EVILS TO BE AVOIDED IN EDUCATION.
[PARENTS, in their anxiety for their children, often defeat the object of true education because they fail to grasp the relative importance of improvement and development of the child’s threefold nature. The article by MR. EDWARD BOK, a large part of which was quoted from the Ladies’ Home Journal (January, 1900) in the March ADVOCATE, laid bare the evils of the “cramming system.” The words of MRS. LEW WALLACE, in an article entitled “The Murder of the Modern Innocents,” which appeared in that journal for February, 1899, received wide attention at the time, but parents can not too often read these things. To impress the facts upon the minds of our readers we have placed selected paragraphs from the above-mentioned article beside selections containing similar thoughts from the writings of MRS. E. G. WHITE.—EDITOR.] THE MURDER OF THE MODERN INNOCENTS.
BETHLEHEM was little among the thousands of Judah. We are told that probably not over thirty children fell under the order of Herod. The murder of the innocents of the nineteenth century is a march to untimely graves, not by order of a wrathful king, but under what is claimed to be the finest free-school system in the world. Go into any public school, and you will see girls pallid as day lilies, and boys with flat chests and the waxen skin that has been named the school complexion. Every incentive and stimulus is held out; dread of blame, love of praise, prizes, medals, badges, the coveted flourish in the newspapers—the strain never slackens. Watch the long lines filing past, each pupil carrying books—three, four, five—to be studied at night in hot rooms by fierce, sight-destroying lights. Time was when spectacles went with age. They are no sign of age now. Many must An Education that Kills.
IT has been the custom to encourage children to attend school when they are mere babies, needing a mother’s care. Children of delicate age are frequently crowded into ill-ventilated school-rooms, to sit upon poorly constructed benches; and the young and tender frames have, through sitting in wrong positions, become deformed.
In our institutions of learning there was to be exerted an influence that would counteract the influence of the world, and give no encouragement to . . . love of display, love of flattery, and strife for high rewards and honors as a recompence for good scholarship. It would be impossible to avoid these, and yet send to the public schools.
In regulating the hours of sleep there should be no haphazard work. No student should form the habit of sitting up late at night to burn the midnight oil.
146 wear glasses to help eyes worn prematurely old by night work. . . .
I do not undervalue education; it is greatly to be desired, but overeducation is slaying its thousands.
The burden is books. The tasks imposed on the young are fearful. The effort seems to be to make text-books as difficult and complicated as possible, instead of smoothing the hill so high and hard to climb. The Process Emphasized.
Said a mother, “Two and two are what?”
The boy hesitated.
“Surely you know that two and two make four.”
“Yes, mama; but I am trying to remember the process.”
Process, indeed! . . .
One day Mary was bending over a tablet writing words on both sides of a straight line, like multiplied numerators and denominators.
“What are you at now?” asked grandma.
Mary answered with pride, “I am diagraming.”
“In the name of sense, what’s diagraming?”
“It’s mental discipline. Miss Cram says I have a fine mind that needs developing. Look here, grandma, now this is the correct placing of elements. ‘Fourscore’ and ‘seven’ are joined by the word ‘and,’ a subordinate connective copulative conjunction. It modifies ‘years,’ the attribute of the proposition. ‘Ago’ is a model adverb of past time. The root word of the first clause is—”
“Why, that’s Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg. I keep it in my work-basket and know it by heart.”
“Indeed! Well, ‘our’ is a simple personal—”
That’s enough. If President Lincoln had been brought up on such stuff, that speech would never have been written. He called a noun a noun, and was done with it. “Mental discipline.” Not any more than a Chinese puzzle; merely so much rubbish under the attic. The mathematics superstition is strong in the land we love to call our own; children of thirteen are in algebra.
Mental Discipline and Nervousness.
Undertake the tasks laid on girls in their teens for one year, and then write me how you like the “system.” We need no physician to tell us that the number of nervous diseases on the increase is appalling. In educating youth there is need of that wisdom which comes only from God. It is a mistake to put into the hands of the youth books which puzzle and confuse them, a study of which can not fail to mix things in their minds. The Process Emphasized.
Many parents have kept their children at school nearly the year round. These children have gone through the routine of study mechanically, but they have not retained that which they learned. Many of these constant students seem almost destitute of intellectual life. The monotony of continual study wearies the mind, and they have but little interest in their lessons, and to many, the application to books becomes painful. . . . They did not encourage in themselves reflection, and investigation of objects and things. . . . Close reasoners and logical thinkers are few, for the reason that false influences have checked the development of the intellect.
A return to simpler methods will be appreciated by the children and youth. Work in the garden and field will be an agreeable change from the wearisome routine of abstract lessons to which their young minds should never be confined. Mental Discipline and Nervousness.
