The school in the home; talks with parents and teachers on intensive child training

Contents

PAGE

I INTRODUCTION 1

II LANGUAGE, THE INSTRUMENT OF KNOWL- EDGE 23

Introduction

That this is not the work of an "educator" will be perfectly clear at once to all the members of that fraternity under whose notice this book comes. But that does not necessarily preclude the possibility of clearness of vision nor does it invalidate certain obvious facts of experience. Education is one of those things in which everybody has some experience, and has not been reduced to an exact science, if indeed it will ever become a science, in any proper sense at all. Human life and the human mind are constantly undergoing great and fundamental changes. The point of view which prevails at one period is entirely inadequate for another. For example, it is more than fifteen years ago since the present writer urged upon a large assembly the need for increased industrial and technical training in Massachusetts and the reorganization of the state's programme of education with this and other things in view. He had just returned from Germany, where he had seen vast changes taking place and an entire nation being educated into an efficiency which was at once wonderful as an exhibition of what could be done in this respect and striking in its personal and commercial results. He saw a village which he had seen some years before as a quiet and rural community transformed into a vigorous, active, commercial center with the world-view of commerce and industry. He saw young persons whom he had known as young country children exhibiting all the natural characteristics of such a class in Germany (a very different tiling, by the way, from the similar class in America) , changed into alert persons whose grasp upon themselves was hardly less amazing than the nation's grasp upon its industrial self -consciousness and commercial self-organization. Both these things so impressed him that, knowing the listlessness and waste of American life, especially on its educational side, coincident with the overwhelming American passion for education, especially public education, he urged the adoption of German methods or at least the mastery of the German idea with a view to securing like results in America.

Speaking broadly, the address was received with mild amusement and the public comment which was made upon it was in the nature of ridicule that anybody could ever excel American zeal, American adaptability and American genius. One journal suggested that the speaker would better stop his foolish aping of European ideas and become a real American. Since that time, however, the progress of Germany in the commercial history of the world has so arrested attention in America that there is now an almost equally stupid and insensate acceptance of certain ideas of German origin as there was once contemptuous rejection of them. The fundamental differences between Germany and America and the equally fundamental differences between the social organization of the German and the American mind, are being ignored in the haste for industrial education, so that presently we shall be wondering just why we do not get the results in America that they get in Germany. And then we shall set about finding the true way.

It was, however, on the personal side that these phenomena made the deepest impression upon him. He saw individuals rise in the scale of efficiency, self -organization and self-expenditure, which was the most striking effect of the whole business. He saw in individuals an expansion of mental horizon which clearly showed that the juvenile mind can work at a pressure, without loss of strength, health or diminution of any power or physical capacity which is practically unknown in America. And he saw these results in per-, sons who could not in the slightest degree be called unusual, in capability, antecedents or opportunity. He saw children not only in Germany, but in Belgium, Holland and other countries in northern Europe do an amount of work and assimilate a fund of knowledge at an early age which makes the achievements of the average school child in America seem foolishness and waste. He resolved to try experiments in this direction himself and for many years now has been in the course of his vocation as a preacher and pastor also teaching young people from very young children to students in college in almost all branches required for admission to American colleges. The results have been surprising beyond words. These young people, almost seventy in number, have responded to an intensive treatment in instruction and guidance, in a way which shows that the waste in the average American child's life is something simply astounding. It proves to him beyond all doubt, that on the side of personal efficiency, American education is one of the most wasteful things in the whole American organization of life.

It seems to prove that from three to five years of life are lost to American young people, simply because they are not trained for large results in a large way and required to undertake tasks commensurate with their abilities. It seems to show that while there are undoubted differences in children arising from their antecedents, intellectual ancestry and environment, on the whole, these are negligible in the final result if you get a right method and make a large enough demand and arouse the necessary interest and exert the required force to get the result. This is a loss of years of life, the amount of which is beyond computation. It takes years out of the life of people, makes waste in productiveness, happiness and effectiveness in mature life, which one, who has not thought the matter through, would hardly imagine to be the case. The evidence of the truth of this indictment of our public education can be had on the most casual inquiry. Ask any well-informed parent about his children's progress in school and you will get at once a cry of discontent and helpless protest. Such protests, in the shape of letters of inquiry about the subjectmatter of this book, are in my possession by the hundreds. They come from all sorts of people, from college professors to the street laborers. They come from persons in all walks of life, from rich men and poor men. But all these people have one element in common. They are interested in the intellectual growth and development of their children and are anxious to send out into the world effective and thoroughly equipped persons. Sometimes the interest arises from the remembrance of privileges which the parents themselves did not enjoy. Sometimes it arises from the consciousness of the neglect of parental duty in the matter of the children's education. Sometimes it is the sincere and helpless anxiety arising from the plain evidence, daily before the parents, that the young people are not only not making any real progress but are forming habits which either mean a fearful task to overcome in the future or a hopeless handicap in the race of life. The one thing about them all is, that they see with more or less clearness that the education on which we spend so much money and about which we boast so loudly and about which we are in such deadly earnest as communities and so indifferent as individuals, is a fearfully wasteful and costly process. And in nothing more costly than in the loss to the mental habits and personal intellectual ideals of the young people themselves. We could possibly endure it if it did no good. But it does not stop there; it is demoralizing the mental habits of the nation.

