^_ Qc 
 
 
 umo-jw* 
 
 SO 
 
 
 
 lOS-ANCElfJ> 
 
 i?
 
 A CHRISTMAS ADDRESS. 
 
 Science and the Elementary Schools, 
 
 DELIVERED AT A 
 
 GENERAL MEETING OF THE 
 TEACHERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Cleveland Public Schools, 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW S. DRAPER, 
 
 Superintendent of Instruction. 
 
 SATURDAY, DECEMBER i6th, 1893. 
 
 PUBLISHKD BY 
 
 THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.
 
 A CHRISTMAS ADDRESS. 
 
 Science and the Elementary Schools, 
 
 DELIVERED AT A 
 
 GENERAL MEETING OF THE 
 TEACHERS 
 
 OK THK 
 
 Cleveland Public Schools, 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW S. DRAPER, 
 Superintendent of Instruction. 
 
 SATURDAY, DECEMBER r6th, 1893. 
 
 PUBLISHKU BY 
 
 THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 A Christmas Address: 
 SCIENCE AND THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 
 
 THE SCHOOLS OF ANCIENT TIMES. 
 
 The modern, free elementary school has had a 
 growth and extension which is phenomenal. It reaches 
 out its kindly arms unceasingly and farther and farther 
 to the world's children, and year by year it gains in 
 strength and power and completeness. It is going to 
 be the world's universal civic institution. 
 
 The ancients maintained schools more than we are 
 accustomed to remember. In some cases they were 
 more elaborate, reached higher and had wider range 
 than we commonly recall. But they were for the pur- 
 poses of the king, not for the uplifting of the people. 
 The instances in which the purposes of the king coincided 
 with the interests of the people are so rare that they 
 hardly count. The kingly power under one name or 
 another was everywhere present. It was supreme. Its 
 foot was upon the neck of the people and it was inexor- 
 able. Its ambition was the perpetuation of the dynasty. 
 Ignorance and superstition were its instruments to that 
 end. Such schools as were set up were for the few as 
 against the many, for favored classes who were trained 
 
 2O65685
 
 to augment the power of the king and forge the chains 
 of the people. When the arts were cultivated it was 
 that they might adorn the crown. Brute force was the 
 power that controlled the race. The world sped on in 
 darkness because the people were slaves. 
 
 LIGHT IN THE WORLD. 
 
 But light broke. It was heralded by a new star 
 above the hills of Bethlehem. The world will never fail 
 to commemorate that great event. In memory of it we 
 suspend all our ordinary work ; we give ourselves up to 
 mirth and gladness ; we give gifts and do what we can 
 to make our friends merry and carry happiness to all 
 who are about us. Upon this one anniversary, by com- 
 mon impulse, the world comes into harmonious accord ; 
 all minds dwell upon one historic scene ; all feelings are 
 in union ; all instruments of music are in one key ; all 
 the people sing, and all the silvery bells ring out the Te 
 Deum and the Gloria in Excelsis with a depth of feeling 
 and expression unequalled at any other time "Through 
 all the circle of the golden year." 
 
 It is the noblest way in which Vt^ could celebrate 
 the greatest of religious anniversaries. But Christmas 
 has a civic as well as a religious significance. If we 
 were to observe it with oration, and booming cannon, 
 and martial music, and marching column, it would not 
 be as appropriate an observance, but it would not be an 
 altogether inappropriate observance of the day, for the 
 birth of the Savior was the most momentous event in 
 civil as well as in religious history. 
 
 It brought a new force into human affairs which was 
 destined to overturn kingdoms and bring the plans 
 of kings to naught. It set up a King above kings,
 
 whose mission was the uplifting of all mankind, whose 
 plan was to be made known in the uttermost parts of 
 the earth, for whose sake men and women were to go to 
 the rack and the scaffold and the block, in whose cause 
 vast armies were to fight and so prevail as to change the 
 whole current of human affairs. The missionaries of 
 the Cross, in the market places and in the wilderness, 
 stirred the minds as well as the hearts of men. Persecu- 
 tion by the kings only intensified devotion. . The blood 
 of the martyrs became the seed of the church. Thought 
 was set in motion. It was the plan of the Almighty, 
 and it was irresistible. Then came the moving of the 
 mighty hosts in the crusades for the reclamation of the 
 Holy Sepulchre. They failed in their specific object, 
 but they accomplished infinitely more. The tread of 
 their armies reverberated throughout Europe, set the 
 nations all in action, energized thought and opened the 
 way for a new civilization. Again, it was in the plan of 
 the Almighty, and it was irresistible. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 
 
 In history events lead on to consequences with un- 
 erring and majestic tread. The movements of the na- 
 tions led right on to the discovery of America, another 
 mighty event in the marvelous plan for the uplifting of 
 the people. It became a practical necessity to find a 
 water route to the Indies. Reason told a great navi- 
 gator that it could be found by sailing westward. Let it 
 never be forgotten that Columbus sailed on the faith of 
 an idea. -He died in the confidence of success, but in a 
 delusion, for Cathay was still many thousand miles away. 
 But what a glorious delusion it was. If he had not 
 reached the eastern shores of the old world, he had come
 
 upon the eastern outposts of a new world, and next to 
 the birth of Christ he had accomplished what was the 
 most momentous event in human history if it is to be 
 measured by its influence on the affairs of men. 
 
 RESULTS OF THE DISCOVERY. 
 
