The teacher's hand-book, for the institute and the class room

Front matter

Accession No.

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Chapter I. Preliminary Considerations

1. Objects stated. — The primary object of the following pages is to aid the teacher in his arduous work. Such a result is to be accomplished, first, by an effort to improve one of the most important agencies for his professional instruction and, second, by furnishing a practical Hand-Book directly suited to his wants in the school-room.

This double object is rendered practicable on the theory that an institute for the improvement of teachers should be organized and conducted, not only as a school, but so far as circumstances will allow, as a model school. It must be conceded that, in a general sense, nearly everything that is essential to a well-conducted and efficient school is equally essential to a well-conducted and efficient institute ; and that young teachers should themselves be subjected to a regime similar to that which they would impose upon their own pupils. Loose organization and a slipshod management will yield adequate results in neither case.

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2. The Institute and the School. — The office of the institute and of the school, is to teach, and to a great extent, both should teach the same subjects in the same way. So far as the institute has special objects of its own, it must of course diverge from the work of an ordinary school. The divergence, however, must relate to a portion of the subject-matter, rather than to the method of instruction. It must relate to that which is more strictly professional. But one of the best methods of teaching how to teach, is by example. Hence, the branches required to be taught in the common schools, must also be taught more or less in the institutes, and a Hand-Book for the institute instructor will be equally serviceable to the common-school teacher.

3. Teachers should be well-informed upon all subjects. — No profession has greater claims upon its members, for a high order of intelligence, than that of the teacher. " The days of a driveling instruction are departing." Ignorance, at the head either of a school or a school system, presents the preposterous paradox of the blind attempting to lead the blind. The time has arrived when education, and not the absence of it, must guide our educational forces. The teacher must not only be a scholar, but he must possess a rich fund of general intelligence. He cannot afford to be narrow-minded or short-sighted. He must be especially well versed in everything that pertains to his profession. Whether he ever attends an institute or not, he should know what it is. He should study the history, the objects, the methods of organization and management of an agency so potent as this in the promotion of his professional interests. If the profession is ever to be respected, it must make itself respectable. To be respectable, it must rise above mediocrity. To rise above

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.

mediocrity, it must ascend the "hill of science; "it must enter and occupy the temple of learning ; it must know its rights ; it must faithfully recognize, and honestly discharge, its high and solemn duties.

4. A supply of educated teachers indispensable.— Upon the teachers of the nation, more than upon any and all other classes combined, devolves the solution of the problem of a wise and generous education for the entire people. We may build grand school edifices on every quarter-section of our territory, we may hoard up huge school funds in every State, we may endow magnificent institutions with all the wealth of " Ormus and of Ind," and yet, without a full and constant supply of well-educated,, skillful, and devoted teachers, our efforts for universal education will be in vain. School buildings, school fands, and endowments are but inert machinery. The power resides in the faithful teacher alone. He must breathe into these instruments, as into a perfected organism, the animating breath of life. The maxim as is the teacher, so is the school," may be accepted as an educational axiom. The value of a school or of a system of schools depends entirely upon its quality. Vicious methods of teaching are as certain to produce bad citizens as the absence of all teaching. Hence, the great question is, What shall be the character and qualifications of our teachers, and how many of the right sort is it possible to produce ?

5. The Teacher's influence. — The influence of the teacher should be no less potent outside of the school-room than within that sacred sanctuary. He should be able to inform and guide public sentiment in all that relates to education. He should be the high priest of his profession, thoroughly informed in its history, nature, means, and ends. Thoro is no question connected with

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its principles, its methods, or its polity, which should not be as familiar to him as " household words." Since education is his business, he should comprehend it in all its bearings and relations better than any other persons comprehend it. His interests and his duty alike demand this thorough acquaintance with his specialty. The interests of society demand it ; and until the schoolmaster thus becomes master of the whole situation^ he can neither receive the consideration due to his profession, nor can the world experience the great benefits from his labors that it so sadly needs. In no one thing is the influence that springs from eminent attainments and high character on the part of teachers more necessary than in shaping the course of educational legislation. The great cause is constantly embarrassed and retarded by unwise and inadequate legal enactments. The representatives of the people, as well as the people themselves, are mainly absorbed in the consideration of questions more immediately affecting their material interests. As a general thing, they have neither the information nor the disposition requisite to wise and progressive legislation upon a subject so foreign to their usual course of thought, and demanding the most profound and careful study. Like other great interests, therefore, education needs leaders worthy to represent it, and competent to command the support essential to the success of its measures. To whom should it be able to look for such leadership, if not to those who are especially set apart to promote and defend it ? To the teachers of this country^ the great duty belongs. Will they rise with the emergency and prove themselves equal to its demands ?

