Chapter 17

Will it then readily be believed--and yet it is unquestionably true--that, to this hour, neither the schools nor the teachers can be found that are in possession and practice of a well-defined, positively guiding, and always trustworthy _method_ of intellectual, and other means and steps by which to conduct and consummate the education of our children? Note, we do not here declare the want of the true and universal method of educating, if there can be such a thing; but we distinctly assert that no school and no living teacher employs or conforms to any well-defined, positive, and, in and for its purposes, completed method of educating the young; nor, since this latter is a supposition better pleasing certain critically-minded gentlemen, have we in anything like clear delineation and positive practice the _several_ methods that may be imagined requisite for minds of varying bent and capacity. If we sum up in one word the most pervading, constant, and obvious characteristic of our schools, and of the teaching and the learning in them to this day, that word must be, _immethodical_. Although admitting that the education of the young should distinctly embrace the four departments of a training, _physical_, _intellectual_, _moral_, and _social_, yet, for the sake of clearness in our discussion and its results, not less than through the necessities of a restricted space, we shall here confine our remarks wholly to education in its intellectual aspect.

To move, for each subject, and for each part of it essayed, always along the right way, and by the true character and order of steps,--that is the thing to be desired, and which is, as yet, unattained. As a consequence, the prosecution of studies is by attempts and in ways that are generally imperfect, at best make-shift or provisional, often radically erroneous or worthless. Doubtless, the defects in method are now less glaring and influential at the two extremes of the sensibly-conducted infant school, and the well-appointed and leisurely collegiate course. There is no true study that is not what the origin of the word implies--STUDIUM, a work of _zeal, fondness, eager desire, voluntary endeavor, interest_. Such study has two essential characteristics; where these are wanting, study does not exist; the appearance of it is a sham; and though results disconnected and partial are attained, real acquisition is meager, and apparent progress deceptive.

Of these characteristics, the first is what the word directly expresses--zealous exertion on the part of the student's own intellectual powers, a zeal literally pre-venting all other incentives, or, at the least, subordinating them, through pure love of finding out that which is new and curious, or true. In two words, this first essential of study, and fraught with all the desirable results of study, is genuine INTELLECTUAL WORK. It is the _nisus_ of the intelligent principle to bring itself into ascertained and well-ordered relations with the facts, agencies, and uses of nature, alike in her physical and spiritual domains. The bright-minded boy or girl who may not comprehend the feeling or thought when so uttered, nevertheless _knows_ it, and, for his or her range of effort, as keenly as does the adult explorer.

But, when a mind thus _works_, the truth that it can never advance beyond missing or unfound links in the chain of thought does not need to be taught to it. The impossibility of so doing has become a matter of experience and of certain conviction. The mathematician knows, that, beyond that form of his equation containing an actual mis-step, or a positively irresoluble expression, all subsequent forms or values involving that step or expression are vitiated, and the results they seem to show substantially worthless. Now, every actually working mind, and at every stage, from schoolboy perplexities over algebraic signs, up to philosophic ventures in quest of one remove further of solid ground, in respect to the interrelations of physical forces, or the law of development of organized forms, finds itself in precisely the predicament of the mathematician: it feels no footing and accomplishes no advance beyond that link in the chain of fact and thought, which, to its comprehension, stands as uncertain, erroneous, wanting, or inexplicable. This is so from the very nature of our knowing faculties and of knowledge. The true intellectual worker, encountering interruption through any of these conditions, goes back to view his difficulty from a better vantage ground, or attempts to approach it from either side, or, failing these resources, bows to the necessity, and suffers no harm, other than stoppage and loss of time. Thus, the second characteristic of true study is in the rigidly natural and unfailing CONSECUTION of the steps and processes by which the intellectual advance is made. A mind so advancing never flatters itself of being able to grasp that which, in the nature of knowledge, must be a consequent truth, until the antecedent or antecedents german to the question in hand have first been possessed by it. But in our schools, how vastly much is _supposed_ to be taught, in which consequents come before antecedents, or are promiscuously jumbled up with them, or assert themselves, without so much as the grace to say to antecedents of any sort, 'By your leave.' Obviously, however, such could not be the character of so much of our teaching, did not the character of most of our books for schools exactly correspond with it. And the books do correspond: they not only give to a faulty teaching its cue, but, now that the _theory_ of education is being so much discussed, and in good degree improved, they constitute one of the most influential causes of the almost hopeless lagging of its practice.