 The belief that the long-sought water route to 
 the Indies had been discovered and that the products of 
 the Empire of the Grand Kahn could be brought to 
 Europe in ships, sent a thrill of new life throughout the 
 land and gave a new energy to the thought of the people. 
 Marked results followed, for life and thought will have 
 expression. In the next twenty-five years Luther had 
 nailed his ninety-five theses on the church doors at 
 
 / 
 
 Wittemburg and fired the sunrise gun of the Reformation. 
 The opening epoch was to be a bloody one, but it was 
 to witness the birth of liberty. Nothing moves the 
 people like religious feeling, Nothing ever did move 
 the people like the feelings which had their expression 
 in the Reformation. A new religious and intellectual 
 development was everywhere apparent, but was most 
 marked in Germany and in Britain. 
 
 It was more than half a century after the discovery 
 of America before the fact became known that the land 
 upon which the great navigator had come was not China, 
 but a new and independent continent. This new dis- 
 covery was not a disappointment. It made the achieve- 
 ment of Columbus of v much greater consequence than 
 had been thought. The possibilities of this new fact 
 had no limit. In its turn it gave added activity to the 
 life and thought of Europe. Spain, under whose patron- 
 age this great achievement had been accomplished, at 
 once gained great importance and became the most ag-
 
 gressive and warlike nation of the world. She had 
 found a new world, and it impelled her to attempt the 
 subjugation of the old one. Her government was, of 
 course, the will of the king, and her policy was against 
 liberty of thought and the independence of the people. 
 She very naturally directed her power against the na- 
 tions where development was most marked and intel- 
 lectual emancipation was most promising. She pushed 
 her armies into the Netherlands and set up the Inquisi- 
 tion that she might bring to her feet the most progress- 
 ive people of Continental Europe; at the same time the 
 granddaughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, one of the 
 accidents upon the English throne, and the doting wife 
 of the Spanish king who both controlled and hated her, 
 the weak and bloody Mary, began the horrible work 
 of Spanishizing Britain with flame and fagot. 
 
 The world-wide battle of the people against the 
 king was now on, and it was to continue to a finish. 
 Moreover, a change in the program was at hand. Kings 
 and queens, as well as subjects, were to lose their heads. 
 There could be but one result. Thought is all powerful. 
 The truth will work its way out. An overruling power 
 was behind it all. William the Silent and the Nether- 
 land Republic, Cromwell and the English Common- 
 wealth were inevitable. So were the American Revolu- 
 tion and the French Revolution and all the other 
 struggles which have been waged and all the triumphs 
 which have been gained for the liberty of the common 
 people and for intellectual independence. 
 
 THE RISE OF COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 I surmise we should have difficulty in finding a task 
 more fascinating than a closer study of these mighty
 
 events and all the innumerable array of other events 
 which cluster about them, and also of their relations to 
 the conditions of our modern life, and particularly to the 
 rise and growth of our civil institutions. And I surmise, 
 moreover, that the more we study the more we will 
 value the beneficent institutions under which we live and 
 the more closely we shall see their relations to the great 
 event we celebrate at Christmastide. 
 
 The life must be long, and the scholarship thorough, 
 and the labor uninterrupted and assiduous if one person 
 is. even measurably, to accomplish this great work. 
 Men and women who do it but partially, though thor- 
 oughly, gain great prominence in the field of historic 
 literature. 
 
 We may for the hour, however, take one of these 
 institutions and consider a single phase of that. It is 
 the institution with which teachers are most familiar ; it 
 is a phase suggested by the Christmas season and is the 
 natural sequence of the reflections in which we have al- 
 ready indulged. 
 
 No fact is clearer in history than that common 
 schools followed upon the overthrow of the kings. In 
 some lands the king was dead before the king knew it. 
 In some lands he is dead for all practical purposes long- 
 before the people understand it. But in no land have 
 ffee schools for all the people preceded the practical 
 overthrow of the kingly power ; in no land have free 
 schools been long deferred after the power of the king 
 has been broken or has been surrendered, or has become 
 obsolete by disuse. The extent and the character of the 
 elementary free schools of a people measure, with con- 
 siderable nicety, their preparation for civil liberty and 
 the extent to which they possess and exercise it.
 
 In Germany free elementary schools followed im- 
 mediately the Reformation; in France they have had a 
 most phenomenal and scientific growth since the over 
 throw of the third empire; in England they have fol- 
 lowed upon the growth of that spirit of independent 
 liberalism which is well represented in the progress of 
 the Liberal party; in America they came first from the 
 Dutch in the Old Netherlands with the Dutch at the 
 mouth of the Hudson in the New Netherlands, then with 
 the English in New England as those colonists came 
 more and more to oppose the power of the king, and 
 they spurted into being everywhere when independence 
 was gained and self-government was completely estab- 
 lished. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS IN THE SCHOOLS. 
 
 In all countries, and particularly so in this, the im- 
 provement of the schools has been gauged by the intel- 
 lectual strength of the masses, and the power of the 
 people to obtain that which they are able to see that they 
 need. And in turn the schools have helped the masses 
 in all lands where they have been established, but the 
 extent and effectiveness of the schools has been in exact 
 proportion to their advance along scientific lines. 
 