If teachers were receiving light and wisdom from the divine Teacher, they would look at things in a very different way. They would measure the relative importance of the things to be learned in school; the common essential branches would be more thoroughly taught, and the word of God would be honored and esteemed.
147 Even paralysis has crept in on the young; a leading physician of our State had three new cases in 1896. There is too much of everything except what is contained in Judge Baldwin’s admirable answer to the question, “Should manners be taught in our public schools?” Four, or at the utmost five, hours are a full day’s study, if one is to have health in this exhaustive climate. Under our forcing system the time demanded is nearer ten hours. Foreign children may study harder, but they do not come of fathers consumed by ambition, and mothers trying to do the impossible.
The girls break first because of greater capacity for suffering in nerves alive and quivering that with boys are insensible as telegraph wires. Besides, girls are more tractable, and take to music, embroidery, and painting, while boys play ball. In sanitariums, rest cures, water cures, and other refuges, forlorn wrecks of women lie on beds of pain, swallowing cod-liver oil, malted milk, and beguiling “foods” and drugs in order to build up. But there are no foundations to build upon. Parental Pride to Blame.
Back of all, and harder than unbending rules, is the merciless ambition of parents. American children must do, be, and have everything. Propose to cut down, drop the least congenial study, and there is an outcry, “Why, then Mary could not get her diploma!” What will she do with it if she does get it? Lay it away in a forgotten top drawer, or frame and hang it in the guest chamber—a costly document, bought with a great price.
Said a tender mother to me, “The air of the school-room is so foul that my boys’ heads smell of it.”
“And you continue to send them?”
“Oh, yes; you know they must pass.”
They are passing. The Practical Neglected.
Said one of my neighbors, “Here are two diplomas; they represent my two daughters educated to death.”
Death by freezing is easier. One of the most foolish sights I have ever seen was a feeble country girl There is health and happiness for him [the child] in the study of nature. . . . To the nervous child, who finds lessons from books exhausting and hard to remember, it will be especially valuable.
Every student should understand how to take such care of himself as to preserve the best possible condition of health, resisting feebleness and disease. . . . It is required of each one of us to preserve our health and strength by the practice of temperance in all things. [This includes temperance in study.—ED.] Anything that lessens the physical power enfeebles the mind, and makes it less clear to discriminate between good and evil.
The student who desires to put the work of two terms into one, should not be permitted to have his own way. . . . It is not reasonable to suppose that the mind can grasp and digest an oversupply of mental food, and it is as great a sin to overfeed the mind as it is to load the digestive organs, giving the stomach no periods of rest. Parental Pride to Blame.
Frequently the parents have but limited means, and an expense is incurred which they can ill afford; but everything must be made to bend to this artificial line of education. . . . They [the children] are required to study from books things that tax their young minds, and often they are taught music. . . . This course is not wise. A nervous child should not be overtaxed in any direction, and should not learn music until he is physically well developed.
Many children have been ruined for life, and some have died, as the result of the injudicious course of parents and teachers in forcing the young intellect. The Practical Neglected.
In connection with the schools should have been agricultural and manufacturing establishments. There should have been teachers also of household labor. There should have been a portion of the time each day
148 who expected to earn a living, she hardly knew how, puzzling over Cicero’s orations.
Latin is part of the treadmill stairs all must climb. Well has it been said of the Romans, that had they been obliged to learn their own language, they never would have been able to conquer the world. The dull girl pulls through grades high and low, and when the time comes to take a teething baby through dog days and nights, how goes the battle? Down with nervous prostration, she would give Euclid, Cicero, even the seventh book of Thucydides, for a day’s release from the pangs of neuralgia. Baby is predestined, one of the never-sleeping sort, doomed to nerves tense as fiddle strings. . . .
I knew one type of a class. She mastered various sciences and languages, had seven years of music, and in mathematics went so far as to carry the surveyor’s chain. She started in evanescent beauty, rose bloom and snow, and faded as certain sea shells lose color lying in the sun. The last time I saw her she said with angelic patience, “My children are wakeful at night, and I suffer a good deal.” She drooped without complaint, and one day the black horses came to the door and bore away the young mother to the city of the silent.
There is a school . . . where little children go three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon, and are punished for the least restlessness. Naturally, the prisoners are too exhausted to make much racket when released, so the houses where they live are “kept quiet.” Teach the Trades.
If your boy’s tastes are not scholarly, you may make him miserable by trying to force a love for learning. He will go through the books, and the books will go through him; there is no assimilation. . . .
There is no reason why our little people should be bound under the same rigid rule as the heads of the Flathead Indians; why eighty should learn what perhaps six will need. As the English say in their straight- devoted to labor, that the physical and mental might be equally exercised. If schools had been established upon the plan we have mentioned, there would not now be so many unbalanced minds. . . . The youth who would be graduated at such institutions would many of them come forth with stability of character. They would have perseverance, fortitude, and courage to surmount obstacles. . . . There should have been experienced teachers to give lessons to young ladies in the cooking department. Young girls should have been instructed to manufacture wearing apparel, to cut, make, and mend garments, and thus become educated for the practical duties of life.
