Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 Form L I 
 
 LB 
 1507 

 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 ML 8 1926 
 
 1929 
 
 ISBl 
 
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 OEC 4 1946 
 
 .\f\K} 1 4 1963 
 
 Form L-9-15?(i-8,'24
 
 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 ALSO 
 
 THE IDEAS WUICH INSPIRED IT 
 AND WERE INSPIRED BY IT 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY R. ALLING-ABER 
 
 I n3(p 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 1897 
 
 Get. /doz
 
 Copyright, 1897, by Harper & Brothers. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 L \3 
 
 TO 
 
 PAULINE AGASSIZ SIIAW
 
 PREFACE 
 
 In August of ISSO, during a railway journey, I 
 had some conversation with a stranger on educa- 
 tional topics. Some features of the conversation 
 being reported, they reached one who was suffi- 
 ciently interested in new things to wish to see any 
 reasonable thing tried, and was able to provide 
 opportunity for the trial. 
 
 As without the opportunity I could not have 
 made the experiment, it is with no small degree 
 of gratitude that I ask the reader to give to the 
 maker of the opportunity^ — Mrs. Pauline Agassiz 
 Shaw — due credit for whatever is helpful in the 
 pages of this book. 
 
 Acknowledgment is due also to the teachers 
 wdio aided in the work, since it was their patient, 
 loyal efforts to give the plan a fair and complete 
 trial — each in the parts assigned to her — that 
 largely contributed to the final results. These 
 teachers were Miss Anna B. Sheldon, E'ina 
 MooEE, Dora V. Williams, Clara F. Palmer, 
 and Rachael C. Clarke. 
 
 Whenever, in expressing opinions, I have tran- 
 scended the limits of the experiment or inferences 
 logically deducible from it, I have been made bold
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 to do SO by the fact that a considerable bodj^ of 
 opinion which, prior to the experiment, was the- 
 oretical only, Avas proved practicable or reasonable 
 by the results of the experiment; and, although 
 well aware that to prove one thing does by no 
 means prove another or a different thing, the 
 opinions not proved are so similar in kind and so 
 allied by presumptive reasoning to those that were 
 proved that their inclusion seems justified in a 
 work of this kind. 
 
 Prior to the experiment I had ten years of teach- 
 ing in high and normal schools. From one-half 
 to one third of the time allotted to a subject had 
 been spent in teaching the student how to use his 
 mind, to use books, specimens, etc. ; in other words, 
 how to study. This waste was irritating and pit- 
 iable in view of the short time allowed to subjects, 
 and I could not be reconciled to the notion that 
 an adult mind must so generally lack power to 
 work economically, trust worthily, and discrimi- 
 natingh^ 
 
 It was these conditions, superinduced on a ten- 
 dency previously formed — during a course at the 
 Oswego State l^ormal School — to watch the pupil's 
 mind more than the subject being taught, which 
 forced, at last, a conviction that mindj^e/' se was 
 not to blame, and that bad mental habits and 
 mental life devoid of habit were legitimate prod- 
 ucts of our processes of education. There natu- 
 rally followed some devising of means to lessen the 
 evils, and so grew up a desire to experiment with 
 children. 
 
 At the opening of the experiment in 1881, so far
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 as I know, natural-science studies had not been 
 made an integral ]")art of any primary-school course, 
 and literature and history in such grades were 
 mostly unthought of. Some object-lessons had 
 dealt with natural objects and phenomena, and 
 some stories and poems had been drawn from lit- 
 erature and history; but the uses of these had not 
 been of the sort recommended in this book ; sci- 
 - ence, literature, and history had not been made the 
 chief objects of study in primary nor in the gram- 
 mar grades. Neither are they so now, but long 
 strides in that direction have been taken in many 
 places ; so that all which my experiment was meant 
 to demonstrate as feasible now bids fair to become 
 the common usage in education. 
 
 If such usage were established and everywhere 
 accepted as a matter of course, this book ^vould 
 have no excuse for being ; but because it is not so, 
 and educational thought is still feeling its way 
 towards the same ends and usages for which my 
 experiment was made, this book is offered with the 
 hope that it may do something to increase the im- 
 petus of tlie })i'esent movement.
 
 COIsTTENTS 
 
 Preface . 
 
 Part I. — The Experiment 
 
 I. IN BOSTON . . 
 11. AT ENGLEWOOD. 
 
 Part II. — Ideas Underlying the Experiment 
 
 I. QUALITY OF STUDIES 
 
 II. ORDER OF STUDIES 
 
 III. EFFECTS OF STUDIES 
 
 IV. ENDS TO BE SERVED BY STUDIES .... 
 
 Part III.— Some Detail about the Teaching of 
 Special Subjects 
 I. science . . 
 II. history . . 
 
 TIT. literature . 
 rV. LANGUAGE 
 
 V. mathematics 
 
 VI. industrial training 
 vii. means op expression 
 
 VIII. at home 
 
 Part IV.— Suggestions about the Atmosphere op 
 School-rooms 
 
 I. "ART for art's sake" 
 
 II. method 
 
 III. THE school as ENVIRONMENT 
 
 iv. mirth in the school-room 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 PAGE 
 V 
 
 3 
 
 31 
 
 47 
 55 
 6G 
 
 83 
 
 107 
 123 
 141 
 156 
 167 
 175 
 186 
 199 
 
 231 
 237 
 231 
 240 
 343
 
 AIS" EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 part H 
 
 THE EXPERIMENT
 
 m BOSTON* 
 
 In October, 1881, a primary department was 
 added to a private school in Boston, Mass., and 
 the control of it given to me, for the purpose of 
 making an experiment in education. While it 
 was hoped the primary would sustain the usual 
 relation to the higher departments, the propri- 
 etor guaranteed freedom of action for three 
 years, and generously furnished the means re- 
 quired. Gratitude is due to others also, espe- 
 cially to the teachers who assisted in some part 
 of the work. 
 
 The aim of the experiment was to see if the 
 child may not be introduced at once to the foun- 
 dations of all learning — the natural and physical 
 sciences, mathematics, literature including lan- 
 guage, and history — and at the same time be 
 given a mastery of such elements of reading, 
 writing, and number as usually constitute pri- 
 mary education. 
 
 * Reprinted, by permission, from The Popular Science Month- 
 ly for January, 1892, where it bore the title "An Experiment 
 in Education."
 
 4 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 The experiment began with nine children be- 
 tween the ages of five and a half and seven 3^ears. 
 With scales and measuring rod each child was 
 weighed and measured, while such questions were 
 asked as " Have you been weighed before V^ 
 " When ?" " What did you weigh then ?" " How 
 does your -weight today compare with that?" 
 The shyest children forgot they were at school, 
 and chatted freely while watching and compar- 
 ing results. By questions as to why a present 
 weight or measure was greater than a former 
 one, the statement " Children grow " was ob- 
 tained. Questions about the causes of growth led 
 to the statements " Children eat," " Children 
 sleep," " Children pla3^" A question as to 
 whether anything besides children grows started 
 a talk about animals, in which were given the 
 statements "Animals grow," "Animals eat," 
 " Animals sleep," "Animals play." In like man- 
 ner similar statements about plants were ob- 
 tained. The children were easily led from think- 
 ing of a particular child, animal, or plant to the 
 general conception and the use of the general 
 term. This was the first lesson in natural sci- 
 ence. 
 