 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 What is science? Some of the old writers called it 
 " God's sight," and the characterization was not at all inap- 
 propriate. Science is the truth of the Almighty over- 
 coming obstacles, working its way out through difficul- 
 ties and marching on to its final triumph. Science and 
 nature and Deity are very nearly the same. They are 
 in full and harmonious accord. They constitute a power 
 which is everywhere present and always active. No
 
 matter about any peculiarities af our personal beliefs, no 
 matter in what kind of a church we worship, or, indeed, 
 whether we worship at all, there is not one of us that 
 does not realize the existence of such a Power in the 
 world and does not know that it is everywhere present 
 in the universe and that it is always active. We know 
 that it controls both mind and matter; that flowers 
 bloom and the electric current flows, and minds unfold, 
 and planets revolve and keep to their courses under its 
 laws. 
 
 Frequently we are unable to understand its pro- 
 cesses. Names are cumbersome. The language of 
 science is discouraging, for it seems unduly involved and 
 unnecessarily mysterious. But learning and research 
 are continually helping us. How much has been re- 
 vealed to this generation which has been withheld from 
 all that have gone before it! And as one difficulty after 
 another is removed and one achievement after another 
 is accomplished, how mysteries are explained, how re- 
 mote facts come into relationship, how the harmonies of 
 the universe are established and how we stand in the 
 presence of the mighty Power that is behind it all ! 
 
 That is sometimes called science which is not science. 
 In reaching from the known into the unknown there is 
 danger of letting go of the known and falling into the 
 unfathomable unknown. There is intellectual dissipa- 
 tion for some in contentions which no one can establish 
 and no one can overturn. True science holds on to 
 what is known and keeps in touch with what is material. 
 It is intensely practical. Its mission is not to involve 
 in mystery, but to clear up the sight and unlock the 
 truth.
 
 n 
 
 HARMONY WITH SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 We have lived long enough to know how vital it is 
 to our happiness and our usefulness that we keep in 
 accord with the Power that rules the universe, and that 
 we act in harmony with scientific knowledge. We have, 
 all of us, experimented enough to see how dangerous it 
 is to attempt to cross the boundaries which nature sets 
 against human action. We are surely experienced 
 enough to understand both the fascination of scientific 
 study and the vital relation of its results to the uplifting 
 of the human race. Human laws, which merely regu- 
 late the social organization, must necessarily differ ac- 
 cording to the circumstances and experiences of nations 
 and change with their changing conditions, but the laws 
 of nature are universal and unchangeable. The human 
 life which measurably expands to its possibilities must 
 read the book of nature and act upon its precepts. The 
 life which does this is enriched, gains capacity for enjoy- 
 ment here and will find itself in harmonious relations 
 with whatever there may be in the hereafter. 
 
 SCIENCE IN THE SCHOOLS. 
 
 If this knowledge is of consequence to the indivi- 
 dual so it is to the school. If it has lifted up the indivi- 
 dual so it has the school. If it has brought a new light 
 into the life of the individual so it has into the life of 
 the school. If it is a stairway to the high ends of human 
 existence, it is, of course, a vital element in the curricu- 
 lum of the schools. Let us try to see what it has already 
 done and how much more it may do for the schools. 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL-HOUSE. 
 Science is evolving a scientific house for the use of
 
 li 
 
 the schools. Science and art are both telling us things 
 that our fathers never thought of. The one is showing 
 us how cultivated taste and skill can make a building 
 which will please the eye and train the aesthetic taste 
 for the same money that was expended upon the un- 
 sightly structure of the last generation, and experience 
 has shown that even the sense of the child is strong 
 enough to respect and care for it if it is pleasing to the 
 eye and is worthy of being cared for. Art has shown 
 that no school authority can afford to ignore its entrea- 
 ties. But science is more imperious. By consequences 
 and results it has shown that no school authority dare 
 disregard its injunctions, for its mission is to conserve 
 the health of the pupils and promote the effectiveness 
 of the school. 
 
 It concerns itself with the character of the ground 
 upon which the building is to stand and the conditions 
 with which it is to be surrounded. It locates the build- 
 ing with reference to the points of the compass and the 
 advantages of sun-light. It discriminates in material; it 
 puts the basement floor above the water line ; it regulates 
 the height of stairs; it asks for sheltering porches and 
 demands that outer doors shall swing outward. Above 
 all, it looks to the size, and shape, and temperature, and 
 ventilation, and lighting of rooms. It says that the good 
 health of each child requires at least twenty square feet 
 of floor space and two hundred and forty cubic feet of 
 air space; that fresh air, right from the outside, is even 
 more important than warm air, and that every child must 
 have at least two thousand cubic feet of it per hour, if 
 the necessity of re-breathing the same air and the con- 
 sequent likelihood of disease is to be avoided. Science 
 prescribes the methods for getting warm and fresh air
 
 into the room and for taking dead air and foul gases out 
 of the room, and provides the instruments for determin- 
 ing the extent to which it is accomplished. Science 
 looks to the tinting of the walls and takes light from the 
 ceiling or the left side for the purpose of protecting the 
 eyesight of pupils. Thus sanitation, hygiene, and also 
 seats, blackboards and innumerable other points receive 
 scientific attention ; these serve to indicate the extent to 
 which knowledge is evolving a healthful and pleasurable 
 school room. Of course, the perfect building has not 
 yet come, and the schools have many old buildings on 
 their hands which they have inherited, and some people 
 are slow to see the value of scientific knowledge, but 
 when we compare the new school-house with the old one 
 and know that no intelligent parent will longer be indif- 
 ferent, and no intelligent official dare be indifferent to 
 these things, we see with what rapid strides the light and 
 truth have been advancing. 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEACHER. 
 