Now, how is it that pupils get on at all with such lessons and such books? The explanation is a simple one; but the consequences it is fraught with are not trifling. The simple fact is, pupils are not yet allowed to _study_ (in the best sense and manner of that process) the subjects they are prosecuting. When, now, they undertake in earnest to study, they are but too constantly confused and delayed by the no-method of the treatises they are being carried through. In a course of earnest intellectual work, the pupil must too often, with his present aids, become aware of absence of comprehension; he is ever and anon brought to stand still and cast about for the unsupplied preliminary facts and truths, for the unhinted hypotheses and inferences, which his situation and previous study do not enable him to supply, but which are necessary to a _comprehension_ of the results set down for him to deal with. Barren results, _per se_, our learners are now too much required to ingest; and such they are expected to assimilate into intellectual life and power! As well feed a boy on bare elements of tissue--carbon, sulphur, oxygen, and the rest; or, yet more charitably, dissect out from his allowance of tenderloin, lamb, or fowl, a due supply of ready-made nerve and muscular fiber, introduce and engraft these upon the nerve and muscle he has already acquired, and then assure our _protegé_, that, as the upshot of our masterly provision for his needs, we expect him to become highly athletic and intellectual--that so he is to evolve larger streams of muscular energy and more vivid flashes of spiritual force!

As it is, we too nearly put the pupil's intellect asleep by our false method; and he endures it because of his unnatural condition. He thinks he 'gets on' with it; and in an imperfect way and degree does so. Rarely, we find, does such a one get so far as into the 'conics;' and he is not certain to be in the habit of reading reviews: if we were sure, however, that he could comprehend and would meet with our simile, we would say to him, that the tardy inclination up which he now plods painfully, must, if graphically represented, be shown by an oblique line _descending_, in fact, below the curve of his possibilities, more rapidly even than it _ascends_ above the horizontal cutting through the point of his setting out. True, with pupils who are spontaneously active-minded from the first, or who at some point in their course become positively awakened to brain-work, very much of the repressive influence of imperfect methods is prevented or overcome. The number of those so fortunate is doubtless small in the comparison. The few who _would_ know, by a necessity as imperative as that by which they _must_ feed, and sleep, and probably toil with hands or head for subsistence, are able to supplement many of the deficiencies, and supersede some erroneous processes of our methods, by the play of their own powers of investigation upon and about their subject. To these, a false method can bring perplexity and delay, but not repression nor veritable intellectual torpor.

We assert, then, that from a course or manner of instruction from which those characteristics of true study--real work of the learner's faculties, and a just consecution of steps--are largely omitted or excluded, the best sort of intellectual education can not, in the majority of instances, accrue. On the other hand, the method embodying these characteristics must present that unity, certainty, and guiding force hinted at in the outset. Concisely summed up, it is a method proceeding throughout by discovery, or, as we may say, by _re-discovery_ of the truths and results to be acquired in each department of knowledge undertaken by the learner. In the absence of the one true method of intellectual advance, what should we expect but a confusion of clashing, imperfect, or tentative processes of instruction? He who could, to-day, ciceroned by some pedagogic Asmodeus, visit one hundred of our schools, or listen successively to a recitation on a given topic, conducted by one hundred qualified and faithful instructors, would find the methods and no-methods of introducing to the century of classes the truths of this self-same subject to be--and we do not mean in the personal element, which ought to vary, but in the radical substance and order of the theme--quite as numerous as the workmen observed; in fact, a conflicting and confusing display. Now, do causes, in any realm of being, forbear to produce fruit in effects? Are the laws of psychologic sequence less rigid and certain than those laws of physical sequence which determine in material nature every phenomenon, from planet-paths in space to the gathering of dew-drops on a leaf? If it were so, falsity or confusion in intellectual method might be pronounced a thing of trifling import, or wholly indifferent. But such suppositions are the seemings only of postulates floating through the brains of Ignorance or Un-heed, who really postulate nothing at all. If, on the contrary, we admit this inflexible relation of cause and result in the mental, as well as in the material world, and if we admit also that our school-methods are yet fragmentary, varying and tentative, then we are compelled to the conclusion, that at least the greater number of our schools are falling short, in the time and with the outlay invested, of doing their best and largest work, while in very many of our schools there must be steadily going forward a positive and potent mis-education!

