 
 tells ns: 
 
 " No runner, running alone on a race-track, will 
 find in his own will the power of stimulation which 
 his rivalry with other runners incites, when he feels 
 them at his heels, able to pass." 
 
 I know as well as my reader knows, that I am 
 indulging, fancy-free, in the purely ideal; am off, 
 indeed, in Utopia again. I know, too, as well as my 
 reader does, that it would be only a sentimentalist 
 who would dream, for one little moment, of trying 
 to bring it about that children, even in this genera- 
 tion, should come into an inheritance so delightful 
 as that. We hitch our wagon to a star, not because 
 we hope to mount to the star, or hope to travel 
 through the universe in its wake, but because, — 
 well, because it's natural to the Sons of God to have 
 ideals; natural that "a man's reach should exceed 
 his grasp." No, that scheme of Big Things is not 
 intended as a working plan for us of to-day. We 
 can, at present, only forge faithfully forward with 
 our children, slowly evolving our ideals, meanwhile 
 giving the expansive, freedom-loving little creatures, 
 as little prison and as much liberty as possible, not 
 
118 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 bewildering their moral and mental vision more 
 than we must. 
 
 If we see a child tumbling comfortably about, 
 intent upon some interesting thought or deed,, we 
 indulge in philosophisings on the picturesqueness of 
 the " graceful abandon of childhood." Why is our 
 satisfaction not multiplied by thirty, if thirty chil- 
 dren are thus disposed? But imagine to yourself 
 the creepy horrors of any teacher of to-day, if even 
 a faint suggestion of such " disorder " were made 
 for any study-hour of her class! They look so fine 
 and orderly, set up in strait- jacket chairs! even 
 though we know they are longing for limb-stretch- 
 ing freedom! Yet we need not thus to restrict 
 children and dominate them, — not if we work all 
 together, we and they. The necessity of this 
 "discipline" is simply the result of our giving 
 them to understand from the very start that we 
 are educating them, when we should be standing 
 by to help them in educating themselves. This 
 sounds Utopian and theoretical, yet every one who 
 knows children well, knows how responsive they are 
 to such methods. We may have it with them which- 
 ever way we elect. But we are fools, all of us, in 
 our conceit of believing that we know how to 
 " manage " children without their own cooperation! 
 
BIG THINGS 
 
 119 
 
 It is my belief, and I am sure that I am by no means 
 alone in it, that the intimations and impulses and 
 desires of a rightly-born, rightly-received, rightly- 
 environed child are, nearly all of them, wholesome, 
 upward-striving, and to be reverenced. What in 
 them seems bad, will, if closely examined into, turn 
 out to be tentative searchings after experience and 
 self-expression. Their whole activity is the result 
 of an unconscious reaching out after a true adjust- 
 ment of self with its surroundings. The infant, for 
 instance, will, for but a marvellously short time take 
 its food with eager animal enjoyment, absorbingly 
 employed in illustrating that " first law of Nature " 
 which is self-preservation. Woe be to us if we do not 
 recognise dawning affection when the child refuses 
 to enjoy food greedily, which is served with frowns 
 instead of smiles! when the tiny hand is stretched 
 toward us in mute appeal for comradeship. Woe to 
 us, and to him, if we do not then and there begin 
 to say "we" with him; to let him have from that 
 time forth, a sense of companionship with us. 
 
 To say nothing of the relation of many children 
 with their parents, what is that of most pupils with 
 their teachers? Acuteness of skill in " getting out " 
 of all they can on the part of the pupils; the 
 teachers, meanwhile, wearing themselves out in 
 
120 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 faithful endeavour to pull their reluctant charges 
 along rapidly in order to keep them up to the 
 grade requirements; — a mild half -recognised con- 
 flict always between them. "Is the task done? if 
 it isn't you must stay after school until it is! " when 
 it should be: " Oh, couldn't you do it? I will try 
 and get a chance to help you after school! " 
 
 What proportion of school work, I ask you, may 
 honestly be called hearty cooperation of pupil and 
 teacher? Yet Childhood is capable of it! Of noth- 
 ing in all my experience and observation do I feel 
 surer than of that! But we have wandered again 
 toward Utopia; let us return; Utopia is not " practi- 
 cal!" 
 
 " What knowledge is of most worth? " asks 
 Spencer and has but one answer to his question, viz. 
 " Science," " Science," always " Science," so you will 
 see that we shall have in this chapter, but one only 
 answer to the question, which will be ever and 
 always, " Big Things." 
 
 Turn with me now if you will to page 57; look 
 once more upon our curriculum and ponder; and re- 
 flect that " Children need not a prison but occupa- 
 tion." Beading one day the Personal Recollections of 
 Mary Somerville, by her daughter, I came suddenly 
 upon the following paragraph. I was for the mo- 
 
BIG THINGS 121 
 
 ment transfixed with surprise and delight; I read 
 and re-read it, gloating npon it. 
 
 "When we were very young she taught us her- 
 self for a few hours daily; when our lessons were 
 over, we always remained in the room with her, 
 learning grammar, arithmetic, or some such plague 
 of childhood." 
 
 Delicious faith of a mother! " When our lessons 
 were over"! What, then, were those "lessons" 
 without arithmetic, or grammar, or other " plagues 
 of childhood"? How simply this fact is recorded 
 by her daughter along with the others! How naive 
 the unconsciousness that she is here setting forth 
 the very central principle of ideal curriculum- 
 making! How incidental are the " plagues of child- 
 hood," grammar, arithmetic and the rest, to which 
 we devote nearly the whole of those eight long 
 years! What, I ask again, could have been the 
 " lessons " which Mary Somerville taught her chil- 
 dren during those "few hours daily"? How we 
 should like to know! We may be sure they were 
 Big Things of some sort, that Arithmetic and 
 Grammar should be so cavalierly brushed aside. We 
 can only surmise; — her beloved Astronomy, per- 
 haps; possibly Spencer's Science; the easy and 
 beautiful things of Physics and Chemistry; the 
 
122 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 fascinating problems of measurements and con- 
 structive and observational Geometry; History, 
 Literature, and Music, surely. We may be certain 
 that those lessons had to do with things high and 
 noble, Mary Somerville herself being high-minded 
 and noble. 
 
 Deep-deep-rooted is this old custom of believing 
 that our children must spend their days fiddle-dee- 
 dee-ing among little things! Doing "galley-slave 
 work " when, self-respecting and masterful, they 
 should be about their Father's business. This wrong 
 will never be righted till Parents awaken to the 
 seriousness of it, and join Pedagogues in the scheme 
 of education. Pedagogues are wise; — wise in 
 theory and in zeal; Parents, too, are wise, — wise in 
 affection and in the instinct born of it. We will 
 not debate which is the wiser wisdom. Both are 
 needed. 
 
 A young friend of ours who had lived mostly 
 innocent of school life, and rather largely and 
 freely, not wishing at the time of her entering col- 
 lege, to study Greek, set herself the task of prepar- 
 ing herself without a teacher, in the substitute 
 mathematics of the Harvard entrance requirements. 
 Any one familiar with the old-time double-duty 
 penalty for any departure from the regular, laid- 
 
BIG THINGS 123 
 
 down scheme, will easily understand that she had 
 given herself no small task. One day she settled 
 comfortably into an easy-chair and began to read 
 her Analytic Geometry exactly as though she were 
 reading a story. She went through to the end with- 
 out doing an example. When she had finished, she 
 exclaimed, slangily to be sure, but emphatically: 
 " There! I wanted to know where I was at! " Then 
 she rolled up her sleeves and went into it. That 
 was her " Natural Method." And a fine one it was, 
 — a method with Bigness to it. And at ten, this 
 girl had been among the " owls " in arithmetic! 
 
 Even very young children get an added self- 
 respect by being given big conceptions of things. 
 Everybody knows that the Kindergarten is our in- 
 stitution perfect; yet it may be safe for me to utter an 
 expression of my fear, that this " perfected-system " 
 business is taking much out of the life of Froebel's 
 beautiful, spontaneous kindergarten, by not letting 
 in largeness enough, — by fussing. There is no 
 record that the joyous, spontaneous Froebel had a 
 half-hour-period programme for three and four- 
 year-old children, to which he strictly adhered, as do 
 the kindergartners of to-day. It is difficult to 
 imagine him abiding by one. 
 
 One day, visiting a "crack" kindergarten of 
 
124 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Boston, we became interested in an eager little boy 
 who was " hurrying np " to get his card all sewed 
 before schedule time brought on the next thing. 
 He didn't succeed, and he begged to be allowed to 
 " finish it all the same." " Oh, no, Charlie, not to- 
 day; we are going to form a ring and play now," 
 said the kindergartner, "you can finish it next 
 time; " which the child knew would not be for three 
 days, for doesn't every one know that " occupa- 
 tions " all come twice a week in kindergarten? The 
 refusal had been given kindly enough, but with 
 a mild surprise that Charlie hadn't caught on to the 
 schedule of things. Oliver Twist had asked for 
 more! 
 
 "But I don't want to play," persisted Charlie, 
 now a little snarlily, " I want to finish this." 
 
 Firmly but gently the kindergartner laid the 
 work in the box with the other cards, and the child 
 went discontentedly to play(?). Play, you may 
 recall, is defined as " voluntary activity." The boy 
 was listless and indifferent during the entire period 
 of games. He was going to play all the afternoon! 
 He didn't care if he had had the allotted twenty-five 
 minutes of card-sewing; he wanted to finish that 
 little bit on his card and take it home to his mother! 
 How different the points of view were in the affair! 
 
BIG THINGS 125 
 
 From the kindergartener's point of view the boy- 
 was doing his period of card-sewing; the child was 
 simply making a pretty thing to carry home to his 
 mother. He had been given a little thing to do; he 
 was doing a Big Thing. 
 
 It is like that all along the line through the 
 kindergarten, primary school, grammar school, and 
 to a less degree, possibly, in the High School. It is 
 murderous always to have work chopped off just 
 when interest is thoroughly aroused, and the metal 
 red hot for being wrought upon! Only to be set 
 pounding upon some cold metal, and all just because 
 the gong has sounded to announce the close of a 
 period! 
 
 "Your Committee/' announces our before-men- 
 tioned Committee of Fifteen, " recommends recita- 
 tions of fifteen minutes in length in the first and 
 second years, of twenty minutes in length in the 
 third and fourth years, and of twenty-five minutes 
 in the fifth and sixth years, and of thirty minutes in 
 the seventh and eighth." 
 
 Now what has Psychology to say to that? Where 
 is GL Stanley Hall, to prove to us by tabulations, 
 lines, and curves, that some children can give atten- 
 tion longer than others? and that some subjects 
 will hold attention longer than others? What 
 
126 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 psychological law is explicit enough to bear us 
 out in rigidity of that sort? Children have a 
 craving, — and it is a noble one, and an educational 
 crime not to satisfy it, — to do completed, well- 
 rounded work, or, at least, to go on up to their limit 
 in attempts to do it. This heading a child off from 
 his own strong self -direc tings; and fitting him to 
 schedules, tends most wretchedly to initiate the child 
 into the " pernicious habit of being satisfied with in- 
 adequate and partial results, at an early age, an age 
 when by nature he delights in adequate and full ones." 
 Pedagogues and Parents, get ye alike, into the 
 leading-strings of your children. Don't knock the 
 stick-to-it-iveness out of them, if, perchance, 
 Nature has at the start endowed them with 
 it! Later on we shall all be groaning that the great 
 evil among them is lack of concentration. And 
 why shouldn't it be ? Haven't we been inducing it ? 
 If you give a child a story to write, and you see him. 
 leaning on his elbows, staring into space with rapt 
 look, don't tell him to " hurry up " because the 
 period is nearly over! Nor don't make him go off 
 to gymnastics, or even to geography, if he is so 
 interested that he wants to finish. Two halves 
 don't make a whole in education, unless they are 
 halves of the same thing. Nor don't make him 
 
BIG THINGS 127 
 
 write his first copy "neatly and in his best hand- 
 writing." I wouldn't like you to see the first copy 
 of this chapter! Have you ever seen a facsimile 
 of the first copy of Dickens or of any other author 
 of note? Give the little embryo author as good a 
 show as his grown-up fellow-authors. But we are 
 always expecting children to do what we couldn't, 
 by any hook or crook, do ourselves! 
 
 We may safely trust the instinct of children for 
 Big Things, and give them a long rope of freedom 
 in their activities. 
 
 " A desire for knowledge is the natural feeling of 
 mankind; and every human being whose mind is not 
 debauched will be willing to give all that he has to 
 get knowledge." 
 
 So writes the enthusiastic, knowledge-loving Dr. 
 Johnson. It is with regret, however, that we must 
 recall the fact that Johnson did not discover, in his 
 brief and unhappy period of schoolmastering, that 
 this is even truer of children than of men and 
 women. " Generation of Artificial Stupidity in 
 Schools " kept the fact under a total eclipse in his 
 day, as it does nearly in ours. But the fact is a 
 fact all the same, provided, — and the provision is a 
 necessary one, — that the knowledge is real knowl- 
 edge, and is the particular knowledge which is fitted 
 
128 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 to the child's wants. This last provision is the one 
 which looks after the Individuality so strongly 
 pleaded for in another chapter. Drudgery, to be 
 spontaneous and cheerful, must he performed for 
 the getting or the making of some Big Thing, big 
 in the eyes of the worker. A boy will not patiently 
 pick up and carry stones as a task. But how your 
 little Ben Franklins will excite wonder, tiring 
 themselves out building a miniature wharf! Watch, 
 then, for what big thing your child has ambition, 
 then set him to work on the road toward that thing. 
 
 " The Youth," says Thoreau, " gets together his 
 material to build a bridge to the moon; or perhaps 
 a palace or a temple on earth; and at length the 
 middle-aged man comes along and concludes to 
 build a woodshed with it." 
 
 What matter if ambition and ardour do cool as we 
 get older? Let not our youngsters lose hope while 
 they are young. Let each new generation have its 
 try; its own hopes and experiences; only thus is 
 possible the finest moulding of character. Moreover, 
 an occasional one does succeed in building his 
 bridge to the moon. And, indeed, that is the best 
 sort of mind which keeps up the hope of it till 
 death. Let us live bravely and die game. 
 
 We can, I believe, do nothing better for our 
 
BIG THINGS 129 
 
 children than to dismiss the "plagues of child- 
 hood" with a minimum of attention, and to keep 
 the tracks clear, ahead of their own childish schemes 
 and enterprises. This advice, be it understood, 
 must he heeded with discretion, even the necessary 
 minimum of the " plagues of childhood," making up 
 a large and troublesome list. What I am pleading 
 for, is that we shall err on the side of indulgence; 
 shall give the children as large scope of freedom for 
 their own chosen activities as our wider view can, 
 by stretch of judgment, permit to them. 
 
 Freedom! Magical word! How it has set throb- 
 bing the pulses of nations and of individuals! The 
 history of the world is but a history of fights for 
 Freedom, and who loves and needs Freedom more 
 than children? And who fights harder and more 
 persistently for it? Let them have more of it! 
 Freedom the path; Truth the Goal! 
 
 To be given Freedom, and taught self-reliance! 
 
 To be given Freedom, and taught the great gulf 
 between liberty and license! 
 
 To be given Freedom, along with health and op- 
 portunity! 
 
 Then may we accomplish Big Things! True for 
 ourselves, even more true for our children. 
 
 Freedom is, indeed, the biggest of the Big Things 
 
130 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 which we should covet for our children, even as it is 
 the one first thing which we, ourselves, think we 
 must have. It may be thought that we do give 
 children Freedom. Americans are accused of giv- 
 ing them too much of it. We shall all agree, per- 
 haps, that we give them too much license, but let us 
 frankly allow ourselves to see how very small is the 
 amount of true Freedom which Civilisation allots to 
 childhood. " Civilisation is the rock that man has 
 split upon," writes some one, and just missed 
 being a bit of a genius, for not having written 
 " childhood " instead of " man." Civilisation is the 
 rock that childhood splits upon! Architecture, Art, 
 Music, Science, Society and Social Institutions, 
 Eeligion, — all these are the achieved triumphs of 
 man's past upward climbing, his present ideals as 
 far as he can get them expressed. They furnish the 
 natural environment and soul-food for cultivated 
 Man. But how little of it is the ideal of Childhood! 
 How little of it furnishes natural environment or 
 soul-food for Childhood! Normal children, not too 
 early initiated and rendered blase, shirk about all 
 they can of it. 
 
 Civilisation, however, should be infinite inspira- 
 tion for children to behold; to go to for sips and 
 tastes, to get food for reflection from, and to serve 
 
BIG THINGS 131 
 
 as ideals in the formation of their thoughts and 
 character. To be able to pass their character-form- 
 ing years within range of Civilisation should, in- 
 deed, be a tremendous impulsive force in their 
 development. It is only adult unwisdom, " adult 
 egotism " again, that makes children " split " upon 
 Civilisation. Why can we not have enough wisdom 
 to see to it that children have the benefits of 
 Civilisation, even while living their actual life close 
 to Nature and simplicity, each drinking in from the 
 grand ideals about him, only what he can assimilate, 
 we having courage not to try to force the rest upon 
 him. 
 
 No, we are not yet ready to give children this 
 priceless privilege. From the moment a child 
 comes into the world his Freedom is mortgaged to 
 the process of fitting him to Civilisation. We don't 
 mean to let him go through those dreadful Culture 
 Epochs if we can help it. Go look upon the layette 
 over which the expectant mother hovers so fondly! 
 The farther from simplicity the more she gloats. 
 She stands before the store-window display of styles 
 distingue and chic Parisian get-ups of Civilisation 
 for the covering of its tiny young, yearning to pass 
 unmolested through their claw-and-club stages of 
 existence! And the bazaars, filled with completed 
 
132 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 toys, marvellously calculated to stultify any dawn- 
 ing faculty of invention, and to prevent the develop- 
 men of childish powers! 
 
 Alas! We are wandering toward Utopia again; 
 this time by contrast. We must relentlessly re- 
 turn. 
 
 "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"! 
 Life we protect for our little ones; of the delights 
 of Liberty they know little. As for the Pursuit of 
 Happiness, it is we who pursue it for them, — con- 
 tinually and always. We have yet to instruct our- 
 selves in the art of allowing them to come upon it 
 naturally and unconsciously, by the sheer force of 
 their own efforts and activities. 
 
 What, then? What practical lesson for us? 
 This, — that we should ever give children as high 
 and wide a lookout about them as is consistent with 
 a simple unstimulated life. Let things run along 
 as much as possible in currents and sweeps, not 
 fussing. Left to themselves, children naturally 
 generalise, naturally think big breezy thoughts. 
 Doing things largely induces largeness of thinking; 
 and doing and thinking largely is but liberal-minded- 
 ness and generosity of soul, which we so much ad- 
 mire; is, indeed, one of the most distinguishing ele- 
 ments of a fine character. 
 
BIG THINGS 133 
 
 "I have generally found/' observes Pestalozzi, 
 " that high and noble thoughts are indispensable for 
 developing wisdom and firmness." 
 
 High and noble thoughts grow out of high and 
 noble and Big doings. Let us see how it is cus- 
 tomary to regard this thing: " The conclusion is 
 reached," sets forth our much-quoted Curriculum, 
 " that learning to read and write should be the lead- 
 ing study of the pupil in his first three or four years 
 of school." Pedagogic, not parental wisdom! 
 
 Would that there might spring up from some- 
 where, another Mary Somerville, who should head a 
 committee of Fifteen Mary-Somerville-minded 
 Pedagogues and Parents, to give us a counter-cur- 
 riculum! 
 
 It never seemed to me much matter how early a 
 child learns to read and write. Provided that it is 
 learned easily and voluntarily, and does not dis- 
 place knowledge of things, the earlier the better. 
 Ability to read swiftly and intelligently, — to read 
 as you breathe, unconsciously and absorbingly, is 
 the very backbone of a good education, is, in itself, 
 a good education. Too few there are who have ac- 
 quired the art, except in the devouring of fiction. 
 
 Nevertheless, to believe that in the business of 
 conducting a child to the full stature of a man, the 
 
134 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 learning to read and write should be the " leading 
 study" for the first and best years, — that should 
 seem to Parents the worst kind of heresy. These 
 are the years which give the key-note to life; the 
 years in which those studies should be the leading 
 ones, which will train little ones from the very start, 
 to observe accurately and infer justly; to love largely 
 and to serve. They should be studies which bestir 
 conscience, and educate it to demand implicit obedi- 
 ence. In a word, while all studies should be charac- 
 ter-forming ones through the entire course, they 
 should be absolutely the chief ones at the beginning, 
 which is the source of the stream of after life. 
 Surely primer-reading and handwriting, this small 
 work of tool-making, is elevated to a position far 
 above its merits! These should be run in as inci- 
 dentals, as things which must be done, if one means to 
 be decently educated. 
 
 In conclusion, let us look a little upon this being 
 who is given into our charge, this being which, from 
 very birth, so loves Freedom and Bigness! We will 
 pass by the bonbon-craving, finery-admiring, party- 
 going, self-centred, indulged, critical, almost cynical, 
 spoiled child of society, and " Civilisation," and 
 " adult egotism." It is the spontaneous, self -forget- 
 ting, eager, soul-hungry, natural, unspoiled child, 
 
BIG THINGS 135 
 
 of whom we are speaking. We ought to feel a sense 
 of awe in his presence. 
 
 Chamberlain, in The Child, a Study of the Evolu- 
 tion of Man, quotes Goethe as saying: 
 
 "If children grew up according to early indica- 
 tions, we should have nothing but geniuses; and all 
 the play of environment since the race began has 
 not removed the fact emphasised by Schopenhauer, 
 'Every child is, to a certain extent, a genius, and 
 every genius to a certain extent a child/ " 
 
 " Genius," says Mr. H. Cooly, " is that aptitude for 
 greatness that is born in a man." We should repeat 
 that to ourselves again and again when we are in the 
 presence of children. " Genius is that aptitude for 
 greatness that is born in a man." We get such bril- 
 liant glimpses of this genius all through childhood! 
 But it is so delicate, so evanescent, that it eludes the 
 enticements of this life and slips little by little away, 
 and we grow into manhood and womanhood hope- 
 lessly lacking it! Perhaps it is like the first dew on 
 the flowers in early morning, not intended to remain 
 through the glare of the midday. Yet should we 
 not try to keep our hold on as much of it as we may, 
 as a delight for our workaday world? 
 
 "Gifted people seem to conserve their youth," 
 says G. Stanley Hall with truth. He asserts also 
 
136 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 that "it is certainly one of the marks of genius 
 that the plasticity and spontaneity of adolescence 
 persist into maturity." And Chamberlain takes 
 some pains to bring to our mind that, not only is 
 genius akin to childhood, but in its ways and means 
 is also similar to the latter. But we smother this 
 genius, this aptitude for greatness; we swamp it with 
 galley-slave work. The affinity of genius and 
 childhood, in my way of thinking, lies in this, that 
 they both love the simple, elemental, real things of 
 life, and that they love them so insistently that they 
 must have them; they are the very necessity of their 
 living. And these simple, elemental things are the 
 Big Things! All things noble are simple and — Big; 
 complexity is commonplace; it satisfies only the ordi- 
 nary mind. 
 
 "As small letters hurt the sight, so do small 
 matters him that is intent upon them." Let us 
 heed Plutarch and keep our children intent upon 
 Big Things. 
 
 " What your heart thinks is great, is great. The 
 soul's emphasis is always right." 
 
VIII 
 
 THE METHOD OF LIMITS 
 
 " Attention should be called to the desirability of introduc- 
 ing the Method of Limits."— Harvard College Entrance Re- 
 quirements in Geometry. 
 
 One is happy to recognise his ideas wherever he 
 finds them, and this one is clothed to my liking and 
 by good authority. " Attention should be called to 
 the desirability of introducing the Method of 
 Limits." What, then, is this " Method of Limits "? 
 
 St. Paul discovered what it was for him when he 
 stopped kicking against the pricks. If he were but 
 instructed in it, what a boon it might prove to the 
 bumble-bee which is, at this very moment, bruising 
 his poor little head against my window-pane, in the 
 vain hope of attaining freedom in the sunny fields 
 beyond! For ourselves we interpret it to mean, 
 that when we have come to the end of our rope in 
 any one direction, it is folly to fall to marking time, 
 fondly imagining we are still advancing. Eather 
 let us recognise our Limit. 
 
 It is an important method to understand, this 
 137 
 
138 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Method of Limits, in order to rightly construe the 
 chapter on Big Things, — or any other chapter on 
 education. " Big " is a relative term; what to you 
 is a little thing is often a Big Thing to your child. 
 The natural love which children have for Big 
 Things brings them continually up against this 
 Method of Limits. They feel themselves equal to 
 far bigger things than they can really compass. 
 It is well to let them discover their own Limit. 
 The child who conceives a Big Thing, starts in on 
 it and proceeds up to his Limit, has done far more 
 toward developing a commanding character, than 
 the one who travels over that same bit of road with 
 no goal in view, but does it as a task given out by 
 his teacher. 
 
 Our little fellow, when very small, long indeed 
 before he learned to write, got the knack of spelling 
 out words on the type-writer, phonetically of course, 
 and could set down his ideas in a manner quite in- 
 telligible. When he could not induce us to admit 
 that they were " correct," he stoutly maintained 
 that his way was just as good as our way; writing 
 is meant to be read! and his could be! What more 
 could you reasonably wish? Lest you should not 
 believe me, I do not dare to tell how young he was, 
 when he produced the following curious specimens: 
 
THE METHOD OF LIMITS 139 
 
 " jojwoshtn " (George Washington); "klarudiki" 
 (Clara Dickey); " osaksahosgutloos " (0 sakes, a 
 horse got loose!) and the like. Once when he felt 
 naughty he said resentfully, "I'll write a bad 
 word! " and ran off to the type-writer. He soon re- 
 turned, holding his breath at the audacity of what 
 he had done, and held up a big sheet of paper with 
 the one word upon it, " devul." When he was four 
 years old and had learned to separate the words, 
 and had acquired a little more skill generally, he 
 announced that he was going to write a book " with 
 lots of chapters," and forthwith produced the fol- 
 lowing table of contents : 
 
 "1. a Spanish wo-bot (war-boat) 
 2. a man tokt when ded (talked) 
 
 The merykn flag (American) 
 
 an 8 leggid spider 
 
 a singing lump of dirt 
 
 sum wirds of a littl song 
 
 doo fish gro 
 The little fellow did a vast amount of thinking on 
 each of these subjects before he accepted it as a 
 chapter-head. But baby ambition had found its 
 limit. He said thoughtfully: 
 
 "I'll write 'em all perhaps some day; that last 
 one I've got to study up." 
 