 If science has been potent in the improvement of 
 the school-house so it has surely been in the prepara- 
 tion of the teacher. Fifty years is a brief period in the 
 history of education, but the last fifty years constitute a 
 period which will be memorable, for that period has wit- 
 nessed the rapid and mature development of the science 
 of teaching, and that development has worked a com- 
 pkte revolution in the conduct of the schools. Our 
 fathers were accustomed to think that any one who 
 knew a thing could teach it. They were far from the 
 truth. Investigation and experience has shown the truth 
 to be that the bare possession of knowledge is but one 
 element in the equipment of a teacher. He must know
 
 human nature; he must understand the particular mind 
 to be taught and be able to come into harmonious rela- 
 tions with it; he must engage its attention, arouse its 
 enthusiasm, and make it not only receptive of knowledge 
 but eager for knowledge before it can gain knowledge 
 which will give it strength. A mere imitator cannot do 
 this; much less can one who knows nothing of scientific 
 processes and is not even an imitator. Pestalozzi de- 
 clared that " Education is the generation of power." 
 The elements of power must exist for the generation 
 of power. The teacher must understand principles and 
 be able to employ the best methods at the right time 
 and in the right way, with a trained and discriminating 
 judgment. The force of these scientific facts has but 
 recently come to be apparent. When New York first, 
 and Massachusetts a little later, commenced to train 
 teachers for the common schools some fifty years ago, 
 it would be supposed that it was pursuant to these scien- 
 tific truths; but quite the contrary is the tact. There 
 was even then no recognition of them whatever. But 
 the light broke at last. To-day there is no movement 
 in progress which is more rapid and forceful than that 
 towards the professional preparation of the teacher. It 
 is true that the general public scarcely understand it yet. 
 But the teachers do. The entire army of teachers is 
 under its influence and on the advance. The ones who 
 do not catch the spirit will have to go upon the retired 
 list without a pension. The new recruits will have to 
 meet larger exactions. The whole force is moving to a 
 higher, because a more scientific, position. The world 
 will not long fail to respect expert knowledge and it will 
 not fail to honor artistic work.
 
 15 
 
 SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF CHILD-LIFE. 
 
 Very recent years have witnessed the rise of a new 
 study the scientific study of child-life. The World's 
 Educational Congresses of the Columbian Exposition 
 afforded the opportunity of organizing a national society 
 for securing to this end the co-operative efforts of physi- 
 cians, ethnologists, anthropologists, psychologists, par- 
 ents and teachers, all who are interested in children and 
 who have regard for scientific truth. The work has 
 been divided for convenience into four classes: First, 
 the embryo; second, infancy; third, school life; fourth, 
 youth to maturity. The field is a broad and fruitful one. 
 Teachers should be ruminating in that part of it relating 
 to school life. Considerable progress has already been 
 made. Measurements of the bodies of 25,000 children 
 in Boston, of 10,000 in Milwaukee, of 30,000 in St. 
 Louis, and of many other thousands in other cities have 
 been taken, and from these measurements many inter- 
 esting physiological facts have been deduced. For in- 
 stance, it was found that until the age of eleven or 
 twelve boys are taller and heavier than girls, then girls 
 begin to grow rapidly and for the next few years surpass 
 boys both in height and weight, then again the boys 
 overtake them and remain taller and heavier ever after. 
 Rural life produces larger bodies than urban life. Chil- 
 dren of American born parents average larger than 
 those of foreign born parents. It>seems to be the fact 
 that there are three distinct periods of growth, viz. : a 
 moderate increase in the sixth and seventh years, a 
 weaker growth from the ninth to the thirteenth years, 
 and a much greater one from the fourteenth to the six- 
 teenth years. The fact seemed to appear that children 
 grow little from the end of November to the end of
 
 16 
 
 March, and much between August and November. The 
 fact seems also to develop that growth focuses first upon 
 one set of organs and functions and then upon another. 
 The head, eye, hand, arm, chest, voice, have periods of 
 decided development, which are not coincident in the 
 same person. All this calls for corresponding recogni- 
 tion in making up the curriculum and determining the 
 policy of the school. But this is only one phase of the 
 subject. It extends to muscular control, and the nerv- 
 ous system, to the hearing and the sight, and to all the 
 organs and functions of the body. 
 
 \t extends also to the study of the mind and to con- 
 ditions and influences which affect the opening and 
 growth of the same. We are too prone to forget how 
 many things which are very common to us are sealed to 
 others and how things which they understand perfectly 
 are a mystery to us. Surely one half of the world does 
 not know how the other half lives. In 1880, Dr. G. 
 Stanley Hall, the accomplished president of Clark Uni- 
 versity, studied a large number of children who had 
 just entered the beginners' grade of the Boston schools. 
 His scientific intelligence is established and the reliabil- 
 ity of his statements cannot be doubted. He says that 
 fourteen per cent, of these six-year-olds had no idea of 
 the stars, thirty- five per cent, had never been in the 
 country, twenty per cent, did not know that milk came 
 from cows, fifty-five per cent, did not know that 
 wood came from trees, thirteen to fifteen per cent, did 
 not know the colors, green, blue and yellow, by name, 
 and three-fourths of all had never seen any of the com- 
 mon cereals or vegetables growing. Other children 
 would know all about these things but would be ignor- 
 ant of matters with which these children would be
 
 I? 
 
 familiar. All this emphasizes the importance of the 
 proper treatment and suggests methods for meeting the 
 conditions which are presented. 
 