If it be urged that these are in a degree deductive conclusions, let them be submitted to the test of fact. At least two important circumstances, it is admitted, will come in to complicate the inquiry: first, one purpose of school training is to divert the forming mind in a degree from sense toward thought, the latter being a less observable sort of product than that curiosity and store of facts attendant on activity of the merely perceptive powers; secondly, there is the growing absorption of the mental powers with increase of age in the practical, in meeting the necessities of life, which more and more displaces intellectual activity as a set pursuit, and leaves it to be manifested rather in the means than the ends, rather in the quality than in the products of one's thinking, and, at the best, rather as an embellishment than as the business of a career. And yet, in the mind which has passed through a proper school-training, there should be apparent certain decided qualities and results, which are manifested as, and as often as, opportunity for their exercise presents itself. The schooled mind should surely not possess a less active curiosity to observe and to know than did the same mind before entering school, but even a stronger, more self-directed, purposive and efficient zeal in such direction. Intellectual vivacity and point, clearness of conception, and truthfulness of generalization and of inference,--all these should appear in more marked degree, along with the increased sobriety and judgment, and the improved facility of practical adaptation, which properly characterize maturity of mind and habit. Now, we suggest the careful observation of any number of children, not yet sent to school, and that are favored with ordinarily sensible parents, and ordinarily happy homes; and then, the equally careful study of a like number who have just emerged from their school course, or have fairly entered on the business of life; and we warn the really acute and discriminating observer to look forward (in the majority of instances) to a disheartening result from his investigation! We are convinced that the net product of our immensely expansive, patient, and ardently sought schooling will, in a large proportion of all the cases, be found to consist in the imperfect acquirement and uncertain tenure of knowledge, upon a few rudimentary branches, often without definite understanding or habit of applying even so much to its uses, and usually without the conception or desire to make it the point of departure for life-long acquisition; and all this accompanied, too often, with actual loss of that spontaneous intellectual activity which began to manifest itself in the child, and which should have been fruiting now in, at the least, some degree of sound and true intellectuality. So, we are still left to expect mainly of Nature not only the germs of capacity, but the maturing of them; the latter, a work which Education surely ought to be competent to. Meanwhile, like a wearied and fretted pedagogue, Education complains of the bad materials Nature gives her, when she ought to be questioning whether she has yet learned to bring out the excellence of the material she has.

Is it not an expensive process, that thus amasses a certain quantity of knowledge at cost of the disposition, sometimes of the ability, to add to it through the whole of life? Really, schooling is short, and, contrasted with it, life is long; but what mischiefs may not the latter experience from the former! Let us clearly conceive, once, the aversion many of our boys and girls persistently feel toward the school, and of their leaving it, at the last, with rejoicing! Are we astonished that when they have fairly escaped, frivolity is, with the young woman, too apt to replace mental culture, and with the young man, vulgarity or exclusive living for 'the main chance?' That the men and women so educated are too receptive, credulous, pliant and unstable; that in too large a degree they lack discrimination, judgment, and the good sense and executive talent which plan understandingly, and work without sacrifice of honor, manhood, or spiritual culture, to a true success? But, if our instructors could find out, or if some other could find out for them, _just how_ and _by what steps_ it is that the young mind engages with nature and harvests knowledge, and if they should see, therefore, how to strike in better with the current of the young, knowing and thinking, to move with it, enlarge, direct and form it aright, properly insuring that the mind under their charge shall do its own work, and hence advance by consecutive and comprehended steps, we ask with confidence whether much of the notorious short-comings now manifest in the results of our patient efforts might not be replaced by an approach toward an intellectual activity, furnishing, completeness, and bent, more worthy of the name and the idea of education? We are not alone in questioning the tendencies of existing methods. Other pens have raised the note of alarm. Speaking on the character of the _product_ of the English schools, Faraday says, 'The whole evidence appears to show that the _reasoning faculties_ [mark, it is here the failure occurs, and here that it shows itself], in all classes of the community, are very imperfectly and insufficiently developed--_imperfectly, as compared with the natural abilities, insufficiently, when considered with reference to the extent and variety of information with which they are called upon to deal_.' Does not this strong language find equally strong warrant in current facts of individual conduct and of our social life?