EDUCATION AND STATESMANSHIP.

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Chapter II. Education And Statesmanship.— Discussion Of General Principles

6. Dangers of the Nation. — Intelligence and virtue are the foundation and the corner stone of the American Republic. Hence, it follows that ignorance and wrong are its most formidable foes. Its theory is that every citizen must be intelligent enough clearly to comprehend, and virtuous enough faithfully to discharge his duties. Accordingly, as far as any citizen or any number of citizens may fall short of this standard of qualifications, so far the practice of the republic contradicts its theory, and so far it must sufier the innumerable and costly evils flowing from the operation of forces utterly and irreconcilably hostile to its interests, its prosperity, its perpetuity. While thinking bayonets," may be important in great emergencies, thmking ballots are immeasurably more important in all emergencies. If the republic should perish, the calamity would arise from internal weakness rather than from external violence. Ignorance generates poverty, pauperism, and crime among the masses, while demagogues, corruptionists, and traitors feed and fatten upon its ignoble spoils. An intelligent, virtuous, and vigilant people can neither be deceived, corrupted, nor betrayed. But illiteracy is an insidious disease, preying upon the vitals of the body politic ; and unchecked, it can lead only to a fatal termination.

In the light of our fundamental theory, let us see how

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the account of the great Republic now stands in this regard.

By the census of 1870, the total population of the United States and its territories, exclusive of children under ten years of age, and omitting Chinese and Indians, was 29,686,864. With the same exclusions and omissions, the number of illiterates, or persons unable to read and write, was 5,643,534. The meaning of these figures is that nearly one-fifth of the population of this country, above the age of ten years, is illiterate. But since the ability to read and write indifierently does not constitute intelligence, since in the absence of the restraining virtues those slender attainments are turned to bad account, and since, in short, there are many grades of ignorance above the ''reading and writing stage," the number of illiterates as given above must be largely increased, to represent the actual state of the case. It is to be remarked further^ that as a rule, the child that reaches the age of ten years an illiterate, must remain so, since the great majority of the children in our public schools leave them at that age. If they have never been admitted prior to that period, they are not likely to be, subsequent to it. The indications seem to be, moreover, that so far are we from making any headway against this fearful array of ignorance, it is actually on the increase. Certain it is, that with all our boasted educational activity, we are able to do no more than to hold it in check. With the most favorable interpretation that we can give to these facts, the aspect is appalling and well calculated to excite in the thoughtful mind the most lively apprehensions.

Who can reflect without alarm upon the loss of mental and moral power, the waste of material resources, and the general deterioration of society, growing out of

EDUCATION AND STATESMANSHIP.

the presence of so much ignorance in the very heart of the republic ? In view of its existence with all that the fact implies, how easy to account for the poverty^ pauperism, crime, corruption, and other disorders that afflict the nation.

And what shall be said of the statesmanship that either ignores the stern facts of the situation or contents itself with the most inadequate measures of relief and protection ? Contrast the policy of the United States, a republic, with that of United Germany, a monarchy, in respect to the education of the whole people, and you have a grand truth in a nut-shell : The real strength and glory oj a nation are to he sought and found in its universally educated citizens, Not that we want the power of education to consolidate despotism, but we do want it to conserve and promote the highest welfare and happiness of a free people. As we want no criminals, we must have no idlers. As we would have no idlers, we must tolerate no illiterates. A true statesmanship looks to causes and not alone to palliatives. The surest method of repressing the bad tendencies of human nature is to develop the good ones. " An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." When will American statesmanship recognize these palpable truths ? Says Aristotle, ^'that the education of youth ought to form the principal part of the legislator's attention there cannot be a doubt, since education first moulds and afterwards sustains the various modes of government. The better and more perfect the systems of education, the better and more perfect the plan of government it is intended to introduce and uphold."