140 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 It is not unalloyed fickleness that makes children 
 go from one big scheme to another. Nature's 
 Method of Limits is ever relentlessly restraining 
 them. The child comes to the end of his knowl- 
 edge and judgment and skill in one direction, and 
 must, perforce, begin all over again, changing the 
 direction of his headlong activity, even as he wan- 
 ders a short distance from his home, then returns to 
 wander off in another direction, but never venturing 
 far. His limited, but ever increasing skill, is an 
 always lengthening tether of his energy, keeping 
 him, not in a circle, but in a spiral of activities. 
 
 Our little lad, at nine and a half, had at school 
 four periods a week of drawing and manual training. 
 I pause here to say that if this boy plays a rather 
 prominent part in this book, I can only plead that 
 there are several reasons why he does illustrate it 
 rather naturally. Very likely on account of his 
 own and his parents' mutual lack of persistence in 
 regard to his school attendance, there seems always 
 to be some ready excuse for his never getting more 
 than a few weeks of schooling every year. Secondly, 
 it may be that, like the celebrated Rousseau, we do 
 not prove ourselves equal to both the theory and 
 practice of educational ideas; at all events, the boy 
 receives an unusual amount of protection in Liberty 
 
THE METHOD OF LIMITS 141 
 
 and the Pursuit of Happiness, and keeps up a series 
 of animated illustrations of what free, spontaneous 
 childhood is likely to evolve. 
 
 As before stated, he had four periods a week at 
 school for drawing and manual training. When 
 asked what they did during that period, he replied a 
 little resentfully, " She talks to you half an hour, 
 then gives you ten minutes to do it"; which re- 
 minded us of an opinion which he once gave that 
 the way to study geography was "to go there." 
 Well, in consequence of having so little time for 
 doing, the boy begged to have a duplicate outfit for 
 this work at home, which was got together for 
 him; — a knife, a ruler and pencil, a pair of com- 
 passes, and a T square, with some small pieces of 
 thin wood to work upon. 
 
 Then business began! No time or thought for 
 anything else! Match-scratchers, pencil-sharpeners, 
 and the like, were turned out till they were a glut 
 in the market. The compasses were the special 
 fascination. He went through a variety of per- 
 formances with it and then asked if we didn't know 
 "some things to do with it." Of course we put 
 him through the bisecting of lines, constructing of 
 perpendiculars, circumscribing and inscribing of 
 circles and squares and the like. He did it all 
 
142 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 beamingly, I give you his own original method of 
 drawing a line through a given point, parallel to 
 a given line. He still thinks it is simpler than the 
 " regular way," and " plenty accurate enough." 
 
 " Draw two little mountains as high as the other 
 one, then draw a line across the top of 'em all." 
 
 All this satisfied his very soul. He has not even 
 yet got over the delight and wonder of trying 
 to place three points not in a straight line, in 
 such a position that he can't put a circle through 
 them. 
 
 One day we found his outfit, previously so ten- 
 derly cared for, scattered about, neglected and for- 
 gotten. Limit attained! He must have a scroll 
 saw! Santa Claus brought it. " Another fellow " 
 remembered that he had one that he used to be 
 crazy over. He got it out, brought it over to our 
 house, and set it up beside our lad's in front of the 
 window of his room. For days we could never feel 
 quite free from the idea that we lived under a saw- 
 mill. Frames, dissected puzzles, and pictures and 
 maps, were now the vogue. This craze had a longer 
 
THE METHOD OF LIMITS 143 
 
 run than many others, but even the scroll saw had 
 to have a fall from its high first place. 
 
 One day the lad came in and seriously counted 
 his cash on hand; he must immediately have a 
 clothes-line. Couldn't the kitchen-girl give him 
 hers? She wasn't washing! He had some pulleys 
 and things and wanted a clothes-line to go with 
 them. He got together thirty-five cents and he 
 and the " other fellow " went off to make the best 
 bargain they could with it. They returned with 
 thirty-five yards of clothes-line and the derrick acts 
 began all over the house. Coming in at the front 
 door, the first thing likely to greet the eye was 
 something or other dangling about in upward career 
 in the front hall. We stepped into his room one 
 day just in time to rescue his bed, which was being 
 slowly elevated toward a pulley fastened above the 
 door! The derrick scheme was a short one. Pos- 
 sibly it lacked the sympathy of the household! 
 Scheme after scheme has followed, one to be 
 dropped only to be succeeded by another. 
 
 A healthy normal boy is never without a scheme, 
 and never pursues any scheme long, before he runs 
 up against his Limit, and is off again in another 
 direction. A child's possibilities of achievement 
 are so small! And they are made even smaller by 
 
144 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 the backwardness of parents in supplying them with 
 tools and material and opportunity to carry on their 
 schemes, being far more ready to buy them finished 
 toys. It is much easier and less bothering and 
 cluttering, than it is to keep a watchful eye out, 
 furnishing the needful links and hints that would 
 hold them enthralled longer in any given line of 
 activity. So they soon come to their limit in any 
 direction in which ambition or fancy impels them; 
 and they are too impatient and too instinctively wise 
 to be willing to do treadmill work. Anyway, who 
 of us likes to do " galley-slave work "? The refusal 
 to do it is but natural self-discipline. True educa- 
 tion forbids our continuing to do a thing after we 
 can do it; we may continue to do it from necessity, 
 but not for education. When you can do one thing 
 learn to do another; that's progress. 
 
 "Patience is genius," says the proverb. So, in- 
 deed, it is. And how infinitely patient and pains- 
 taking the wonderful little beings are in their own 
 chosen activities! 
 
 " Patience is the virtue of asses! " says a counter 
 proverb. So, indeed, it is, — in a treadmill. The 
 proverbs are complementary, not contradictory. 
 
 We should note all this in prescribing tasks. A 
 child's Limit, in my opinion, is reached in any work 
 
THE METHOD OF LIMITS 145 
 
 or study, when he cannot longer do it with interest; 
 the more I reflect and observe upon the matter the 
 more I believe that we may rely upon that fact as a 
 law. A child reaches his Limit from one of two 
 reasons. He has arrived as far as at that time he is 
 fitted to go; or, which is more often the case, be- 
 cause there is no one at hand to sympathetically 
 open vistas beyond on that particular road, and 
 help him clear away obstacles so that he may con- 
 tinue his way. And, indeed, is anything worth the 
 precious hours of childhood in which interest can- 
 not be aroused? Working where there is no in- 
 terest means indifferent or even painful snail-pace, 
 when, in another direction, it might mean the 
 jubilant speed of the deer bounding over his native 
 heath. 
 
 More and more as I observe children I do believe 
 that they should be led into knowledge after a 
 fashion which shall draw out spontaneous interest; 
 that they should not be "taught" by a teacher 
 whose mind is anxiously on the term-end examina- 
 tion, which is to determine whether they may go on 
 to the next "grade." The relentlessly examined 
 subjects should be exceedingly few and exceedingly 
 elemental. All the rest, built upon these, should be 
 things so enticing to the children, that they can be 
 
146 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 trusted to absorb and assimilate, each up to his 
 Limit. And never you speer too much into their 
 minds to know how much that is! Do you measure 
 the air they breathe? Or the amount of food they 
 eat, — if only they thrive? 
 
 This treatment, you say, would give a vague idea 
 of everything and an accurate idea of nothing. 
 Quite likely. That is what they get even now. Go 
 talk with them and ascertain for yourself if it is not. 
 A little classmate of our lad's had been marked S 
 in his recitation, when unluckily the teacher asked 
 him what were some of the industries of the state 
 of Maine and he replied promptly, " The manufac- 
 turing of saw-teeth." He remembered that they 
 manufactured something, and he got it mixed up 
 with the " saw-teeth shape of the coast " ! For that 
 he got his mark reduced to P. And P, you know, is 
 lower than S, meaning only " pass," while S means 
 "satisfactory"! 
 
 Our own boy just missed a disgrace of that sort; 
 we were reading " Miles Standish " aloud. " Noth- 
 ing was heard in the room, but," — I paused to see 
 if he could fill out the line from memory, which he 
 did without hesitation, — " but the stripling pen of 
 John Alden"! He was at home, however, and did 
 not get marked down for it! His sister, several 
 
THE METHOD OF LIMITS 147 
 
 years older, was guilty of a similar vagueness; "I 
 like So-and-so," she exclaimed earnestly, " he is so 
 dastardly! He da'st to do anything under 
 heavens!" 
 
 Vagueness! Vagueness is a part of the natural 
 make-up of most youth: I could present instance 
 after instance of it among the youth about me at 
 the present moment. 
 
 " The meeting adjoined at 8.30/' recorded a 
 bright young seventeen-year-old girl secretary, 
 " and the rest of the evening was spent in socialism." 
 
 "Did So-and-so play a solo last night?" I asked 
 a young friend. 
 
 "He played something alone," was the simple 
 reply, "but Fm not a muscian, and I don't know 
 whether it was a solo or not." 
 
 We all know how much vagueness there is at all 
 ages on the subject of religion. Especially are we 
 certain to find it among young people. 
 
 "Do you, can you, really and truly believe in 
 eternal punishment? " asked one schoolgirl of 
 another at the close of a heated argument on the 
 subject. "Yes, I do; I must, because the Bible 
 teaches it," was the sorrowful reply of tender- 
 hearted " Sweet Sixteen," who immediately added 
 joyously, " but I don't believe it will last forever! " 
 
148 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Childhood is, by the very nature of it, vague. So, 
 too, is youth. All the correct teaching we are 
 capable of will not take vagueness from childhood, 
 and make it accurate. How can children learn ac- 
 curately all the wonderful things in this wonderful 
 world in so short a time? We do not find an 
 overabundance of accuracy among our grown-up 
 selves! 
 
 A word concerning this same accuracy; it should 
 always and unremittingly be encouraged, and its 
 brilliancy and utility ever shown up, but I much 
 doubt if there is anything at all in which we can 
 reasonably require children to be absolutely accu- 
 rate, except truth-telling and the multiplication 
 table, and even in these, the first especially, it's 
 doubtful if we may expect it. At the price of 
 eternal vigilance, sympathetically turning them face 
 about and setting them right when they go astray, 
 we may hope to fetch them up at last to President 
 Eliot's ideal of being able to " observe keenly, to 
 reason soundly, and to imagine vividly." The ambi- 
 tion to express themselves is very strong in young 
 people, but they soon come up to their Limit of 
 knowledge and experience; overstepping this Limit 
 come vagueness and inaccuracy. Spencer warns us 
 of the grave error which one commits when he 
 
THE METHOD OF LIMITS 149 
 
 "insists on putting into undeveloped minds per- 
 fectly exact ideas; exactness being not only un- 
 appreciated by, but even repugnant to, minds in low 
 stages." 
 
 Let me beg you to believe it, this Method of 
 Limits is an important one. There is, indeed, 
 "desirability of introducing it." It applies itself 
 continually in the education of the young; let us see 
 a little how. 
 
 There are in nature two sorts of things, organic 
 and inorganic, nearly enough denned for our pur- 
 pose as things which grow and things which do not 
 grow. Things to be learned, like the things of 
 nature, are also of the same two kinds, those which 
 will grow and those which will not. If you wish for 
 a field of corn you may plant it and go about your 
 other work while it grows a harvest for you; up to a 
 certain point you may labour profitably upon it; 
 beyond that point you cannot further assist its 
 growth. You would but defeat your end if you were 
 to stay by and pull at it to make it grow faster. 
 But is it a stone wall that you want? You must 
 stay by until the last, collecting and laying every 
 stone of it. Stone walls never grow. Again, if at- 
 tention be called to the beauty of the butterfly and 
 the flower, the interest and delight will of themselves, 
 
150 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 grow to appreciation of other insects and flowers 
 and of all Nature. Teach a child to count ten, and 
 once interest him in the combinations of numbers, 
 and his knowledge of number will grow as the days go 
 on, if only a little attention is bestowed to keep up 
 the incitement. Particularly in arithmetic we 
 waste time lavishly on things which would grow of 
 themselves if we had but faith to wait for them. 
 Facts of narrative history must, on the contrary, be 
 accumulated with industry; a knowledge of George 
 Washington will never of itself grow into a knowl- 
 edge of Queen Elizabeth or of Garibaldi. Yet what 
 a fine harvest we may reap of the Philosophy of 
 History by the mere fact of its growing. " Philos- 
 ophy of History " is indeed nothing else than re- 
 flection upon what we read, and surely we can trust 
 to the growth of the powers of reflection, if we can 
 trust to the growth of anything at all. And child- 
 philosophy is a most beautiful thing to start grow- 
 ing, and a most fascinating little force to guide or 
 to follow! Our small nine^ear-old, between school 
 and home, got himself filled with sympathy for the 
 New England Pilgrims. One day he appeared with 
 the most serious expression on his little face. He had 
 produced the following, and " couldn't find any more 
 words to rhyme." 
 
THE METHOD OF LIMITS 151 
 
 * f Those exils who came ore the waves, 
 When they landed they were glad. 
 And now they all lie in their graves. 
 But the king of England he was mad. 
 they built 
 By tlio-ratowny oon thoir houoo it otood, ■ 
 
 The line through that last verse was pathetic; it 
 indicated the Limit. Tears had been ready to come 
 with the sense of defeat. He is not a poet; possibly 
 he is destined, as were both his parents, to a few 
 defeats to find it out! His few little lines were not 
 incipient poetry; they were incipient " Philosophy 
 of History." Properly smiled upon and encouraged 
 it will grow to its fulfilment " in years which bring 
 the philosophic mind." 
 
 Oh for the faith of Paul to plant and Apollos to 
 water, and for the faith to trust in God to give the 
 increase! We are afraid to "live by admiration, 
 hope, and love." We shall not in this generation 
 be wise enough for anything so simple as that. We 
 shall, for a long time yet, believe we must teach 
 children all that we want them to know. We shall 
 go on for a long time yet, stupidly pulling and push- 
 ing at the things which of themselves are bravely 
 trying to grow in the fertile minds and hearts of 
 children. Our children must suffer still some time 
 longer by our " adult egotism." 
 
152 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 One of the most relentless forms which this pull- 
 ing at growing things takes in the schools is the 
 form of drill. Drill is a word in which school- 
 masters have much confidence. "We learn by 
 doing." So, indeed, we do. But that does not 
 necessarily mean that we learn a thing by doing 
 that particular thing over, and over, and over, 
 again. Even the famous curriculum-makers feel 
 that. 
 
 Professor Woodward has pointed out that the 
 educational effect of manual training is destroyed 
 by having the pupils work for the market. " The 
 first machine made is an education to its maker . . . 
 the second and subsequent machines made, are only 
 a matter of habit." 
 
 Galley-slave work again! The word drill is a 
 word which should be employed with caution. On 
 this point we should heed such words as those of 
 Commissioner Harris: 
 
 "Especially in elementary schools is it very 
 important to study the effects of arrested develop- 
 ment that occur by reason of too much drill in 
 arithmetic or word memorising, or any semi- 
 mechanical operation, . . . under the plea of 
 thoroughness." 
 
 I have had come under my personal observa- 
 
THE METHOD OF LIMITS 153 
 
 tion several cases in which I believe that brilliant 
 capabilities have been deadened by excess of drill 
 and memorising. Soldiers must have precision of 
 drill; musicians must drill for skill of finger; 
 children must drill, more or less till they can read, 
 and write, and " say their tables." Up to a certain 
 point " drill " is a " Natural Method/' beyond that 
 point it easily becomes a first-class machine for the 
 strengthening of the patience " which is the virtue 
 of asses." Is not drill the function which gets us 
 into a habit of doing things mechanically? But 
 there are not many things we wish to do mechani- 
 cally. It is, for instance, a misapplication of the 
 use of drill, to expect to become good writers of 
 English through drill in writing. We can, doubt- 
 less, by drill, get into a way of writing a certain 
 sort of correct, harmless sort of English; but if you 
 hope to write forceful, vigorous, interesting English, 
 first of all get your head full of clearly-defined, red- 
 hot ideas, and words will gather to them as iron 
 filings to a magnet. 
 
 So, then, when we have brought children np to 
 their Limit, let us not make them miserable because 
 they cannot go beyond it. When they have grown a 
 fair harvest of one sort, let us encourage a rotation 
 of crops. How this growing capacity of a child's 
 
154 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 mind and the growing quality of some subjects, 
 should guide in curriculum-making and in the train- 
 ing of teachers! 
 
 " Just as if one must not necessarily grow cleverer 
 and taller at the same time! " cries Jean Paul. 
 
IX 
 
 "NATURAL METHOD" 
 
 And Nature, the old nurse, took 
 
 The child upon her knee, 
 Saying: " Here is a story-book 
 
 Thy Father has written for thee. 
 
 " Come, wander with me," she said, 
 
 " Into regions yet untrod; 
 And read what is still unread 
 
 In the manuscripts of God." 
 
 And he wandered away and away, 
 With Nature, the dear old nurse, 
 
 Who sang to him night and day 
 The rhymes of the universe. 
 
 And whenever the way seemed long, 
 
 Or his heart began to fail, 
 She would sing a more wonderful song, 
 
 Or tell a more marvellous tale. 
 
 — Longfellow. 
 
 "N"atueal Method"! "Scientific presentation 
 of the subject"! Phrases beloved of Pedagogues! 
 Phrases for the Schoolmaster to conjure with! 
 "Natural Method" is, perhaps, the rallying cry 
 which did more than any other to rescue the schools 
 155 
 
156 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 from the old, cramming method of "imparting 
 knowledge." It is now in danger of doing more 
 harm than any other. The educational world went 
 stark mad over the invention of "natural" methods, 
 and has not yet fully recovered its sanity. There 
 was but one method of " cramming/' but of methods 
 " natural/' their name is legion. Each teacher has 
 his own selected, or original one. It reminds us 
 of the enterprising manufacturing firm in the West, 
 which could not keep up with the demand for 
 " relics which came over in the Mayflower" To 
 each, the best method which he can devise seems 
 the natural one. 
 
 An acquaintance of mine once had charge of a 
 little orphaned niece. She was an exceedingly con- 
 scientious woman and longed to devote much time 
 to the education of the child, but she had little 
 leisure. She took the child about with her a great 
 deal, and she conceived the bright idea of having 
 her learn to read and spell and to " say her tables " 
 in fragments of time during their journeyings; 
 " for," she reasoned, " when she gets to school she 
 will easily learn to apply them." The child was 
 responsive and learned these and many other things 
 with eagerness, always by rote, her aunt relying on 
 her getting the application of them when she should 
 
"natural method" 157 
 
 go to school. Now let us see how little she had 
 attained of any real knowledge. Meeting her one 
 day, I asked, in the course of the conversation: 
 
 "How long have yon lived in this world, any- 
 way?" 
 
 A look of real surprise came over the child's 
 bright face as she answered slowly and wonderingly: 
 
 " I don't know; 111 ask Auntie." 
 
 I was interested in the child and took a little 
 trouble to learn of her progress from time to time. 
 After she had been in school a few weeks I asked 
 her teacher how she was getting on. 
 
 " She is a sort of wonder," the teacher exclaimed. 
 " She knows her tables perfectly, but it has been 
 almost impossible to make her see that they have 
 anything whatever to do with her examples. In 
 adding and multiplying she begins at the beginning 
 of the table to find every combination she needs; 
 for instance, if she wants 7x8 she recites the 7 table 
 to herself till she comes to the 8. You can imagine 
 how slowly she does her examples in multiplication. 
 She can spell anything orally, but she had to begin 
 with the very beginners in written spelling. She 
 reads fluently, but has not the slightest idea what 
 she is reading about." 
 
 This was,, indeed,, an extreme case. But it em- 
 
158 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 phasises forcibly the central truth of the New 
 Education which is, that while knowledge and the 
 acquiring of it, while instruction and the fruits of 
 it, are absolutely essential to a good education, they 
 are not, in themselves, a good education without the 
 power of manipulating and employing them. And 
 no method is a " natural " one which does not 
 develop this power along with the getting of the 
 knowledge. In all the New Educational line of 
 thought no other idea occurs more frequently or 
 stands out more prominently than this one. 
 
 " The child is not to learn science, but to dis- 
 cover it," writes Eousseau. 
 
 " Science cannot be taught; only drawn out," 
 says Socrates ages earlier. And Quick puts it, " I 
 do not think that the mind is benefited by galley- 
 slave labour." 
 
 It is ever the same idea; we cannot profitably 
 hoard up knowledge, as the miser hoards his gold; 
 it becomes real knowledge only as we use it; we ac- 
 cumulate it profitably, only by applying it as we 
 acquire it. 
 
 A little friend of ours, a dozen years of age, 
 began the study of Latin a short time ago. We 
 were greatly disappointed, in looking over his text- 
 book, to discover that he was to approach the 
 
"natural method" 159 
 
 language through the grammar exclusively, after 
 the old-fashioned way. The author dwells honestly 
 in the Introduction, on the necessity of the 
 " thoroughness of the memory work, and the learn- 
 ing of paradigms, rather than the reading of many 
 sentences." The book consistently starts the be- 
 ginners off by having them commit to memory all 
 the chief inflections, the declensions of nouns, pro- 
 nouns, and adjectives, and the conjugations of all 
 four kinds of verbs, and even some of the excep- 
 tions; all this with very, very sparing illustration of 
 their uses in the language itself. Divest yourself of 
 maturity and prejudice if you can, become a child 
 again, and look with a child's eye upon the following 
 paradigm given you to memorise with its " funny " 
 pronunciations. 
 
 
 Singular. 
 
 
 Plural. 
 
 
 Nom. 
 
 is 
 
 ea 
 
 id 
 
 ei, ii 
 
 ese 
 
 ea 
 
 Gen. 
 
 eius 
 
 eius 
 
 eius 
 
 eorum 
 
 earum 
 
 eorum 
 
 Dat. 
 
 ei 
 
 ei 
 
 ei 
 
 eis, iis 
 
 eis, iis 
 
 eis, iis 
 
 Ace. 
 
 eum 
 
 earn 
 
 id 
 
 eos 
 
 eas 
 
 ea 
 
 Abl. 
 
 eo 
 
 ea 
 
 eo 
 
 eis, iis 
 
 eis, iis 
 
 eis, iis 
 
 You have half a dozen sentences to illustrate its 
 significance and then you proceed to learn more and 
 more of the same sort. I do not pretend that 
 children cannot learn such things. A good many 
 
160 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 children toss them off with comparative ease, some 
 even with a parrot-like kind of pleasure; but it is 
 my experience and observation that it is largely 
 amusement in tongue-rattling; that when they come 
 to apply it all as knowledge, they do it much as the 
 little girl did her multiplication tables, — " say 'em 
 till you think you've come to the one you think you 
 want." It is the antiquated method of our youth. 
 It is almost a marvel to me that in this day a book 
 like that should find a publisher! We ought to be 
 further on in the progress of educational ideals. I 
 learned Latin in that way with the reverent trust 
 of youth that I was doing a fine thing and doing it 
 the only way. I can to-day con over at your call, 
 like a well-trained parrot, the synoposes of the verbs 
 of all the conjugations in any person and number 
 you shall choose; decline nouns and adjectives to 
 your liking; and recite lists of prepositions and con- 
 junctions. But as for reading Latin — well, I 
 never do it for pleasure, although I have several 
 times parsed and analysed a Latin sentence without 
 knowing its meaning. 
 
 Dr. Edward Everett Hale writes: 
 
 " I am quite clear that I went through the Latin 
 school with the distinct feeling that Adams' Gram- 
 mar stated the eternal truth with regard to the 
 
"natural method" 161 
 
 language, and that Cicero and the rest of them had 
 to adapt themselves to it." 
 
 I well know that opinion is divided among the 
 competent, regarding methods of teaching Latin. 
 And far be it from me to presume to say that this 
 method or that one is the best one. I am not a 
 Pedagogue, I am a Parent. But from a Parent's 
 point of view I can discover not one grain of wisdom 
 in teaching anything under Heaven in so uninterest- 
 ing and unnatural a way. Nor is it any wonder that 
 our children must " grind " so fiercely over Latin 
 to creditably pass their examinations, and that then 
 nearly all of them drop it forever. 
 
 No doubt, from some pedagogical point of view, 
 such methods may be argued to be " easy " and 
 " natural " ones. First learn the principles, then 
 apply them! So simple! From the point of view 
 of the child it can scarcely escape being pure jargon. 
 The ordinary child will learn anything he's given, 
 then go play and think no more about it if it doesn't 
 appeal to him. We should not take advantage of 
 his trustfulness. The child whose nature is a 
 scholarly one will seek at the very outset for crumbs 
 of real knowledge, for a glimpse of the language 
 itself! Children have a natural aversion to hoard- 
 ing; to hoarding anything, knowledge least of all. 
 
162 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 They like to use a thing the minute they get 
 it. No hoarding-up method can be a natural 
 one. 
 
 It runs strongly and continually in my head that 
 there is no one "Natural Method" for teaching 
 anything; that a combination of all methods is the 
 most natural method; and that most often the pupil 
 himself should be allowed to make the combination. 
 It is most earnestly to be desired, indeed, that our 
 children be allowed, as far as possible, to go forward 
 each by his own " Natural Method." The best sort 
 of mind travels toward the discovery or apprecia- 
 tion of a fact, on its own self -laid track, and is apt 
 to " go it blind " on any other. Children should be 
 early encouraged to lay their own track to any 
 desired end. This seems particularly true in 
 Science and Mathematics, but is also true in other 
 subjects. 
 