If further testimony is necessary, ask any mature and capable teacher who has watched the progress of the public schools in the last twenty years. The teacher so addressed will tell you in plain terms, that while the teachers are doing the best they can under the circumstances, the results are steadily more discouraging, if any high and thorough standard is taken into consideration. He will tell you that the capacity for steady and sustained thought on the part of pupils seems to grow less instead of more. He will tell you that the disposition to avoid anything difficult and calling for effort, especially disagreeable effort, grows stronger and that committees and faculties alike are being forced to yield to this disposition, thus controlling public education. Rare is the community that will sustain any public superintendent or school committee in any move that will raise the standard and make attainment of graduation, that ignis fatuus of our educational system, more difficult. The quality of some of the work accepted toward a high school degree, for example, in some of the cities in Massachusetts, is simply ludicrous. A high school diploma may mean that the child receiving it has had some real contact with a strictly intellectual process. But for the most part it does not mean anything of the sort. This does not require any proof. Simple inquiry anywhere will reveal it as a fact.

Following this line one step higher up, we come to college education. The well-known discontent now being frankly acknowledged by the presidents of all American colleges with the intellectual caliber of their graduates is the logical outcome of a process which begins in the lowest grades. That need not be discussed here. But a result in American life arising from it may be considered in a few paragraphs. The decline in respect for scholarship, especially scholarship which has nothing to do with commercial productiveness, is an effect in American life the full meaning of which many persons do not seem to comprehend very clearly. It means a lower type of civilization, it means a lower ideal of life and it means a substantial surrender of the permanent agencies of human happiness, because it is taking out of the life of the nation the one thing which makes more for happiness than any other single element, namely, capable self -organization. One needs only to look about and observe the vast number of persons who, reaching middle life, have no momentum in any direction. They seem to exist from day to day. They have no vital interests, no mental reserves which make it possible for them to live, except by constant dynamic injections of excitement or amusement from without. Nothing shows this more than the amusements which are most flourishing. To ask a group of people to spend an evening together, with only their brain power, their varied intellectual interests, to entertain them and the comparison of their aims and purposes and experiences to furnish pleasure, is to risk an evening of disastrous boredom for almost everybody involved. This also is a common knowledge. Does it not sometimes impress all of us to what idiotic things, as well-bred people and as persons who are supposed to have had some contact with the intellectual treasures of the world, I mean now its exciting and interesting treasures of which there are multitudes, we give ourselves? And have we not often gone home, glad enough to have seen our friends, but thoroughly ashamed of the manner in which we spent our time and wondering just what the reason is we keep on doing these things in this way?

Now the fact is, this is simply the working out of the thing which has its roots far back in the earlier stages of education. The only things intensive about American life at the present moment are amusement and moneymaking. In these, undoubtedly, we are in fearful earnest. A baseball game is a joyous and delightsome sight, especially if it is a good game. But almost any baseball game is good enough. But the reflection that thousands of people, during the most charming and delightful season of the year go, day after day, to see other people play and for hours do absolutely nothing themselves, but see other people doing things, is one of the most curious commentaries on contemporary American life. Now children would never do this. They want to play themselves and they do. But after they have gone through the American educational mill — school, college and the rest — they are content to sit and sit and sit, by thousands, for hours and hours and hours and do nothing but see other people play! We call ourselves an energetic people! The claim is pure foolishness in the light of the way in which we take our amusements, the thousands simply doing nothing, exercising no faculties of their own of mind or body and adding absolutely nothing (but fat) to their own equipment for the fuller years of life. There is a healthy reaction coming in this matter of which we see signs. But for the most part this is descriptive of American life in this phase. Commercially, the same phenomenon is most conspicuous. The mad race for money, without capacity to enjoy it properly, when secured, is still our outstanding characteristic. But even here, it must be confessed that the efficiency which our commerce displays is hardly the efficiency which commands admiration. It still has too much the aspect which makes moral scrutiny a source of uneasiness and has taken as its most recent note the widespread demand for the criminal prosecution of our captains of industry. But this is a subject by itself.