 To recall the first general conception reached 
 in the science lesson a child was asked, " Nina, 
 what did you say children doT' "Children 
 grow," she replied. I said, " I will put upon the 
 blackboard something that means what Nina 
 said," and w^rote in Spencerian script, " Children 
 grow." In response to invitation the children 
 eagerly gave the general statements gained in
 
 IN BOSTON 5 
 
 the science lesson. Each was written upon the 
 board and read by the chiki who gave it. They 
 were tokl that what they liad said and I had 
 written were sentences. Each child read his own 
 sentence again. This was the first reading lesson. 
 
 One by one each child stood by me at the board, 
 repeated his sentence, and watched while it was 
 Avritten. He was then taught to hold a crayon, 
 and left to write his sentence beneath the model. 
 "When a first attempt was finished, the sentence 
 was written in a new place, and the child repeated 
 his effort at copying. In this manner each made 
 from one to four efforts, eacli time telling Avhat 
 his copy meant and Avhat he wished his effort to 
 mean. None of this work was erased before the 
 children had gone. This was the first writing 
 lesson. 
 
 The children were led to count their class- 
 mates, their sentences on the blackboards, the 
 tables, chairs, and other objects in the school- 
 room. It was found that all could use accurately 
 the terms one, two, three, and four, and the sym- 
 bols 1, 2, 3, 4 were put on the board as meaning 
 what they said, and their power to connect these 
 symbols with the ideas that they represent was 
 tested in various ways. This was the first num- 
 ber lesson. 
 
 The children were shown a magnetic needle, 
 and led to note the direction of its points when at 
 rest, and the terms north and south were given. 
 This was the first geography lesson. 
 
 After recess each child read his sentence, wrote 
 it once, and then the subject of the science lesson
 
 6 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 "u^as pursued further. After special answers to 
 the question, " What do children eat V the gen- 
 eral statement was obtained, " Children eat plants 
 and animals.'' Similarly, the children were led 
 to give " Animals eat plants and animals." Then 
 came the question, "What do plants eat?" One 
 suggested the sunshine, another the rain, another 
 the air, others the ground or dirt, for which the 
 term soil was given. It was concluded that rain, 
 air, and sunshine help plants to grow, and that 
 some of their food must come from the soil ; and 
 the general statement was given, " Plants get 
 food from the soil." Then I asked, " Where does 
 the soil come from ?" Before wonder had given 
 way to opinion I said, " If you bring luncheons 
 and extra wraps to-morrow, we will go to the 
 country and try to find out where the soil comes 
 from." A poem of Longfellow's was read, and 
 the children were dismissed. 
 
 On the second morning the children came 
 bounding in before nine o'clock, eager to find 
 and read their sentences, which each did without 
 hesitation ; and until nine o'clock they amused 
 themselves finding and reading one another's sen- 
 tences, teaching and challenging in charming 
 style. A few minutes later w^e started on our 
 first field lesson in science. An hour's ride in 
 street-cars brought us to the open country. We 
 went into a small field where a ledge of rock pre- 
 sented a bold front. "Children," I said, "an an- 
 swer to our question is in this field. I wish each 
 of you to find the answer for himself, to speak to 
 no one until he thinks he has found it, and then
 
 IN BOSTON 7 
 
 to whisper it to me." Soberly they turned away, 
 and I seated myself and waited. One child looked 
 up at the sky, another at the ground, one began 
 to pull over some gravel, another to dig in the 
 soil — most to do some aimless thing because they 
 knew not what to do. After a while some began 
 to climl) the ledge and to feel of it. Suddenly 
 one of these darted to me and breathlessly whis- 
 pered, " I think the soil comes from the rock over 
 there." " Well, don't you tell," I whispered back. 
 The sun climbed higher, but I w^aited until the 
 last child brought me that whispered reply. Call- 
 ing them together, I said : " You have all brought 
 me the same answer. AVhy do you think soil 
 comes from this rock?" They turned to the 
 ledge, picked off the loose exterior, and showed 
 me the same in masses at the base. A hammer 
 was produced, with which they picked away the 
 rock until it became too hard for them to break. 
 I then said, " AVe see that a kind of soil comes 
 from this rock, but what kind did we come to 
 learn about ?" " The soil that plants get food 
 from," they replied. '' How do you know that 
 any plants can get food from this soil ?" I asked. 
 Instinctivel}^ they turned to the cliff ; there were 
 grasses and w^eeds growing in the talus at the 
 base, and in crevices all up its front and sides ; 
 these they pulled, and showed me the roots with 
 the rock soil clinging to them. By referring to 
 the work with the hammer and comparing what 
 they picked off with the hard mass underneath, 
 they were led to variously describe the process of 
 passing from rock to soil, and finally the state-
 
 8 A]sr EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 ment was obtained, " Rock decays to make soil." 
 After luncheon and a bit of play, the children 
 were led to speak of rocks and soils seen else- 
 where. Telling the children to shut their eyes 
 and try to picture what I said, I told them that 
 the earth is round like a ball, and is a mass of 
 rock with a little soil on the outside of it; that if 
 a giant could take the earth in his hand, he might 
 peel or scrape off the soil as we take a carpet 
 from the floor, only the soil would seem much 
 thinner than the carpet, because the earth is so 
 big. All had travelled in railway trains, and had 
 such impressions of their swiftness that this illus- 
 tration was used : Suppose we start for the cen- 
 tre of the earth on a train. Travelling day and 
 night, it would take nearly a week to reach the 
 centre, and another week from there to the sur- 
 face again ; and all day while we watched, and 
 all night while we slept, Ave should be rushing 
 through the rock ; and if we came out throuo-h 
 the thickest layer of soil, it would take but a few 
 seconds to pass through it. Then, telling them 
 to open their eyes, I took a peach whose rind was 
 thin and peeled smoothly from the pulp, spoke of 
 the giant as I drew off the rind, and told them 
 that the soil is thinner on the rock ball of earth 
 than that rind on the peach. A few remaining 
 minutes were spent in observing some pine-trees 
 and barberry bushes growing near. 
 
 On the third da}^ after reading the sentences 
 already on the board — of which each child be- 
 sides his own read one or more others — the fol- 
 lowing sentences were easily elicited : " Children
 
 IN" BOSTON 9 
 
 eat plants and animals. Animals eat plants and 
 animals. Plants get food from the soil. The soil 
 comes from the rock. Kock decays to make soil." 
 These were written on the blackboard, read, and 
 copied by the children as on the first day. This 
 was the natural science, reading, and writing of 
 the third day. In number, the children added 
 and subtracted ones by making groups and join- 
 ing and leaving one another. In geography the 
 first lesson was recalled, and the terms east and 
 west associated with the appropriate points. 
 