 " The prime obstacle to our doing the best that 
 might be done for the child's education is adult 
 egotism. The shadow of ourselves obscures the 
 child," writes Patterson Du Bois. Many a " stupid " 
 child has come out bright when freed from the 
 shackles forged upon him by our egotism. We 
 should be a little shy of " natural " methods; 
 should make sure they are really Nature's method 
 
"natural method" 163 
 
 and not the " Natural Method " of some particular 
 mind. We once visited an Indian Eeservation in 
 Nova Scotia. The French, from the very start, have 
 always dealt in more loving fashion with the Indians 
 than we have. They have never had a " Century of 
 Dishonour," and these Indians were great pets. In 
 answer to our inquiry as to what they did for a 
 living, the people there told us that they made all 
 sorts of " Indian remedies " from herbs during the 
 summer, and went to the cities to sell them in the 
 winter. "And are the medicines really good for 
 anything? " we asked incredulously. " Oh, they 
 are probably harmless," was the laughing reply! 
 Eeflections were in order upon the enormous sale of 
 Indian remedies in " The States "! Indians live so 
 close to Nature, you know! It is unnecessary to 
 point our moral. The wares of " Natural Method " 
 venders are not always certain to be so fortunate as 
 to be " harmless." Even in small things we want our 
 children's work to have, at last, that quality. 
 
 Our nine-year-old boy's young, enthusiastic 
 teacher, wishing to help the children in studying 
 their spelling lessons, directed them to write all 
 the words five times, and all the hard ones ten times, 
 and pass them in to her. Our boy was quite dis- 
 turbed. Monotony is death to him; it is to any one. 
 
164 
 
 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 He had various ways of conquering his list; for 
 instance, yesterday he did it in the following man- 
 
 Ittfridtdaa* 
 
 
 
 ner: with his left eye closed he shrewdly scrutinised 
 the list, then hunted up some one to read him the 
 words; above is a facsimile of the form in which he 
 brought them to us to be corrected. As penalty for 
 
^NATURAL METHOD" 
 
 165 
 
 the misspelled words he went through the perform- 
 ance of a " pailful of churches/' and a " chestful of 
 expeditions "; all of which pleased him greatly. Now 
 after the five hours of school and an afternoon of 
 hard outdoor play, a boy's mind is not in order for 
 
 harness-work, — or work at all, for that matter, and 
 as he sat wearily down to his homework tasks, we 
 hated to have them turned into drudgery. So we said 
 simply: 
 
 " You ask your teacher if you may learn them as 
 you please, if you will get them right." 
 
 The next day the teacher, with much tact I think, 
 announced to the class that those who got ninety 
 per cent, in their spelling should be excused from 
 handing in the written list. It was a small thing, 
 
166 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 but it was worth while. School work is made up of 
 small things, all of which seem big to the children, 
 especially when they are that bugbear of school 
 days, home-work. 
 
 " Natural Methods " became, after the " New De- 
 parture " of Quincy, so many and so various, so 
 original, so peculiar, so anything but the old way, 
 that they came to mean a continual experimentation 
 on the children. The remembrance of it all recalls 
 the story of the nurse who scorned the thermometer 
 for the baby's bath; she could " tell without." 
 When asked how, she replied, " Why, mum, if the 
 baby turns red it's too hot; if he turns blue it's too 
 cold. It's the easiest way and it's sure! " 
 
 By all that is sacred in childhood, let us leave the 
 children as much freedom and originality in their 
 mental development as we can, by any stretch of 
 judgment, believe wise, even as, for their physical 
 growth, we rejoice to see them run and jump and 
 kick and sprawl to their heart's content and after 
 their own heart's devices. We wouldn't interfere if 
 they tried to coast up hill, or made their snow men 
 standing on their heads. " Ah," we exclaim, " that 
 will make them healthy and strong! " Do they not 
 need a large amount of the same free activity in 
 spirit, to gain a healthy strong soul? 
 
"natural method" 167 
 
 "It might be desirable/' laments Mr. Hanford 
 Henderson, "it would certainly be convenient, if 
 we could present great slices of truth, like generous 
 helps of layer-cake, to the minds of our children, 
 and have them thoroughly assimilated by methods 
 prescribed by ourselves in normal schools assembled. 
 But however desirable and convenient, it is not 
 possible. Yet we go on trying, yesterday, to-day, — 
 I hope not forever." It is certainly wise to have 
 the soul-feast always a bountiful one for children, 
 provided we have enough self-control and faith not 
 to be continually nagging their appetite. We 
 should have viands — simple, dainty viands — suited to 
 a child's palate. If we could but have faith in child- 
 hood's appetite and impulses! Faith to believe that 
 they indicate the true "Natural Methods"! Could 
 we but recognise as God-given hints, childhood's 
 longings and Teachings out after Life — full, abun- 
 dant Life and Freedom! Our "adult egotism" 
 prescribes all their mental activities. Every bit of 
 the mental training of which our children are 
 rightly capable — and more — we give into the charge 
 of the school. And the school says to them, " You 
 must do even as the others do; you must all do and 
 be, alike." 
 
 We ought steadily to resist the pedagogical theory 
 
168 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 that a step-by-step, logical-order track can be laid 
 for children, and all children set running at the 
 same pace upon it. No such theory would ever get 
 birth from a Parent's experience. The result of 
 this pedagogical belief is, that for the school half 
 of a child's life, there get to be constructed ladders, 
 upon which to climb to the heights of knowledge, 
 the foot firm upon one rung before the next may 
 be attempted; the child meanwhile is cheered up 
 the ladders by innumerable sweet, discouraging lit- 
 tle encouragements for the feeble; "little by little," 
 " pas a pas" " slow and sure," and the like, most of 
 which are epigrams far more true in the material 
 world than in the world of spirit. Many a child can 
 go fast and sure, leap by leap, over long stretches of 
 the hard road of learning — if he be not hindered. 
 I do not now believe there exists that close simi- 
 larity between material and mental law in which I 
 once had so much faith. Nature is far more liberal 
 and indulgent in things spiritual than in things 
 material. Matter is hard, inflexible, stubborn. 
 Spirit is fluid, flexible, elusive. There is no 
 Aladdin's lamp for us — not yet — in things material. 
 Matter is relentless. But who has not felt at times, 
 the almost magic thrill of a sudden inspiration or 
 revealing, overleaping at one bound, scores of the 
 
"natural method" 169 
 
 logician's ladder-rungs? Wings may sprout at any 
 unexpected moment and bear an intense soul to 
 heights where no man knows enough to fix a ladder- 
 top. "Watch. Trust a little to Nature. The 
 choicest spirits will ignore your ladders, and bridges, 
 and £ower-strewn paths, to the goal you have 
 selected. They have their own individual flights to 
 take; let them take them. Do not too much be- 
 lieve that the adult mind has a right to demand 
 from the child, conformity to its wisdom and its 
 methods. The "Natural Method" in most things 
 is the growing to a thing, not the being taught it. 
 One wonders if Mr. Alexis Frye should not be 
 given the first prize for a "Natural Method" of 
 doing things. We shall always recall with delight 
 his bold, magnificent way of introducing our ideals 
 and ways into the Cuban schools. He seems never 
 to have even thought of establishing an American 
 normal school in Cuba and sending down a batch of 
 pedagogues and professors to equip the teachers 
 with Herbartian or other psychology, and big- 
 worded wisdom of the order described in our In- 
 troduction. To have done that would, indeed, have 
 been an orderly, regulation way. But behold now 
 how much more "natural" was his method. He 
 simply brought a thousand or more of the Cuban 
 
170 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 teachers up here so that, to use President Eliot's 
 words, they might " see how our people live; see our 
 manners and customs when we are at work and when 
 we are at ease. ... To see what has come of the 
 steady, slow development of civil, political, social, 
 and industrial liberty through eight generations of 
 men on this rude shore and this barren soil." Then 
 he took them home again and dispersed them all 
 over the Island. And did he not accomplish more 
 thereby, than would have been accomplished by 
 ordinary methods in ten years? 
 
 Even by the best of methods nobody can be taught 
 faster than he can learn. "The speed of the 
 horseman must be limited by the power of the 
 horse," which is John Milton's conclusion of the 
 matter. 
 
 It comes to me ever more and more strongly, 
 every way of looking at it, that our part in educa- 
 tion is not primarily, the getting up of school- 
 curricula and schemes of education, but hum- 
 ble cooperation with what the child may reveal 
 as Nature's method, — which is surely Evolu- 
 tion. We have all come, in this generation, to 
 believe in evolution for the world universal. But 
 evolution for the whole is compassed only by a 
 separate little scheme of evolution for each individ- 
 
"natural method" 171 
 
 ualised atom or part. Thus the progress of the 
 Human Race must come by evolving the true nature 
 of each individual child; — which brings us to the 
 province of Education. 
 
 It may be claimed that School-Curricula are in- 
 tended to be made in harmony with the laws of 
 this very evolution. But continuous contact with 
 the daily free activities of childhood, which are, 
 indeed, but the actual processes of evolution, must 
 have a tendency to arouse in every thoughtful 
 parent's mind, doubts as to whether worthy schemes 
 of education can be mapped out for any child or set 
 of children, for weeks and months and years in 
 advance. It would be unpardonably weak of us not 
 to have always within our own view, the great fields 
 of knowledge into which we hope our children will 
 enter; but we shall surely fail if we try too much to 
 dictate the order of their entering. That is 
 Nature's share in the scheme; it is she who gives 
 them their make-up, their temperament, and the 
 trend of their longings. Our part is to watch; to 
 stand by and, from day to day, shift the point of 
 contact to fit the individual and momentary need. 
 When an onrush of class heat and fervour is 
 generated, and is bearing a class toward high ideals, 
 would you, in your " adult egotism/' switch them off 
 
172 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 to a siding, merely to keep them on the " grade " 
 track? Or if it be the ardour of an individual child, 
 must it, forsooth, be ignored, that the child may- 
 fit in with the other forty-nine? Nay, let us have 
 more faith. 
 
 Let us trust the individual genius of each nation; 
 of each particular school-class even; but most 
 especially and most sacredly, let us reverence the 
 individuality of each child. Scientific produce- 
 raisers and stock-raisers understand this principle 
 by instinct: they cultivate each plant, each animal 
 by itself. Letting it take its own lead, they stand 
 by to suppress, and so cultivate out, the undesirable 
 characteristics, and to encourage by every means, 
 the desired qualities. Let us be as scientific in 
 Education. Let us allow Cuban and Filipino to 
 evolve his own destiny, meanwhile helping him all 
 in our power. Let us believe in the same law for 
 any nation or individual weaker than ourselves, or 
 behind us in the march of civilisation. Most 
 especially, as before said, let us give the children the 
 benefit of this law of evolution; — evolution assisted 
 by civilisation, not coerced by it. 
 
ARITHMETIC 
 
 " Multiplication is vexation, 
 Division is as bad; 
 The Rule of Three doth puzzle me 
 And Fractions drive me mad." 
 
 Akithmetic! Charm and delight of my school- 
 days! Divine harmony of numbers and of quantity! 
 Enchanted realm for those " horn to it "! Bottom- 
 less pit for the school-child who discovers not its 
 fascinations! A youngster good in Arithmetic may 
 go through the public school head high. Skill in 
 Arithmetic will cover a multitude of sins. But be 
 he "stupid" in Arithmetic, other graces will not 
 redeem him. He may be a natural artist, a genius 
 in history, have a fine literary instinct, a strong 
 lovable character; — but he can't keep up in Arith- 
 metic! And Arithmetic is the grade-regulator! 
 
 Yet ability in Arithmetic is not a fair test of a 
 child's intelligence, intellectual capacity, scholar- 
 ship, practicalness, or even mathematical talent; 
 that is, Arithmetic as everywhere required and 
 173 
 
174 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 taught in the schools. From the time when I first 
 knew how to count, I have taught Arithmetic, — for 
 money, for love of childhood, oftenest perhaps, for 
 the very love which I bear for the study itself, and I 
 have yet to meet the first normal child who did not 
 seem to me to have natural ability in Arithmetic. 
 So universal is the ability to comprehend it, indeed, 
 that it seems almost a fair test of normality. Of 
 course this ability, like ability in all other directions, 
 varies widely in different children, but I am con- 
 vinced that it is not lack of ability in pupils which 
 " generates so much artificial stupidity " in that 
 branch; neither is it lack of faithfulness on the part 
 of teachers, who are mostly over-conscientious. 
 The " stupidity " is in the everywhere accepted 
 method of teaching it, and especially in the arrange- 
 ment of school arithmetics. Arithmetics of to-day 
 have, all of them, a most " Scientific Presentation of 
 the Subject," but the arrangement is universally 
 " scientific " with regard to the subject, and not in 
 regard to the natural development of a child's ap- 
 preciation of number. But more of that later. 
 
 I was very small when the determination first 
 took possession of me to make a " decent arith- 
 metic " when I should be " big." I was but a dozen 
 years or so of age when one of my teachers an- 
 
ARITHMETIC 175 
 
 nounced to our class, that in a few years the schools 
 would probably all be using my arithmetic! He 
 made the announcement jocosely, but I did not 
 smile. In my trusting child-heart I looked upon 
 his prophecy as a sure one. For many years the 
 ambition to make a " decent arithmetic " broke out 
 occasionally in acute form. I wish I (or some one) 
 had been given the grace and strength and* time to 
 do it. The ambition died long ago. The cause of 
 its death was manifold. 
 
 1st. There were already so many arithmetics. 
 
 2d. If I really did make a " decent " one it 
 would be so radically, so revolutionarily different from 
 other arithmetics that teachers would think — well, 
 that the maker of it was crazy, perhaps. 
 
 3d. That very likely I couldn't after all, do it 
 as I had it in mind; to conceive a thing and to 
 execute it are two very different things. 
 
 4th. The fourth cause will appear in the follow- 
 ing incident, although the incident occurred after 
 the death of said ambition. 
 
 The ambition which replaced that of making a 
 " decent arithmetic " was an ambition to discover 
 one. To that end, whenever I heard of the publica- 
 tion of a new arithmetic, I hastened immediately to 
 give it sympathetic attention and examination. 
 
176 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Both ambitions are dead now. I have arrived with 
 many others at the mournful stage of regarding the 
 arithmetic disease in the schools as an incurable 
 one. However, the incident is fraught with fairly 
 profitable food for reflection and I will give it. 
 
 At one time two new arithmetics by rival firms 
 were announced at the same time, each claiming to 
 be arranged " scientifically/' on " natural methods " 
 and incorporating the " newest and most up-to-date 
 ideas." I dropped into the publishing house of one 
 of the books and, asking to see their new arithmetic, 
 seated myself to examine it, intending, if it seemed 
 to warrant my doing so, to buy it for my collection. 
 Then I went over to the clerk, with whom I held 
 the wholly unpremeditated conversation which 
 follows: 
 
 I. " Is the book essentially different from all the 
 other arithmetics? Enough different to warrant 
 adding another to the list? " 
 
 He. " We think it is a pretty good arithmetic." 
 
 I. " Yes, but aren't such and such arithmetics 
 good ones? — about as good as this?" 
 
 He. " Those are excellent arithmetics " (cau- 
 tiously). 
 
 I. "But this one? Why did you make another? 
 How is it different?" 
 
ARITHMETIC 177 
 
 He. "Well, we thought we would like an arith- 
 metic of our own." 
 
 I. " I see; and So-and-So thought they would like 
 one of their own, I suppose; have you seen theirs? " 
 
 He. "I have seen it. It looks like a good one, 
 too " (generously). 
 
 I. "Isn't it almost exactly like this one? The 
 advertisement sounds just like it. I'd like very 
 much to see one; you haven't a copy, have you?" 
 
 He. " We keep only our own publications." 
 
 I (after a moment's hesitation with an air of 
 good-comradeship). " You haven't a copy any- 
 where about, have you? " (I knew they must have.) 
 " It's a long way up there, and I do want to see one 
 very much." 
 
 He. " I think So-and-So may have one." 
 
 He really got me one from So-and-So's desk, and 
 I spent some little time examining it and in compar- 
 ing them. I found them as I had expected, almost 
 identical. Then I returned to the desk of the 
 hospitable salesman and resumed our conversation. 
 He was accustomed to meeting " All sorts and condi- 
 tions of men" and he handled me with patience 
 and even with courtesy. 
 
 I. " Do you feel that you have come to the final 
 thing in arithmetics? For instance, do you regard 
 
178 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 your arithmetics as up to your histories, and 
 geographies, and books for teaching English and 
 Science?" 
 
 He. " Well, no, we don't. We are always on the 
 look-out for a good thing in arithmetics." (Then he 
 evidently thought it his turn to do the quizzing, and 
 he asked smilingly, but probably with a good deal 
 of inward irony), "Why don't you make an arith- 
 metic yourself?" 
 
 I. "I have often thought of it, and I'm not 
 wholly convinced that I shall rest comfortably 
 under the sod if I don't — unless some one else writes 
 my arithmetic." 
 
 He. " Would it be so very different? " 
 
 I. "Very different." 
 
 He. "In what respect?" 
 
 I. " The other day we got a new sewing-machine 
 at our house, and the old one was turned over to 
 our little boy. We told him that, for him, it was 
 almost as good as the new one. "Most as good!' 
 he exclaimed, 'It's a good deal better! More 
 machinery! ' And surely, beside the old one, the 
 beautiful new machine did look ashamed of itself 
 with its exceedingly simple arrangement for sewing. 
 My arithmetic would be like that; in the presence 
 of other arithmetics, it would hang its head with 
 
ARITHMETIC 179 
 
 shame at the very nakedness of its simplicity." (He 
 laughed politely and I continued) : " But supposing 
 I, or any one else, should make an arithmetic which 
 really was, on the face of it, far ahead of other 
 arithmetics in fitness for the use of children, would 
 it, on its merits alone, stand much of a chance for 
 sale, do you think? " 
 
 He (laughing). "No, perhaps not, on its merits 
 alone." 
 
 I. " Which arithmetic gets the sale, the "best one 
 or the hest pushed one? " 
 
 He. " We do have to do a good deal of pushing." 
 I. "And if an absolutely perfect arithmetic 
 should enter the lists, its perfection would not be a 
 large element in contributing to its success." 
 He. " I don't know that it would, really." 
 This little incident gives a hint, perhaps, why 
 nobody writes arithmetics for the children. Arith- 
 metics are for publishing houses. Each one wants 
 one of its own. And there's more money and less 
 risk in an arithmetic of the "regular kind"; and 
 the " regular kind " is complexly " scientific." For 
 the present, in spite of prevailing theories to the 
 contrary, the current of actual arithmetic-teaching 
 is not set in the direction of simplicity. The old 
 love prevails for words and rules, and forms and 
 
180 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 formulas, for superabundant explanations and ex- 
 planations of explanations, and apparatus and ap- 
 pliances, for teaching this simplest of simple sub- 
 jects, — the only method scorned being the direct, 
 each-in-his-own-way coming at the simple problems 
 required in actual life, and for further mathematics. 
 Eesult: a double or treble portion of time must be 
 given to arithmetic during the whole eight or ten 
 years of primary and grammar-school work, and 
 must even then, have a " finishing off " course if ex- 
 amination in it is required for college or technical 
 school. And, after all that, how small the number 
 in practical life who are " good at figures "\ There 
 are a few, it is freely acknowledged, who like arith- 
 metic in the schools, nevertheless, I do not believe 
 it is overstating the truth to say that it is the most 
 universally "hated," and shirked, and failed-in 
 study in the schools to-day. 
 
 Arithmetic should be one of the incidental things 
 in the primary, and I am not sure but also in the 
 grammar, grades, not the central one; one of the 
 side-dishes at the feast, not the piece de resistance. 
 A glance at the French course of instruction as 
 given in President Eliot's "Educational Reform," 
 makes it seem as if it were really so in France. By 
 that schedule, during the primary and grammar- 
 
ARITHMETIC 181 
 
 school age, the time devoted to arithmetic is about 
 a third as much as we allot at that age. The time 
 thus gained is given largely to the acquisition of 
 foreign languages. How much more "natural"! 
 and "scientific"! For these are the unreasoning, 
 obedient years of parrot-like imitativeness and of 
 memory. 
 
 To roam about, even to riot, among numbers is a 
 delight to children, and is, therefore, natural. It 
 is not a delight and is, therefore, not natural to " do 
 arithmetic" at so early an age as it is done, or 
 attempted to be done, in the schools. Nor is it 
 natural for young children to do arithmetic, or any- 
 thing else, attended by so much difficult terminol- 
 ogy. A little girl of my acquaintance used to talk 
 about the toperator and denominator of fractions. 
 On our quizzing her a little she said jauntily: " Oh, I 
 say it that way always so's to remember which one's 
 the top one." "I remember "divisor 5 all right," 
 said a little chap, of long division, " because it's the 
 divider, and besides, we use it so much, but I don't 
 bother about the others." "But don't you use 
 'quotient' just as much?" we asked. "Which 
 one is that? the answer? Well, I call it the an- 
 swer." 
 
 Children like, and ought to have, small worcis 
 
182 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 with big ideas, not small ideas with big words. 
 Which of ourselves likes a nut that's mostly shell? 
 
 When all is said, arithmetic should not be taught 
 overmuch. Like Science it should be . . . come 
 upon, worked out in one's own way. And it is 
 really so simple! Only common-sense applications 
 of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division! 
 Arithmetic should be, as it were, planted, tended 
 somewhat, and be allowed to grow, according to the 
 recipe of the "Natural Method" chapter, while we 
 go about something else. Like other things that 
 grow, if you think to make it grow unduly fast and 
 keep pulling at it, you do but dwarf it. If a child 
 of ten can easily divide 8,764 by 43, the size of his 
 possibilities in long division will grow along with 
 the size of the rest of him, and later on he will have 
 no trouble in dividing 6,456,165,769,632 by 45,963 if 
 occasion should ever be unkind enough to require it 
 of him. Do you not suppose his mental power is to 
 grow as fast as his bodily? Do not waste precious 
 childhood and youth teaching or trying to teach, 
 what belongs to a later age, and will almost surely 
 grow, if we will but give it opportunity, from its 
 own Nature-given impetus. We may indeed, trust 
 a great deal to the growing quality of arithmetic. 
 Judgment and experience come late, and skill in 
 
ARITHMETIC 183 
 
 arithmetic requires judgment and experience. 
 Whether any years, except those of some specialists, 
 are suited to cumbersome arithmetic is a question, 
 but we may be sure that these early years are not; 
 these open-minded, romantic, receptive, impressible 
 days are far too valuable for any other than things 
 of beauty and joy and use. They should be given 
 over to whatever develops character: high moral 
 purpose and refinement. The heavy artillery of 
 arithmetic is so soulless, so mechanical, as to be 
 almost stultifying to the moral development of 
 children who " hate " it. 
 
 We had a child whose mind balked in arithmetic. 
 We lost all patience — so much easier it is to preach 
 than to practise in the matter of patience. Then 
 common sense and consistency flashed the thought 
 upon me: 
 
 " This child is of at least ordinary intelligence; 
 I am surely of e;r£ra-ordinary patience in educa- 
 tional matters; we must, therefore, be attempting 
 unnatural things." On the spot I said to the 
 child: 
 
 "There! Close your book. You need have no 
 more to do with arithmetic for one year. We'll see 
 if you won't grow to that! We'll try a rotation of 
 crops" 
 
184 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 We were given grace (which I think was quite 
 remarkable) to adhere to that decision, and when at 
 the end of the year, the child went again about her 
 arithmetic, we were delighted and inconsistently 
 amazed to observe the naturalness and ease with 
 which she skipped along, making not the slightest 
 difficulty over the particular subject on which she 
 had stumbled so vexatiously. And that child, at a 
 later date, performed some quite unusual feats in 
 mathematics, which I cannot help fancying she 
 would never have done, if she had continued to be 
 nagged instead of being set free. 
 
 Under the inspiration of our success in this ex- 
 periment, on several occasions we repeated the ex- 
 perience on a smaller scale, and every time to our 
 satisfaction. Plant, then, in Arithmetic; plant 
 assiduously, and carefully cherish and tend your 
 plantings, and trust Time to bring the increase. 
 For, as I have before observed, I cannot help look- 
 ing upon Arithmetic as the very chief of the " or- 
 ganic " or "growing" studies. Teach the curious 
 inquisitive youngsters to count — by the dozens, by 
 the scores, by the gross; to measure and to reckon 
 money. They love to measure by the ounce and 
 pound; by the foot and yard and rod and mile; to 
 solve easy and useful and practical problems in 
 
ARITHMETIC 185 
 
 measurements. But by the sacredness of the laws 
 of childhood, trust Nature with her laws of growth 
 to do as she pleases about developing them, later 
 on, to such a point that they will care to, or be able 
 to, do such things as " Ascertain what part of a mile 
 is 7 furlongs, 37 rods, 3 yds., 2 ft. and 5 inches, 
 decimally and fractionally, and prove that the 
 answers are identical." 
 
 Children will take great pleasure in halving and 
 quartering things and, indeed, in learning all about 
 fractions which one needs to know, provided they 
 are allowed to come at it interestingly, but again 
 trust Nature (if she thinks necessary) to get them 
 on to such fractions as: 
 
 64 18 t 
 85 + 19 1tt 
 
 Aye, trust Nature. All the same I believe she 
 will lead them on, not to those particular attain- 
 ments, but to far higher and more uplifting ones of 
 her own choosing. All this in the face of the fact 
 that there are always a few arithmetical acrobats in 
 every class to whom such gymnastics are a delight 
 and who should be encouraged to indulge in them. 
 It would, indeed, be cruel to force all children to 
 
186 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 walk the tight-rope because there is now and then 
 one who must do it by the very nature of him. It 
 would take high courage, which we do not yet 
 possess, to require our children to learn the simple 
 essentials of arithmetic, and leave them free to 
 follow their own leading as to whether they shall 
 do the " extras." Yet this is what we should do, 
 more or less. If we were to do that in all the studies, 
 I believe we should get ourselves marvellously 
 astonished and delighted, by discovering that nearly 
 every pupil would forge ahead in some direction, 
 thus revealing his own peculiar bent and individual- 
 ity. And most would go far on in the majority of 
 things. 
 