Now the influence of all this upon the personal life and character is perfectly plain. This not being a moral treatise, that phase of the matter will not be discussed here. Enough to say that the final result is a lower type of civilization, lessened respect for the fine and permanent things of life, an idealism that is bounded by the stock exchange or the musical comedy, a culture that in spite of notable exceptions and great advances, rests upon private initiative almost exclusively and this often collaborated with the criminal interests just alluded to. The place where all this is to be combated is in the sphere of child training. It is in the creation of mental habits, mental outlook and mental interests, which will automatically make this type of development impossible. It is in a programme of intensive development for young children which will make them immune from the tendencies which not only destroy their best capacities, but which make it possible for them to go through the world never knowing what they have missed and what kind of a world it actually is. There must be a mind fertilization, which is, at the same time, a sterilization against other things. There must be the arousing of interests which, by their very fire and picturesqueness and enjoyment, will make the rest seem tame and listless. There must be such a linkage of real and substantial knowledge and the process of gaining it, with delight and pleasure, as will make the senseless and idiotic things offered to rational beings for amusement seem an insult to the mind. There must be such a programme and it must be begun in the home, before the school life begins, which will assimilate naturally the best things offered in the school and by natural repulsion leave the rest. There must be such a cooperation between the home and the school as will secure the continuous education of parents in the education of their children, that will make for the continuous enrichment of the intellectual life of the household and will at the same time steadily create new interests, as new knowledge and new experiences are brought into the fellowship of parents and children.

So much for the actual conditions. Now for some concrete examples of what happened. The earliest experiments were made in my own family of four children, now aged, respectively, a girl of seventeen, a boy sixteen, a girl twelve and a boy ten. At the time these plans began to go into operation the two younger children were not born and there being but seventeen months between the two eldest, the plan admitted of treating both exactly alike. These two were admitted to RadclifFe and Harvard colleges, the girl being fifteen and the boy thirteen and a half. Their examination papers were of average, possibly slightly above average excellence, betraying nothing unusual and especially nothing that indicated "prodigies." They had simply arrived several years earlier than is usual. Two years of their college life have passed and their standing in college is, with an occasional exception, in the honor list. Both have pursued the maximum amount of work permitted by the colleges, the boy being allowed to take six courses at Harvard, the girl only five at Radcliffe. They are in good health and nothing unusual has happened. No vital relation which ought to come with college life, associations or interests, has been denied them and they have secured all that could be expected out of their college life. In fact, rather more as I should judge. I can see no reason for altering the course with the two younger children, both of whom are in the Cambridge High and Latin School and are beginning third year work. They will take college examinations and probably be admitted at about the same ages as their older brother and sister. There has been no crowding. They are in absolutely perfect health judged by ordinary standards. They are not children of exceptional ability. They have been subjects of exceptional oversight and care, both as to studies and health. If this result had been secured with one child, the usual plea of an "unusual child" might possibly be raised. But it is unthinkable that there should be four ''prodigies" in one family! As a matter of fact, all such talk is absurd. The difference is one of method, parental interest and care.

Another case from what might be called the opposite social pole is that of a youth whose father was a street laborer with whom I became acquainted because he worked in front of my house and I got into the habit of speaking with him as I passed out of my gate in the morning. One day he confided to me his anxiety about his boy in the grammar school, who was not doing well. I called at the school, got acquainted with the boy, his habits and his possibilities. He was about to be denied promotion for neglect of his work and bad behavior. I got him interested in me, planned his work for the following summer, gave up a part of my vacation to see that he did it, instructed his parents as to my requirements for study and habits, and the following September he took admissions for the high school into which he was admitted, in which he made an excellent record, from which he passed into a law school and is now a successful practicing lawyer. His record in the law school was excellent. He has since developed literary habits and will be a useful and effective men> ber of his profession. And he is a gentleman!

Still another case is that of a girl in whom I became interested when she was ten. Her parents, when I indicated what I thought she might do, strongly deprecated any attempt to get her to college and advised me to give the attention to an older sister. They gave absolutely no aid in the matter. But the girl became interested, applied herself, developed remarkable aptitude for making quick inferences and utilizing her knowledge, entered high school, made a good record and graduated in the first twenty in her class in college, Her whole career was a struggle and against an absolutely hostile environment, since the domestic life of the home was not happy and the girl got no assistance there. She is now a useful and successful teacher.

An unusual case was that of a boy who had some rather severe physical infirmities, but whose interest being aroused, set to work to overcome these and other natural handicaps. I got into touch with him when he was twelve. Between that age and seventeen he did more work than most children do between beginning school and twenty. He also made a good college record, which might have been brilliant if he had not had to earn a part of his living at the same time. This boy also is in the law and is known among his associates as a "student," a man whose opinions are valued because of his habits of application and thoroughness.