 On the fourth day, after the children had re- 
 told what they had learned in the science lessons, 
 they were shown a globe, and asked to imagine 
 one as large as the room would hold, and ho^v, to 
 represent the earth, they must think it all rock, 
 with only a thin la3^er of dust to represent the 
 soil. In geography they were shown a map of 
 the school-room, and led to see its relations to the 
 room, and the relative positions of objects in the 
 room and on the map. The next day, on another 
 map, they traced their route to the countr}^, and 
 located the field and ledge of rock where their 
 question was answered. In the fifth day's sci- 
 ence lesson the children were led to speak of rain 
 and w^ind as washing and blowing off the decayed 
 rock and exposing fresh surfaces, and so increas- 
 ing the decay, and to give the following summary : 
 " Without decay of rock there would be no soil ; 
 if no soil, no plants, no animals, no people." In 
 reading they had seventeen sentences, which they 
 read without hesitation and wrote with some re- 
 semblance to the originals. In number, none failed
 
 10 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 to count to ten and to add and subtract ones to 
 ten. Each day a passage of poetry was read at 
 the opening and closing of the session ; little songs 
 were taught, gentle gymnastic exercises were in- 
 troduced between the lessons, and the free-arm 
 movement in making long straight lines was 
 added to their lessons in writing. This work of 
 the first week is given to show how the experi- 
 ment was begun. The classes entering the sec- 
 ond and third 3'ears were started with different 
 sets of lessons, but substantially on the same lines. 
 Throughout the three years reading was taught 
 as in the first week. When there were enough 
 sentences to make a four-page leaflet of print, 
 they were printed and read in that form. The 
 first transfer from script to print was made at the 
 end of six weeks. The printed leaflets were dis- 
 tributed ; the children merely glanced at them ; 
 as 3^et they w^ere of less interest than the objects 
 usually distributed. I said, " Look at the papers; 
 see if there is anything on them that you have 
 seen before." Soon one hand was raised, then 
 another, and another. " Rosamond, what have 
 you found ?" " I think one of my sentences is 
 here, but it don't look just like the one on the 
 board." In less than ten minutes, by comparison 
 of script and print, they read the whole leaflet, 
 each pointing out " my sentences." After a few 
 readings the children took the leaflets home, the 
 sentences were erased from the boards, and the 
 same process repeated with the new matter that 
 was accumulating. The reader may think there 
 was great waste of time and effort, since the new
 
 IN BOSTON 11 
 
 vocabulary and the written and printed symbols 
 must have been forgotten almost as soon as 
 learned. I expected the children to forget much, 
 and was surprised to find that they did uot. One 
 morning in JMarch a visitor who was looking over 
 the accumulated leaflets asked to have them read. 
 I told her they had been read when first pi-inted 
 only ; but she urged the test, so I distributed 
 them as they happened to come. The first leaf- 
 let fell to the youngest girl, and I think I was 
 more amazed than our visitor when she read it 
 without faltering. The visitor asked her, " What 
 does palmatel}^- veined mean, where 3'ou read 'The 
 leaf of the cotton-plant is palmately-veined'?" 
 The child replied, " I cau show what it means bet- 
 ter than I can tell it." " Show us, then, Marjorie," 
 I said. The child drew on the board a fairly cor- 
 rect outline of a cotton-plant leaf, inserted its pal- 
 mate veining, and turning to the visitor pointed 
 to that veining. All the leaflets were read with- 
 out help, nothing was forgotten, neither ideas nor 
 words, as the visitor assured herself by questions. 
 No effort was made to use a special vocabulary, 
 to repeat words, to avoid scientific terms; there 
 was no drill in phonics or spelling ; no attention 
 was given to isolated words as words — a thought 
 was the unit and basis of expression. In the 
 science lessons the minds of the children were in- 
 tent on the getting of ideas and the expression of 
 them. Direction to look or think again usually 
 sufficed to change vague, wordy expressions into 
 clear, terse ones by giving the child clear and ac- 
 curate conceptions. When the child's own vo-
 
 12 AN EXPEIUMENT IN" EDUCATION 
 
 cabulary was exhausted, he was promptly helped 
 to words by classmates or teacher, the effort being 
 to use tlie speech of cultiv^ated people. 
 
 At first the reading- could by no means keep 
 pace with the science lessons : from the mass of 
 expressions obtained some were selected for the 
 reading and writing matter. AVith increase of 
 power to remember forms and combinations of 
 letters and words, the number of sentences was 
 increased, until what was gained in the science 
 lessons was reproduced in the reading lessons. 
 This increase was rapid. From the first field les- 
 son two sentences — eleven words — only could be 
 taken, while a field lesson near the close of the 
 second year yielded ninety-seven sentences — over 
 eleven hundred Avords. In the former the sen- 
 tences were written on the board and read every 
 day for five weeks ; in the latter they were taken 
 down in pencil by the teacher as the children gave 
 them, arranged according to topics, printed, and 
 presented in the printed form for the first read- 
 ing. There was little hesitation in that reading, 
 so vivid were the impressions from such a day 
 out-of-doors. 
 
 During the first year a little reading matter 
 was drawn from lessons in literature and history. 
 This was gradually increased during the second 
 and third ^'^ears. Still the sentences for reading 
 were taken chiefly from the science lessons, be- 
 cause there could be more certainty of the child's 
 having accurate and well-defined ideas as the 
 basis of each expression, and the sentences could 
 be more completely his own. In March of the
 
 IN" BOSTON 13 
 
 first year reading-books were introduced. At the 
 first trial they took Swinton's Ea^ij Steps for Lit- 
 tle Feet, and in twelve minutes read a page-and- 
 a-half stor3\ Of their own accord they sought 
 and independently obtained from tlie context the 
 meaning of all but two of tlie unfamiliar words, 
 and gave to express the meanings either the exact 
 words of the book or synonymous ones, for which 
 those of the book were substituted. After this 
 they read from books wlienever such reading 
 could be related to their otlier work — not much 
 otherwise. While the production by the children 
 of the bulk of their reading matter was a promi- 
 nent feature, this was not the object of the ex- 
 periment, but merely an adjunct to the chief end 
 in view. Nor were the science topics selected 
 with reference to the reading matter, but on their 
 own merits, mutual relations, and the capacities 
 of the children. 
 
 As soon as a child's writing on the blackboard 
 could be read by his classmates — copy being erased 
 — he began to write at his desk with pencil on 
 unruled paper, the copy being still written on the 
 board. When all had reached this stage, concert 
 arm and finger movements were taught. During 
 the second and third years the forms of the let- 
 ters and combining strokes were analyzed, and 
 each drawn on a large scale to accurate measure- 
 ments. 
 
 The children saw no misspelled words, and were 
 not asked to spell or write isolated words. Dur- 
 ing the first and second years the}^ usually had a 
 copy from which they wrote. In the third year
 
 14 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 they wrote original exercises. They \Yere told to 
 ask, when not sure how to write a word. The 
 word was written on the board : no effort was 
 made to have them think how a word should 
 look, no matter how many times they had seen it 
 written and printed. 
 
 AVork in the natural and physical sciences, start- 
 ing with broad conceptions, was carried forward 
 along various lines, care being taken to show rela- 
 tions, and to lead the children to regard them- 
 selves as a part of nature. In mineralogy and 
 geology, the paving, building, and ornamental 
 stones most used in Boston ; the ores of the prin- 
 cipal metals, and their products ; graphite and 
 the making of pencils ; gypsum and halite, were 
 studied, eacli child getting his knowledge from 
 specimens before him. Each was furnished with 
 a testing outfit, including what a field geologist 
 commonly carries, except the blowpipe and re- 
 agents to use with it ; and these children from six 
 to ten soon learned to use the outfit with as 
 much skill as any adults whom I have taught. 
 
 In physics, lessons were given on extension and 
 gravity ; on the solid, liquid, and gaseous states 
 of matter ; on heat as the force producing expan- 
 sion and contraction ; on the evaporation, conden- 
 sation, and freezing of water, with results in dew, 
 clouds, rain, snow, and the disintegration of rocks; 
 on movements of air as agents producing wind 
 and storms ; on the thermometer ; on magnets, 
 and two of their uses. In chemistry, lessons were 
 given on air and its composition ; on combustion 
 and its products ; on iron rust as to formation,
 
 IN BOSTON , 15 
 
 and effects on iron ; on CO2 as an ingredient of 
 calcite, and a product of breathing; on acids as 
 tests for lime rocks containing- COgi on tlie dis- 
 tinction between physical and chemical changes. 
 In astronomy, a few lessons were given on the re- 
 lations of sun and earth as causing day and night 
 and the seasons. 
 