 But this is not all. The span of the memory, the 
 influence of the imagination, the force of reason all of 
 the processes of the child-mind; the trend of the feel- 
 ings, the strength of the attachments all the natural 
 likes and dislikes of children, have been studied with 
 scientific care in order to know how to make the work 
 of the schools most prolific of good. 
 
 Of course, this thing may be overdone. There is 
 great possibility of error. Facts may be apparent rather 
 than real. Deductions may be lame. Logic may be 
 spread out until it is thin. There is a rich field for ridi- 
 cule. That has been the common lot of science in all 
 lands and all ages. Still science is conquering the world. 
 The truth keeps working its way out and marching on. 
 It is doing so with majestic step in this case. The scien- 
 tific study of the child and the scientific training of the 
 teacher have already revolutionized the work of the 
 schools to such an extent that a plain statement of what 
 the new schools are doing is regarded by the last gener- 
 ation with disbelief or incredulity, and a plain statement 
 of what the old schools did is felt by the new genera- 
 tion to be false or unfairly exaggerated. 
 
 MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN. 
 
 As the physicians of the past generations gave 
 physics and emetics and put on leeches and let blood 
 indiscriminately, thus breaking down the constitutions 
 they were employed to build up, so the teachers of past 
 generations fumed, and scolded, and strutted, and 
 thrashed, and so humiliated the characters they were
 
 i8 
 
 employed to uplift. Occasionally there was a physician 
 and occasionally there was a teacher with a clearer vision 
 than the rest; occasionally there was a patient with a 
 constitution which was bound to outwit the doctor, and 
 occasionally there was a character bound to outlive the 
 absurd discipline of the school. 
 
 That discipline was almost uniformly harsh. The 
 government was not one of reason but of force. The 
 teacher, if a woman, was employed in the summertime to 
 teach the girls because she was related to the trustee, or 
 his cousins, or his aunts; and if a man, was employed to 
 teach the boys in the winter, because he had superior 
 strength, agility and courage. The threatening talk and 
 the menacing conduct of the teacher stirred up all the risi- 
 bilities and combativeness of human nature. The teacher 
 was thought great by the people if he could conquer the 
 school after stirring its passions. A substantial ferule 
 was always in sight. Frequently a rawhide whip was 
 kept in the room. Many carried a rattan in the hand 
 continually. Flagellations were of every day occur- 
 rence. Frequently they were cruel in the extreme. 
 Struggles and blows and outcries which no intelligent 
 parent of our day would permit his child to witness, and 
 from which he would either turn himself or which he 
 would stop by force, were very ordinary. The ingenu- 
 ity of the teacher was taxed to* find methods and instru- 
 ments of punishment. Children were made to hold 
 weights at arm's length, to "sit on nothing" with the 
 back against the wall and the feet at leg-length there- 
 from, or to do anything which would be excruciating, 
 humiliating and degrading. If they flinched they were 
 whipped for it. To make the thing especially obnoxious 
 boys were sometimes sent out to get whips with which
 
 19 
 
 to be whipped; and sometimes boys who were not in- 
 volved in trouble were sent for whips with which to 
 whip their brothers or associates, in order to make the 
 affair particularly unbearable. These things seem im- 
 possible or gross exaggerations, but there is no one of 
 them which, without pleading to very advanced age, I 
 do not personally remember. 
 
 Of course, children had spirit then as now, and that 
 spirit, resented and organized to resist this stupid bru- 
 tality. Teachers were frequently put out of the school 
 house. Life and death struggles between the school 
 and the teacher were common, Mr. George H. Martin, 
 who would certainly make no unguarded statement 
 against the divine attributes of the people of Massachu- 
 setts, says in his recent history of the school system of 
 that State, that during one winter more than three hun- 
 dred schools were broken up in Massachusetts by the 
 insubordination of pupils. The common proceeding was 
 to put the teacher out of the school-house. The old 
 pedagogue who has survived is inclined to boast of the 
 fact that he stayed in the school-house at all; it is the 
 tallest feather in his plume. 
 
 At home the child was asked not what he did in 
 school during the day, but whether he was whipped. 
 This, with " chores " morning and afternoon, with the 
 dearth of games and of books, and with brimstone theol- 
 ogy, in allopathic doses, nights and Sundays and between 
 times, made an environment which was not well calcu- 
 lated to ennoble the nature of the child, as it certainly 
 was not likely to promote cheerfulness in his medita- 
 tions. If substantial character afterward developed, as 
 it very frequently did, the fact was due to other circum- 
 stances and considerations which have very largely
 
 ceased to exist. If strong manhood followed it was not 
 because of this harsh and senseless disciplinary treat- 
 ment, but in spite of it. 
 
 Fortunately it has all passed away, for scientific 
 study of the secret springs of human motives and actions 
 showed, and experience proved, that such a plan of man- 
 agement rested upon a basis which was wholly fallacious, 
 that the more force there was the more there would 
 have to be, that it degraded the teacher, that it set up a 
 standard of excellence in the minds of the people which 
 was utterly false, and was a bar to the fruitfulness and 
 effectiveness of the teacher's work. It brutalized the 
 school and absorbed the productive energies of the in- 
 structor. It put the child out of teachable relations with 
 the teacher, and scientific thought would not have it so. 
 It was against nature; it was opposed to the truth; and 
 it is among the eternal verities that nature and truth shall 
 have their way. And they have been having their way, 
 for in the person of a teacher more intelligent and better 
 prepared, they have appealed to the reason, the affec- 
 tions, the ambitions, the honor; they have made study 
 both objective and attractive; they have given the open- 
 ing mind the pleasure of learning things and accom- 
 plishing things; they have helped and inspired and 
 trusted, until they have brought pupils into relations 
 which make teaching practicable and into an atmosphere 
 where teaching must be a thing of energy and power. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC TEACHING. 
 