 No other study lends itself more readily to the 
 purposes of the " Natural Method " inventors than 
 Arithmetic; and no subject is so busily furnished 
 forth with devices and apparatus and paraphernalia 
 for its teaching, than this simplest of subjects, 
 number. To approach it comfortably, and with 
 childlike directness and simplicity of vision, is the 
 one method not permitted. Consequently, on all 
 sides is heard the wail that children " get on all right 
 except in arithmetic." Over and over again and 
 everywhere we hear it. 
 
 One of our neighbour's children " had trouble " 
 
ARITHMETIC 187 
 
 in this way with her arithmetic. She was doing 
 division of fractions. I supposed I had set her free 
 from all elaborations when I told her not to bother, 
 but to turn her divisor upside down and go ahead 
 exactly as though it were multiplication, which she 
 said was "lovely because it was just cancellation." 
 So I asked, "Why, what's the trouble?" "Oh, I 
 can't do them," she moaned. " They won't let us do 
 'em your way. First you have to divide or multiply, 
 I always forget which, by the top, then do the other 
 thing by the bottom, and it always comes out wrong, 
 for I just try it by that easy way of yours, on the sly, 
 to see." 
 
 I took the resolve of visiting the school, with 
 the ulterior purpose, of course, of interceding in my 
 little friend's behalf. The teacher I knew well 
 for a genuine, sturdy, reasonable woman, enthusias- 
 tic in her work. I gradually got the conversation 
 led up to this " new way " of teaching division of 
 fractions, smilingly referring to the good old rule of 
 our day, "Invert the divisor and proceed as in 
 multiplication," meaning to show her that, after all, 
 it isn't quite always necessary to understand such 
 rules. I felt quite triumphant in the success which 
 I was about to achieve. Alas! When I referred to 
 her " new way " her face lighted immediately: 
 
188 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 " Isn't it fine ? " she exclaimed. " Just think of 
 that dull, uncomprehending way we used to learn 
 it! And this way is so simple! " 
 
 Her good-comradeship was too much for me. 
 How could I be expected to descend from that 
 pedestal whereon stood the intelligent and modern, 
 and confess myself one of the stupid old fogies? I 
 made up my mind to desert little Mary! Ashamed 
 of it? Of course! But I soothed myself all the way 
 home: " Anyway, the case was hopeless. It would 
 have been useless. Perhaps I could help Mary to 
 the new way, even if it was bothersome! " etc., etc. 
 But once at home again I put her on her own 
 defence. 
 
 " You tell the teacher," I said, " that you love 
 our way and that you and I always do it that way, 
 and I guess she'll let you." 
 
 A day or two afterwards I met her and I asked: 
 
 " Well, how goes the arithmetic ? " 
 
 " Oh," she replied happily, " the teacher laughed 
 when I told her, and said ' All right.' " 
 
 I'm sure that teacher scented cowardice; but to 
 this day Mary and I do it " the good old way " with- 
 out stopping to pay toll to reason, and I have my 
 suspicion that the teacher does the same when she 
 isn't setting an example for her class. 
 
ARITHMETIC 189 
 
 There are indeed, some Gordian knots which 
 should be cut, not untied. The application of 
 principles should, of course, be always absolutely 
 and clearly understood. But long division, square 
 root, and the like are best learned without bothering 
 in childhood about the reason for them. As soon 
 as we get a good grip on the formula, we give 
 the reason the go-by, anyway. Moreover, these 
 reasons are too abstruse for childhood. Children 
 do not really get the reasons when we think they are 
 getting them. All the " Natural Methods " in the 
 world won't make children truly comprehend mathe- 
 matical reasoning till they are up to it, how- 
 ever glibly they repeat the words of your explana- 
 tions. 
 
 And even things which must be understood 
 should not have too many and too wordy explana- 
 tions put upon them. Explanations are often but 
 a painful rat-tat-tat on the tympanum of the ear. 
 Clear away the mists you must, surely, for those 
 who are misty-minded in arithmetic; gently, sug- 
 gestively, never wordily, lead them to work their 
 own way, you beside them to open up vistas ahead 
 when courage or ability fails. When you blaze 
 your own way through a wilderness you are for- 
 ever after able to follow the trail. And the sense 
 
190 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 of accomplishment gives such an inspiring sensation 
 of self-respect and triumph! 
 
 A little friend of mine was once working away 
 trying to learn her addition tables " skipping 
 'round." She got the right result every time, but 
 was slow about it. I called her to me. 
 
 "Tell me how you get them/' I said, "get me 
 seven and nine/' and after a moment she gave me 
 the correct answer. " You don't count it, do you? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " Oh, my! no," she exclaimed. " Of course that's 
 quicker, but we aren't allowed to count." Then, 
 making elaborate preparations as though the per- 
 formance were to be a formidable one, she delivered 
 herself with great precision and system: "First I 
 say two eights are sixteen, then seven is one less 
 than eight; that makes it down to fifteen, then nine 
 is one more than eight; that makes it up again to 
 sixteen. See? " 
 
 " And do you do them all that way? " 
 
 "Yes, 'cause I know all the twos, two eightses 
 and two sevenses and all of 'em." 
 
 I praised her way of course, then asked her if she 
 would like to know my way. She was doubtful; it 
 was all so laborious! but she consented, and it was 
 my turn for elaborate preparation! I meant to ex- 
 
ARITHMETIC 191 
 
 plain that thing so simply that the child should never 
 again have anything but pleasure in it! Adult 
 egotism once more! I began cautiously: 
 
 "Let's see. It's seven and nine. You know 
 seven and ten are " 
 
 " Goodness gracious! " interrupted the child with 
 a wild jump, " what a goose I am! why didn't I ever 
 think of getting 'em from the tens? It just goes 
 down one! Give me all the nines there are! quick! " 
 
 She answered them all promptly and with the 
 greatest glee, for she was a child slow in number 
 and taking it rather hard, and here were " a whole 
 lot of 'em all off " at one fell swoop. She did the 
 eights in the same way " going down two." 
 
 Do you take it that I taught her my way? Not 
 a bit; it was her own struggles, her familiarity with 
 the field, that made her catch so quickly at the 
 vision of things through that wee little opened vista. 
 
 In my childhood the one great " Natural Method," 
 the open sesame in arithmetic, was Analysis. " Re- 
 turn always to unity" was dinned into our ears 
 ad nauseam, till Colburn's Mental Arithmetic, which 
 should have been the delight of my Arithmetic- 
 adoring mind, became a vexation and a scourge. 
 
 Superintendent Martin speaks with great admira- 
 tion of that Colburn's Arithmetic of our old school 
 
192 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 days, as an " efficient force in raising the standard 
 of instruction/' " This book came into the 
 schools/' he says, "as refreshing as a northwest 
 wind, and as stimulating. . . . Embodying the prin- 
 ciples of the New Education, it wrought a revolu- 
 tion in the teaching of arithmetic, and it determined 
 the character of all subsequent arithmetics." 
 
 Colburn's Arithmetic was meant to be, and ought 
 to have been, " A refreshing breeze " in the arithme- 
 tic class, but it did not take the conventional teacher 
 of that day long to get it thoroughly hated. 
 
 "If 7 oranges cost 21 cents, how much will 17 
 oranges cost?" And the answer was ready the 
 moment the teacher arrived at the interrogation 
 point. Easy enough! Two 21's for 14 oranges, 
 and 9 cts. for the other three, — 51 cents. And 
 now the " fun " was over! Instead of being led on 
 to another and another and still another of these 
 delightful mental gymnastics, we must stop and 
 tumble and stumble over this thing, first of course 
 repeating the question: 
 
 " If 7 oranges cost 21 cents, one orange will cost 
 as much as seven cents will go into 21 cents, which 
 is three cents; if one orange costs three cents, 17 
 oranges will cost 17 times 3 cents, which is — (long 
 pause) — 51 cents. Therefore, if 15 oranges " etc., 
 
ARITHMETIC 193 
 
 etc. The memory of all that makes me angry when 
 I think of it, even at the present day. 
 
 Possibly you think such nonsense is done away 
 with, and it is, in most places, in quite such verbose 
 formality, but one is astonished, even now, in visit- 
 ing schools, to see a vast amount of this sort of 
 nagging of the children. What if the child does 
 get the right answer? The conscientious teacher's 
 soul is not satisfied till she is sure that he has done 
 it in her way, which is, of course, the natural and 
 best way. I believe such bothering is an even bigger 
 drawback to children's morals than it is to their 
 arithmetic. How much of all that committed-to- 
 memory explanation was arithmetic ? The question 
 and the flashed answer; the rest was perhaps " lan- 
 guage," perhaps persiflage. By all means teach a 
 child to express himself, but don't in the name of 
 honesty, call it " arithmetic " when you force a child 
 to rattle off someone else's ideas in that fashion; nor 
 do it when the child's mind should be allowed to play 
 freely about his arithmetic. Let him have a chance 
 to acquire concentration of thought, lack of which 
 is the bane of — everything. I used to get through 
 that formula painstakingly and with credit, solely 
 for the mark, for I was ambitious, but I did it with 
 contempt under my jacket, saying to myself: 
 
194 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 " Fifty-one's right; it's none of your business how 
 I got it; your way's horrid! " And my impertinence 
 of spirit was in no manner subdued when, on giving 
 vent to my resentment at home, my father laughed 
 at me proudly and told me I was right. 
 
 A young woman who had just entered college was 
 much impressed by the way in which the students 
 were held responsible for results only, being left to 
 get at them in their own way. 
 
 "Don't you think," she was asked, "that the 
 college method could be begun earlier? " 
 
 " It ought to be begun at birth! " she exclaimed, 
 with a little blaze in her eyes that opened up 
 a whole revelation of past school befuddlements 
 over which her mind was evidently travelling 
 back. 
 
 This girl had never had the "regular training" 
 in arithmetic, and she had all sorts of individual 
 ways and short cuts 'cross lots, of getting at things. 
 One day in helping out a young fellow of about 
 seventeen, I said: 
 
 " Oh, come, you are altogether too old to go 
 around Robin Hood's barn like that. So-and-so 
 [referring to this young woman] would do that like 
 this " 
 
 " She! " he interrupted, with a good deal of heat, 
 
ARITHMETIC 195 
 
 "well, she never studied arithmetic like the rest of 
 us, and, of course, she does things the easiest way. 
 But I tell you when a fellow gets put through the 
 paces for years, he just can't do things those easy 
 ways; he's just got to take it regular! " 
 
 What a comment! Couldn't do arithmetic the 
 easy ways because he had studied it so long! 
 
 This young woman told us of an amusing incident 
 which occurred in the chemical laboratory at 
 college. They had come to a place where they were 
 pausing to make calculations; she made hers and 
 stepped sociably over to her neighbour to compare 
 results. The neighbour glanced at the figures and 
 asked, "Why, how did you do it so easily?" She 
 was shown, and expressed admiration and apparent 
 satisfaction, but a little later my friend noticed that 
 she had not gone on with her experiment, but was 
 still going through her calculations with worried 
 brow. She asked, " Didn't you quite understand 
 it?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, indeed," was the answer, " and it was 
 fine, but I thought I had better do it the regular 
 way and be sure." 
 
 Now, I ask you, shouldn't the shortest and easiest 
 way in arithmetic be the "regular" way? And 
 hadn't that young woman surely been a victim of 
 
196 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 the " Generation of Artificial Stupidity in Arithme- 
 tic " ? This generation of stupidity is begun in the 
 schools as soon as written work begins, and there 
 are too many arithmetic victims all about us. Does 
 not our lad's home-work savour somewhat of it this 
 week? 
 
 " What is the ratio of 5 yds. 4 ft. 14 in. to 3 yds. 
 5ft.? 
 
 " John has 4 gals. 5 qts. 2 pts. of molasses in his 
 jug and Jane has 7 gals. 6 qts. 5 pts. in hers. What 
 is the ratio of John's molasses to Jane's ? " 
 
 Notice the refinement of nagging, " 5 qts. and 2 
 pts "; " 3 yds. and 5 ft." Ratio is the « Natural 
 Method " over there just now. They are ratio-mad. 
 One wonders what is the ratio of the sense to the 
 nonsense in it all. 
 
 Dropping in at a friend's house the other evening, 
 we found their little girl working away at her 
 omnipresent arithmetic. She was "doing well at 
 school in all but arithmetic." She is a bright girl 
 and there is no excuse whatever for her not " doing 
 well " in that as in her other lessons; yet there is 
 danger of her being kept back for an entire year in 
 all her other lessons on account of arithmetic. This 
 particular evening "a great long example" was 
 bothering her. 
 
ARITHMETIC 197 
 
 "It's easy enough," she exclaimed, "but it's so 
 horrid long." I looked over her shoulder. 
 
 "What is 250 of 1250, of 750, of 500, of 384 
 inches ? " 
 
 She had worked it out thus, only she had made a 
 mistake somewhere: 
 
 1.25 
 .25 
 625 
 250 
 
 .3125 
 .75 
 
 15625 
 21875 
 .234375 
 
 .50 
 
 .11718750 
 384 
 46875000 
 93750000 
 35156250 
 
 45.00000000 inches 
 
 I should not give this incident, nor take so much 
 pains to give the entire work, were it not so good an 
 illustration, so fair a type, of what is going on in 
 the schools. This child is a pupil in one of the 
 best schools of Boston. I easily led her to see this, 
 short method: 
 
 4 of 4 of l of -i of:!§! " =45 - 
 
198 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 But she showed little interest. 
 
 " Of course it's nice," she said nervously, " but 
 she'll call it wrong, I know she will." Her one 
 thought, repeated again and again, was to get at 
 whatever the teacher would " call right." Finally 
 we induced her to pass it in the "regular way," 
 since she felt that her perfect mark was more 
 assured by that method, but to ask the teacher 
 about the short way, too. Next day she told me 
 that the teacher had "just said, Oh, of course you 
 could do it fractionally, but the decimal way is 
 better." 
 
 Ask any business accountant if the shortest way 
 is not the best way. We parents are asleep. We 
 should insist upon a different state of things in 
 arithmetic. 
 
 In his paper on "Can School Programmes be 
 Shortened and Enriched?" President Eliot writes 
 with some heat: 
 
 "Is it not an abominable waste of the time and 
 strength of children to put them to doing in a 
 difficult way, never used in real life, something they 
 will be able to do in an easy way a year or two later? 
 To introduce any artificial hardness into the course 
 of training that any human being has to follow, is 
 an unpardonable educational sin. There is hard- 
 
ARITHMETIC 199 
 
 ness enough in this world without manufacturing 
 any, particularly for children." 
 
 That is a word needed on arithmetic almost every- 
 where. Think of the pages of figures, maddening 
 in the almost utter impossibility of getting them 
 correct, for which boys and girls sacrifice hours of 
 precious freedom in doing examples in compound 
 interest! They should be taught to do them from 
 the computed tables, as business men do them! 
 But it is the same in all parts of the arithmetic! 
 
 I have a friend who had a boy in the Public 
 School of a large city. That the boy is dull in 
 arithmetic is without doubt, but the father is a 
 natural arithmetician, and could have assisted the 
 boy and kept him up with his class, but he could 
 not get into touch with the exact school forms into 
 which the work was required to be put at the school, 
 and as no other would be accepted, he was helpless. 
 At length the boy was forbidden to have any help 
 at home. He was at last forced to leave school and 
 has gone to work, — and is giving good satisfaction. 
 I remonstrated with the father quite hotly on the 
 matter of his yielding so tamely, and he asked me 
 what I supposed one man could do against a great 
 institution like the Public School System of a big 
 city! Is not the whole incident a fine illustration 
 
200 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 of the need there is that Parents should be hand 
 in hand with Pedagogues in the matter of Educa- 
 tion? But such illustrations can be furnished with- 
 out end. 
 
 Children should have an arithmetic simple 
 enough to be put into their hands as soon as they 
 have arrived at a point where it is wise for them to 
 do "written arithmetic/' It should be so attract- 
 ive and, if possible, should be so well besprinkled 
 with illustrations and all sorts of knacky little 
 things to entice them, that we might feel ourselves 
 justified in saying to them, "Master this book 
 completely, every bit of it." There should be not 
 one single thing in it which every child could not 
 understand, and absolutely no wordy, " scientific " 
 rules and explanations. The class should then be 
 required to go right through it from beginning to 
 end, each pupil doing it his own way and talcing his 
 own pace. Of course I know that is heresy, but 
 heresy has, in all history, usually been able in the 
 end, to hold up its head. If it is done rightly and 
 sympathetically, this thing can be done; and it 
 ought to be done — in this manner or in some other. 
 By some method the arithmetic disease should be 
 cured, for even with all the time and all the nerve- 
 energy of the children which is at present allotted 
 
ARITHMETIC 201 
 
 to it, very few people out in the practical world, 
 handle their few little problems with naturalness 
 and ease. 
 
 Teachers are vaguely or clearly conscious of this 
 need of a simple, lovable arithmetic, as is seen by 
 the fact that in many schools, the children's lessons 
 are given out from the blackboard. The teacher 
 hunts down the examples in various arithmetics, 
 writes them on the board, often hurriedly during 
 recess or after school, too frequently in small pale 
 handwriting, in high lights or low lights or no 
 lights, to be copied off by the pupil; he does it 
 accurately, perhaps, but " any old how," " just so I 
 can read it myself," at the close of the five-hour 
 confinement when accuracy is even less natural to 
 him than usual. In the evening the smudgy copy 
 is pulled forth from the miscellaneous child-pocket 
 contents, and read by whatever light good or ill 
 fortune happens to supply him. And now, in nine 
 cases out of ten, tired enough to go to bed, the little 
 student is obliged to muster up enough brain, not 
 only to work out the examples, but to get them into 
 exactly the form which the brainy teacher has 
 evolved as the " Natural " one. And nothing must 
 be forgotten. Said our little chap the other day on 
 returning from school: 
 
202 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 "I can never remember to put the period after 
 Ans and so half the time I lose my 100$. But/' 
 angrily, " I don't see that it is wrong." 
 
 " No, it isn't/' we agreed. " How many legs has 
 a horse if you count the tail as a leg? " 
 
 That question is our stock consolation in such 
 cases and he answered gaily as he ran off to play: 
 
 " Four just the same; calling it a leg doesn't make 
 it a leg." 
 
 We never intend to discredit the teacher, but we 
 shall always see to it that every child who has to do 
 with us, learns to distinguish the real thing from 
 the red tape it gets wrapped up in. 
 
 It would be easy to write an entire book on the 
 subject of " Sense and Nonsense in Arithmetic." 
 But in this book, the simple, beautiful, ill-handled 
 subject of Arithmetic, no matter how much atten- 
 tion it needs and deserves, can have but its one 
 chapter. We regretfully omit the other two hun- 
 dred pages we should like to write upon it! 
 
 In closing I will only entreat Parents to beware 
 of hard, forehead-wrinkling Arithmetic for their 
 children. In childhood the mathematical faculty 
 seems the one least rampant. Let required judg- 
 ment and reasoning in children be small, but let 
 them acquire fluency and accuracy in simple practi- 
 
ARITHMETIC 203 
 
 cal problems as fast as they can do it normally. If, 
 at eighteen or so, when the reasoning age has 
 arrived, we have the wisdom to do as the French do, 
 and allow a short fmishing-off course in Arithmetic, 
 we shall find that the harvest will he plenteous even 
 though the labour upon it has not been excessive — 
 provided that it has been intelligent labour. Time, 
 the great co-worker, gives rich increase on fertile 
 soil. 
 
XI 
 
 CHILD MORALITY 
 
 " His best companions, Innocence and Health, 
 And his best riches, Ignorance of Wealth." 
 
 —Goldsmith. 
 
 Would that I could approach the subject of the 
 Moral Education of children filled with something 
 of the confidence which was mine when I penned the 
 chapter on ilrithmetic! Such a subject is not mine 
 to write upon, and were it, I should want a book, 
 not a chapter, to write it in. Too many wise and 
 helpful things have been said and written upon the 
 moral and spiritual training of the young, for me to 
 have the presumption to do more than present a few 
 fragmentary thoughts on the subject. It is with 
 faltering steps that I do even that, so far does the 
 right foundation of character transcend in impor- 
 tance all other considerations in education, being, 
 indeed, the sole end for which education exists. 
 " Unless your cask be perfectly clean whatever you 
 put into it will sour." Obscured morality, founda- 
 tionless character, is least evil with least of technical 
 204 
 
CHILD MORALITY 205 
 
 education; even as unskilled rascality is less powerful 
 for harm than skilled rascality. "The most 
 atrocious miscreant of our time, if not of all time/' 
 writes Compayre, "was a man who contrived a 
 machine to sink ships in mid-ocean, his only object 
 being to gain a sum of money on a false insurance." 
 How helpless would have been the evil desire with- 
 out the skill behind it! 
 
 It goes without saying that if we ought to train 
 the body to its highest usefulness as a worthy in- 
 strument of the soul, we ought to train that soul to 
 its maximum of righteousness. From the begin- 
 ning to the end of education, from birth to death, 
 the one paramount aim should be to develop charac- 
 ter. How then, shall we define ideal character? 
 Is ideal character more than this: highly developed 
 power controlled by noble aims? 
 
 Can we teach morals? Can we teach those things 
 which make for this high ideal? Children are sus- 
 ceptible, confiding creatures; they can be taught 
 almost anything, and really can be influenced— for 
 a time— by precept unrelated to example. But 
 teaching will seldom long prevail without an ac- 
 companying true life behind it; in the end it is real 
 things which influence. It will ever be personality 
 which will dominate,— the character behind the 
 
206 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 words. Was it not President Garfield who de- 
 fined a university as a log with Mark Hopkins sit- 
 ting on one end of it and a young man on the 
 other? Not, mind you, any professor, but a Mark 
 Hopkins! 
 
 A young friend of mine, having selected one of 
 her courses in college, attended one recitation, then 
 gave it up for another, giving as her reason: "I 
 couldn't meet that fossil twice a week for a whole 
 year; I'd rather take any tiling with a whole man at 
 the wheel." There should be no fossils among 
 college professors; very likely this one was not; 
 youth is often hypercritical and notional. All the 
 same, struck by this student's attitude, I have many 
 times since, advised students to select their college 
 courses with the idea well in view, of coming in con- 
 tact with the highest type of personality and charac- 
 ter, even at some little sacrifice in the choice of 
 studies; and I would advise parents, so far as is 
 possible, to bear this thing in mind in placing their 
 children at school. This idea was well understood 
 ages ago by the wise. Plutarch writes: 
 
 "When a child has arrived at such an age as to 
 be put under the care of pedagogues, great care is to 
 be used . . . for it is a true proverb that, if you 
 live with a lame man you will halt." 
 
CHILD MORALITY 207 
 
 I forget who it is who has forcibly put the idea in 
 this form: 
 
 " The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed 
 nor calls out his powers, if pastured out with the 
 common herd, that are destined for 'the collar and 
 the yoke/' 
 
 This thought is a most common one in the works 
 of educators, — the infinite need of life behind pre- 
 cept. That fable is a striking one of the young 
 crab which, in reply to his mother's directions for 
 walking, asked, " But, mother, why don't you walk 
 straight ? " and then forever afterwards walked 
 after the manner of her example and not of her 
 precept. It was the life behind the teachings 
 which, two thousand years ago, gave Christianity an 
 impetus, the force of which is still as strong as at 
 the start. 
 
 Sorrowfully we know it, we are not ideal enough, 
 neither Parents nor Pedagogues, to do our whole duty 
 in the character-forming of our children, solely from 
 the influence emanating from our personality. We 
 do have to have ways of regulating things with 
 them. Free from evil we receive them into the 
 world; shortly, too shortly, they begin to lose their 
 purity. We cannot now, as of old, believe that it is 
 on account of inherent total depravity. Rather do 
 
208 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 we not wonder if it be not, in good part, because of 
 the unwisdom of us who have long been here, and 
 are — "sophisticated/' perhaps that word will ex- 
 press it. Childhood, in the very inexperience of it, 
 is uncaretaking and irresponsible, yields to present 
 impulse. Let us not fear too much; not too much 
 nag children, because of their frailties, — we will 
 not call them faults. One wonders often if children 
 really have " faults "; if they are either " good " or 
 "bad," being in great measure little automatons, 
 for whose performances we should hold environ- 
 ment and companionship responsible! At times, 
 and I am not sure but at all times, it seems so. 
 This is not of course, an idea the least bit original; 
 it is a fairly well supported one. If it be a true one, 
 it will justify us in imitating somewhat the wisdom 
 of the Old Testament Jehovah, who is recorded as 
 having "winked at the iniquities of Israel." The 
 course for us to pursue is not too much to punish and 
 correct faults, but to ignore these and induce vir- 
 tues. It is, indeed, one of the highest functions of 
 both Pedagogues and Parents to sweep children into 
 currents of the true and beautiful, that imperfections 
 shall find no place and shall disappear. 
 
 Only of inherent cruelty and cunning would we 
 make exception. These two vices should be re- 
 
CHILD MORALITY 209 
 
 garded as diseases, and should have active warfare 
 waged against them; even then it is doubtful 
 if they ever get wholly eradicated. Many a child 
 tells " fibs "; many a one is often thoughtlessly cruel; 
 but if you know of a boy or girl who sneaks through 
 the world by "ways that are dark and tricks that 
 are vain/' spare no pains to keep your child out of 
 his company; you don't want him on the other end 
 of the log in your child's university. No more do 
 you want the boy who can deliberately pull the hind 
 legs off a live frog because he has heard that they 
 are good to eat. We may, however, thank Nature, 
 who has an especial kindness for children, that she 
 almost universally gives them so good a start that 
 they may go through their earliest years head and 
 heart high. And so it should be! Who would have 
 it otherwise? Is not a happy-hearted child, care- 
 free, because conscience-free, the freshest, breeziest, 
 most inspiring thing you ever encounter? Would 
 that we might ourselves become as little children 
 and be fit companions for them. Jesus of Nazareth 
 meant more than we realise when he said " Except 
 ye become as little children." 
 