 Botany was pursued in the fall and spring 
 months. In the spring the cliildren planted a 
 window garden, from which they drew ]:)lants for 
 the study of germination and growth. From gar- 
 den and wild plants they studied buds and their 
 developments, and the forms, parts, and uses of 
 some leaves, flowers, and fruits. A series of les- 
 sons on plants yielding textile fabrics and the 
 manufactures from them was projected ; but, ow- 
 ing to the difficulty of getting plants in proper 
 condition, the onl}^ portion given was that on the 
 cotton plants. Fine specimens of these were re- 
 ceived from Georgia, Avhich kept fresh nearly two 
 ^veeks, and showed all stages, from flower bud to 
 open boll of cotton fibre. No work in zoology 
 was done, save the giving of a few lessons on silk- 
 worms and sheep, as yielding silk and wool. In 
 physiology, lessons were given on the general 
 parts of the body ; on the joints, skin, hair, nails, 
 and teeth ; on the chest, and the process of breath- 
 ing and its products ; on food and digestion — all 
 with reference to the care of the body, keeping 
 the lungs from disease, and the true object of tak- 
 ing food. Geography was connected with science, 
 history, and literature — the original habitat and 
 migrations of rocks and plants, and the location
 
 16 AN EXPEEIMENT IK EDUCATION" 
 
 of events leading to imaginary journej^s. The 
 forms of water and land, and a demonstration of 
 the shape of the earth by the positions and ap- 
 pearances of vessels at sea, were gained in lessons 
 to the country and the sea-shore. Boston and its 
 surrounding townships were studied in connection 
 with lessons in local history. Maps, globes, com- 
 pass, and modelling clay were used throughout 
 the course. 
 
 While the work in mathematics was not so 
 fully developed on new lines as in other subjects, 
 some work done in the first j^ear may be of in- 
 terest to the reader. In a field lesson of the sec- 
 ond week, some distinguishing features of the 
 apple, beech, ])itch and white pine trees were 
 noted and branches obtained. These branches 
 furnished material for many days' number les- 
 sons. Apple leaves with their two stipules, pitch- 
 pine sheaths with their three needles, beechnut 
 exocarps with their four sections, and white-pine 
 sheaths with their five needles were used by the 
 children in constructing concrete number tables, 
 which — picking up the objects — they recited as 
 follows : " In one sheath of white pine are five 
 needles ; in two sheaths of white pine are two 
 times five needles," etc. When the concrete table 
 was familiar, the same number relations were 
 written on the blackboard with figures and svm- 
 bols. In this manner the children learned the 
 four classes of tables as far as sixes. Meanwhile 
 the study of geometrical forms and the plant 
 lessons gave illustration and review. In Janu- 
 ary work with money was begun, and continued
 
 IN BOSTON 17 
 
 through the remainder of the year ; but other op- 
 portunities to give practice in number were util- 
 ized — as, the six faces of the halite crystal, the 
 six stamens of the tulip, etc. To get unworn coins 
 we sent to the Philadelphia Mint. In two lessons 
 the children learned the names and values of one 
 copper, two nickel, four silver, and six gold pieces; 
 in the third, by placing piles of coin side by side, 
 they constructed and learned the table : 
 
 Two silver half dollars equal one gold or silver 
 dollar. 
 
 Four silver quarter dollars equal one gold or 
 silver dollar. 
 
 Ten silver dimes equal one gold or silver dollar. 
 
 Twenty nickel pieces equal one gold or silver 
 dollar. 
 
 One hundred copper pennies equal one gold or 
 silver dollar. 
 
 On the following day a new concrete table was 
 prepared, and the dollar sign, figures, symbols, 
 and decimal point were substituted for the words 
 in the written work. The relative values to one 
 another of the lower denominations were taught, 
 and tables constructed and \vritten. The differ- 
 ent denominations of paper money up to the fifty- 
 dollar bill were added to the coins ; and this 
 money — about one hundred and fifty dollars — 
 was used in business transactions, which gave re- 
 view of the number relations alreadj^ learned, and 
 taught those necessary to the construction and 
 comprehension of the remaining tables. At the 
 end of eight months the children could use and 
 write numbers to one lumdred and fifty, and the
 
 18 AN EXPERIMENT IN" EDUCATION 
 
 signs +, — , X , -^, =, ^, and • (decimal point); and 
 understood the value of position in notation to 
 three places to the left and two to the right of 
 a decimal point. Also, in the oral Avork with 
 money, they readily used the fractions one half, 
 one fourth, one tenth, one twentieth, and one hun- 
 dredth ; and most of them could write from mem- 
 ory the usual tables from one to twelve. In this 
 first year no effort was made to do a defined kind 
 or amount of work ; the children sjient from 
 twenty to thirty minutes each day at some math- 
 ematical work, but progress and variety dejDended 
 on their interest and capacities, A visitor who 
 had spent forty years in teaching sat through 
 one of these primary sessions. He expressed pleas- 
 ure and surprise at the work of the children 
 in science, reading, and other branches, but was 
 incredulous, at first, about the work in number 
 with the money at their desks, and the written 
 work in figures and signs at the blackboards. 
 He went around among the children, tested them, 
 and watched to see if there were not some trick 
 of parrot -like performance. Finally, convinced 
 of the genuine comprehension of what they were 
 doing by these children of six and seven, he said : 
 "I should not have believed it on the statement 
 of any man or woman whom I have known ; but 
 I have seen it with my own eyes." 
 
 It is a matter of regret to me that growing 
 burdens of care forbade the development of the 
 number work during the second and third years 
 on the lines begun in the first year. To spend 
 from a half-hour to an hour a day for ten years
 
 m BOSTON 19 
 
 at mathematics, with no better results than the 
 average boy or girl of sixteen can show, looks 
 like a great waste of time and energy. May not 
 the cause be twofold : First, that the beginning 
 work is made silly by its simplicity, and insipid 
 by being related to nothing interesting; second, 
 that processes like the subtraction of large niiiii- 
 bers and long division are pressed upon the child 
 before his powers are adequate to their compre- 
 hension? 
 
 The last fifteen minutes of each day were de- 
 voted to literature. Selections with biography 
 and anecdote constituted the materials for these 
 lessons. Advantage Avas taken of birthdays, an- 
 niversaries, and natural phenomena. Storms fur- 
 nished accompaniments to Lowell's The First 
 Snow-fall, portions of Whittier's Snow-hound, 
 Longfellow's Rainy Day, Brj^ant's Bain, Shel- 
 ley's Cloud, etc. Flowers brought by the children 
 were related to readings from Burns, AVords worth, 
 Emerson, Lowell, Bryant, Whittier, and Long- 
 fellow. Emerson's Rliodora was committed to 
 memory and recited, a cluster of the purple blos- 
 soms being in sight. Selections were made with 
 primary reference to their value. Biography was 
 usuall}^ employed to heighten interest in litera- 
 ture ; for its own sake when embodying noble 
 sentiments — as Scott's struggle against debt, Sid- 
 ney's gift of water to the soldier. By such tales 
 of heroic effort and action it was hoped to develop 
 courage, honor, and devotion to duty. 
 