 If science has done much to improve the environ- 
 ment and the management of the school it has done 
 more to improve the instruction.
 
 21 
 
 The old theory, if there was a theory, seems to have 
 been that children came into the world totally depraved 
 and terribly wicked. They must not be allowed to do 
 things they liked to do for their ways were evil. They 
 must not be permitted to follow the leadings of nature 
 for fear they would get in the habit of having their own 
 way and be spoiled. The way which was the longest, 
 and the hardest, and the most unnatural, was the way 
 which had the most discipline in it, and was therefore 
 best calculated to subjugate them in this world and edu- 
 cate them for the world that is to come. Indeed, that 
 seems to have been the aim of the old schools and the 
 earlier plan of education. 
 
 The new education proceeds upon an entirely dif- 
 ferent theory. It starts with throwing the total depravity 
 hallucination to the dogs. With Bryant it sings: 
 
 " Innocent child and snow-white flower 
 Well are ye paired in your opening hour, 
 Thus should the pure and the lovely meet, 
 Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet." 
 
 It keeps company with nature. It studies to learn 
 what the truths of nature are. It gains the support of 
 nature. It tries to assist nature. It keeps in sympathy 
 with the real. It sees that it cannot contravene the laws 
 
 * 
 
 of the Universe, and it seeks first to understand and 
 then obey them and make the most of them. It tries to 
 make the child at home in the school room. It utilizes 
 his natural tastes and desires and fancies for his improve- 
 ment. From the Kindergarten to the University the in- 
 struction is alive, objective and natural. The Almighty 
 has implanted in every human being admiration for the 
 beautiful. A child delights in a flower before it knows 
 why. Scientific teaching makes the most of that fact in
 
 22 
 
 an infinite variety of ways. There is no fun in learning 
 rules. Some children cannot do it at all. But all chil- 
 dren like to do things and to show their handiwork. 
 Scientific teaching does not try to overcome that fact, 
 but seizes upon it and applies it to its own purposes in 
 innumerable ways. When nature is allowed to have its 
 way all children have real satisfaction in finding out 
 facts and like to lead on from one accomplishment to 
 another. These facts are the basis of the new plans of 
 the schools. 
 
 Methods have been thoroughly reformed on a scien- 
 tific basis. The old plan commenced with the alphabet 
 and the book. It is difficult to make people who are 
 past middle life and not associated with the schools be- 
 lieve that children can be taught to read without first 
 learning the letters. Yet what a slow, tedious, wearing 
 process it was! The new plan commences without either 
 the alphabet or the book. It takes the child before he 
 can be taught to read, and the school becomes a joy and 
 a fascination to him. While it gets possession of him 
 and gains his confidence by methods and objects which 
 his nature cannot resist, it exercises his muscles, sharp- 
 ens his observing and perceptive faculties, and starts the 
 habits of inquiry and investigation; it arouses his emo- 
 tions and directs his affections; it quickens his eye and 
 trains his hand; it develops his reason and stimulates 
 his moral sense. At the very beginning it lays the 
 foundation of a broad character and establishes habits 
 which make intellectual versatility and power. 
 
 And so it proceeds, upon a harmonious and con- 
 sistent theory, with all the subsequent work of the 
 schools. With processes and methods which are scien- 
 tific and will not let' the interest flag, because true to
 
 23 
 
 nature and to life, it leads on through the primary school, 
 and the grammar school, and the high school, and the 
 college, and the university. 
 
 The old essential branches are taught in new ways. 
 The child learns to read objectively. He learns to know 
 words and sentences at sight, as he learns to know things 
 at sight. He learns numbers not by words but by ob- 
 jects, and arithmetic not by rule but by demonstration. 
 Geography is taught objectively and by real or imagin- 
 ary journeys, and history by living in the past and mov- 
 ing with the scenes as they transpired. The whole plan 
 considers the nature of the child and uses real things or 
 fictions which are true to nature to accomplish its pur- 
 pose. 
 
 The Manual Training which has come into the schools 
 in these recent years and is being co-ordinated with all 
 the other work, from the beginning to the end of the 
 course, is practical and adapted to the new circumstances 
 of our active life, but it is no less scientific than practical. 
 Indeed, if it were not scientific it would not be practical. 
 The men and women who developed the material re- 
 sources of the land, who built up the institutions of the 
 Republic had their childhood in an age which did things. 
 Many of the boys were country boys, who cut wood, and 
 broke steers, and mended harness, and made their own 
 sleds; others who lived in the cities came from homes 
 where poverty was the inspiration of industry and inge- 
 nuity, and they came by the way of a factory or a shop. 
 The girls learned the household arts at their mothers' 
 side and contributed their share toward the family living. 
 In either case they were in contact with things and were 
 where they had to use their hands. It was more of a 
 privilege than they then thought, for it contained the
 
 elements of intellectual growth and of sturdy manhood 
 and womanhood even more than of manual dexterity. 
 These privileges are largely denied the youth of our day, 
 and scientific thought has discerned this deficiency and 
 reasoned what the consequences would be. It has reme- 
 died the loss in a way which brings new interest into the 
 schools and strengthens all the other lines of their work. 
 