 "The thoughts of youth are long, long 
 thoughts; " let us as far as we can, accord a long, 
 long childhood for the maturing of them. We are 
 
210 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 often told that the higher the species, the longer 
 is its childhood. Are there not some intimations 
 that this may also be trne of the individual? The 
 rushed-throngh Yankee may win our admiration for 
 his smartness, but he certainly is not so fine a 
 specimen of a man as is he who has reflection and 
 gentleness cultivated along with power. Indeed, 
 reflection and gentleness are sources of the highest 
 sort of power. But by the very nature of reflection 
 and gentleness, they require a more leisurely de- 
 velopment. Moreover, any virtue which is grown 
 into is almost sure to have a finer fragrance than 
 one that is " taught." 
 
 As for virtue, which is but a right condition of 
 the mind and heart, I wonder if it is not a bit of 
 that same "adult egotism" that makes us fancy 
 that we can to any great extent teach it to children, 
 even if we may to adults. Children are far more 
 uncompromising and direct in their conceptions of 
 right than we sophisticated, calculating grown-ups 
 are. Theodore Parker said of some one that he did 
 not know that a straight line is the shortest distance 
 between two points in morals as well as in geometry. 
 That is true of too many of us, but children, unless 
 they have been corrupted by adult sophistry, know it 
 instinctively; they take it for granted. You will 
 
CHILD MORALITY 211 
 
 recall the newspaper story of the two little girls 
 hurrying along to school lest they should be late. 
 " Let's kneel right down here and pray that we shall 
 not be late/' proposed one of them; a good illustra- 
 tion of one who had been corrupted by adult 
 sophistry. "No" responded the other who was 
 Nature's own, "we'll skin right along and pray as 
 we go." 
 
 A whole book might be written upon the subject 
 of our sinfulness in corrupting the moral and 
 religious sentiments of children. Our little girl 
 and a "chum" were once studying their Sunday 
 School lesson. It was of the Pharisee and the 
 Publican. 
 
 " Did you ever have a playmate who felt herself 
 a little better than the others ? " was a question read 
 out. The younger child looked wondering and 
 thoughtful. 
 
 "Why, no/' she replied, "I don't think I ever 
 did." And she had been playing all summer with 
 just that sort of a companion! 
 
 "I have," exclaimed the older girl, scorning the 
 simplicity of the younger. " Lots of girls are stuck 
 up!" 
 
 I hastened over and sent the children off to play. 
 It was unbearable to witness the process of teaching 
 
212 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 a child to look for evil in her companions when her 
 sweet soul was tuned only to the good in them! 
 One of the divinest of our tasks with children is 
 to protect the growth of their natural, uncompro- 
 mising virtue. We may do it with some degree of 
 success while they are in the nursery. It is our re- 
 proach that not until they get out into the world, 
 and bring the search-light of their keen young 
 intellects to bear upon our actual doings, do their 
 moral muddlings begin. " Children stand out in 
 contrast to adults by reason of their uncorrupted 
 nature; they are more upright and honest, and it is 
 contact with the stupidity of adults that spoils 
 children and breeds criminals." There is a pretty 
 story of Gorgo, the little Greek maiden, who after- 
 wards became the wife of Leonidas, the hero of 
 Thermopylae. When a child of eight years she 
 happened to be in the room one day while a mes- 
 senger was trying to bribe her father to aid the 
 Persians. He offered ten talents at first, and 
 gradually raised the sum until the child, suspecting 
 danger, said: " Go away, father, this stranger will 
 corrupt you." The discussions of the youngsters 
 during the present world disturbances, have been of 
 great interest to me. They shoot like an arrow 
 straight at the mark. 
 
CHILD MORALITY 213 
 
 "The Philippines aren't ours; we've no right to 
 take 'em. Suppose some one should try to take us? " 
 "The English are mean to fight the Boers," ex- 
 claimed our lad hotly; " it's none of their business 
 what the Boers do; if they don't like it, let 'em go 
 home! " Simple solutions for everything! On the 
 opposing side they are just as direct. "Well, we 
 can get money out of 'em and we want 'em! " 
 
 " The secret of preserving the good, the true 
 office of Education, lies not in sermons, harangues, 
 idle talk, but in pure air, healthy food, good cor- 
 poreal and mental exercise, the never-failing pres- 
 ence and example of moral customs and habits, — the 
 harmony of healthy social life." But we are on 
 the road to Utopia again! We must return; Utopia 
 is not practical. But children are not, even in 
 Utopia, unalloyed perfection and delight. Child- 
 hood's sins are many everywhere. It is not in me, 
 however, to take pleasure in discoursing upon them, 
 even when I have time and space which now I surely 
 have not. There is one of these sins, nevertheless, 
 that I must have my little " say-so " upon, for it is the 
 one of them all, upon which the judgment of the 
 world has always seemed to me to be too harsh; it is 
 the sin supposed to be childhood's own, the sin of ly- 
 ing. "Children are natural liars," is a proverb among 
 
214 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 those who have no reverence for childhood or un- 
 derstanding of it. Are children natural liars? 
 Surely not, — unless they happen to discover the 
 " fun " or usefulness of a lie. Then young children 
 do often have to go through a stage of fibbing be- 
 fore they can discover the glory which belongs to 
 truth. They will go on, up to a certain time, with 
 hair-splitting attention to truth and exactness; — 
 be it understood of course that I am speaking only of 
 children whose environment is one of truth and sin- 
 cerity. Sooner or later they are certain to meet with 
 some playmate who has a wonderful facility for draw- 
 ing himself out of predicaments by that " abom- 
 ination unto the Lord," but " very present help 
 in time of trouble," a lie. At first they wonder; 
 then with a who-can't-do-that air, they try it them- 
 selves, as they do most new things that they hear of 
 or see. It must be a marvellous fascination when 
 they first realise the ease and comfort which a lie 
 will often bring! One of our children went through 
 this experience. She had gone nearly up to the 
 age of five with a devotion to* truthfulness and ac- 
 curacy which nothing ever seemed to tempt. Child- 
 hood seemed in her the very incarnation of truth! 
 But alas! a family of three young children loomed 
 suddenly upon our horizon. The oldest was not 
 
CHILD MORALITY 215 
 
 ten. They were a riotous, dainty, fascinating, 
 and lovable little group, but not one of them seemed 
 to have the faculty of distinguishing between 
 a lie and the truth. If it had not been for 
 little gasps of horror which would creep over you, 
 it would have been a delightful pastime to have 
 watched those graceful little imps, trying to keep 
 themselves in smooth waters Tby reeling off anything 
 that happened to come into their curly heads in 
 defence of themselves, or in explanation of their 
 mischief. We wondered what the effect would 
 be on our little precisionist. We were soon to 
 know. 
 
 "Did you do so-and-so?" I asked at dinner one 
 day concerning something we had forbidden her and 
 the others to do. 
 
 " No, I didn't," she replied cheerfully. 
 
 « But you did!" 
 
 Down went her knife and fork in astonishment; 
 with a gasp, not of shame but of sheer amazement 
 at our magical knowledge, she asked: 
 
 " How did you know? " 
 
 " I saw you; why did you say that you did not do 
 it? " With a look of relief that I was not after all 
 a magician, the child answered with a perfectly 
 frank smile: 
 
216 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 " Because I did not know that yon saw me/' and 
 went comfortably on with her dinner. And I am 
 inclined to believe that the shont of laughter with 
 which the family quite overwhelmed her, was the 
 best possible, as it was surely the most "natural," 
 corrective; a far more effective one than any talk- 
 ing to or regulation punishment. She joined the 
 other fibbers for the time, however, and for a few 
 weeks held high carnival in fibbing. She returned to 
 her old hair-splitting truth as suddenly as she had 
 abandoned it. In some way she discovered 
 
 " What a tangled web we weave, 
 When first we practise to deceive," 
 
 though how it would have ended, if that fibbing 
 little triad had remained in our neighbourhood, it is 
 hard to say. Eidicule and seriousness judiciously 
 mixed might have made them, as it did her, feel the 
 folly as well as the sinfulness of lying. 
 
 Sometimes children of lively imagination do not 
 bother to distinguish between fact and fancy. The 
 newspapers related a while ago, of course we cannot 
 tell how truthfully, that one of Eudyard Kipling's 
 children was sent to bed for telling a lie, and that 
 she went, whimpering resentfully that "Papa gets 
 lots of money for telling big lies, and I get sent to 
 
CHILD MORALITY 217 
 
 bed for telling just one little one! " Whether true 
 or not the story is apropos. 
 
 Alphonse Daudet leaves a reminiscence of how 
 as late in his childhood as twelve years of age he 
 indulged in the pleasure of lying. His friend, 
 Edmund de Goncourt, in writing of one of his 
 visits to him, gives the account as illustrative of 
 the dramatic instinct: 
 
 "Daudet told us that once when he was twelve 
 years old he had run away from home, I think on 
 his first love escapade. He returned somewhat 
 frightened, and prepared for a terrible scolding. 
 His mother opened the door, and Daudet, yielding 
 to a sudden impulse, said to her, ' The Pope is dead.' 
 The announcement of such news to a good Catholic 
 family threw young Daudet's affairs in the shade. 
 The next day he announced that the Pope, who had 
 been supposed to be dead, was better, and thanks 
 to this fertile power of invention, he escaped the 
 scolding and the punishment." 
 
 Unless he was a habitual story-teller, which does 
 not appear to have been the case, I would be willing 
 to answer for it that the little fellow enjoyed the 
 " dramatics " of that experience far more than he 
 cared for the escape from punishment. I chuckle 
 sympathetically with him as I remember what con^ 
 
218 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 flicts there used to be in the long, long ago under 
 one small jacket, between an honest reverence for 
 truth and an intense love of dramatic effects! 
 
 President G. Stanley Hall says: "Thorough- 
 going truthfulness comes hard and late, and school 
 life is now so full of temptation to falsehood that 
 an honest child is its rarest as well as its noblest 
 work." 
 
 Now a lie, I grant you, is a vile and dastardly 
 thing. A lie will throw any situation out of per- 
 spective with the meanest sort of promptness. 
 Home, church, school, society, even politics should 
 set the current of things mightily against lying, 
 "that devouring cancer of the inner man." Jean 
 Paul exclaims: 
 
 " The first sin on earth, — haply the devil was 
 guilty of it on the tree of knowledge, — was a lie; 
 and the last will surely be a lie, too." 
 
 He draws our attention to the contempt which 
 every nation has for a lie: " The Greeks, who suf- 
 fered their gods to commit as many crimes with 
 impunity as their present representatives, the gods 
 of the earth do, yet condemn them for perjury, — 
 that root and quintessence of a lie, — to pass a year 
 of lifelessness under the ground in Tartarus, and 
 then to endure nine years of torments. The ancient 
 
CHILD MORALITY 219 
 
 Persian taught his child nothing in the whole circle 
 of morality but truthfulness. The German tourna- 
 ments were closed to the liar as well as to the 
 murderer. And the English know of no more abus- 
 ive epithet than liar." 
 
 Even Jean Paul, who perhaps loved and under- 
 stood children as well as any one, does not expect 
 great things of them in the matter of truthfulness, 
 but calls that virtue the " blossom of man's strength 
 of character," and reproaches us that we require of 
 " a child whom you have to educate, the last and 
 noblest fruits of truth! " 
 
 " The more free the education," he writes, " the 
 more truthful the child. All truth-loving ages and 
 nations, from the German to the British, have been 
 free; lying China is a prison." 
 
 This law, like most laws, is universal; it applies 
 equally to nations and to children. The more 
 liberal the education of a child, the more likely is 
 he to be frank, ingenuous, truthful. And, verily, 
 ordered freedom is, as we have before pleaded, best 
 for the cultivation of all virtues. 
 
 I trust that it will be understood that I am by no 
 means defending lying in children; I am only try- 
 ing to have it understood that even as bad a thing 
 as lying is, we need not take too seriously to heart 
 
220 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 the experimenting with it by young children. In 
 some children, other elements in the character seem 
 to come into conflict with their love of truth, and 
 make it necessary for them to need to play with 
 lying a little while and discover for themselves that, 
 in spite of its attractiveness, in the end it bites. 
 We older ones do not always promptly recognise his 
 satanic majesty, he has so many ways of making 
 himself fascinating! 
 
 Although we have gone far afield to hunt down 
 that sin of lying, and get at the true nature of it, 
 we must not forget that the aim of this chapter was 
 to inspire ourselves with faith in children's own 
 natural untaught morality; and to fortify ourselves 
 with faith to believe that our part in their moral 
 education should be largely, from the very outset, 
 to do honour to child-nature, which is naturally self- 
 impelled toward moral uprightness and brotherly 
 love. Our highest duty toward children is to recall 
 them to their true nature when they are unfaithful 
 to it; to discover to them the vast chasm which lies 
 between liberty and license, and thus to lead them 
 to trust the law that is within them that they may be 
 worthy to be Free. 
 
 I have observed again that if self-direction, — 
 that is,, government from inward motive rather than 
 
CHILD MORALITY 221 
 
 from outside authority, — is secured when the child 
 first begins to feel conscious of his powers — from 
 six to sixteen months of age,, we will say, — then it is 
 comparatively easy to keep the course of his develop- 
 ment running smoothly. It is a fine thing to get 
 one's hand on the helm of one's own destiny at the 
 very start in life! Too many lives are like a fine, 
 full-rigged ship, careering along without ballast, 
 and with no steady hand at the wheel. 
 
 " Now," once said a lady to me of her ten-year-old 
 child, " it is time that I took her religious training 
 in hand." Ah, my dear lady, your best opportunity 
 passed ten years ago. You may now put the child 
 through the Catechism, and later bring her up in 
 snow white for Confirmation, but bless you! the on- 
 rush of moral (in this case we feared unmoral) life, 
 of spiritual (or unspiritual) thought, has already 
 acquired headway. You may be able to guide it 
 somewhat; I should surely take my courage in my 
 hands and try it if the charge were mine, but oh, the 
 divineness of the task had it been undertaken nine or 
 ten, or better still, eleven years ago! 
 
 We should not need to prate of "winning the 
 confidence of our boys and girls." It is given to us 
 at birth; why need we ever lose it? "We may keep 
 it by becoming as one of them: 
 
222 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 " Leave all thy pedant lore apart; 
 God hid the whole world in thy heart. 
 Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns, 
 Gives all to them who all renounce." 
 
 While we are in the company of our children we 
 must teach ourselves to live with them; thus shall we 
 be a blessing to each other, they to us as much as we to 
 them. Eemembering that " Conscious law is King 
 of kings," it is ever ours to gradually make con- 
 scious to our children the harmony of the laws 
 which bountiful Nature has placed within them as 
 their birthright gift; then lead them to feel, uncon- 
 sciously it may be, but all the more truly on that 
 account: 
 
 " My angel, — his name is Freedom, — 
 Choose him to be your king; 
 He shall cut pathways east and west 
 And fend you with his wing." 
 
 And, finally, pray to be always reverential in the 
 presence of children; trust them actually, as in theory 
 we trust their nature; make each child feel himself a 
 free son of God and of Eternity. So shall we " give 
 to the child a heaven with a pole-star, which may ever 
 guide him in whatsoever new countries he may after- 
 wards enter." 
 
XII 
 
 PRACTICAL MORALS 
 
 "Not the cry, but the rising of the wild duck, impels the 
 flock to follow him in upward flight."— Jean Paul Richter. 
 
 Possessing the high faith in children's natural 
 rectitude which I have already expressed, it has ever 
 been exceedingly difficult for me to formulate schemes 
 or methods for their moral and spiritual instruction. 
 Of one thing we may be certain, — that the thing 
 absolutely first in importance is that they shall always 
 be met by those whom they regard as " their own/' 
 in entire sincerity and on a high plane. " Morals " 
 and "religion" should be their native atmosphere, 
 should permeate everything, and be breathed by them 
 naturally and as a matter of course. And yet I know 
 that some instruction in these things is beneficial to 
 children of all ages, even as it is beneficial to instruct 
 them upon the necessity of pure air for their lungs. 
 Unconscious virtue is the finest flavoured virtue; yet 
 virtue which feels and loves and obeys the laws 
 which underlie right behaviour cannot fail to mould 
 
 223 
 
224 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 a firmer character than virtue relying wholly upon 
 instinct. 
 
 It is excellent — it is necessary to our highest cul- 
 ture — that we not only have the use and enjoyment 
 of our knowledge, but also that we shall be familiar 
 with the science of it, and moral and spiritual laws 
 are but the science of true thought and life. But 
 the science of anything, from the very nature of it, 
 comes after the knowledge of that thing. Science 
 is systematised and recorded knowledge, and there- 
 fore presupposes the knowledge. If this is the cor- 
 rect view of the case, children should be allowed to 
 come upon all knowledge in a natural and accumula- 
 tive way, until they get so much of it in any one 
 direction that it will be a pleasure to see it organ- 
 ised, — to organise it one's self; to begin gradually to 
 see a beautiful, harmonious whole in what seemed 
 before but isolated facts and laws. I have never, 
 however, been able to discover that the knowledge 
 of facts of truth, or of behaviour, ought to be come 
 upon through the science of them. Grammar and 
 many other things, geometry being quite especially 
 in my mind, have lost their position among the 
 "harmonies," for some of the best minds, by dis- 
 regarding this law; the law that accumulation 
 should precede systematising, and not be accom- 
 
PRACTICAL MORALS 225 
 
 panied by it. Wide and comprehensive knowledge 
 of anything is of infinitely greater value than the 
 organisation of that knowledge afterwards indulged 
 in by the scientific mind. A familiarity with flowers 
 and their habits, gained through love of them and 
 companionship with them, is a thing far beyond 
 the mere knowledge of Botany. The art of speak- 
 ing and writing pure English, gained through gentle 
 breeding and every-day companionship with culti- 
 vated people and good writers, is something of a 
 higher order than a knowledge of Grammar and 
 Ehetoric. The science of Botany is, indeed, a fine 
 thing, — for "the mind that loves it"; so also is a 
 knowledge of the structural laws of language; but 
 it distresses me to see children and youth forced to 
 come at things theory-end first; to hear them con- 
 jugating verbs in our own or a foreign tongue before 
 they can speak correctly. Here, in the country, 
 there is a bright ambitious youth about the place, 
 who regards himself as a fair scholar in his little 
 world, who I am certain could conjugate glibly: 
 
 SINGULAR, 
 
 Plural, 
 
 I am 
 
 We are 
 
 thou art 
 
 you are 
 
 he is 
 
 they are 
 
 Now if he had formulated that conjugation, as he 
 
226 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 should have been made to do, from his own use of 
 the verb, he would have been obliged to recite it: 
 
 Singular. 
 
 Plural. 
 
 I be 
 
 We be 
 
 you be 
 
 you be 
 
 he is 
 
 they be 
 
 which I verily believe would have so astonished him 
 that he would forever afterwards have felt that 
 there is some connection between the science of our 
 language and the speaking of it, which seems now 
 to be an idea that has not yet dawned upon him. 
 Indeed, the youth said to me frankly: " Grammar 
 don't have nothing to do with my talking; I talk 
 just as I'm a mind to." 
 
 Concerning the teaching of morals and the de- 
 velopment of character and right behaviour, I find 
 myself reasoning in the same way. Morality, even 
 spirituality, grown into through a natural adjusting 
 and attuning to others in a moral and spiritual en- 
 vironment, is quite beyond a character attained with 
 much accompaniment of set teaching. Conscious 
 virtue is apt to be Pharisaic. We do not need a 
 code of morals for children. The d^ily beholding 
 of never-failing pity for the suffering, delight in 
 others' happiness, and indignation at cruelty and 
 injustice, will lead children to " Eejoice with those 
 
PRACTICAL MORALS 227 
 
 that do rejoice and weep with those that weep/' far 
 more effectively, if there is not too much wording of 
 the situation. Moreover, the mind, later on, will 
 be found in fresher, more impressionable condition, 
 — not perhaps to be taught moral and spiritual laws, 
 but to search tentatively for them. All dealings 
 with children should, from the outset, be on a taken- 
 for-granted basis that there is in them a natural 
 responsiveness to everything good, and of repulsion 
 to all that is evil. What Miss Sullivan writes of her 
 deaf -blind pupil, Helen Keller, may with profit be 
 regarded as what would be true of every normal 
 child: 
 
 " Surrounded by loving friends and the gentlest 
 influences, as Helen had always been, she has, from 
 the earliest stages of her intellectual enlightenment, 
 willingly done right. She knows with unerring 
 instinct what is right and does it joyously. She 
 does not think of one wrong act as harmless, as 
 another of no consequence, and of another as not 
 intended. To her pure soul all evil is equally un- 
 lovely." 
 
 Later on Miss Sullivan writes with confidence: 
 " I believe every child has hidden away somewhere 
 in his being, noble capacities which may be quick- 
 ened and developed if we go about it in the right 
 
228 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 way; but we shall never properly develop the higher 
 natures of our little ones while we continue to fill 
 their minds with the so-called rudiments. Mathe- 
 matics will never make them loving, nor will the 
 accurate knowledge of the size and shape of the 
 world help them to appreciate its beauties. . . . Chil- 
 dren will educate themselves under right conditions. 
 They require guidance and sympathy far more than 
 instruction." 
 
 I always feel too much reverence for childhood, 
 too much dread of interfering with Nature's inten- 
 tion with them, to quite do my whole duty by them. 
 I like to let the beautiful creatures alone; to let 
 them follow their own leading and chase after their 
 own ideals; to learn from them rather than to teach 
 them. Yet for all that, I get the greatest pleasure 
 and profit from reading the inspiring things which 
 have been written upon the subject of moral and 
 religious education of the young. In fact, I depend 
 upon the reading of such things to keep myself in 
 a right attitude toward children; but write them 
 I cannot, although I did do a little of it when I was 
 younger, and felt somewhat less fear of rushing in 
 where angels fear to tread. In spite of the ideal- 
 isation of childhood, I have had ample experience 
 with children to know, as all parents know, what a 
 
PRACTICAL MORALS 229 
 
 disturbance and what care they often are. I know 
 well, too, that we cannot leave children to their own 
 sweet will and call it education. We must somehow 
 in our weakness and imperfection, manage to 
 possess ourselves of what wisdom, and patience, and 
 courage we may, to meet and cope with the head- 
 strong energy, the passions, the self-centred activi- 
 ties, of our children; to reward, punish, impel, or 
 restrain, guide or leave free, as occasion requires or 
 our feeble wisdom dictates. 
 
 I am attempting no full discussion of the teach- 
 ing of morals; I am undertaking only to present a 
 few fragmentary thoughts on one or two sides of the 
 question which have never been emphasised quite 
 to my liking. Let us first consider together for a 
 little concerning punishments. The word has a 
 harsh, unloving sound; it grates on the ear; it 
 savours of revenge, of "paying out," and children 
 too often so regard it. Penalty is a more fitting 
 word, but that, too, is a hard, relentless one; still it 
 carries with it more the idea of justice, a penalty 
 being somewhat of the nature of a consequence of 
 the wrong-doing. Jean Paul likes to call it " after- 
 smart." There are many theories in vogue concern- 
 ing punishment. Childhood, for many centuries, was 
 made a veritable hell in consequence of religious 
 
230 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 faith in the divine efficacy of it. The case of Mar- 
 tin Luther's twenty-three corporal punishments in 
 one day is not an isolated one in history. We know 
 better now than to regard them as the only cure- 
 all for the trip-ups of faltering childhood. We 
 know now that punishments should be few. Ideally 
 there should be none. But we are not ideal and 
 the god of punishment must have his altar. But 
 since they must be, the feeling so common among 
 educators, that that is a wise one which is a con- 
 sequence of the wrong committed is, indeed, a 
 reasonable feeling, and is a theory to be carefully 
 reckoned with by Pedagogues and Parents. I can- 
 not, however, refrain from having a wee bit tilt 
 with its champions concerning the lengths to which 
 they push the principle. For instance, Spencer, in 
 his zeal, quotes the proverb " A burnt child dreads 
 the fire/' and suggests that it is often well even to 
 allow the child to get burned a little in order to 
 learn the power of fire and be cured of playing with 
 it. I have known of several cases in which his 
 followers have adopted this suggestion with a 
 thoroughness positively so cruel as wholly to deprive 
 it of any of its supposed naturalness. A burnt 
 child will doubtless dread the fire, — somewhat. 
 But it's rather a characterless one that will give up 
 
PRACTICAL MORALS 231 
 
 the acquaintance of so beautiful a friend as Fire, 
 just because that same Fire got the better of it for 
 once. It is far more "natural" for the child to 
 go back to the fire and "be more careful next 
 time." 
 
 "We tried that Spencerian method with our first 
 child; we were trusting then, and theoretic. Our 
 baby put out her little hand continually toward the 
 " pitty light " of the candle. We said' " no no," for 
 a proper period, then we looked sorrowful and 
 allowed the child to put her poor little finger into 
 the blaze. Tears came and the little mouth 
 puckered; ours, too. After a long look, the ex- 
 perience was repeated; then again and again until 
 in sheer pity we put an end to the experiment. 
 That child always loved fire and fire-poking. And 
 she had her fill of it all through her childhood. 
 We used to have famous times with her, and with 
 the others after they came, finding out which things 
 would "burn pretty." "Would I burn pretty?" 
 she asked as she caressingly stroked her soft skin 
 before the fire after her bath. At seven she came 
 near getting an answer to that question; she had 
 been carelessly left alone for a moment in the room 
 with a year and a half old brother. The little one 
 got hold of a fly-whisk, somehow got it into the 
 
232 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 open fire, and was brandishing it wildly about the 
 room. We heard a scream, and rushing to the 
 rescue, found the girl skilfully jamming the fiery 
 torch into the grate, meanwhile calling lustily for 
 help; a valiant illustration of " skinning right along 
 and praying as you go." The point is, that the 
 next day, in spite of the fright and the singeing, she 
 was just as much at home with her old friend, Fire. 
 Nor were we surprised; vigorous children do not 
 abandon a good thing because it has a spice of dan- 
 ger in it, else whence have come our Lincolns, our 
 Deweys, and our Nansens? 
 