7. The Needs of the Nation. — It is legitimate to infer from what has already been stated, that what the nation needs more than all things else is universal

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education. It needs this in fact as well as in form, in practice as well as in theory. It needs not only that stark ignorance should be totally exterminated, but that every child^ of whatever sex, condition, or nationality, should be thoroughly taught and trained. It needs that its " popular sovereigns," one and all, should be made intelligent enough to comprehend their rights, and virtuous enough to discharge their duties. It needs that every person who casts a ballot should be made competent so to wield his own reason, judgment, and conscience as to cast it intelligently, honestly, fearlessly. It needs that the masses of the people, " the great conservative element," should free themselves from leading strings ; that they should be able wisely to discriminate between sense and sound, truth and error, wisdom and folly in the conduct of j)ublic affairs as well as of their own affairs. It needs above all, that the ultimate source of its power should be pure enough, wise enough, and courageous enough rightly to select and rigorously to scrutinize the instruments of its power — its public officers of every name and grade. When the people, and the whole people, are made capable of discerning and choosing between the patriot and the partisan, the statesman and the demagogue, then indeed will the nation be redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, and the great republic will be invincible in the might of its intelligence and in the rectitude of its intentions.

There may be many who will pronounce such results impossible of attainment, and who will assert that the great mass of the people cannot thus be elevated to this high plane of intellectual and moral discernment. Such persons claim that what we need is a highly educated class to lead the masses, and guide the affairs of state to wise and just conclusions. But such reasoning is sub-

EDUCATION AND STATESMANSHIP.

versive of the doctrine upon which the republic is based, and, followed to its legitimate results, would lead inevitably to the alternative that a government of the people, for the people, and by the people must perish forever from the earth." Nevertheless, it cannot have escaped the memories of such, that in our greatest emergencies, the men for the occasion have been the men of the people and from the people. Many of the most illustrious characters in our history have been those who have sprung from the bosom of the masses, and who, until the occasion called them forth, were to " fortune and to fame unknown." Nor should the fact be ignored that whatever may be the issue, whether it is to be decided by the ballot or the bullet, the people, either as citizens or as citizen soldiers, are the ultimate arbiters of the national destiny. Is it then of little importance that they be made capable of clearly discerning the merits of public questions and of acting in accordance with well-defined and just convictions of public duty ? This reasoning, it is needless to add, has not for its object the disparagement of a liberally educated class. On the contrary, we can never be in danger from a surplus of such. It is not that we need highly cultured classes less, but well-taught and thoroughly trained masses more. No intelligent person needs to be reminded that the precise difi*erence between civilization with its manifold blessings, and barbarism with its manifold curses, is that which a wise and generous culture creates. Wealth is not so much the product of muscle and machinery as of mind. It is the result of labor generated and guided by intelligence. Where there is no intelligence, there is no wealth-producing labor. Hence, wealth is a child of the cultivated human brain. And so, too, the arts that adorn, the philosophies that

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dignify, the humanities that ennoble, and the institutions that bless a civilized society, all await the advent of that high order of intelligence which a wise and generous education alone can create. In a word, culture is the wealth-producing, comfort-promoting, refinementinducing powrr of the world. Abandon it, and civilization must speedily relapse into barbarism, wealth into poverty, and refinement into brutality and degradation. Increar;e its quantity and improve its quality among the masses, and you as certainly multiply the sources of wealth, and advance the degree of civilization and refinement as causes are sure to produce their legitimate effects. This, briefly, is the nation's greatest want. It needs vastly to increase the source of its power and utterly to exterminate the cause of its weakness.

Chapter III. Discussion Of General Principles Continued

8. The kind of Culture needed. — The mere itbility to read and write is not education. It may not 6e even the beginning of true culture. Whether it is or is not, depends upon the quality of the teaching and consequently upon the quality of the result. When words are habitually read or written in ignorance of their import and use, they are instruments of weakness rather than of power. They are dead weights upon the memory rather than lamps to the reason and lights to the understanding. The education of many a child has been forever spoiled by bad methods in the beginning.

DISCUSSION OP GENERAL PRINCIPLES, 21

The mechanical use of language not only evolves no power but actually stifles development and unfits the mind for rational culture. " Ideas before words, things before books," is the first principle of primary instruction. The thought once developed, the desire for its expression creates a longing and a necessity for language. In a natural method of teaching, the appetite for language is as irresistible as the appetite for ideas or the craving for food. If the teacher be master of his business, he will take the words of his pupils as the measure of their thought and the test of its accuracy at every step. Their language thus becomes the index of their intellectual status and affords to the teacher the certain data for correcting all errors and supplying all deficiencies in the working of the mental mechanism.

A neglect carefully to cultivate the perceptive powers during the golden opportunity of early childhood, renders accurate observation impossible, beclouds the mind with half-formed^ distorted conceptions, weakens the judgment, paralyzes the reason, corrupts the imagination, and saps the very foundation of a virtuous and useful life. The impressions received and the habits acquired during the first ten years of human existence are more decisive either for good or evil, success or failure, happiness or misery, than all the influences of the after period. And yet these fearful truths seem scarcely to have dawned upon the consciousness of mankind. In this connection the following impressive words of one of our most esteemed American savans,* will be read with interest :

" The future character of a child, and that of the man also, is in most cases formed probably before the age of seven years. Previously to this time, impressions * Professor Joseph Henry.