 Aside from clear language in narration, accom- 
 panied by pictures of persons and })laces, and such
 
 30 AN" EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION" 
 
 reading as expresses the rhythm and meaning, no 
 effort was made to have biography or selection 
 understood. Many children have such an appre- 
 ciation of melody that a fine poem "well read will 
 hold their attention. Just before Christmas, in 
 our first year, I read a portion of Milton's Hymn 
 on the Nativity, and said, " I hope you will some 
 day read the whole, and like it." " Please read it 
 all now," said several voices. So it Avas all read, 
 and the children listened intently. Milton's pict- 
 ure was put away, and nothing said of him for a 
 year. When his picture was again put on the 
 easel, a hand was at once raised. " What is it, 
 Tracy ?" " I know who that is." " Who ?" " Mr. 
 John Milton." "AVhat do vou remember about 
 him?" "Pie gave his eyes for liberty" — an ex- 
 pression which, so far as my knowledge of the 
 child went, he had not heard from any one, but 
 Avas his own terse summing up of the narrative 
 he had heard a year before, when barely six years 
 old. Most children have such an appreciation of 
 justice and heroism thatthe}^ will even walk more 
 erectly after listening to a tale involving these 
 qualities. I shall not forget how gravely and 
 proudly fifty children withdrew from the school- 
 room after listening to the story of Sidney's death. 
 An unspoiled child has usuall}^ a vivid imagina- 
 tion; and it is as pernicious to meddle with the 
 formation of his mental pictures in literature, as 
 in science lessons to keep telling him what he can 
 get from his specimens. The child's mind should 
 be brought into direct contact with the realities 
 in history and literature, and left to work at
 
 IN BOSTON 21 
 
 them with the least possible interference and 
 guidance. If a child attempted to repeat a quo- 
 tation or fact, accuracy was required, but he was 
 not uro-ed to remember. Much in the literature 
 lessons was above the children's comprehension ; 
 but it was thought well for each child to feel a 
 breath from the mountains above and beyond — 
 a breath whose coolness and fragrance he might 
 feel without analysis or comprehension of its qual- 
 ities. To have felt was enough. So we paid no 
 attention to ordinary poems and tales for little 
 children, but introduced the children at once to 
 Longfellow and Emerson, "Wordsworth and Scott, 
 Milton and Shakespeare. 
 
 There was regular study of history for each 
 year. Copies of early and late maps of Boston 
 were given to each child ; the older one w^as drawn 
 on transparent paper, so as to be laid over the 
 later one and show directly the changes and ex- 
 tensions into river and harbor. Colored crayon 
 maps and pictures were used to illustrate the his- 
 torical narrative. These narratives were drawn 
 mostl}^ from local events — as the settlement of 
 Boston, with certain old Boston worthies as cen- 
 tres about whom incidents were grouped; the 
 beginning of the Kevolutionary War, with a visit 
 to the Washington elm at Cambridge ; some in-' 
 cidents of slavery and the Civil War connected 
 with Garrison. Extracts from diaries, letters, 
 etc., were printed on leaflets and read by the 
 children, who drew their own inferences. These 
 readings from original sources were mostly con- 
 fined to the third and fourth classes, as the Ian-
 
 22 AK EXPEEIMENT IN EDUCATION" 
 
 giiage used was too difficult for children of the 
 first two years. Sometimes gratifying volunteer 
 work Avas done ; as an instance, a boy of eight 
 learned the whole of Paul Eevere's Ride, and 
 recited it, standing at the blackboard and tracing 
 on a colored map of Boston and its surrounding 
 townships the route taken by the rider. This 
 work in history was done by Miss Nina Moore — 
 Mrs. F. B. Tiffany — who developed it with such 
 skill as to fascinate the children and to lead to 
 her publications on these topics. (See articles in 
 CommonScliool Education for September, Octo- 
 ber, November, and December, 18SS ; and the 
 books Pilgrims and Puritans and From Colony 
 to Commonwealth.) 
 
 The industrial part of the experiment was start- 
 ed at the beginning of the third year. Each child 
 was provided with a bench and ten tools — ruler, 
 try -square, scratch-awl, saw, vise, plane, chisel, 
 brad-awl, hammer, and nail-set. The children of 
 the two 3^ounger classes made a box with the 
 cover hinged on with strips of leather; those of 
 the two older, a case with shelves fitting into 
 grooves. The work was divided into steps ; each 
 was mastered before the next was tried. All the 
 children began with the use of the ruler in meas- 
 urements to an eighth of an inch. The try-square 
 came next. As soon as a true line was drawn, 
 the saw was used to divide the board. After the 
 first day no two children were exactly together, 
 each one's position depending on his own results. 
 The third step — the cross-cut saw- — detained most 
 of the children several weeks ; a true cut with its
 
 IN BOSTON 33 
 
 face at right angles to each face of the board was 
 required. This the children tested for themselves. 
 Often during the first work with saws a child 
 would ask, " Will that do?" "Test it," was the 
 reply, lleluctantly the child applied the test, 
 and renewed his courage as best he could. After 
 a time the desire to use a new tool and to get on 
 as some other child did gave way to desire for 
 perfection. This brings me to the chief end of 
 the work — not skill in handicraft or any finished 
 products, but to put before the children concrete 
 examples of the true and the false, in such a man- 
 ner that the child himself should judge his own 
 work by some unvarying standard. As an in- 
 stance of the moral effects: One of the older 
 boj's was the first to finish the shelves and both 
 sides of his case, all but one groove. The excite- 
 ment of this eminence dizzied him, and the groove 
 was a failure — being too wide, it left an ugly crack 
 above the shelf. ISTo one was more sensitive to 
 that ugliness than he ; but the struggle between 
 his desire for perfection and the fancied humilia- 
 tion of making another side and letting some oth- 
 er child be the first to complete a case went on 
 for some time. Finall}'', Avith a manly effort to 
 keep his eyes from overflowing, he laid the faulty 
 side among the failures and began again. To 
 give up the work of many days, and the prospect 
 of coming out ahead, was to win a great battle, 
 not for himself alone, but for his comrades. For 
 use, the rejected side was almost as good as per- 
 fection itself ; to ideas of truth and beauty the 
 boy's mind yielded obedience. Such 3'ielding of
 
 24 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 lower motives to higher ones, such discipline of 
 patience and judgment as these lessons gave, were 
 not reached in any other line of work. 
 
 Most public schools for primary children have 
 two sessions a day for ten months ; in the experi- 
 ment tliere was but one session a day for eight 
 months. In the former, five hours or more a 
 week are spent in reading alone; in the latter, 
 less than five hours a week were given to the sci- 
 ence lessons and to the reading drawn from them. 
 The saving of time in other studies was almost 
 equally great; and besides the large bod}^ of su- 
 perior knowledge opened to the children, the ordi- 
 nary proficiency in all subjects commonly taught 
 in primary schools was generally reached. This 
 demonstrates the fallacy of the current opinion 
 that children cannot be taught science, history, 
 and literature, and at the same time master the 
 usual three R's allotted to them. 
 
 But the experiment aimed to introduce the child 
 to the world of real learning, with the idea that 
 such introduction would produce certain effects 
 on his mind ; and it is by that aim and those 
 effects that it should be judged. As to the for- 
 mer, the reader has but to examine the body of 
 knowledge outlined, and judge whether it is wor- 
 thy to be called real learning and the foundation 
 of knowledge. 
 