 We ought to be sure that a punishment is really 
 natural, and not artificially natural, before we pro- 
 ceed with too certain a hand. Even the revered 
 Abbott, prophet of the naturalness of Gentle Meas- 
 ures with Children, seems to me to have too much 
 faith in these artificially "natural methods." The 
 following is an instance, which I quote verbatim 
 from that deservedly popular educational classic: 
 
 MARY'S WALK 
 
 "Mary," said Mary's aunt, Jane, who had come 
 to make a visit to Mary's mother in the country, 
 "I am going to the village this afternoon, and if 
 you would like you may go with me." 
 
PRACTICAL MORALS 233 
 
 Mary was, of course, much pleased with this in- 
 vitation. 
 
 " A part of the way/' continued her aunt, " is by 
 a path across the fields. "While we are there you 
 must keep in the path all the time, for it rained a 
 little this morning, and I am afraid that the grass 
 may not be quite dry." 
 
 "Yes, Aunt Jane; Fll keep in the path," said 
 Mary. 
 
 So they set out on the walk together. When 
 they came to the gate which led to the path across 
 the fields, Aunt Jane said, " Eemember, Mary, you 
 must keep in the path." 
 
 Mary said nothing but ran forward. Pretty soon 
 she began to walk a little on the margin of 
 the grass, and, before long, observing a place 
 where the grass was short and where the sun 
 shone, she ran out boldly upon it, and then, look- 
 ing down at her shoes, she observed that they 
 were not wet. She held up one of her feet 
 to Her aunt as she came opposite to the place, 
 saying: 
 
 " See, aunt, the grass is not wet at all." 
 
 "I see it is not," said her aunt. "I thought it 
 would not be wet; though I was not sure but what 
 it might be. But come," she added, holding out her 
 
234 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 hand, "I have concluded not to go to the village, 
 after all. We are going back home." 
 
 "Oh, Aunt Jane! " said Mary, following her aunt 
 as she began retracing her steps along the path, 
 "what is that for?" 
 
 " I have altered my mind," said her aunt. 
 
 " What makes you alter your mind? " 
 
 By this time Aunt Jane had taken hold of Mary's 
 hand, and they were walking together along the 
 path towards home. 
 
 " Because you don't obey me," she said. 
 
 "Why, auntie," said Mary, "the grass was not 
 wet at all where I went." 
 
 " No," said her aunt, " it was perfectly dry." 
 
 "And it did not do any harm at all for me to 
 walk upon it," said Mary. 
 
 " Not a bit of harm," said her aunt. 
 
 " Then why are you going home ? " asked Mary. 
 
 " Because you don't obey me," replied her aunt. 
 
 As I cannot see that anything is more natural for 
 a burnt child than to be more careful next time, 
 neither can I see anything in this little girl's 
 punishment but pure unnaturalness. Theoretically 
 the child ought to have reasoned: "We lost a 
 pleasant walk and I displeased my dear auntie just 
 
PRACTICAL MORALS 235 
 
 because I was disobedient. I will never be dis- 
 obedient again." But nine out of ten youngsters, 
 and they would be the brightest ones, would reason 
 more after this fashion: "Isn't Auntie funny? 
 Just for a little thing like this! Anyway, I don't 
 care! She got the worst of it! I wouldn't give 
 up anything I wanted to do for such a little thing. 
 The grass wasn't wet, anyway! " And then she 
 would go picnicking, perhaps, and reflect how lucky 
 she was not to have lost the fun of the picnic just 
 for a little walk to the village! 
 
 As for "natural consequences," is it not a most 
 natural consequence that parents' love should shield 
 their children from results of their frailty? And 
 no one is quicker to discern this and reckon upon 
 it than the shrewd little youngsters themselves. 
 So when we make them take consequences which 
 would without our intervention be natural ones, 
 they are likely to reason, and it is natural enough 
 that they should: "Anyway, they might have let 
 us off; they could have if they'd wanted to; they're 
 real mean." Many a child has been alienated from 
 parents on these lines. What are parents for if 
 not to shield children from too heavy suffering from 
 their weakness and helplessness ? It is natural that 
 love should overtop everything, and none so keen 
 
236 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 to discern it as children. However, we have nof 
 overmuch to fear perhaps on that score. If your 
 boy disobeys you, plays with his gun and wounds 
 himself, he is exactly as sure of your sympathy and 
 tender care as though the wound had been the result 
 of some accident on the way to Sunday School. 
 Eoger Ascham, the famous schoolmaster of Queen 
 Elizabeth's time, writes in his famous book: 
 
 "Learning teacheth more in one year than ex- 
 perience in twenty; and learning teacheth safely 
 when experience maketh more miserable than wise. 
 He hazardeth sore that waxes wise by experience. 
 An unhappy master is he that is made cunning by 
 many shipwrecks; a miserable merchant is he that is 
 neither rich nor wise but after some bankrupts. It 
 is costly wisdom that is bought by experience; we 
 know by experience itself that it is marvellous pain 
 to find out a short way by long wanderings." 
 
 Experience is indeed an unkind teacher. That is 
 why we say so often to our children, "Let your 
 head save your heels "; and fortunate is he who 
 has the wit to do it. Our children, even with our 
 most loving solicitude, will be sufficiently forced to 
 feel the rod of experience. Let us not fear where it is 
 possible, to take short cuts with children in morals as 
 in arithmetic. We had a neighbour once who had 
 
PRACTICAL MORALS 237 
 
 three sons. He Had begun life at the bottom and 
 gained riches. After he had given his boys an 
 indulged childhood and allowed them as much 
 education as they would take, he had but one maxim 
 for them: " Now begin at the bottom as I did. The 
 only way is to begin at the bottom and work up." 
 In spite of his passionate love for them he dis- 
 couraged and alienated every one of them. Noth- 
 ing could make him see that what necessity had 
 made true discipline for himself, became, without 
 that necessity, an unkindness, arbitrarily imposed; 
 and that by " learning," his sons might start many 
 steps up the ladder and in congenial company. 
 Children should perceive love and interest in their 
 welfare illuminating every relation between them 
 and their parents and their teachers; and love 
 shields and protects. For this reason punishment 
 should be administered only as a last resort; it is, in- 
 deed, a mute confession of failure somewhat back on 
 the line, which failure must now be righted. But 
 when it must actually be resorted to, as it too often 
 must, it is wise to have it as far as possible, self- 
 curing on the part of the small sinner. 
 
 Two quite small boys began going to school at the 
 same time. They both immediately took up the 
 dismaying habit of swearing. One of the mothers 
 
238 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 promptly whipped her boy at every offence till she, 
 at least, heard no more of it; the other one per- 
 suaded and discussed with her boy about the matter 
 and was puzzled that she could make not a bit of 
 impression upon. him. At last she exclaimed in 
 dead earnest: 
 
 " Now see here, young man, this must be stopped. 
 Who is to stop it, you or I? Tell me why it is that 
 you think you must swear like a little pirate." 
 
 "Well," replied the child in equal dead earnest, 
 "I think I'm big enough to swear; and I'm big 
 enough to smoke, too; and I'm going to save up my 
 money to buy me some cigarettes, and I mean to 
 practice running till I can run faster than any boy 
 of my age! " 
 
 He meant to attain rapidly to the honours of big- 
 boyhood! And now the mother saw in it only mis- 
 conceived ambition; her task became a simple one. 
 She had him name over all the men of his acquaint- 
 ance that he considered " first-rate " men; his 
 father, his uncle this and uncle that, and the 
 friend who had lately beatified him by giving him 
 a " regular man's foot-ball "; and not one of them 
 had he ever heard swear! Almost laughingly she 
 made him see how he had chosen the wrong sort 
 for his ideals. He listened thoughtfully when she 
 
PRACTICAL MORALS 239 
 
 explained to him that now that he was going out 
 into the world to be a "big boy/' he would meet both 
 sorts, but that he would want to line up with the 
 best. The boy's self-respect was retained, which was 
 a great triumph, for self-respect is a mighty element 
 in the making up of character. He who respects 
 himself will be respected. To respect one's self so 
 much that he will not, nay cannot, soil himself by 
 wrong-doing is the highest attainment of manhood. 
 Cultivate as a precious plant, the self-respect of chil- 
 dren; the tendency of arbitrary punishment is to 
 destroy it. 
 
 Is it not wise, too, to govern children by motives 
 which shall be permanent? motives which shall go 
 right on serving in youth and manhood, when motives 
 of fear can have no more power? It has often been 
 observed that children who have been governed too 
 much by fear and by punishments are far more apt to 
 have a season of sowing wild oats, than are those who 
 are led to be self-governing. 
 
 "Vices, the common vices of the people," writes 
 Condorcet, " come from the need of escaping ennui 
 in moments of leisure, and in escaping from it 
 through sensations and not ideas." Give children, 
 then, full resources for enjoyment and usefulness. 
 Give them ideas. In short, give them a liberal 
 
240 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 education. Give them a true education that shall 
 cultivate all the faculties and powers; fill them with 
 high ideals; make them self -resourceful in the con- 
 sciousness of power, and ahle to discover oppor- 
 tunities for exercising that power. And above all, 
 lead them to the highest summit of self-control. 
 Tor our encouragement we may remember that 
 every virtue, mental and moral as well as physical, 
 contributes to beauty and poise. John Euskin 
 mournfully calls attention to the " otherwise beauti- 
 ful faces of women," spoiled by lack of intellectual- 
 ity — argument, by the way, for the higher education 
 of women. 
 
 This influencing, rather than directly teaching, 
 may seem more the function of the parent than of 
 the teacher. Not so. It is the chief function of 
 both. When a little friend of mine, good in all 
 his lessons, but spelling, was kept in despair on 
 account of not getting a decent mark in anything 
 because the teacher counted the spelling in every- 
 thing and he " couldn't spell," I believe that child got 
 far more moral harm in the sense of injustice done 
 him, than he got of benefit in spelling, if indeed, he 
 got any, which is doubtful. How much higher was 
 the course taken by one of the teachers of my 
 childhood's days. There was a girl in our class who, 
 
PRACTICAL MORALS 241 
 
 conscientiously and long as she might study, always 
 got a third or a half of her words wrong. She was, 
 like Eobert Louis Stevenson, one of those whom we 
 meet occasionally, who have a genius for wrong spell- 
 ing! At last the teacher discussed the matter with 
 the class, and explained to them that the girl's rank 
 was no just estimate of her scholarship. In the end, 
 on a motion of one of the boys, it was voted that 
 this particular girl's mistakes in spelling were to be 
 divided by four, and her mark in spelling to be 
 reckoned according to the result. Now see what a 
 host of charming little virtues was cultivated in that 
 one small act; generosity, chivalry, kindness, grati- 
 tude, justice, and an honourable and affectionate class- 
 spirit. But that teacher was ever a magician among 
 teachers! (I get it strongly into my head that with- 
 out justice in these small matters, it is almost useless 
 for a teacher to preach little preachments on justice 
 and truthfulness, when children's sense of justice is 
 violated by their being marked low, for instance, in 
 arithmetic, although everything is correct, just be- 
 cause they haven't spelled " answer" correctly, or 
 because they haven't "done it the right way," or 
 remembered to arrange it as they were told. ) 
 
 An incident of my own school life illustrates this 
 point. Years have passed, yet the thrill of it is upon 
 
242 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 me as I revert to it. Fresh from the Boston Gram- 
 mar School, I was on my way to examination for 
 entrance into the long anticipated High School. 
 The only fear I had was for my oral arithmetic. 
 Of the written I felt sure. The ponderings under 
 my jacket as I trudged resentfully along were of 
 this rebellious sort: " Outrageous mean! I can get 
 their old answers in a minute, but I'll never be able 
 to say those old explanations!" and so on, and so 
 forth, all the way. To my delight and surprise I 
 was ushered alone with the examiner into the ex- 
 amining room and told to "just give the answer"! 
 Could anything be finer? I grew three inches on 
 the spot. But to this day it seems to me too 
 pathetic that notions of school justice should have 
 been of such a character that that simple act of 
 pure fairness could produce in me a sense of grati- 
 tude that has lasted all these years. Besides the 
 injustice of things of this sort, which prevail far 
 too much in the schools, and even in the homes, 
 there is in it a discouragement often beyond the 
 childish powers of resistance. Encouragement is 
 the very thrill of life; we need it ourselves; how 
 much more the children. Life is a dead, dead thing 
 for any of us without it. Professor James writes a 
 good word on this subject: 
 
PRACTICAL MORALS 243 
 
 " Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot 
 of his education. If he keep faithfully busy each 
 hour of the working day he may safely leave the 
 final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty 
 count on waking up some fine morning to find him- 
 self one of the competent ones of his generation in 
 whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently 
 between all the details of his business, the power of 
 judging in all that class of matter will have built 
 itself up within him, as a possession that will never 
 pass away. Young people should know this truth 
 in advance. The ignorance of it has probably en- 
 gendered more discouragement and faint-hearted- 
 ness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all 
 other causes put together." 
 
 One other thought and this long, and perhaps, in- 
 coherent chapter shall have an end. It is upon the 
 subject of Eeverence. No character can be ideal 
 without the fragrance which Eeverence gives it. 
 In the every-day world Eeverence takes the form of 
 a natural attitude of respect toward things high and 
 true and real. And this is the only attitude that 
 children should ever perceive in their Pedagogues 
 and Parents. Eeverence is the chief source of 
 humility, and humility is the one virtue which makes 
 possible the attainment of wisdom and knowledge. 
 
244 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 I mean reverence for all things worthy — the Good, 
 the True and the Beautiful, and especially for the 
 great Unknowable. In young children Eeverence is 
 as natural as the very breath of life. A little girl 
 of four stood by the window in her nightdress lojok- 
 ing out for a moment upon the big dark world be- 
 fore going to bed. She waved her tiny hand to 
 include all the lights of the small settlement spread 
 out before her, and exclaimed softly, " Good-night, 
 all the homes! " I cannot reason you out the logic 
 of it, but I am certain that that act was the very 
 essence of love and reverence for humanity, — the 
 wisdom revealed unto babes. (It is the height and 
 depth of educational art to retain through the 
 whole of life, this child-like simplicity of goodness, 
 and of love for our fellow-beings. The character of 
 unspoiled children has an undercurrent of ideality 
 which we may ever envy them. -Let their frailties 
 "be mentioned softly and gained upon by time," 
 while we devote ourselves to the cultivation of this 
 ideality by keeping them, as far as we can, in a 
 current of high thoughts and worthy deeds, even as 
 the channel of a stream, if kept clear, will by its own 
 force, rid itself of debris as it broadens and deepens 
 on its journey to the sea. 
 Let us live in good comradeship with our children. 
 
PRACTICAL MORALS 245 
 
 (The parental function is one of the highest if not 
 absolutely the highest, pertaining to manhood and 
 womanhood, and should not be "entered into 
 lightly or unadvisedly," but with the utmost 
 reverence. , If we wish sincerity in our children we 
 must ever be sincere; if we wish frankness and truth 
 and accuracy, they must never see in ourselves any 
 swerving from these; if we wish for them courtesy 
 and politeness which are real, they must receive 
 these at our hands. ) When parents feel all this, 
 and are of intelligent, liberal, generous spirit, they 
 seldom go far astray with their children. 
 
 It is not that parents need to be perfect. Im- 
 patience, forgetfulness, the half-thousand frailties 
 common to weak mortals, children pass over lightly, 
 loving and respecting us none the less. They form, 
 indeed, a common bond between us and them. But 
 one little false note, one shilly-shallying with the 
 right, one ever so little hesitancy when duty is plain, 
 one injustice unatoned, — ah! there's the rub! We 
 must be utterly incapable of these things. Nor is 
 that expecting too much of ourselves, 
 
XIII 
 
 THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 
 
 44 What, then, are children really ? Their constant pres- 
 ence and their often disturbing wants conceal from us the 
 charms of these angelic forms, which we do not know how to 
 name with sufficient beauty and tenderness, — blossoms, dew- 
 drops, stars, butterflies, — but when you kiss and love them, 
 you give and feel all their names ! A single child upon the 
 earth would seem to us a wonderful angel, come from some 
 distant home, who, unaccustomed to our strange language, 
 manners, and air, looked at us speechless and inquisitive, but 
 pure as Rafael's infant Jesus. . , . And daily from the un- 
 known world these pure beings are sent to the wild earth; and 
 sometimes they light on slave coasts, or battle-fields, or in 
 prison for execution, and sometimes in flowery valleys and on 
 lofty mountains; sometimes in a most baleful, sometimes in a 
 most holy age ; and after the loss of their only father they seek 
 an adopted one here below."— Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. 
 
 " The child is doubtless an embryo angel, but no less cer- 
 tainly a possible devil."— Elizabeth P. Peabody. 
 
 44 Who can declare for what high cause 
 This darling of the gods was born? " 
 
 44 Some children are born into this world with tickets bought 
 and baggage checked on an express train for Hell." 
 
 Maevellous, and marvellously eloquent and forci- 
 ble, are the thoughts which have been thought and 
 
 246 
 
THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 247 
 
 the words which have been written concerning child- 
 hood and children. But whatever else we of to-day 
 may think of childhood, let us never be tempted to 
 believe that by inheritance, by Nature's limitation 
 of their possibilities, or lack of this limitation, 
 children are destined at birth to become " darlings 
 of the gods," or are doomed to perdition. We may, 
 perhaps, believe, that in point of talent or genius, 
 the limit of a human being's possible attainment is 
 already, by inheritance, denned at birth. But can 
 we, without violence to the very highest thought of 
 the divine scheme of things, believe in the foreor- 
 dination of moral character for any normal human 
 being? " Foreordination of evil! " It should be a 
 phrase not in the educational vocabulary! In 
 humiliation and honesty we should hold ourselves 
 responsible for the whole of what we have in mind 
 when we use that accusing phrase! We may be 
 sure that it was distress at the sight about him of 
 "fine souls wrecked by mal-education," which led 
 Wordsworth to write that sad story of two of 
 them in his "Kuth." Youth begins in the glory 
 which is native to it: 
 
 " With hues of genius on his cheek, 
 In finest tones the youth could speak 
 . . . while he was yet a boy." 
 
248 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 By lack of love and tenderness and pure environ- 
 ment 
 
 " His genius and his moral frame 
 Were thus impaired and he became 
 The slave of low desires/' 
 
 The whole story of many lives ahout us is in these 
 two stanzas. Time must, and surely will, do away 
 with the pitiless environment into which so many 
 children are born, and so soon get to be almost past 
 redemption. Am I my brother's keeper? I surely 
 am! Yet it is too probable that our present inter- 
 pretation of Christianity will, for some time to 
 come, continue to leave adult human beings free to 
 finish out their fortunes for good or ill, as they 
 choose to or are able. But as to Childhood! We 
 are at least, the keepers of Humanity's children! 
 Every infant born into this world is the ward of 
 Humanity. I have faith to believe that we- are 
 already launched in a current of solicitude for child- 
 hood, which is bearing us swiftly toward a state of 
 Christianity whereby we shall see to it, as a matter 
 of decency if not of love, that every child shall be 
 given a hospitable reception when it arrives on this 
 planet, and shall be tenderly cared for and guided 
 during its helpless years. At first we shall do it 
 largely from an economic standpoint. But let us, 
 
THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 249 
 
 for the credit of Humanity and of Christianity, do 
 all we can to hasten the time when we shall do it 
 from pure Love. We are, indeed, on the eve of the 
 first stage, and are beginning to believe that, 
 humanity aside, it is wise to spend our money and 
 what brotherly love we have, in preventing the 
 making of criminals, rather than in trying to cure 
 them after we have allowed them to be made'. Many 
 noble men and women are to-day devoting them- 
 selves to the children's problems. One of the finest 
 among things recently accomplished in New York 
 and some other cities, is the establishment of a 
 Children's Court. Delinquent juveniles are no 
 longer summoned before the same judge, in the same 
 place along with two or three hundred adults, all 
 awaiting their turn together, to be summarily dis- 
 posed of as drunkards, thieves, and other law- 
 breakers. They now have a court of their own, 
 with a judge of their own, who may, and who does 
 take time to understand each case, by getting him- 
 self into the attitude of mind of the young culprit, 
 and finding out about home conditions and other 
 environment. Only judges are chosen for these 
 positions, who are especially interested in juvenile 
 delinquents, and effort is made as far as is possible, 
 to have all sentences remedial and reformatory — 
 
250 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 even as would be done by a wise and judicious 
 parent. If all the world could be brought to listen 
 to a few scores of the pathetic stories of these little 
 offenders, as related by the sympathetic judges, the 
 children's case would be won. 
 
 Effort is being made to have these children's 
 courts established in all cities. And the saddening 
 part of it is, that although appeal is made to the 
 humane side of the question, yet, in order to in- 
 fluence the great body of voters and tax-payers, the 
 business side of it must be brilliantly shown up, 
 namely, that, independent of the benevolent side of 
 it, it pays. It pays, inasmuch as we of the United 
 States now spend, as they tell us, $500,000,000 per 
 year for the care and sequestration of criminals, 
 and therefore, every child reclaimed from the 
 criminal class is a saving to the state! It is good 
 to do these things from any motive, but when the 
 love of Humanity shall be so great that Public 
 Opinion will refuse, at any price whatsoever, to 
 endure the sight of one little child uncared for, 
 then, we may feel that we are in truth beginning to 
 have right foundational ideas of Education — and of 
 religion. 
 
 We know now that children are not totally de- 
 praved, unregenerate little aliens from God, to be 
 
THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 251 
 
 redeemed by us; no more are they blank sheets of 
 paper to be written upon, or clay in the hands of 
 the potter. Each one of them is a bundle of possi- 
 bilities of — we know not what, whose rightful birth- 
 right is an environment and wise guidance which 
 shall enable him to work toward the attainment of 
 his yet undiscovered possibilities.) 
 
 Children! In very truth what are they? Jean 
 Paul's "Delicate flower-gods of a soon fading 
 Eden/' or Fourier's "devilkins"? "Unruly brats 
 with birch to tame/' or "gems that glitter while 
 they live"? 
 
 They laugh, they weep, they love, they hate; they 
 fib, they pilfer; "they are mirrors of ingenuous 
 truth "; they are soft and gentle, they are fiery little 
 furies; they are our delight, our despair. What- 
 ever else they are, they are energy and activity 
 rampant, and — they are ours. Ours it is to provide 
 for them; to conduct them forward (if it be not 
 backward) out of their charming realm into our 
 work-a-day world. How shall we meet the merry, 
 careless, lawless, irrepressible, irresponsible brigade of 
 little possibilities? Had we not better haste and 
 form ourselves into a protective union? 
 
 But seriously, and to be " practical "! First of all 
 we must expect every normal child to be a personi- 
 
252 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 fication of activity. No normal child is ever idle; 
 he is either playing or working, thinking or eating, 
 or sleeping, or resting; and that last occupation of 
 resting is usually as far from idleness as any of the 
 others. Of these " silences " Carlyle writes: 
 
 " In them great things fashion themselves to- 
 gether, that they may at length emerge full formed 
 and majestic, into the daylight of life." 
 
 What form shall this perpetual activity be helped 
 to take? A vigorous child of nine once gave un- 
 conscious answer to the question, when she ex- 
 claimed, with flashing eye and lusty emphasis, "I 
 think children ought to play; they hate to work." 
 
 I have often wondered if, provided all did it so 
 that there were no shame to any, it wouldn't be the 
 best possible thing for children, to require them to 
 do nothing but play until they were a dozen or four- 
 teen years old! The higher the species the longer 
 its childhood and coming to maturity! Ours it 
 would then be to see that they were able to get at 
 what they needed for their desires and schemes — to be 
 their aiders and abettors. In fancy we can see the 
 toy forts and bridges, wharves and houses and con- 
 trivances of all sorts. Of course we should read to 
 them, theirs to dictate how much, and when and 
 even what! and books would be left lying about. 
 
THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 253 
 
 What an opportunity for the free development of 
 the faculties! — which is, is it not? the gist of Educa- 
 tion itself. What an opportunity for the free dis- 
 covering of foundational morals, and the finding 
 each of his level among his fellows! One wonders 
 if every one of them would not learn to read and 
 write and cipher, and get all sorts of book learning, 
 "just for fun," and by force of natural ambition, 
 even to fuller success than now they do; and learn 
 also to be kindlier, more courteous and helpful. 
 Again and again I have wondered and questioned 
 within myself whether it would not be so, so surely 
 does assisted freedom more than coercion, bring 
 forth things of beauty and strength! Well, we shall 
 not know, for we shall not have faith or courage 
 to try it. 
 
 This, however, we may be sure of, that play will 
 always be at its maximum in the first years, grow- 
 ing less and less as age advances, and that work will 
 be at minimum, growing more and more as play 
 grows less; work and play being about evenly divided 
 somewhere between the ages of twelve and sixteen. 
 Our fifteen-year-old daughter exclaims, when asked, 
 " Sixteen! not a bit earlier! " One wonders if 
 children wouldn't, by the scheme of playing out 
 their childhood days, come into their life work with 
 
254 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 such freshness and zest and enjoyment that it would 
 be transformed into play, and life be all play! All 
 best play is large part work and all best work should 
 be large part play, play being denned as voluntarily 
 chosen activity. So we come to the new gospel of 
 work, taught by Euskin, Morris and others. 
 
 "Play is the first and only occupation of our 
 childhood, and remains the pleasantest one our 
 whole life long. To toil like a beast of burden is 
 the sad lot of the lowest, the most unfortunate and 
 the most numerous class of mortals, but this is 
 contrary to the intent and wish of Nature. . . Take 
 away from life what is the enforced service of iron 
 necessity, and what is all that is left but play? 
 Artists play with Nature; poets with their imagina- 
 tion; philosophers with their ideas; the fair sex with 
 our hearts, and kings, alas, with our heads! " 
 
 Let us then, young and old, play all we can. 
 " Being a child must not hinder becoming a man; 
 becoming a man must not hinder being a child. ") 
 Let us all therefore have our due proportion of 
 play, for play is but overabundance of life, flowing 
 into the form of voluntarily chosen activity. 
 