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have been made which shall survive amid all the vicissitudes of life — amid all the influences to which the individual may be subjected, and which will outcrop as it were in the last stage of his earthly existence, when the additions to his character made in later years have been entirely swept away. I may mention one idea which has occurred to me, and which I have never seen advanced ; but which, if true, invests the subject of early impressions with a fearful interest. The science of statistics shows that certain crimes which are common in seasons of youth disappear comparatively with advancing age, and re-appear again toward the close of life ; or, in other words, that the tendencies to indulgencies in disorders of the imagination, and habits which were acquired in the early life of a vicious youth, or one exposed to evil associations, though they may be masked and kept in subjection by the judgment and the influences of position and reputation during early manhood, middle life, and first decline, resume their sway and close the career of the man who has perhaps for years sustained a spotless reputation, with ignominy and shame."

It may be safely asserted that multitudes of children leave our common schools for the scenes of active life every year w^ith their perceptive and observing powers thus undeveloped, their intellectual appetencies dormant, their sensibilities untouched by ennobling influences, their habits misshapen, and the very-foundations of their success and happiness in the career of existence unsettled if not utterly destroyed. This is especially true in many of the rural districts, where the schools are small, improperly classified, and meagrely supplied with the material aids to instruction ; where the teachers are young, inexperienced, untrained, poorly paid and inadeqiiately supported by an active and healthful public sentiment. The schools for our rural population present the knottiest problem connected with the entire work ot universal education, and they demand vastly more attention than they have yet received from the statesman, the educator, and the people. Deprived, as the inhabitants of the country districts are to a great extent, of the immediate influence of a high-toned daily press, popular lectures, libraries, museums, and other means of instruction accorded to the residents of cities, it becomes even more important that their schools should be thoroughly taught and wisely managed. They are the principal sources of the intellectual and moral life of the community. They have to do with the child during the most critical because the most susceptible period of his existence, and when, if ever, he needs the guiding hand of a far-reaching intelligence and a matchless skill to secure him from the disasters of false steps and perverted faculties in the beginning. Without exaggeration, this is the most supremely important question with which the statesman and the educator have to deal. " The child is father of the man." What the man is to be, the child, in all the elements of character, must first become. What the child is to become, must be determined by the quality of the teaching and the training he is to receive. There is no accident, no chance connected with ^the question. It is a question of cause and efiect. It is a question between a far-sighted, whole-souled, comprehensive system of thorough education and its opposite. The statesmanship which cannot discern the relations between the illiteracy, the bad teaching, the malforming methods and influences of poor schools on the one hand, and the failures, the social inharmonies, the crimes and other disorders of society on the other, is scarcely equal to the needs of a free people.

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The bearing of a thorough and comprehensive system of teaching upon so much of the labor question as pertains to the cultivation of the soil, deserves the most careful consideration also. Wealth-producing industryis simply another name for labor inspired and controlled by the intellectual and moral power that lies behind it. Vacant minds and exhausted soils, dilapidated machinery and careless, slothful habits, are almost correlative terms. But minds untrained to think, faculties unaccustomed to feel and yield obedience to the power of truth, or to look beyond the demands of the present hour, can possess neither the energy, the skill, nor the dispositio7i to conserve or increase the capacity of the earth for bringing forth its kindly fruits. Science has demonstrated, the press has reiterated, and the voice of history echoing through the ages has confirmed the truth that constant cropping^ in the absence of appropriate restorative measures^ devitalizes the soil and ultimately impoverishes both its owners and the community at large. Vast fertile areas, the former granaries of great empires, have, in this manner, been smitten with physical decrepitude. " Whole provinces, once celebrated for the wealth and social advancement of their inhabitants, have either been deserted by civilized man and surrendered to hopeless desolation, or greatly reduced in both productiveness and population," ^ and still, even in our own favored land, the work of depletion goes steadily on. If we seek for an explanation of these and many other unwelcome facts, we shall find it, mainly, in the total inadequacy of our present means and methods of education to the work of raising up the whole people to a proper appreciation of their true interests and a comprehensive knowledge of their rights

* George P. Marsh, in " Man and Nature."

