Worse Than Useless Education.
By Sidney Brownsberger
WHILE we allow that there are defects in all systems of education, yet efforts are not considered useless, however imperfect they may be, whose tendency is to arouse the mind to a healthful activity, to give it real practical knowledge, or to imbue it with a power of self-reliance and original thought. But school methods that stupefy the intellectual faculties, that do not give to the pupil the ability to make a practical use of what he has studied, and that accustom the mind to a slavish dependence upon rules and text-books, we may well conclude, are worse than useless in their effect upon the mind. Under ordinary circumstances it is safe to judge methods and systems by the results they produce. During the past ten years I have had occasion to examine young men and women, many of whom had been teaching in our common district schools, to determine their attainments, for the purpose of classification in college. These came from a wide field of over twenty States, and therefore afforded an excellent opportunity to judge of the effects of the average school training. With a few notable exceptions—perhaps one in fifty or seventy-five—I found sad deficiencies in their previous education. While in the case of a few of these it was evident that some good work had been done, with the large majority it was equally evident that their former training had been a detriment to them. They had passed over much ground, but had reaped but little benefit from their study. Many of those who had been through Arithmetic could not work simple examples selected from almost any part of the book without consulting the "rule." Some others could perform the work, but could assign no other reason for the operation than that "the book said so." They were lamentably defective in reasoning powers and in judgment. Some knew how to perform operations, but could not obtain the correct result because of inaccuracy. That these defects were due rather to neglect of training than natural mental deficiencies, was abundantly proved by their subsequent work in the college. Many of them became logical reasoners and accurate accountants. In their former training they had acquired little that was of practical benefit to them. It would have been better had they never received any instruction in some of the branches which they had pursued. It required a greater effort to recover them from their slavish dependence upon text-books, than would have been necessary to give them a thorough knowledge of those branches. One of the first duties of the teacher is to inform the pupil how to study, and to give him a correct idea of what constitutes a perfect lesson. A correct knowledge of these two points furnishes the key note to the pupil's success. With this knowledge well established and adhered to, he cannot fail to have a correct idea of the principles of true education, nor can his work fail to be thorough and complete. I have found so many who seem to regard school work as a pleasant pastime, rather than an important business to be performed with earnestness and vigor. Thousands of our young people leave school with the shiftless habits they acquired there, which in after life prove disastrous to them. Our youth must be trained to prompt business habits in the school-room or they will never possess them at all.