One further case will suffice. It was the case of a girl whom I began to know when she was about twelve. At that time she was supposed to be "impossible" from the standpoint of study. A little careful guidance, stimulation on the side of the interests which knowledge properly applied arouses, made a transformation which was little short of wonderful. The need for earning her livelihood took her prematurely out of school, but she has developed literary skill and knowledge and writes beautifully and earns a suitable income with her pen. I have no doubt whatever that this child, had she come under wise guidance at an early age, would have made a brilliant and remarkable figure.

More recently, I advised a mother with her small child of four to resist the temptation to put him into the school but to give him her own attention. I urged his father to take, as I did, his meal times as periods for discussion, for fertilization, for the interesting of his child in the things of the mind. The result has been overwhelming to the parents in the rapid assimilation of a knowledge of history, of some forms of mathematics and a variety of other things usually met by children in the high school period, and that child would at this moment, after two years of such work, find the fifth, or even the sixth, grade stupid and a bore. Imagine a child that has been told the tales of Shakespeare and interested in the plots and counterplots of the great plays, told the thrilling stories of Greek history and able to talk about them on the factual side, being kept in a fifth grade reader !

Now in all these cases there was nothing abstruse, terrifying or otherwise beyond the reach of the average parent. In fact, the whole thing turned upon the fidelity of the parents, quite as much as upon that of the children when the children were young. But in cases some of which are cited above, even with conditions wholly unfavorable, children were enabled to do three and four times the work, in a third or half the time usually consumed by school children. To be sure, in all these cases a little work was kept up throughout the long vacation, one of the absurdities of American life. These children did not for twelve long weeks absolutely forget that they had brains, which must work and which must be kept active in developing habits of observation, attention and self-control.

Now it is impossible to assume that all these children had some unusual qualities not common to most children. In most cases they had good health. Of course you cannot get full work from a sick child. Of course they had to keep regular hours and forego a good deal of what is called the social life of young people. But in this, as in all other things, a choice has to be made. It is a question of what one desires most. Young people cannot go out to parties and dance half the night and have their brains and bodies in condition for capable and effective work the next day. They cannot have their minds filled with a vast variety of "social" nonsense and still keep it fresh for habitation by higher things. When that fact is clearly brought to the attention of a young person and the right choice is made, half the battle is won. But that also is another question.

The methods or rather the principles, which have governed in all these cases were the same. They are indicated not precisely, but generally, in the following chapters. The first thing to be secured is the conviction on the part of parents and others who have young children in charge, that there is capacity and power in the child, which only needs to be developed, and then to take the means by which that development can be secured. Naturally there is no arbitrary method. But the remarks made in the succeeding chapters will indicate about what happened and where the line of advance starts. There are in these histories elements Which cannot of course be made public but which I wish to assure my readers if they knew they would never have another contented minute with the present slipshod, listless and machine methods by which the thousands of our children are given what is called their "education." The parental attitude, and next to that the teacher's attitude toward the higher things of the mind, is of paramount importance especially in young children. The often contemptuous indifference with which mature people treat the presence of children in their habits, manners and conversation is to me one of the paralyzing wonders of contemporary life. This is especially observable in matters of speech and the use of the mother tongue. But it is hardly less true in other important matters.

Of course this is not academic and peda* gogical. As stated, this is not the work of an "educator." It may interest persons whc have an academic interest in this matter, that

I could, if it had been worth while, have placed abundant footnotes and references for many things, in connection with the ideas which are laid down in the chapters following. Perhaps some time later, I shall write a small book with that purpose specifically in mind. But as this is manifestly a "tendenz-schrift" and has in view the purpose of arousement of interest in the thing discussed, the academic discussion of the problem may well be left out. I propose also later to publish a small book, in which a programme is particularly indicated which may not be without its uses. But for the present I wish merely to secure assent to certain ideas, which I believe generally accepted and the practice of the achievement of which, widely adopted, will save from three to five years of school life for the ordinary child and add immeasurably to the happiness, usefulness and effective self -direction of many human beings.

I have no remembrance of the time when I began to learn Greek. I have been told that it was when I was three years old. My earliest recollection on the subject is that of committing to memory what my father termed vocables, being lists of common Greek words with their signification in English which he wrote out for me on cards. Of grammar until some years later I learned no more than the inflections of nouns and verbs, but after a course of vocables proceeded at once to translation ; and I faintly remember going through iEsop's Fables, the first Greek book which I read. The Anabasis, which I remember better, was the second. I learnt no Latin till my eighth year. At that time I had read under my father's tuition a number of Greek prose authors among whom I remember, the whole of Herodotus and of Xenophon's Cyropaedia and Memorials of Socrates ; some of the lives of the philosophers by Diogenes Laertius ; part of Lucian and Isocrates Ad Demonicum and Ad Nicoclem.