 Have not the conceit to believe that a child knows 
 a thing because you have told it to him. He needs 
 to question and doubt it, to examine it on all sides, 
 
THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 255 
 
 to apply it; in a word, to play with it. It is not 
 his very own knowledge till he has done all that with 
 it. We prate of "need of discipline." Is it not 
 true discipline to be given freedom to bring all the 
 powers into play, and to focus them on the getting 
 dominion over the earth? That is the "Big 
 Thing" children love to do! And is twelve, or 
 fourteen, or even sixteen years, too long a time in 
 which to play with, and give meaning to, all the new 
 and strange and wonderful things which the child 
 comes upon when he enters this big complex world? 
 I suspect that it is not what we with our artificially 
 "natural" methods, and scientific arrangements 
 and logical orders, give to children, that is the best 
 part of" their equipment for life. Are not those the 
 best things which they have discovered for them- 
 selves, or gotten from their comrades? — provided 
 we have not generated in them too much " artificial 
 stupidity," which is too sadly likely to be the case. 
 
 "It is perfectly certain that two in every three 
 children are irretrievably damaged or hindered in 
 their mental or moral development in the schools; 
 but I am not sure that they would fare better if they 
 staid at home.") 
 
 If I quote often from Chamberlain and Chamber- 
 lain's quotations, I can only plead as did the western 
 
256 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 school-teacher concerning Shakespeare: "He ex- 
 presses my sentiments fine!" 
 
 Youngsters need to roam over the whole field of 
 knowledge from the very start, and come up to their 
 limit in all directions before they are content to 
 settle down seriously to the business of detailed 
 inquiry, and hard plodding after " knowledge." 
 This seems to be the way Human Eace did it. We 
 Parents cannot be psychologists; in spite of the 
 clear definition in the Introduction of this book, 
 we cannot wholly comprehend " Culture Epochs " 
 either in the race or in the child. We wonder if 
 Pedagogues do. Yet we can in a general way, per- 
 ceive the thing mistily, and even get help and 
 encouragement from it. We do, in our wide ex- 
 perience with children, discover and appreciate 
 many things about them which we call common 
 sense, and sometimes they seem to us to be almost 
 the same things which the child-studiers call " re- 
 capitulation." And science and common sense 
 ought to have contact and agreement somewhere, 
 else one or both of them is unsound. 
 
 The matter-of-fact and continual observation of 
 parents leads us to notice a good deal concerning 
 these various stages in a child's life which the child- 
 studiers call "Culture Epochs." We observe our 
 
THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 257 
 
 children closely from birth; we go into the nursery 
 and put pencils into two-day-old fingers and marvel, 
 as Darwin did, that a tiny infant will hang there- 
 upon for a marvellous number of seconds; only, not 
 being accurate scientists like Darwin, we don't 
 write it down; that is, the wisest of us don't; we 
 don't dare to trust ourselves, albeit we do sometimes 
 have the fever to record, as he recorded. Once 
 upon a time, we and another pair of Parents, 
 planned to do it together and compare notes, but we 
 got discouraged. At three months the parents of 
 the other baby recorded it as having " cried to go to 
 ride." Our baby had cried, but we couldn't feel 
 sure whether it had cried to go to ride or not; we 
 presumed it had; we didn't know anything to the 
 contrary and hoped that our baby was up to the 
 other baby, but we got puzzled. We felt more 
 fully than we ever had before, an appreciation of 
 Max Midler's attitude on this subject: 
 
 " The observers of babies," he writes in his 
 autobiography, "mostly young fathers, proud of 
 their first offspring, remind me always of a very 
 learned friend of mine who presented to the Royal 
 Society most laborious pages containing his life-long 
 observation on certain deviations of the magnetic 
 needle, and who had forgotten that in making these 
 
258 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 observations, he always had a pair of steel spectacles 
 on his nose." 
 
 But, as I said before, we Parents have in our way- 
 done a good deal of observing, and most of us I 
 think, have noticed several things. 
 
 I. That it is most excellent for children to have 
 a big supply of things to do with, and plenty of time 
 for free play. 
 
 II. That the later they get into harness and 
 have the reins pulled taut over them, the better. 
 
 III. That it is absolutely criminal to overdrive 
 them, since it hurts them, not temporarily but, as it 
 would a young colt, for life. 
 
 IV. That reasoning, even when they seem to 
 follow it, affects them, either mentally or morally, 
 about as much as rain affects a house when it falls 
 on the properly shingled roof of it, they being 
 creatures of instinct and emotion, not of reason. 
 
 V. That a child really does pass through stages, 
 
 somewhat as the Race did, and that we should not 
 
 allow ourselves to be so hard-headed as to force 
 
 him to reason out mathematics at an age when it 
 
 seems 
 
 " As if his whole vocation 
 Were endless imitation," 
 
 and then set him to learning foreign languages when 
 
THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 259 
 
 this age is over and the reasoning faculty is fiercely 
 at work in him, but that we should let him do all 
 things according to the law of nature. 
 
 VI. That, morally, they stand stubbornly still 
 when club-driven, but go gaily on when led with 
 banners flying. 
 
 All these things we think we are fairly sure of, 
 and of some others besides. But these will suffice 
 for the present. Concerning III, the early pushing 
 and heavy pressure brought to bear on school- 
 children, too strong warning cannot be uttered, nor 
 be too often reiterated. Many parents complain 
 bitterly of the home work of the younger children, 
 and wails everywhere go up on account of the high- 
 pressure system of the High Schools. A High- 
 School girl told me the other day that in her class 
 they were required to commit to memory every 
 Latin lesson entire, consisting of a page or more of 
 Cgesar, and this five times a week, in addition, of 
 course, to exacting demands from the teachers of 
 the other studies. Every word that Mr. Harris 
 writes on the subject of education is so sound and so 
 wise that it makes us wish that he would take us 
 Parents in hand, and write us a book on our duties 
 and privileges, and would write it so simply, so 
 " popularly," that we could have it for a sort of 
 
260 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 educational Bible, to be picked up and enjoyed at 
 all hours of the day, between the homely tasks of 
 our busy lives. On this subject he writes: "It is a 
 matter of every-day comment that much memoris- 
 ing deadens the power of thought. But it is equally 
 true that memory may paralyse the power of sense- 
 perception, imagination, and will." 
 
 When remonstrated with for permitting too high 
 pressure being put upon their children, parents have 
 but one reply: " What can we do? " When I urged 
 upon one young girl who was rapidly breaking 
 down, " Health is of far more worth than learn- 
 ing," she replied: " You have to study if you 
 go to that school." She was unable to finish the 
 year. 
 
 There have always been wise ones in every age 
 and generation to sound the danger-call concerning 
 this thing. 
 
 "If the higher faculties," writes Spencer, "are 
 early taxed by presenting an order of knowledge 
 more complex and abstract than can be readily 
 assimilated; or if, by excess of culture, the intellect 
 in general is developed to a degree beyond that 
 which is natural to the age; the abnormal result so 
 produced will inevitably be accompanied by some 
 equivalent or more than equivalent evil." 
 
THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 261 
 
 And again he writes: 
 
 "We contend, then, that this over-education is 
 vicious in every way; vicious as giving knowledge 
 that will soon be forgotten, vicious as producing a 
 disgust for knowledge, vicious as neglecting that 
 organisation of knowledge which is more important 
 than its acquisition; vicious as weakening or 
 destroying that energy without which a trained 
 intellect is useless; vicious as entailing that ill 
 health for which even success would not com- 
 pensate, and which makes failure doubly bit- 
 ter." 
 
 Huxley writes of those who are too much forced 
 in early life: 
 
 " Like early risers they are conceited all the fore- 
 noon of life and stupid all its afternoon. The 
 vigour and freshness which should have been stored 
 up for the purposes of the hard struggle for exist- 
 ence in practical life, have been washed out of them 
 by precocious mental debauchery, by book-gluttony, 
 and lesson-bibbing; their faculties worn out by the 
 strain put upon their callow brains, and they are 
 demoralised by worthless, childish triumph before 
 the real work of life begins. ("The power of work 
 which makes many a successful man what he is, 
 must often be placed to the credit, not of his hours 
 
262 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 of industry, but to that of his hours of idleness in 
 boyhood." 
 
 One more from among the multitude of them; 
 this from the long-ago Plutarch: 
 
 "For, as plants by moderate watering are nour- 
 ished, but with overmuch moisture are glutted, so 
 is the spirit improved by moderate labours, but over- 
 whelmed by excesses." 
 
 The disregard of these natural phenomena of 
 childhood; the getting too early into harness; the 
 overdriving; the taxing of incipient reason; the 
 hammering at cold iron instead of waiting till 
 Nature heats it for us at the proper period; all 
 these things dispel the effervescence arising from 
 the pleasure of acquiring knowledge, disperse the 
 " visions splendid " of youth, and rob life's halo of 
 its rightful brightness. The children submit, even 
 with half content, for the unthinking little things are 
 unconscious of their birthright and their loss of it. 
 
 "Men have always reverenced prodigious inborn 
 talents, and always will," says President Eliot. I 
 believe that Nature has been more prodigal of them 
 than we realise. But they are often delicate and are 
 overborne, or are set to grow on too stony ground. 
 They are not given freedom enough. Did you ever 
 go to a maple " sugaring off "? I went to one a long 
 
THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 263 
 
 time ago when the operation was cruder, but more 
 picturesque than now. Out in the grove they built 
 their big fire and hung their kettle over it. How the 
 sap seethed and boiled in it in endeavour to escape 
 its bounds! A watcher was by, and whenever the sap 
 threatened to boil over he tossed in a piece of ... I 
 think it was salt pork! Down instantly went all 
 that enthusiasm. Over and over again it happened; 
 it depressed me; why could they not have the pot big 
 enough? It was senseless of me, sentimental! But 
 even to this day when I recall the scene, the thought 
 of it gives me the same sense of regret. Why could 
 they not have had the pot big enough? 
 
 It is exactly like that, that the enthusiasm, the 
 surging bubbling life of children is suppressed in the 
 schools. I sometimes think we need not look farther 
 than this for answer to the questions, "What be- 
 comes of all the bright children? " " Why do we not 
 in manhood and womanhood, fulfil the high promise 
 of childhood? " " We are born under a law; it is our 
 wisdom to find it out and our safety to comply with 
 it." But surely that law cannot be to cripple in 
 order to control! To keep down natural activity in 
 order to save ourselves the care of directing it into 
 proper channels, even as animal-trainers starve their 
 animals in order to subdue them. 
 
264 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 What then? We meant to have this chapter a very 
 " practical " one, and here we are once more in 
 Utopia, with our chapter of sufficient length. We 
 meant to have had our say-so on the various sins of 
 childhood, quarrelsomeness, impertinence, ill temper, 
 etc. But many have discoursed wisely upon these 
 subjects, and we will leave the children right here 
 upon Utopian soil, for which my reader will long ago 
 have discovered I have a strong liking. Well, who 
 doesn't? But children, especially, are safe there. 
 V. In conclusion, let us then, bring children forward 
 as best we may with the minimum of punishment, 
 leading, inciting, enticing, beguiling, encouraging, 
 and sometimes coercing. If we find the task too ideal 
 for our unideal, undivine capabilities, let us all the 
 same, go cheerfully forward. Not one of us is perfect; 
 so can our ways not be. But face always toward the 
 Mecca. Eead unstintingly, observe continually, and 
 ponder all these things in your heart. Have patience 
 and charity infinite, pressing onward trustfully, 
 hopefully, not foreboding evil; for have we not all the 
 forces of the universe with us in this divinest of 
 tasks, that of conducting children out of childhood 
 into the full stature of the Sonship of God? 
 
XIV 
 
 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 " A body of cultivated men, devoted with their whole hearts 
 to the improvement of education, and to the most effectual 
 training of the young, would work a fundamental revolution 
 in society."— William Ellery Changing. 
 
 " The future of American civilisation and the rich blessings 
 of republican institutions will be assured if we can interest the 
 best talent of the country in education, and evolve a school 
 system which shall be as nicely adjusted to our national re- 
 quirements as the German system is to German needs."— 
 James E. Russell. 
 
 There is a pedagogic "body of cultivated men, 
 devoted with their whole hearts to the improvement 
 of education "; the best pedagogic " talent of the 
 country " is interested in education. But the trum- 
 pet-call is now to all of us, to the Parent as well 
 as the Pedagogue. Wisdom parental and wisdom 
 pedagogic are complemental; they should be joined in 
 marriage never to be put asunder. The iteration and 
 reiteration of this sentiment must be pardoned in the 
 light of the fact that it is the one central and insist- 
 ent thought around which this entire book is written. 
 
 Home and school work independently of each 
 265 
 
266 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 other, impelling the child, as may chance, in the 
 same, or in opposite direction. In the entire history 
 of education, we search in vain for any impress of the 
 parental hand. The role of the parent, in the long 
 past, has been wholly one of trustfulness, of def- 
 erence, almost of reverence, toward learning and all 
 institutions of learning. Such relationship has 
 doubtless been necessary in the past. It is no longer 
 necessary; yet to-day it is the same. No honoured 
 goal is recognised toward which home and school 
 mutually trend. In justice it must be admitted that 
 Pedagogues do always have high ideals for which 
 they work with earnestness and zeal. But it is only 
 the occasional parent who recognises the ideals of the 
 school, or who has for his own children, ideals of any 
 sort toward which he strives consistently, — unless, 
 indeed, it be money-getting. The well-being of our 
 children is the chief interest of us all; but we trust 
 the routine of things. We hold ourselves too much 
 in the attitude taken by the English ministry at the 
 time when " Chinese " Gordon was left to his fate: 
 " They threw the puzzle into the air," writes Hake, 
 Gordon's resentful biographer, " and hoped to see its 
 pieces come down in proper order, all accurately 
 fitted together into an allegorical picture of economy, 
 happiness, and universal suffrage." 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 267 
 
 As a body, Parents are in that same comfortable 
 frame of mind with regard to the education of their 
 children. They reason: — "We pay heavy taxes for 
 the schools; we expect the schools to take good care 
 of the education of our children. "We give them into 
 the care of the schools exactly as we turn them over to 
 the doctor when they are sick." But we should not 
 do that thing. There cannot be a body of educa- 
 tional experts as there can be of medical experts. 
 Physicians may, in session assembled, and in actual 
 presence of the human skeleton, learn all there is to 
 know about the bones of the human body; the dissect- 
 ing room may furnish knowledge for the doctoring 
 of us all, nabob and beggar alike. But who may 
 dissect a human soul? " Where," asks a French 
 writer, "can you apply a thermometer to test the 
 temperature of a soul? " Pedagogues are not educa- 
 tional experts; neither are Parents; it requires both 
 to do educational work. 
 
 Mr. Pellatt, a schoolmaster of England, writes 
 truly, " Thories upon education have an absorbing 
 fascination for all schoolmasters possessed of the 
 true teaching instinct." Pedagogic thought and 
 feeling and judgment are, indeed, largely the out- 
 come of strong, intellectual, reasoned-out theory. 
 Parental thought and feeling and judgment are the 
 
268 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 outcome of experience, interpreted by Nature's 
 strongest motive forces, parental instinct and love. 
 Pedagogic zeal fits children to its schemes; parental 
 instinct fits its schemes to the children. The one 
 without the other is as the strenuous day without the 
 restful night; as the work-a-day world below, with- 
 out the serene heavens above; is as the father without 
 the mother; useless each without the other. The 
 home and the school should be the two halves of a 
 harmonious educational whole. 
 
 Of the story of his own education President 
 Dwight writes: 
 
 " If there is any suggestion which it offers it is, I 
 think, that of the importance of family life in giving 
 the impulse to intellectual growth." 
 
 All through that most interesting series of How I 
 was Educated papers, as in most autobiographies, 
 this idea is of constant recurrence. " Have the right 
 father and mother." And liberal-minded parents of 
 to-day are beginning to rouse themselves to a feeling 
 of this responsibility; to feel a personal interest and 
 concern in the education of their children. The 
 number is every day increasing of John Locke's 
 parents "whose concern for their dear little ones 
 makes them so irregularly bold that they dare venture 
 to consult their own reason in the education of their 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 269 
 
 children, rather than wholly to rely upon Old 
 Custom.". But the institution of the Public School 
 is a thing of dismaying size and momentum. It has 
 not yet occurred to Parents, even when discontented, 
 to interfere with the workings of it, or to take their 
 rightful attitude toward it. Of the dissatisfied ones, 
 those who are able take their children from the 
 Public Schools and place them — wherever best suits 
 their ideas; the rest criticise, or grieve, or complain, 
 according to temperament, and chafe under their 
 helplessness. But there certainly is a spirit of un- 
 rest among Parents of to-day. They are patient, 
 but there is everywhere discernible a spirit of ques- 
 tioning; of wonderment as to whether their children 
 are receiving the individual uplift and send-off in 
 life, which they have a right to expect. There are 
 mutterings, some of them loud ones, of too much 
 pressure in the High Schools; of over-burdening 
 home work, of too long hours of close confinement, of 
 too much book- work with not enough of doing, of too 
 little attention to the individual pupil. And surely 
 the yoke of the Public School is not easy nor its bur- 
 den light. 
 
 Why, however, should Parents complain? Com- 
 plaint is not the attitude we should take. The 
 Public School is an institution our very own; its 
 
270 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 corps of instructors are our paid assistants. They 
 are doing magnificent work, but they are working 
 without our sympathy or cooperation or oversight. 
 We do not think of dealing like that with any other 
 paid-for service rendered us. A wholly pedagogic 
 one-sidedness in our school-service is the natural re- 
 sult, and nobody is at fault but the parents them- 
 selves. 
 
 We may well ask ourselves, "Are we, even the 
 educated among us, competent to enter intelligently 
 into council and conference with our highly-trained 
 educators? " We may surely answer that we are not. 
 Parents do not now train themselves for their part. 
 Let us, however, once perceive the duty of our share 
 in the responsibility, and it will be far otherwise with 
 us. How then can Parents fit themselves for intel- 
 ligent, acceptable cooperation with Pedagogues? 
 
 To begin with, some study of the simple, underly- 
 ing laws and principles upon which character is 
 formed should be taught as a part of the finishing 
 course in the Education of every young man and 
 woman, or better still, should permeate the entire 
 course. It may be thought that we are already doing 
 that in placing psychology on their list of studies, 
 but that is doubtful; at all events, it is not what I 
 mean; I mean a study of the actual, practical, mani- 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 271 
 
 fest principles upon which character has been built, 
 as exemplified in the lives of successful men and 
 women. The minds of youth are eagerly competent 
 to understand and revere these laws, if concretely 
 studied and comprehended. Both young men and 
 young women could be led to read with intense profit 
 and pleasure such things as the above-mentioned 
 How I was Educated papers, so full of human 
 nature, and human nature's ambitions, struggles, and 
 final triumphs. The first chapters of biographies, 
 especially of autobiographies, are fine, instructive 
 reading; they are a beguilement to the finish, and 
 lead to that most illuminating method of coming at 
 histor}^ through the lives of men who have been the 
 centres of momentous epochs. Do not select just 
 those lives which seem to point a moral; take any 
 which have been successful, from the soft youth of 
 Ebers to the strenuous, early life of Lincoln, or the 
 forced one of John Stuart Mill. Have these lives 
 discussed and compared in class. In studies of 
 " applied psychology " of this sort, the simpler and 
 more evident laws of life and progress and success 
 would loom up and impress themselves upon the 
 minds of youth; would furnish a living foundation 
 for the future study of psychology; would make 
 young people more considerate of childhood; would 
 
272 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 tend to lay a good foundation for character, ambition, 
 and service, and of parental wisdom for later needs. 
 Such currents of thought once set in motion, gather 
 momentum; inculcated in school, academy, and col- 
 lege, they would make almost impossible among 
 young parents such every-day " generation of artifi- 
 cial stupidity" and criminality as one continually 
 comes upon as the following: 
 
 " What makes the cars go? " asked a child ahead of 
 me on the train. The mother laughed and stopped 
 talking with her neighbour long enough to answer: 
 
 " The engine/' 
 
 "What makes the engine go?" 
 
 " The steam, goosey/' 
 
 After a pause: 
 
 " What makes the steam make the engine make the 
 cars go?" 
 
 "For the fun of it afterwards!" laughed the 
 mother with a staring glance at the boy which said 
 too plainly, " How can you be so stupid? " 
 
 The mother was a well-dressed intelligent-looking 
 woman; so was the one who passed under my window 
 one day dragging a small child by the hand. 
 
 "What are them things?" asked the little one 
 pointing to a team of oxen going by. " What are 
 them things? " Over and over at intervals of about 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 273 
 
 thirty seconds, till the two were out of hearing, and 
 not a word in reply! 
 
 And how many parents tell lies to their children 
 all through their impressible years, then are heart- 
 broken that their children take turn-about at it in 
 later years? 
 
 " Koger, come right back here this instant! Snake 
 down there! " called out a young mother neighbour of 
 mine yesterday. I naturally looked out to see what 
 danger my little friend Eoger was getting into. The 
 two-year-old adventurer was hesitating before his 
 mother called, but at this lie I was revengefully de- 
 lighted to see him start cautiously forward with neck 
 outstretched: 
 
 " Snake! Snake! Want see snake! " 
 
 " If I have to come down there after you I shall 
 whip you," came from the disappointed mother. 
 But the child continued peering around after the 
 snake, and the mother came down. She snatched 
 him up in her arms and kissed him rapturously: 
 
 "Why don't you come when mamma calls you, 
 you darling little idot? " 
 
 Two lies in one lesson, for this child's first course 
 in mendacity! 
 
 It should get to be the natural and regular order 
 of things to be rational and honest with children, 
 
274 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 even as it is fast getting to be the order of things to be 
 rational and humane in our treatment of dumb 
 animals. 
 
 Again, to induce this close understanding between 
 Pedagogues and Parents, we might have regular mass 
 meetings for addresses and discussion, somewhat like 
 those which Pedagogues now have among themselves, 
 but with both sides represented. Do you fancy that 
 such meetings would not be well attended? If they 
 were rightly arranged and if they were made 
 interesting, I feel absolutely certain that they would 
 be enthusiastically supported. Little as it may 
 seem so, parents have the education of their 
 children more intensely and ambitiously at heart 
 than almost any other interest in their lives. It is 
 only because this strong interest has no proper 
 outlet of expression that it does not more fully 
 appear. 
 
 Some sort of Pedagogue and Parent Paper, too, or 
 magazine, if made interesting, ought to win for itself 
 such a place that it would be the magazine or paper 
 oftenest found in cultivated homes. Education 
 should be, among adults, a taken-for-granted topic 
 of conversation. Such a paper or magazine would 
 reveal educational ideals to Parents, and give sugges- 
 tions how to cooperate in attaining them. It would 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 275 
 
 keep Parents in the current of educational progress, 
 give educational news, and lists and reviews of good 
 books to be read by pupils of the various grades, and 
 by Parents; it would help, through the Parents, to 
 swerve children from that great, destroying stream of 
 sensational reading. 
 
 A paper of this sort, in connection with periodical 
 mass meetings like those mentioned, would bring 
 Parents into an understanding of, and cooperation 
 with the ideals and aims of school work, of which they 
 have now little appreciation; for instance, the im- 
 portance of having youth acquire power and right- 
 eousness even more than so-called knowledge; of 
 governing them, not by fear of punishment, but by 
 motives that may serve permanently through life; of 
 being on the watch to make early discovery of in- 
 dividual bent, and to encourage it; — and of a hundred 
 other things. 
 
 President Eliot writes: 
 
 " Let us remember that the moral elements of the 
 New Education are individual choice of studies and 
 career among great, new varieties of studies and 
 careers, early responsibility accompanying this free- 
 dom of choice, love of truth, now that truth may be 
 directly sought through rational inquiry, and an 
 omnipresent sense of social obligation" 
 
276 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 The same sentiment comes forth from the pen of 
 President Barnard: 
 
 " A man's education must be mainly his own work. 
 He may be helped and he may be embarrassed greatly 
 by his environment, but neither books nor teachers 
 nor apparatus nor other surrounding conditions of 
 any kind, will be of any avail unless he himself 
 furnish the energising spirit which shall put them to 
 account. A mind is not moulded as an earthern ves- 
 sel is fashioned by the hand of a potter. It moulds 
 itself, by virtue of an inherent force which makes for 
 symmetry or deformity according to the direction 
 given to it by consciousness and will." 
 
 President Bartlett says likewise: 
 
 "The man that is thoroughly master of his own 
 powers will master any sphere or theme to which he 
 is called/' 
 
 The ring of these ideals is a new one in this genera- 
 tion. Parents should educate themselves up to it, 
 and the home and the school be brought into the 
 closest cooperation for rousing in the souls of the 
 pupils response to its clarion call. And this coopera- 
 tion is of far more moment to Parents than to Peda- 
 gogues. It would be a tremendous influence in help- 
 ing to disarm unsympathetic criticism of the schools; 
 it would almost surely keep school matters out of the 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 277 
 
 hands of politicians; it would make it easy, when 
 necessary, to arouse public sentiment in favour of 
 needed appropriations for the schools. More im- 
 portant than any of these things, perhaps, it would 
 result, with absolute certainty, that Parents would 
 ultimately find themselves on Curricula and other 
 committees, which decide important educational ques- 
 tions. There are many of these important questions 
 being settled to-day. We should not shirk the re- 
 sponsibility of assisting in the settling of them! 
 
 G. Stanley Hall, among others, writes sadly of the 
 increase of juvenile criminality: 
 
 "Although pedagogues make vast claims for the 
 moralising effect of schooling, I cannot find a single 
 criminologist who is satisfied with the modern school, 
 while most bring the severest indictments against it 
 for the blind and ignorant assumption that the three 
 E's, or any merely intellectual training, can 
 moralise." 
 