 Further investigation would bring out many other 
 and perhaps more important facts in proof of the scien- 
 tific improvement of the schools, but even this super- 
 ficial and imperfect examination shows how through all 
 the discussion and the experimentation of these recent 
 years the truth has been making its way to the surface 
 and the schools have been settling down gradually and 
 surely to systematic lines of work which are in harmony 
 with the laws of nature, and therefore lead on directly 
 and irresistibly to the higher ends of human existence. 
 Of course, we are not yet at the sun-rise of the Millenium 
 morning. But we are making headway in that direction. 
 We surely find clearer foresight, a more consistent theory 
 and greater definiteness of purpose in the schools. They 
 are fitting for this life, and that is a good step on the 
 road towards preparation for the life that is to come. 
 They aim at intellectual versatility, at productive power, 
 at discriminating judgment, at substantial character and 
 sound citizenship. They can hardly be charged with 
 more. Their plans show greater maturity and more 
 uniformity and solidity. All is not chaos. An educa- 
 tional system is being evolved. 
 
 Some things have become settled and established in 
 the organization and the work of the schools. No care- 
 ful observer of the Educational exhibit at the Columbian 
 Exposition could fail to note how all the progressive
 
 25 
 
 educational work of the world was settling down upon a 
 basis of scientific truth, and no reflective observer could 
 fail to think how much farther this movement had gone 
 in the universe of thought which could not be illustrated 
 in a material exhibit than in the world of things which 
 could be so presented. f 
 
 THE STUDY OF THE SCIENCES. 
 
 It remains to be said that the schools have not 
 only been molded and directed by scientific thought in 
 these later years to an unprecedented degree, but the 
 schools-^-the common schools, the elementary schools 
 are commencing the direct study of the sciences as 
 never before. It is not so very long ago since this kind 
 of study was monopolized by a few students who led a 
 secluded life and acquired a world-wide renown. It was 
 surrounded by mystery. It dazed the incredulous and 
 stirred the superstitious. But the truth was bound to 
 expand. It came into the colleges and then into the 
 secondary schools. No one thought of its going farther. 
 But it was bound to march on. It has come into the 
 elementary schools. In Cleveland it has this year been 
 introduced into the regular course of the grammar grades. 
 A little equipment of scientific apparatus and appliances 
 scales and measures, glass tubing and acids, lenses 
 and mirrors, magnets and iron filings, flasks and spirit 
 lamps have been supplied, at inconsiderable cost, to 
 every building.* The equipment is not extravagant, and 
 there is no occasion for it being so. The beginning is 
 
 *The Course of Study and Assignment of Work prepared in the summer of 1893, for 
 the guidance of the Cleveland Schools during the ensuing year, abridged, not the funda- 
 mental principles and processes, but the details of the Arithmetic work, enlarged upon 
 the Nature Studies in all the grades and introduced the simpler Physical Sciences into 
 the grammar grades. Even before that a light line of History had been commenced in 
 the third and fourth grades, and it was then continued through the fifth and sixth
 
 26 
 
 small, and there is no idea of enlarging it out of advis- 
 able proportions. But the work is fascinating and brings 
 new interest into the schools. It promises all that the 
 Association of New England Colleges, under the lead of 
 the President of Harvard, claimed for it when they moved 
 in advocacy of the plan. 
 
 The present age is a material and scientific one. It 
 is unlike any which has preceded it. It did not come by 
 conquest. It broke upon us as quietly as the dawn of a 
 summer morning. It has witnessed a new love for 
 nature and an added interest in her wonderful secrets 
 and processes. It is an age of searching inquiry and 
 close discussion. The false and the sham will be re- 
 vealed; that which cannot stand discussion will go to 
 the wall; the truth will work its way out. It is not only 
 an age of demolition but one of accomplishment. It is 
 an age of material development, for it is an age of con- 
 structive genius. It is an age of intellectual energy, for 
 it is an age of disciplined thought. It is essentially an 
 age of scientific knowledge and scientific power. 
 
 Science is the interpretation of Nature. But nature 
 is manifest in the butterfly, the squirrel and the robin, 
 as well as in the mammoths of the deep or the masto- 
 dons of the ancients; it is in the opening blade and the 
 blooming flower as well as in the burning mountain and 
 
 grades, this study having been in the past a part of the seventh and eighth grade work 
 only. The Geography work had already been put upon lines which lead into the fields 
 of the separate sciences, but it was carefully revised and enlarged in the same direct inn. 
 Phases of Manual Training were also introduced into all the elementary grades. The 
 best English literature had been previously used to some extent in the seventh and 
 eighth grades as supplementary reading matter. With the revision of the Assignment 
 the work was enriched and carried back so as to commence with the fourth grade and 
 reach forward and meet the same work in the seventh. Thus nearly or quite all of the 
 leading recommendations of the Committee of One Hundred of the National Educa- 
 tional Association, so far as the work of that Committee referred to the curriculum of 
 the elementary schools, had been anticipated, Wut the complete and authoritative en- 
 dorsement of the changes made in Cleveland which comes in the report of the Com- 
 mittee of One Hundred is very gratifying.
 
 27 
 
 the blinding storm; it is in the rocks and shells as well 
 as in the invisible current which drives the machinery of 
 our factories or that other invisible force which propels 
 the machinery of our lives. There is science for the 
 child as well as science for the savant. The activity 
 ol the child and the wisdom of the scholar each have 
 their uses in unfolding the secrets of science. 
 