That there is yet no recognized complete method in, and no ascertained science of education, the latest writings on the subject abundantly reiterate and confirm. The best of our annual School Reports, and the most recent treatises,--among which, notwithstanding the abatement we must make for their having been, through adventitious circumstances, pushed in our country to a sudden and not wholly merited prominence, Sir. Spencer's republished essays may be named,--while they acknowledge some progress in details, disclose an undertone of growing conviction of the incompetency and unsatisfactoriness of our present modes of teaching and training. The Oswego School Report, speaking of primary education, tells us 'There has been too much teaching by formulas;' and that 'We are quite too apt, in the education of children, to "sail over their heads," to present subjects that are beyond their comprehension,' etc. Its way of escape 'out of the rut' is by importation into our country of the object-lesson system, as improved from the Pestalozzian original through the labors of Mr. Kay, now Sir J.K. Shuttleworth, and his co-laborers, of the Home and Colonial Infant and Juvenile School Society, London. In the report of Mr. Henry Kiddle, one of the four making up the collective School Report of the City of New York for 1861, the radical error of our present teachers is very forcibly characterized, where the danger of the teachers is pointed out as that of becoming 'absorbed in the mechanical routine of their office, losing sight of the _end_ in their exclusive devotion to what is only the _means--teaching the_ THING, _but failing to instruct the_ PERSON--eager to pour in knowledge, but neglecting to bring out mind.' Is there not indicated in these words a real and a very grave defect of the manner in which subjects are now presented, studied, recited, and finished up in our schools? We think there is. And then, what is the effect of this study and teaching, with so much less thought toward the _end_ than about the _material_?--what the result of this overlooking of the mind, the individuality, the person?--what the fruitage, at last, of having given so much time to the 'finishing up' of arithmetic, geography, and the rest, as to have failed _to bring out the mind_ that was dealing with these topics, and is hereafter to have so many others to deal with? The physiologists have to tell us of a certain ugly result, occurring only in rare instances in the _bodily_ organization, such that in a given young animal or human form the developing effort ceases before completion of the full structure; the individual remaining without certain fingers or limbs, sometimes without cranium or proper brain. They name this result one of 'arrest of development.' Is it not barely possible that our studies and recitations are yet in general so mal-adapted to the habitudes of the tender brain and opening faculties of childhood, as not merely often to allow, but even to inflict on the intellectual and moral being of the child a positive arrest of development? And if it be possible, what question can take precedence of one concerning the means of averting such a mischief? Pestalozzi intuitively saw and deeply felt the existence of this evil in his day, when, we may admit, it was somewhat more glaring than now. But Mr. Spencer truly characterizes Pestalozzi as, nevertheless, 'a man of _partial_ intuitions, a man who had occasional flashes of insight, rather than a man of systematic thought;' as one who 'lacked the ability logically to co-ordinate and develop the truths he from time to time laid hold of;' and, at the same time, he accredits the great modern leader with a true idea of education, 'the due realization of [which] remains to be achieved.' How doubly important every rational attempt to achieve such realization--every well-considered effort to improve the method of the studies and the lessons--becomes but too apparent when we note the early age at which, as a rule, pupils must leave the schools, and the consequent brief space within which to evoke the faculties and to establish right intellectual habitudes. As an illustration drawn from the cities, where of course the school period is soonest ended, take the incidental fact disclosed by Mr. Randall in the New York School Report, that in that city the course of studies must be so framed as to allow of its completion, with many, at the preposterously early age of _fourteen years_--really the age at which study and mental discipline in the best sense just begin to be practicable!

In all directions, in the educational world, we are struck with the feeling and expression of a great need, though the questions as to just what it is, and just how to be met, have not been so distinctly answered. Let us agree with Mr. Currie, that 'Practical teaching can not be learned from books, even from the most exact "photographing" of lessons: it must be learned, like any other art or profession, by imitation of good models, and by practice under the eye of a master.' Yet it is true, however paradoxical the statement may appear, that practical teaching will gain quite as much when the school-books shall have been cast into the right form and method, as when all the teachers shall have been obliged to imitate good models, in a system of sound normal and model schools. What has given to the teaching of geometry its comparatively high educating value through centuries, and in the hands of teachers of every bent, caliber, and culture? What but the well-nigh inevitable, because highly perfected and crystalline method of one book--_Euclid's Elements_? Doubtless we want 'live' men and women, and those trained to their work, to teach: quite as imperatively we then want the right kind of text-books, in the pupils' hands, with which to carry forward their common work. If mind is the animating _spirit_, and knowledge the shapeless _matter_, still method--and to the pupil largely the method of the books--is the organizing force or _form_ under which the knowledge is to be organized, made available and valuable. We shall suffer quite as much from any lack of the best form, as through lack of the best matter, or of the most earnest spirit. In education, the teacher is the fluent element, full of present resources; the book should be the fixed element, always bringing back the discursive faculties to the rigid line of thought and purpose of the subject. We have now the fluent element in better forwardness and command than the fixed. We have much of the spirit; an almost overwhelming supply of the matter; but the ultimate and best _form_ is yet largely wanting, and being so, it is now our most forcible and serious want.