 No idea is more trustfully ensconced in the hearts 
 of parents than that education will make their chil- 
 dren "good." They have a right to feel that it is 
 so, and, as I have before said, they have high faith in 
 educators. But we are supinely dreaming when 
 we hold teachers responsible for the virtue and moral 
 strength of our children. Ideally, the highest moral 
 
278 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 influence must ever emanate from the home, the 
 school in full alliance with us at every turn. The 
 intellectual centre should of course be the school, — 
 but intelligently reinforced by the home. Education 
 should be one, — not home education and school 
 education, but Education. 
 
 We had in Boston a summer or two ago, and we 
 have it somewhere every year, a most triumphant and 
 successful Teachers' Convention. I cannot help hop- 
 ing that in the not too far away future, such gather- 
 ings will be called by a different name, and that 
 layman and laywomen will be in as full evidence as 
 teachers. An unprejudiced looker-on at that con- 
 vention might have imagined that he perceived just 
 the same pedagogic atmosphere as one feels in the 
 schools; an atmosphere generated in the study and 
 the class-room. It savoured of assurance. It had a 
 strong note of self -congratulation. It was erudite. 
 But it lacked completely the elements which a solid 
 contingent of Parents would have imparted to it. 
 Parents have little assurance. They hold their 
 breath. They proceed cautiously, following their 
 children somewhat. They have not erudition; they 
 have instinct and practical sense. We ought to have 
 been in it. 
 
 We ought to be in everything which concerns 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 279 
 
 education. I believe it would be a surprise to the 
 great body of parents if they realised how many 
 thoughtful people are questioning whether it is profit- 
 able to send young men and women to college. So 
 true is this that George Gary Bush, in his Higher 
 Education in Massachusetts, tells us that " The pro- 
 portion of those who pass through a college course 
 grows smaller with each advancing decade." Presi- 
 dent Eliot has proved to us the same fact by statistics. 
 Mr. Bush asks if the decline may not be " due to the 
 increasingly high standard which the college sets, 
 and be, in reality, an indication of progress/' But 
 President Eliot attributes, as part cause of this fall- 
 ing off, the insistence of colleges in giving pref- 
 erence to Greek and Latin, and even to mathematics, 
 over other and newer forms of knowledge. That 
 single cause has quite probably been a sufficient one 
 to effect the result, for eager is the pursuit of youth 
 after the "new knowledge" of the present genera- 
 tion., Many feel as Mr. Adams wrote in his A 
 College Fetich: "Do what he will no man can keep 
 pace with that wonderful modern thought; and if I 
 must choose — and choose I must — I would rather 
 learn something daily from the living who are to 
 perish, than daily muse with the immortal dead." 
 But whatever has been the cause of scepticism con- 
 
280 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 cerning the value of college education, one of the 
 promptest things long ago effected by a good under- 
 standing between Pedagogue and Parent would have 
 been either the removal of the cause, or the justifica- 
 tion of it. Probably indeed, the falling off would 
 never have occurred. 
 
 Again; a conference of over three years' duration 
 has been going on between the faculty and the over- 
 seers of Harvard University, concerning a revolu- 
 tionary change in its admission requirements, which 
 has at last culminated in letter if not wholly in 
 spirit, in the placing of " other knowledge " on a par 
 with the classics. This subject has been discussed 
 and decided upon with no manifestation of interest, 
 or influence, on the part of the great body of parents, 
 who have been almost in utter ignorance, indeed, that 
 such a discussion was in progress. For parents, 
 especially the parents of scientifically minded youths, 
 how important is the decision! Yet the utmost 
 concerning the matter which has seemed to get 
 thoroughly into the minds of Parents, is a 
 vague, satisfying consciousness that it has at last 
 "been fixed so that you can go to college without 
 Greek! " 
 
 Dr. S. H. Butcher, in Some Aspects of the Greeh 
 Genius, writes; 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 281 
 
 "From Greece came that first mighty impulse 
 whose far-off workings are felt by us to-day, and 
 which has brought it about that progress has been 
 accepted as the law and goal of human endeavour. 
 Greece first took up the task of equipping man with 
 all that fits him for civil life and prompts his secular 
 well-being; of unfolding and expanding every in- 
 born faculty and energy, bodily and mental; of striv- 
 ing restlessly after the perfection of the whole, and 
 finding in this effort after an unattainable ideal, 
 that by which man becomes like to the gods/' 
 
 Munroe, in his Educational Ideal, felt justified 
 in saying of Rabelais: 
 
 " He taught truth and simplicity, he ridiculed 
 rrypocrisy and formalism, he denounced the worship 
 of words, he demanded the study of things, he showed 
 the beauty of intellectual health, of moral discipline, 
 of real piety. Best of all he enumerated the su- 
 preme principle of nature which is ordered free- 
 dom." 
 
 Thus this "first mighty impulse" was given 
 momentum more than two thousand years ago; and 
 Rabelais lived in the sixteenth century. If so far 
 back as that, the foundational principles could get 
 discovered; if, in the dissipated life about him, a 
 recreant, but observant man of the world, could re- 
 
282 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 discover them, and a whole procession of torch- 
 bearers be found to pass on the educational light 
 through all the intermediate generations, surely we 
 ought by this time to have gotten farther out of laby- 
 rinthic obscurity in practical educational matters! 
 In theory, we are, indeed, somewhat well out in the 
 open; but we still mass our children in phalanxes to 
 be what we call " educated." 
 
 Yet, too much still, is the fresh, strong young will 
 suppressed; eager individuality is still too much 
 effaced; too much still do our youth come forth from 
 school " machine-made men." 
 
 How shall we dare accuse European nations of 
 making machines of men by compelling them, during 
 so many of their career-shaping years, to yield obe- 
 dience to their vast war machinery? Individuality 
 must be left behind when men enter that machine; 
 will must be soothed to slumber. So, too much, must 
 our boys and girls bid farewell to individuality and 
 will, when they start in on one of our eight or nine 
 or ten year curricula. " Who is going to prevail? " 
 asked a teacher of a little fellow who had brought 
 back his home work all correctly done, but clinging 
 to his own arrangement of it, " who is going to pre- 
 vail?" 
 
 " I don't know," replied the child wistfully. 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 283 
 
 " I am," said the teacher firmly, " next time do it 
 the regular way like the others." The boy had 
 simply trimmed his work up in red ink! Doubtless 
 he was looking forward to the teacher's praising it as 
 " pretty "; but should the teacher once begin to allow 
 departures it could not be foretold where it would 
 end ! The teacher " prevailed " ! 
 
 It was exactly thus that the French Louis XIV. 
 " prevailed " and preserved uniformity in his king- 
 dom by relentless persecution of his loyal and indus- 
 trious Huguenot subjects, although by " prevailing " 
 he set back the progress of his country, so say the his- 
 torians, for a century or so. It was a big price that 
 the French nation paid for Louis' famous proverb: 
 
 " Un roi, une loi, une foi; 
 L'etat, c'est moi." 
 
 It is a big price, too, that we are paying for uniform- 
 ity in our schools. And why, pray, do we pay it? 
 Why, in our children's education, do we lag in prac- 
 tice so far behind the shining light of theory? Is it 
 for lack of money? Most certainly not. We are a 
 rich nation and we have the custom of affording 
 whatever we really desire. Is it for lack of interest? 
 Not at all. Our educational force is made up of a 
 class of men and women, high-minded, zealous, con- 
 
284 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 scientious. Why then should it be possible for a man 
 like Superintendent Dutton to feel like writing: 
 " Education in this country has clung too closely to 
 old ideals and conditions and has not adapted itself 
 easily to new situations " ? Somehow I cannot help 
 feeling that Parents do "adapt themselves more 
 easily to new situations." In the school it is the 
 scheme which is the constant thing, but in the home 
 the parent is ever shifting the scheme to fit the vary- 
 ing needs of the child. " No nation which is virtu- 
 ous and vital will ever be a slave to the past/' writes 
 Edwin D. Mead in his The Principles of the Found- 
 ers; " at the command of virtue and of vision it will 
 snap precedent like a reed." Parents are compelled 
 to be continually snapping precedent like a reed! 
 Children are not bashful in the home, and they force 
 parents to prompt adaptation. 
 
 In the Harvard Graduate Magazine we read: 
 " The subject of education forces itself on us all 
 nowadays, whether we will or not, and is likely to 
 grow more, rather than less, insistent. For well- 
 nigh a century we Americans pointed to our Public 
 School system as if it had always been perfect and 
 would always remain so, and required no more atten- 
 tion from anybody. Only in our own generation has 
 this fallacy been exploded." 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 285 
 
 The passionate love of youth for the " new knowl- 
 edge" has been a large element in the explosion, 
 and will have to be a large one in the gradual recon- 
 struction which is too haltingly taking place. So, 
 also, has the unrest of parents, and that, too, will 
 have to be taken account of. 
 
 " Victory is assured," writes the above-quoted Dr. 
 Butcher, "to those who see things as they are, and 
 shun illusion, and who at the same time, summon to 
 the aid of thought, a sustained and courageous energy. 
 In the divorce between thought and deed, between 
 speech and action, Demosthenes truly saw the flaw 
 that was destined fatally to impair Greek conduct 
 and character." 
 
 G. Stanley Hall and his inspired Worcester coterie 
 may continue to surprise and delight us with educa- 
 tional insight; college presidents may continue to 
 write for us books winning our highest admiration; 
 money may be lavished for the luxurious housing of 
 our schools and for books and apparatus; but it re- 
 mains obstinately in my mind that we shall not easily 
 shake off the " divorce between thought and deed," 
 this "flaw" in our educational system, until the 
 natural cooperation is established between the two 
 departments of education. In the preface to his 
 great work, Adolescence, just published^ G. Stanley 
 
286 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 Hall writes with great feeling and sympathy of the 
 age of transition from childhood to youth: 
 
 " Youth awakes to a new world and understands 
 neither it nor himself. The whole future life de- 
 pends on how the new powers now given suddenly 
 and in profusion are husbanded and directed. 
 Character and personality are taking form; but every- 
 thing is plastic. Self-feeling and ambition are in- 
 creased and every trait and faculty is liable to exag- 
 geration and excess. It is all a marvellous new birth, 
 and those who believe that nothing is so worthy of 
 love, reverence, and service as the body and soul of 
 youth, and who hold that the best test of every human 
 institution is how much it contributes to bring youth 
 to the fullest possible development, may well review 
 themselves and the civilisation in which we live to 
 see how far it satisfies this supreme test." 
 
 This is surely a trumpet-call to teachers. It is as 
 surely a trumpet-call to parents. 
 
 Let parents humbly fit themselves to act their 
 part. With loyalty to schools and school-workers, let 
 us yet have the courage of conviction which comes to 
 us through close intimacy with childhood. Let us 
 consciously and conscientiously enter into knowledge 
 and appreciation of what is going on in the educa- 
 tional world. How shall we do this? 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 28? 
 
 I. Bead. Bead enough of the history of education 
 to understand the birth of this " New Education "; 
 to catch the spirit of it and feel its trend. 
 
 Just now, to write freely on the subject of Educa- 
 tion seems to be one of the functions of college presi- 
 dents and professors. The books and papers they 
 write are finely inspiring. Bead them all! At 
 least all that you have time for and can enjoy. 
 They are a spiritual tonic. Thus you shall discover 
 for yourself how each and all, though in a different 
 manner, are struggling to set flowing the big, clear 
 current of modern educational thought, namely: that 
 education is not knowledge-getting chiefly, but the 
 growth of fully developed power, with the law of 
 righteousness established within for the control of it. 
 Bead. Bead everything that is good on the subject 
 of education. Beading of this sort is culture of the 
 highest kind, independent of its utility. As soon as 
 it shall be the vogue for Parents to read and discuss 
 largely concerning educational topics, there will 
 surely come forth a flood of reading, profitable and 
 interesting for Parents. From this reading, and 
 more still from actual experience and observation, 
 formulate your own ideas and theories, and have the 
 fearlessness and faith to abide only by what theory 
 and experience shall agree upon. Only never wear 
 
288 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 theory within sight; keep it well within the sacred 
 precincts of the mind and heart. What a glorious 
 thing for us, both in the matter of grace and strength, 
 is that skeleton of ours with its two hundred and 
 six bones, all working continually for us with easy 
 adaptability! But should we not be thankful to 
 artistic Nature for not ordaining that we must 
 wear the uncanny thing on the outside! Let the 
 virtue, but not the bones, of our theories appear. 
 
 II. Visit the schools, not censoriously, but sympa- 
 thetically. Do not be impatient — with the teachers. 
 Large bodies move slowly. So far as possible follow 
 in detail what your own children are doing and be- 
 coming. Be sure that they themselves feel that they 
 are on God's highway, not groping about in bypaths. 
 Cooperate with the teacher even if she isn't doing 
 things exactly as you would like to see them done, 
 always, of course, keeping your own ideals well in 
 mind. Eemember that hearty work on an inferior 
 plane is often better than criticised and lagging work 
 on a higher one. 
 
 III. Consider it your office, not the teacher's, to 
 keep a hand on the brakes. You are the one to 
 preserve the physical, mental, moral, and social health 
 of your children. Do not permit them to be wrecked 
 or stunted or subdued, even though they miss a little 
 
PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 289 
 
 "knowledge." When children are overworked, 
 Nature is as likely to punish us by wrecking their 
 morals, as their bodily or mental health. Be "ir- 
 regularly bold" enough to call "down brakes!" 
 rather than allow children to go too long or too 
 wearily to tasks. 
 
 IV. Last and most important; be watchful! Have 
 faith in the intimations which Nature has planted for 
 our guidance in the instincts and longings of the 
 children themselves. While they are learning of us 
 we may learn even more of them. So shall we fulfil 
 the highest law of parenthood, which is for our own 
 refining as much as for the well-being of childhood. 
 
 Have at all times the courage of conviction, con- 
 cerning your own individual children. (*Be ever on 
 the alert to spread the belief that it is not necessary 
 that children go forward all alike in ranks.) Custom 
 weighs heavily upon us in this matter! And who 
 is brave enough to set himself up against " Old Cus- 
 tom"? Only he who is great dares defy Custom. 
 Let us strive to be great enough to defy her in this 
 long-established, deep-rooted belief, that children 
 cannot be given individual care when educated in 
 numbers. We may, however, take heart. To visions 
 made prophetic by love and ambition, fearlessness 
 and faith, and fortified by true culture, the fallacy 
 
290 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
 
 of this belief is already beginning to be made 
 apparent 
 
 On the loving-cup presented to President Eliot on 
 the occasion of his seventieth birthday is the inscrip- 
 tion: "In grateful acknowledgment of his devotion 
 to the University for 35 years and of his passion for 
 justice, for progress, and for truth." With the ideal 
 home and the ideal school ever unobscured in our 
 minds, let us all work together with that same " pas- 
 sion for justice, for progress, and for truth." / Only 
 together shall we find grace and strength to so satisfy 
 the cravings of childhood that men and women may 
 not too overwhelmingly feel their lives 
 
 " A crying out for light that has not shone; \ 
 A sowing of sweet seeds that will not spring.'^) 
 
 THE END 
 
TWO BOOKS BY THE LATE 
 
 FRANCIS A. WALKER 
 
 President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
 
 DISCUSSIONS IN ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS 
 
 Edited by Professor Davis R. Dewey. 
 
 With portrait. 454 + 481 pp. 2 vols. 8vo. $6.00 net. 
 
 Important papers on Finance, Taxation, Money, Bimetallism, Eco- 
 nomic Theory, Statistics, National Growth, Social Economics, etc. The 
 author had hoped to himself bring these papers together. 
 
 The Dial: "Professor Dewey has performed a real service to the 
 public, as well as to the memory of his late chief. ... In the present 
 collection the editor has not included everything General Walker ever 
 wrote, but has aimed, so far as possible, to avoid repetitions of 
 thought .... there are some discussions of the national finances in 
 the period following the Civil War, which have a timely as well as his- 
 torical interest at the present time. . . . To improve the census was 
 General Walker's work for many years, and his experience cannot fail 
 to be of interest to the present generation. . . . Economics in the hands 
 of this master was no dismal science, because of his broad sympathies, 
 his healthy, conservative optimism, his belief in the efficacy of effort ; 
 and, in a more superficial sense, because of his saving sense of humor 
 and his happy way of putting things .... he was the fortunate pos- 
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 the general reader, as well as instructive to the careful student. There 
 could have been no more fitting monument to his memory than these 
 two volumes, together with the other volume of ' Discussions in Educa- 
 tion.' " 
 
 New York Commercial Advertiser : " Clear, direct and forceful, full of 
 familiar illustration and appeal to fact, and always interesting. Cer- 
 tainly no other man has had such a wide influence on the economic 
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 ment, however, can give no adequate notion of the wealth of material 
 or wide scope of subjects covered by these shorter articles .... one 
 can almost hear the spoken word in some of the adresses .... an 
 excellent index." 
 
 DISCUSSIONS IN EDUCATION 
 
 Edited by James Phinney Munroe. 342 pp. 8vo. $3.00 net. 
 
 The author had hoped himself to collect these papers in a volume.' 
 
 The Dial .■ " A fitting memorial to its author. . . . The breadth of his 
 experience, as well as the natural range of his mind, are here reflected. 
 The subjects dealt with are all live and practical. . . . He never deals 
 with them in a narrow or so-called l practical ' way." 
 
 Literature : " The distinguishing traits of these papers are open- 
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 honesty, sagacity, and courage shine on every page." 
 
 The Boston Transcript : " Two of his conspicuous merits characterize 
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 subjects, and the capacity he had for controversy, sharp and incisive, 
 but so candid and generous that it left no festering wound." 
 
 HENRY HOLT & CO. ^4fi££3sS&Z2& 
 
 XX 1900 
 
il One of the most important boohs on music that has ever been published." — . 
 VV. J. HENDERSON in the N. Y. Times. 
 
 TOURTH EDITION, with a new chapter by H. E. KREHBIEL, 
 covering Richard Strauss, Cornelius, Goldmark, Kienzl, Hum- 
 perdinck, Smetana, Dvorak, Charpentier, Elgar, etc. 
 
 LAVIGNAC'S 
 
 Music and Musicians 
 
 Translated by WILLIAM MARCHANT. 
 
 With additional chapters by HENRY E. KREHBIEL on 
 Music in America and The Present State or the Art of Music. 
 
 With 94 Illustrations and 510 examples in Musical Notation. 518 pp., nmo, 
 $1.75 net. By mail, £1.91. 
 
 Cfl A brilliant, sympathetic and authoritative work cover- 
 ing musical sound, the voice, musical instruments, con- 
 struction aesthetics and the history of music. A veritable 
 musical cyclopedia, with some thousand topics in the index. 
 
 W. F. APTHORP in the Transcript :— 
 
 Admirably written in its way, capitally indexed, and of genuine value 
 as a handy book of reference. It contains an immense amount of 
 condensed information on almost every point connected with the art 
 which it were well for the intelligent music-lover to know. . . . Mr. 
 Marchant has done his hard task of translating exceedingly well. , . . 
 Well worth buying and owning by all who arc interested in musical 
 knowledge. 
 
 W.J. HENDERSON in the N. Y. Times:— 
 
 A truly wonderful production ; . . . a long and exhaustive account 
 of the manner of using the instruments of the orchestra, with some 
 highly instructive remarks on coloring. . . . Harmony he treats 
 not only very fully, but also in a new and intensely interesting way. 
 . . . Counterpoint is discussed with great thoroughness. ... It 
 seems to have been his idea when he began to let no interesting topic 
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 ... It will serve as a general reference book for either the musician 
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 music that have ever been published. 
 
 HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, 
 
 NEfr YORK. C»ill,'o!). CHICAGO. 
 
ENGLISH ROMANTICISM 
 
 By Prof. Henry A. Beers of Yale 
 
 2 vols. i2mo, laid paper, gilt tops 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. $2. 
 
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 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. $1.75 «* (Postage 15c.) 
 
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LUCAS* THE OPEN ROAD 
 
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 Some 125 poems (mostly complete) and 25 prose passages, representing 
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 Cheerful Americans 
 
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 cans Abroad" series, "The Man of Patty," 
 "Too Much Boy," "The Men Who Swapped 
 Languages," "Veritable Quidors," etc. 
 
 N. Y. TIMES SATURDAY REVIEW 
 
 says of one of the stories: "IT IS WORTHY OF FRANK STOCK- 
 TON." The rest of the notice praises the book. 
 
 N. Y. TRIBUNE: 
 
 "He is unaffectedly funny, and entertains us from beginning to end." 
 NATION: 
 
 "The mere name and the very cover are full of hope. . . . This small 
 volume is a safe one to lend to a gambler, an invalid, a hypochondriac, 
 or an old lady ; more than safe for the normal man. . . . The boolc 
 should fulfil a useful mission on rainy days, and on kerosene-steeped 
 evenings in those spots of earth where men and women do congregate." 
 
 N. Y. COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER: 
 
 "His opera-Douffe portrayals of American types are distinctly enjoy- 
 able. Most of us have met them or their next of kin in real life. . . . 
 The volume is abundantly illustrated, and the artists have admirably 
 caught the spirit of the author's humor." 
 
 BOSTON TRANSCRIPT, 8-19-03: 
 
 "A new and very interesting collection. . . . Of the seventeen stories in 
 the book there is scarcely one not marked by an originality of plot and 
 an abundance of healthful humor. . . . He who reads the first story will 
 read them all and wish for more." 
 
 CHICAGO TRIBUNE: 
 
 "The title is a stroke of genius. The book is sanely American and 
 one of the cheeriest books published in a long time. . . . The humor is 
 natural, the characters well drawn, and the style simple and unaffected. 
 . . . The automobile stories, while distinctly original, suggest Stockton 
 in their serious absurdity. . . . When Mr. Loomis has written another 
 volume or two like it we will treat him like the other immortal and 
 drop the Mr." 
 
 HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, 
 
 NEW rORK. % O.'o** CHICAGO, 
 
"The best single help to the study of Parsifal 
 
 with which I am acquainted ... for its purpose, the book has 
 no adequate fellow."— H. E. KREHBIEL in the Introduction. 
 
 KUFFERATH'S WAGNER'S 
 
 PARSIFAL 
 
 Translated by Louise N. Henermann. 
 
 XVIII + 300 pp., l2mo, $1.50, net (by mail, |l.6l). 
 
 This remarkably comprehensive book contains an Introduction by H. E. 
 KREHBIEL ; eight full-page illustrations in halftone of the scenery at 
 the Metropolitan Opera House ; The Motifs in Musical Notation; Chapters 
 on The Legend, History and Poetry; The Perceval of Chretien de Troies; 
 The P arrival of Wolfram Von Eschenbach; The Drama {Wagner's); 
 The Genesis of Parsifal; The Bayreuth Performance; The Score. 
 
 MR. KREHBIEL further says in his Introduction ; 
 
 "The production of "Parsifal " in New York was the most notable 
 occurrence compassed by the annals of the lyric stage in America. 
 " Parsifal " stands apart, not only from all other operas, but also from 
 the lyric dramas sprung from the same creative mind. It is not easy 
 to find the properest frame of mind in which to approach it. . . . If 
 any work of dramatic art invites study and is likely to repay it, it is 
 " Parsifal." It was necessary that a scholar should gather into a com- 
 pendium the most important things discovered by the investigation of 
 specialists, which throw light on Wagner's work, add to its charm, 
 and present it lucidly, entertainingly and convincingly to the many. 
 This M. Kufierath has done. His book stands quite alone in the field 
 of Wagneriana. . . . Kufferath makes many a pretty walk into by- 
 
 f>aths which Wolzogen never knew . . . more voluminous, more de- 
 ightful than the one on the score, and equally valuable, are the chap- 
 ters devoted to the vicissitudes of the Grail legend before Wagner 
 seized upon it as dramatic material ; the story of how the work grew 
 in Wagner's mind ; the account of its first performance ; the exposi- 
 tion 01 the philosophy of pity and its relation to Wagner's personal 
 character and religious speculations; and, finally, the exposition of 
 the drama itself. . . . Kufferath's German origin lent him serious- 
 ness of purpose, sympathy with Wolfram Eschenbach's poem, and the 
 capacity for patient research ; his^ French breeding and literary train- 
 ing, deftness of touch and skill in narrative; his musical learning, 
 capacity to understand and facility to expound Wagner's music, and 
 love for Wagner's art, fired him with an enthusiasm which illumines 
 nearly every page." 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY, 
 
 a 9 W. 23d Street, (H, '04). NEW YORK. 
 
THIRTEENTH IMPRESSION of "A novel novel and an 
 all-around good one." — Brooklyn Eagle. 
 
 The Lightning 
 Conductor. 
 
 The Strange Adventures of a Motor Car. 
 
 By C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON. 
 
 Iimo, $1.50. 
 
 €J[ The love story of a beautiful American and 
 a gallant Englishman, who stoops to conquer. 
 Two almost human automobiles, the one 
 German, heavy and stubborn, and the other 
 French, light and easy-going, play prominent 
 parts. There is much humor. Picturesque 
 scenes in Provence, Spain and Italy pass be- 
 fore the reader's eyes in rapid succession. 
 
 Nation : " Such delightful people, and such delightful scenes. . . . 
 It should be a good, practical guide to those about to go over 
 the same course, while its charming descriptions of travel afford 
 an ample new fund of pleasure, tinged with envy here and there 
 to the stay-at-homes." 
 
 N. T. Sun: "A pleasant and felicitous romance." 
 
 Springfield Republican : "Wholly new, and decidedly entertaining.** 
 
 Brooklyn Eagle : "A novel novel and an all-around good one." 
 
 Chicago Pott: "Sprightly humor . . . the story moves." 
 
 Boston Transcript: "Can hardly fail of a popular vote of approval." 
 
 HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, 
 
 KI.1V YORK. (*,'oj). CHICAGO 
 
NOV 18 1904 
 

 &m& 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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