Young ladies frequently give themselves up to study, to the neglect of other branches of education even more essential for practical life than the study of books. After they have obtained their education, they are frequently invalids for life. They neglected their health by remaining too much in doors, deprived of the pure air of heaven, and the God-given sunlight.
These young ladies might have come from their schools in health, if they had combined with their studies household labor and exercise in the open air.
Health is a great treasure. . . . Every abuse of health enfeebles for life, and makes us losers, even if we gain any amount of education. . . . The impression that work is degrading to fashionable life, has laid thousands in the grave who might have lived. Teach the Trades.
Education in felling trees, tilling the soil, erecting buildings, as well as in literature, is the education our youth should each seek to obtain. Further, a printing press should be connected with our school, in order to educate in that line. Tent-making also should be learned. There are also many things in which the lady students may be engaged. There is cooking, dress-making, and gardening to be done. Straw-
149 forward way, if your son is to be a tradesman, give him a tradesman’s education. The man who under happy stars might excel as an architect or a machinist may be a poor lawyer, and sentenced to it because his father was bred to the law, and there was a judge somewhere among his ancestry.
The founders of our free school system (I hope they rest in peace!) little dreamed of the latitudes and longitudes that would grow out of their idea of a sound English education accessible to all; or as General Grant sensibly wrote, “Every child in the land can have the opportunity of a good common school education unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistical tenets.” Their idea has been elaborated into a toilsome course, sapping the strength of the strongest. German, Latin, music, drawing, and studies whose names I do not know, are brought in. The Hearts of Parents Should Turn to Their Children.
After all, what are our children being educated for? The boys are to be bread-winners—that is decided. They must hurry through, and “hustle for a living.” The girls—let us believe it—are the future homemakers. The word “helpmeet” is obsolete, left behind with the woman who made Eden Paradise.
Constantly the question is being brought up, “Shall this and that be added to our public schools?” But who asks, “Can the scholars endure any more?” They have no protest nor petition; they must stand like human vessels ready to be filled to the brim with mixtures of facts. I plead for a childhood of the soul as well as of the body, for the free air, the blessed sunshine, the moderate task ended at the schoolhouse. This night young heads are leaning against their mothers, tired as no young things should ever be; and it is a sorrowful sound to hear a child waking from what might be the sunny slumber of a light heart beating to healthful music to ask in troubled voice, ‘Do you think I can make the pass grade?’ It is said that they like to go to school. Yes, and they would like it twice as well if there were half as much to learn. Many children have I known, but not one berries should be planted, plants and flowers cultivated; this the lady students may be called out of doors to do. . . . Book-binding also, and a variety of trades should be taken up.
Lads are to come in from different localities, and nearly all will take the industrial course. This course should include the keeping of accounts, carpenter work, and everything that is comprehended in farming. Preparation should be made for the teaching of blacksmithing, painting, shoemaking, cooking, baking, washing, mending, typewriting, and printing. Every power at our command is to be brought into this training work, that students may go forth, equipped for the duties of practical life. The Hearts of Parents Should Turn to Their Children.
Mothers, let the little ones play in the open air; let them listen to the songs of the birds, and learn the love of God as expressed in his beautiful works. Teach them simple lessons from the book of nature and the things about them; and as their minds expand, lessons from books may be added, and firmly fixed in the memory.
Small children should be left as free as lambs to run out of doors, to be free and happy, and should be allowed the most favorable opportunities to lay the foundation for sound constitutions. Parents should be the only teachers of their children until they have reached eight or ten years of age.
This long-drawn-out process of adding and adding more time, more branches, is one of Satan’s snares to keep laborers back. . . .
150 who loved study for its own sake. Companionship is what lures them.
Instead of wandering up and down the wilderness of wintry facts, let them loiter a while among the dear illusions. The Happy Valley of Childhood is but narrow, where the golden water babbles to the talking bird and the singing tree, where the sun always shines and the years are summers. They who adjust the load that presses so heavily on the springs of life have much to account for.
Boston has been shaken by a solemn protest from the city physician against the ruinous manner in which children are overworked. Not the orphans in factories, nor the poor in the tenements, but in the handsome schoolhouses where the well-to-do send their sons and daughters. If we had a thousand years before us, such a depth of knowledge would be uncalled for, although it might be much more appropriate; but now our time is limited.
I would not in any case counsel restriction of the education to which God has set no limit. Our education does not end with the advantages which this world can give. Through all eternity the chosen of God will be learners. But I would advise restriction in following those methods of education which imperil the soul and defeat the purpose for which time and money are spent. Education is a grand life work. . . . It is a mistake to devote a period of years to one line of book knowledge.