 " We have a secret, just we three, 
 The robin and I and the sweet cherry tree, 
 The bird told the tree, and the tree told me, 
 And nobody knows it but just us three." 
 
 There is joy and fascination in nature, for the nature 
 that is about us is in harmony with the nature that is 
 within us. 
 
 " There's a blush on the fruit and a smile on the flower 
 And a laugh on the brook as it runs to the sea." 
 
 There is moral power in science. Who can see a 
 dozen magnetized needles, floating on corks in a basin 
 of water, repel each other and range themselves at equal 
 distances apart and remain in exact equilibrium so long 
 as the similar poles are all pointing up or down and then 
 see the dirturbance and the clashing which ensues when 
 one of them is reversed, without thinking of what is be- 
 hind all this? Who can see the earth turn under the 
 swinging pendulum without knowing that this did not 
 come by accident or chance, and without revering the 
 Power which controls this motion and holds the spheres 
 upon their courses? 
 
 There is intellectual awakening in the study of 
 science. "No one can engage in it without acquiring the 
 habit of inquiry and investigation; no one can be under 
 its spell without thought which is original; and these are 
 the principal instrumentalities of the new education.
 
 28 
 
 Scientific investigation, above almost any other 
 work that can be taken up in the school room, is promot- 
 ive of cordial relations between teacher and pupil. They 
 work together for a common end and that end is the 
 truth. They are in harmony with a common object, and 
 therefore in harmony with each other. The tension is 
 removed, the problem of management is reduced in its 
 proportions if not entirely eliminated, and teachable 
 relations are established between teacher and child, and 
 enthusiasm carries them on. Then we begin to realize 
 how much more may be accomplished when instructor 
 and pupil help each other, than when indifference pre- 
 vails, or when they wear each others' lives with bitter- 
 ness, or mechanically observe only the requirements of 
 an armed truce. 
 
 Then the study of the simpler sciences, experiment- 
 ally and in the methods of the laboratory, is both prac- 
 ticable and essential at an early age, and will promote 
 the work of the schools both directly and by reflex and 
 stimulating influence on the school organization, on the 
 betterment of the building, on the growth of the teacher, 
 on the temperament of the pupils, and on all the lines of 
 work in which the schools engage. 
 
 THE SCHOOLS AND THE PEOPLE. 
 
 The schools must be kept in touch with the life of 
 the people. That life is broader than it used to be. It 
 is greater in volume and the current is swifter than in 
 the days of our fathers. Interests and employments have 
 multiplied many fold. Methods have changed.' Energy 
 has intensified. Intelligence has broadened marvelously. 
 /Esthetic taste has grown. The life of the people has 
 followed the leadings of nature. Nature is not depraved.
 
 2 9 
 
 It does not lead the great mass the wrong way. This 
 may not be wholly within the limits of old-time theo- 
 logical dogma; then dogma may have to suffer some 
 amendments. It is easier to change what men have 
 written than to turn the mighty current of human life 
 from its channel. In any event, the life of the world has 
 has been liberalized. The truth is being liberated. 
 Eighteenth century schools will not fit twentieth century 
 life. The mathematical drill alone of the old schools 
 will not suffice for the new. Training which answered 
 for the narrow life of the past would be wholly inade- 
 quate for the swelling life of the present and the future. 
 The schools must train for intellectual alertness. The 
 schools cannot specialize. They may incidentally train 
 artists, they may incidentally train mechanics, they may 
 incidentally train engineers and diplomats; they must 
 surely train thinkers They must train all the children 
 of the people so that, within personal circumstances and 
 inclinations, all will have an equal chance. As the mass 
 will not remain through the whole course, because their 
 labor is necessary for bread, as the more a child is 
 trained the better he can think and do and take care of 
 himself, the schools must put the most care upon the 
 work of the first years. From the first year to the last, 
 the work must rest upon a scientific basis and be in the 
 hands of artists if they can be procured or developed. 
 It must be of a nature and it must employ methods 
 which will germinate intellectual versatility and power. 
 In healthful co-operation with the church and the home, 
 the school must train for manly and womanly character 
 and independence. Then as the river gains strength 
 and impetus and majesty from tributary streams as it 
 runs to the sea, so will the mighty current of human life
 
 30 
 
 be enriched and energized by the work of the schools as 
 it runs on to that final destiny where life and nature and 
 the truth will be in entire harmony and accord. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Three hundred and sixty-five thousand teachers in- 
 struct fourteen millions of children in the Public Schools 
 of the United States. There are many other thousands 
 in the schools of the other constitutional governments 
 of the world. The elementary free school is indeed be- 
 coming universal and the teaching fraternity world-wide. 
 No army in the world holds greater power in its hand. 
 Upon no other does so much depend. If this great 
 fraternity will think upon the movements of the dead 
 centuries toward a higher life; if it will keep in sympathy 
 with nature; if it will seek a clearer understanding of the 
 leadings of the overruling power in the world; if it will 
 have a larger interest in scientific study; then, it will 
 have a deeper reverence for scientific truth; it will real- 
 ize the assurance of Coleridge that "as we strive to 
 ascend we will ascend in the striving;" it will see an un- 
 wonted meaning in the words of a greater than Cole- 
 ridge who said, "And ye shall know the truth and the 
 truth shall make you free;" and itwill have added power 
 in the schools as it will have added joy in the time- 
 honored recurrences of the Christmas season.
 
 Ce 
 
 >
 
 A 000 039 736 4 _