 Among the effects, perhaps the chief place 
 should be assigned to the general attitude tow- 
 ards study. Compare two children trained in the 
 two ways. On entering school both are equally
 
 IN BOSTON 25 
 
 eager and happy. One is kept for the most part 
 away from learning, and laboriously taught to 
 hold the empty wrappers of it ; the other is 
 taken at once into the shrine, where he soon be- 
 comes at home ; and, while he gets wrappers as 
 rapidly as the child outside, every one is full and 
 overflowing. The former grows tired of tasteless 
 drudgery and longs to have school days over; in 
 the latter, nearness to the central fires kindles 
 the sacred flame, and its shining through the 
 fleshly covering makes his face a contrast to that 
 of the other child. One finds the school-room a 
 prison ; the other an enchanted land where all is 
 " truly true." If both leave school during the 
 first six years — as so many do — the former is 
 likely to have vague notions about a large field 
 of study, and but little interest in its contents or 
 faith in their value ; while the latter will be as 
 likely to preserve sympathy with learning, and 
 desire to advance it in himself and others. 
 Among other effects may be mentioned : 
 1. The children learned to ask serious questions. 
 In a lesson on clouds and rain, Emma asked, 
 " Why is the rain not salt, if most of the cloud 
 vapor comes from the ocean ?" She was told to 
 dissolve a certain amount of salt, to evaporate 
 the solution over a fire, and note results. On 
 the following day she reported that the same 
 amount of salt was left after evaporation as she 
 had first used, and gave as her conclusion that 
 ocean-water in evaporating leaves all its salt be- 
 hind ; and the youngest boy added, " Then only 
 pure water can float up into the blue sky." 
 
 A
 
 26 AK EXPERIMENT IX EDUCATION 
 
 2. They learned that opinion without knowl- 
 edge is folly. In planting a window garden, 
 they put seeds in pots of earth ; I, between Avet 
 blotting-papers. Their decided opinion was that 
 ray seeds would not grow. A Aveek later they 
 were eager to give this sentence, " The seeds in 
 Miss Alling's garden did grow." 
 
 3. They became fond of mental activity. They 
 were not marked, formally examined, hurried, 
 nor required to do a certain amount in a definite 
 time. This freedom and leisure transformed 
 their first laborious, timid thinking into a delight, 
 which they entered upon as spontaneously and 
 fearlessly as upon their outdoor phj^sical games. 
 
 4. Their habits of thinking improved. At first 
 they showed but a superficial interest in the ob- 
 jects studied, and much questioning was needed 
 to direct and hold their attention : later, thev 
 voluntarily seized upon the marked features of 
 objects and phenomena, and pursued them until 
 practically exhausted. We did not flit hither 
 and thither, giving the children new objects of 
 
 study each day, but kept them at work upon one 
 so long as it could yield anything within their 
 comprehension. As an instance, successive les- 
 sons on the cotton plant were given for three 
 weeks. 
 
 5. Their perceptions became almost unerring. 
 At the Museum of the Boston Society of Natural 
 History, one day, Katherine exclaimed, as we 
 rapidly ])assed a case of minerals, "■ There's some 
 graphite." Turning and seeing whitish speci- 
 mens, I said, " Oh no ; have you forgotten how
 
 IK BOSTON 27 
 
 graphite looks?" The child insisted, caiid we 
 turned back to the case. Sure enough, on one 
 shelf the white rocks contained grains and threads 
 of graphite, which fact the child had gatliered in 
 one rapid glance. 
 
 6. Memory became active and generally true. 
 It was aimed to pursue all things in order, with 
 regard to natural relations and associations ; be- 
 yond this the cultivation of memory was committed 
 to the qualities of the ideas presented. The re- 
 sult seemed to prove that memory is retentive in 
 proportion to the activity and concentration of 
 the whole consciousness, and that this is propor- 
 tioned to the interest of the subject-matter. 
 
 Y. Imagination was vivid and healthy, produc- 
 ing clear reproduction, apt illustration, sometimes 
 witty caricature, and occasionally thought and 
 expression delicate and lovely enough to be wor- 
 thy the envy of grown-up literati. 
 
 8. There was a beginning made in the habits 
 of independent examination of any matter, of 
 honestl}^ expressing the results of such examina- 
 tion, and stoutly maintaining one's own ideas 
 until convinced of error, and then of readiness to 
 adopt and defend the new, how^ever opposed to 
 the old. These habits lead to mental rectitude, 
 robustness, and magnanimity, which qualities con- 
 fer the power of discriminating values : for pride 
 of opinion gives blindness ; the love of truth for 
 its own sake, sight. 
 
 9. In waiting for Nature to answer questions — 
 sometimes they waited three wrecks or more — 
 and in continual contact with her regularity and
 
 28 AN" EXPERIMENT IK EDUCATION 
 
 dependence on conditions, they gained their first 
 dim conceptions of what hiw means, and of the 
 values of patience and self-control, and of real- 
 ities as opposed to shams. Finding in Nature 
 mysteries which the wisest have not explained, a 
 half -conscious reverence stole upon thera — the 
 beginnings of true spiritual growth. 
 
 At first the experiment called forth much criti- 
 cism. At home the children told about rocks and 
 plants, and related stories from history and liter- 
 ature, but said little about reading and writing. 
 Parents came to see, and universally condemned 
 the method. One mother said, " My daughter 
 will study geology and literature when the proper 
 age comes ; I wish her now to learn reading and 
 wa^iting, and have simple lessons in arithmetic 
 and geography." But she yielded to her child's 
 entreaties, and allowed her to be experimented 
 upon. Later, this mother visited the department 
 to express her wonder and satisfaction at her 
 daughter's progress in reading, writing, and num- 
 ber. A father, after visiting the department, 
 said, " My boy isn't learning anything ; he's hav- 
 ing a twaddle of experiments." Three months 
 afterwards he said, " Mv bov's whole attitude of 
 mind is changed ; he loolvs at the world with new 
 e\"es, and is also progressing rapidly in the studies 
 common to children of his age." 
 
 A criticism frequently met w^as that the vocab- 
 ulary was too difficult, and, being largely scientific 
 and technical, could not fit children to read chil- 
 dren's books. Experience proved the contrary. 
 Heading for ideas, the children were not deterred
 
 IN BOSTON 29 
 
 by a few unfamiliar words. In reading stories in 
 books, they could usually get the principal ideas; 
 and to infer the meaning of the unknown forms 
 had much novelty and interest. It was also ob- 
 jected that the ideas themselves were too diilicult, 
 and could not possibl}'^ be comprehended by the 
 children. In a langnage lesson of the second 
 year, Frank gave the sentence, " The soil is thin." 
 A visitor asked, "Did you ever see a well dugf 
 "Oh yes; at my grandfather's, last summer." 
 "Was the soil tliere thick or thinf' "Thick." 
 "How thick?" Looking from floor to ceiling, 
 " Thicker than from this floor to the ceiling." 
 " Then what do you mean by saying that the soil 
 is thin'^" was asked, in a mocking, disconcerting- 
 tone. Frank dropped his eyes in thought ; after 
 a moment he said, " I mean it is thin when you 
 think of all the way down to the centre of the 
 earthy This boy entered before he was six years 
 old, and was at this time barely seven. 
 
 Teachers who visited the department said, 
 "You have a comparatively small number of 
 children from cultivated families ; even similar 
 results could not be obtained in the large, miscel- 
 laneous public-school classes." This could be met 
 then by the statement only that mind has every- 
 where the same elemental possibilities, and must 
 yield similar results for the same influences, al- 
 though the time required might be much length- 
 ened. This criticism has now been answered in 
 part by the results of a trial made in the public 
 schools at Englewood, 111., an account of which 
 is given below.
 