DISCUSSION OF GENEEAL PKINCIPLES. 25 and duties as individuals and as citizens. " Good com- - mon schools," said Edward Everett, when Governor of Massachusetts, " are the basis of every wise system of education." But to a vast majority of the American people they are not only the basis, but the superstructure and the apex of the only system within their grasp. More than nineteen-twentieths of our children derive their sole educational advantages in the common schools, and these privileges, such as they may be, are limited principally to the school period below the age of ten or twelve years. This is especially true of our rural population, who compose the great mass of the people. When to these facts it is added that the country schools do not perhaps continue in session on an average of more than six months in a year, and that multitudes of the children fail to reap such slender advantages as may be afforded, for more than three or four months annually, we shall have some of the more prominent elements of the difficult problem clearly before us.

What then do we need ? What ought to be done ?

What can be done ? These are questions of vast import. They demand the most thoughtful consideration. They ought to be ever present to the minds of our statesmen and educators ; for they will always be in order, and will constantly demand a satisfactory answer. The kind of culture required for the masses of the people has already been indicated in the discussion of that which we now give to too many of them. They need, in the few years allotted to their early education, the blessings of a thorough system of culture conforming to nature. The perceptive and observing powers should be developed by a rational application of appropriate means, instead of being stifled by false, mechanical methods. The imagination should be filled with pure 2

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and beautiful images. Tlie attention, the memory, and the power of association should be distinctly recognized and assiduously cultivated in all? the exercises of the school. The wayward tendencies of childhood should be held in check by the restraints of a wholesome and efficient discipline. Habits of order, neatness, promptitude, obedience, industry, and self-respect should be inculcated and enforced at every step, until they become a part of the daily life of the future citizen. Reason, judgment and conscience should be made to assert their sway over the instincts and the passions, guiding and controlling every outward act and inward emotion. In a word, the discipline of the school should prepare the ehild^ so far as human agency can do it, for the disci- 2Mne of life. It should inspire him wnth the love of knowledge, giving him the power to acquire and the disposition to use it in the intelligent and faithful discharge of every duty incumbent upon him as an individual and as a member of society.

" I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both public and private, of

peace and war inflamed with a study of learning

and the admiration of virtue, stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy patriots, dear ta God and famous to all ages." *

* John Milton.

Chapter IV. Discussion Of General Principles Continued

9. The duty of the Nation. It is manifestly the duty of the nation to plant the common school in every neighborhood, and within reach of every citizen whom its soil maintains. The possession of rational faculties implies an inalienable right to the means for their cultivation. Since educated mind is the source of all our wealth, education is clearly entitled to so much of our material resources as may be necessary for the extension of its blessings to all who are entitled to receive them. Since the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is best secured hj educating the whole people, since the safety of life and property is the best assured w^here there is culture, refinement, industry, and respect for law, it is no less the interest than the duty of the nation thoroughly/ to educate itself. The common school, with its associated institutions and agencies, is the ordained instrument through which this universal education of the people alone is possible. To encourage, perfect, and extend it until it reaches every home and performs its functions wisely and fully, is the great problem of all others that should engage the attention, and command the warmest sympathies and the best efforts of American statesmanship. To neglect this duty is to disregard the first instinct of national selfpreservation and progress.

No greater mistake can be committed than the adoption of measures characterized by false notions of

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economy in this direction. The great question is not, How little can we get along with, and exist ? but, How much can we judiciously and wisely expend in the education of the people ? No investments are so certain to yield an adequate return as those which are carefully made for the increase of intellectual and moral power ; for the rescue of the young from ignorance, degradation, and crime. With all the faults that we so justly attribute to our systems of education in this country, it must be confessed that we get about all we are entitled to, because all we pay for. The way to obtain adequate results is to make adequate investments for education. We venture the bold suggestion that when we judiciously expend ten times the amount now annually expended for school purposes, we shall be better satisfied than we now are both with the returns and the investments. The statesmanship which measures the value of an educational institution or system by the paucity of its expenditures rather than by the quality and quantity of the fruits which it brings forth, is totally incompetent to shape the destinies of a great nation. The question should be, How much can be profitably applied to the extinction of ignorance and the exaltation of intelligence and virtue ? When this policy prevails, we shall have little occasion to deplore the inadequacy of our means or the poverty of our results in national education. This is no plea for extravagance or unnecessary expenditures. No investment can be extravagant which is necessary. But so long as education is the creator of wealth, it is necessary that wealth should be liberally and wisely employed to advance education and extinguish ignorance, the source of poverty. So long as civilization is the product of culture, civilization must vay the price necessary to render culture universal