 30 AN EXPERIMEKT IIST EDUCATION 
 
 The few scientists who knew of the experiment 
 looked on with favor. " It is the ideal Avay," 
 said one: "A realization of my own dreams," 
 said another. An eminent leader in educational 
 affairs in this country objected that the great ma- 
 jority of our primary -school teachers could not 
 follow in the same line because lacking the requi- 
 site bod}^ of knowledge. When courses of study 
 for lower scho«^xS are made out by eminent spe- 
 cialists with a view to putting into the hands of 
 children the beginnings of their own lines of 
 research, and when school authorities provide 
 courses of lectures and other means of furnishino- 
 to teachers the necessary body of knowledge, I 
 think teachers will, as a whole, be quick to re- 
 spond to the demand and the opportunity — as a 
 release from the belittling effects of their present 
 monotonous drudgery with trivial ideas, if for no 
 higher motive. 
 
 In conclusion, the reader may wish to ask, 
 "Was the experiment, after all, a success?" I 
 answer, " As a demonstration of the possibility 
 and value of introducing little children to real 
 learning, yes ; as a realization of my ideals, no." 
 I was conscious that there was much that was 
 superficial in the work, and that in striving to 
 avoid shadows and to grasp the real substance of 
 education I often grasped but another and a finer 
 sort of shadow. May some other teacher, having 
 greater fitness for the work and a longer opportu- 
 nity for effort, reach the goal for which I started ! 
 The instruction such a one could give about prima- 
 ry education is needed all over our beloved land.
 
 II 
 
 AT ENGLEAVOOD* 
 
 Englewood, 111., is now a portion of the city 
 of Chicago ; but formerly it was a suburban town 
 "with an independent school s^^stem. In October, 
 18S6, Miss Frances MacChesney, a primary teach- 
 er in the Lewis School, obtained permission from 
 her principal, Miss Katherine Starr Kellogg, and 
 her superintendent, Mr. Orville T. Bright, to try 
 some work on the lines wrought out in the exper- 
 iment made at Boston. Her request was granted, 
 on condition that she would complete the grade 
 work in the required time. 
 
 At first nothing was attempted beyond the giv- 
 ing of simple science lessons as bases for reading 
 lessons. In these the children were furnished 
 with specimens, and led through their own ob- 
 servations to the acquisition of facts and ideas, 
 which the children expressed ; these expressions 
 put upon the blackboards constituted the reading 
 matter, and were written in script or print on 
 slips of paper for further use. At this time Miss 
 MacChesney herself thought of the work mainly 
 
 * Reprinted, by permission, from The Popular Science 
 MontMy for Februury, J 892, where it bears tlie title "Aa 
 Experiment in Education."
 
 33 AK EXPERIMENT IK EDUCATION 
 
 as a more interesting way of teaching reading; 
 and, althongh the basal lessons were usually drawn 
 from Nature, little attention was paid to the qual- 
 ity and value of the ideas tlius used. Later, the 
 fundamental idea of the Boston experiment was 
 taken up, and the chief attention directed to the 
 selection of topics and materials for real science 
 lessons. 
 
 In this work no effort was made to introduce 
 the vocabulary of the reader assigned to the 
 grade. In February that reader — Applctoni 
 First — was given to the children for the first 
 time. To quote Miss MacChesney's own words : 
 "The interest which had been awakened by the 
 reading of their own thoughts was transferred to 
 the books, and the grade work was completed 
 before the required time — thus more than fulfill- 
 ing the condition on Avhich the trial was allowed 
 to be made." 
 
 The work in reading went on in this manner 
 during a second year, all other grade work being 
 done in the old ways. During the third year 
 systematic lessons on minerals and plants were 
 given and work in literature begun, and the chil- 
 dren's sentences w^ere written out on a tj^pe writer. 
 In a letter written at the close of this year, Miss 
 MacChesney says : " Out of a room of forty chil- 
 dren, divided equally into two classes, one class 
 finished the first year's work in eight months ; 
 the other class, with the exception of two chil- 
 dren, completed the grade work at the end of the 
 year, besides doing all the extra Avork ; and the 
 whole was accomplished with ease and happiness
 
 AT EKGLEWOOD 33 
 
 on the part of both pupils and teacher." Dur- 
 ing the first year of trial, another teacher in the 
 Lewis School, IVIiss Quackenbush, became inter- 
 ested in Miss MacChesney's work, and began a 
 similar attempt with her own class. In a short 
 time she j^roduced excellent results. 
 
 From the lirst, Mr. Bright carefully watched 
 the progress of the trial, and willingly and pa- 
 tiently waited its results. When convinced of 
 the superiority of the principles involved and of 
 the results obtained, he earnestly championed the 
 cause, and has continued to be its enthusiastic 
 supporter. 
 
 During the second year, teachers' meetings 
 ■were called, discussions aroused, illustrative les- 
 sons given, courses of lectures for the teachers 
 projected, and other teachers joined in the work. 
 A teacher wrote me at the time: "I never saw 
 teachers so ready and eager to 'speak in meet- 
 ing' ; . . . I never saw them so thoroughly awake." 
 Finally the principals and teachers of the Engle- 
 wood schools generally waked up to the fact that 
 something new and interesting was going on in 
 their midst ; the idea spread, and many visitors 
 came from adjoining towns.* 
 
 * In the fall of 1888 IMiss MacChesney gave a series of les- 
 sons on grasshoppers and heetles. These the children cauglit 
 for themselves, hnt she herself killed and preserved them in 
 alcohol. The following summer, while teaching at an insti- 
 tute, she was attacked quite fiercely for this part of her work, 
 on the plea that it was inculcating cruelty. I should like to 
 ask all who bring this plea whether they eschew roast beef 
 for dinner. Shall a million beasts of a high grade of intelli- 
 gence and finely wrought nervous systems daily witness the
 
 34 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 At the beginning of the fourth 3^ear a printing- 
 press was ])rovided ; but each teacher furnished 
 her own type, set it, and did the printing for her 
 class. During this year, after four months of 
 the new work, one division of Miss MacChesney's 
 class " completed the grade work in reading in 
 three months, a thing never before done at En- 
 glewood." Concerning this year Miss MacChes- 
 ney says further: "From the experience which 
 this year has brought me, I am thoroughly con- 
 vinced that, could the average child have from 
 the first the results of his own observations put 
 in printed form, and enough of phonics to enable 
 him to find out new words, the reader could be 
 withheld until the latter part of the year, when 
 it would be read with relish, and as a book ought 
 to be read. . . . The power gained by the children 
 to observe closel}'', to tell clearly and concisely 
 what they have observed, and the power of log- 
 ical, connected thinking is not confined to their 
 
 scenes in ten tliousand slaughter-houses, ami themselves be 
 the victims of the loathsome iudiffereuce to cruelty there prac- 
 tised — shall this exist and pass uncondemned, because its re- 
 sults are pleasant to the appetite of the bod}', and the cry of 
 cruelty be raised when a few hundred grasshoppers are killed 
 for purposes of study ? Is the body of more value than the 
 mind, and nourishment more desirable than knowledge ? So 
 long as slaughter-houses exist, so long will it seem desirable 
 to teach children reverence for animal life by minute personal 
 study of the wonder and beauty of organ and function in 
 the lower forms. When slaughter-houses liave been done away 
 with forever, the human mind will fliud a better way to teach 
 zoology. Let the cry of cruelty go forth, but not from those 
 whose own flesh is built up from the flesh of their brute 
 brethren.
 
 AT ENGLEWOOD 35 
 
 science and reading, but is felt in all the work of 
 
 the school-i'oom. ... In looking back over the 
 time since we began working out this theory, I 
 see a constant increase in the power of the classes 
 that have been led along this path." 
 
 In regard to the influence of this work upon 
 herself. Miss MacChesney, during the third year, 
 wrote me : " At night I can hardly wait the morn- 
 ing, so eager am I to begin another day, and see 
 how the children will go through the woi-k 
 planned for that day." Here she reaches the 
 true work of the teacher — to watch and direct 
 the growth of the children's minds. From letters 
 received from Miss MacChesney during 1889-90 
 I cull the following : " I started out to try what 
 seemed a theory of doubtful utility to public- 
 school children, and found all my work and my 
 life enlarged and beautified, ... I am certainly 
 happier than I have ever before been in teaching, 
 and I know I am doing more for the children 
 intrusted to my care. . . . Mr. Bright, in order 
 to speak with assurance about these matters, 
 visited fifteen city teachers ; and in no case did 
 he find the attention of teachers or children di- 
 rected to anything but the symbol, and in no 
 case were the children further advanced than 
 ours where thought and symbol go hand in hand. 
 ... I did not meet with anv opposition in the 
 work. The only requirement that I must meet 
 was ' the grade work accomplished in the re- 
 quired time'; and whether I could do that was 
 asked over and over again. . . . The greatest 
 trouble " (referring to the days before they had a
 
 36 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 printing-press) " was the lack of printed matter. 
 I met no criticism from parents and mncli praise. 
 Especially was this true of the work in literature. 
 . . . The criticism oftenest given by visiting 
 teachers is on the ' big vv^ords,' as they call them." 
 Elsewhere, in regard to these " big words," she 
 says : "They " (the children) " vrere proud of their 
 new possessions, and lost no opportunity to use 
 them, and use them correctly. The so-called ' big 
 w^ords,' when they express a definite idea, are re- 
 membered with ease, while their humbler sisters 
 which express nothing tangible are more readily 
 forgotten. . . . We can say emphatically that the 
 work can be done in the public schools, and that 
 both teachers and pupils are benefited thereby." 
 
 Another Englewood teacher w^rote me : " The 
 teacher gains an impetus in searching for and 
 assimilating real truth to give to the waiting lit- 
 tle ones. ... I believe the parents of our children 
 are becoming awakened, for children tell me of 
 searches made at home to answer whys and hows, 
 whens and wheres, tliat have been raised in the 
 work at school." 
 
 Miss "Walter, critic teacher at the Oswego 
 (N. Y.) State Normal School, after a visit to En- 
 glewood in February, 1890, wrote me: "It has 
 been my good fortune to see within the last week 
 some of the best school work I have ever seen. 
 ... It was in the rooms of Miss MacChesney, 
 Miss Quackenbush, and others that I saw" such 
 admirable work. . . . Miss MacChesney is carry- 
 ing out in a wise and careful manner an ideal 
 line of work."
 
 AT ENGLE^VOOD 37 
 
 111 closing this account of tlie now work at 
 Englewood I cannot do better than to give quo- 
 tations from two letters received from Mr. Orville 
 T. Briglit, the superintendent under whom all this 
 experimental work has been done. He says : 
 
 December 15, 1889. — " We are now harder than 
 ever at work studying how to make observation 
 a living element in our schools. . . . AVe have 
 thirty — yes, forty — teachers now who are thor- 
 ouglily in earnest in the matter." 
 
 Mareli 9, 1890. — " It is about three years since 
 Miss MacChesney began the work. Miss Quack- 
 enbusli soon followed, and the next year Miss 
 Phelps, all in the Lewis School ; . . . and the 
 fact was demonstrated beyond a doubt that fifty 
 children are no bar to the success of a teacher in 
 training little children to observe in subjects per- 
 taining to science. 
 
 " All our primary teachers slowly wheeled into 
 line. We had numerous meetings and discussions 
 on the subject, and every one who tried the work 
 was convinced. The stand of the superintendent 
 had been misunderstood from the first, but he 
 did not think it wise to force matters. He wished 
 teachers to undertake the work because they be- 
 lieved in it ; and now every first and second 
 grade teacher in the district — thirty-five in num- 
 ber — are in hearty sympathy, as are almost all of 
 the third and fourth grade teachers, about sixty 
 in all. ISTot all, however, are at work. 
 
 " There has been no systematic arrangement of 
 material, only so far as individual teachers have 
 made it in a small wav. Our aim has been to
 
 38 AN EXPEllIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 demonstrate the feasibility of doing the work with 
 large classes, and to prove the growth of children 
 under the training possible. These two things 
 we have done ; and we are now at work upon a 
 related plan for the several grades. The scheme 
 must be a flexible one, and it can be so arranged ; 
 but the second grade work must grow out of and 
 be an advance upon the first, and so on. We have 
 discussed motive first for several weeks. Kow we 
 are on material ; then will come method. These 
 I cannot write about now. We hope to see the 
 subject in some kind of shape before the end of 
 the school year." 
 
 Do not the results of the trials at Boston and 
 Englewood virtually constitute a plea to parents 
 and teachers to investigate this matter — not nec- 
 essarily to follow, but possibly to get suggestions 
 about a better way ; for the contemplation of a 
 new thing sincerely conceived sometimes leads to 
 the inspiration of a better ? 
 
 Pupils in all sorts of schools seem, for the most 
 part, unable to distinguish between opinion and 
 fact ; tlicir reasoning processes are easily over- 
 turned, imperfect, slovenly ; their power to dis- 
 criminate values is slight ; and the whole working 
 of their minds lacks cohesion, totality, and grada- 
 tion. Is not the human mind naturally capable 
 of trustworthy action, and is not the lack of such 
 action in the average adult due to faulty educa- 
 tion ? To see clearly, judge fairly, and will strong- 
 ly — are not these the great ends of education? 
 Should not a man have as great a consciousness of
 
 AT ENGLEWOOD 39 
 
 mind and of power to think as he has of hands 
 and feet and power to use them ; and should he 
 not be as unerring in the right use of the one as of 
 the others ? Should not the schools give this con- 
 sciousness and power and mental skill, and also 
 fill the mind with ideas worth the effort of get- 
 ting and retaining ? 
 
 The maxim " Ideas before Avords," adopted by 
 teacliers like Professor Louis Agassiz, lias produced 
 great results in changing the methods of study in 
 the natural and physical sciences. This influence 
 has extended to other departments in the older 
 centres of learning, but the majority of our higher 
 schools are yet scarcely touched by it. In these, 
 study results in little more than filling the mind 
 with words ; and from them students pass into 
 life without the taste or ability to examine and es- 
 timate facts, and to form independent judgments 
 and volitions. 
 
 In primary education the maxim " Ideas before 
 words" is repeated with tiresome iteration, but 
 seldom is a question raised about the value of the 
 ideas taught. Do the charts and books for prima- 
 ries express aught that is unfamiliar to children? 
 Rather do they not contend for the merit of ex- 
 pressing most completely the commonplaces of 
 child-life ? Is there anything worthy to be called 
 thinking or capable of arousing interest and emo- 
 tion in memorizing combinations of symbols, and 
 associating them with familiar and trivial ideas ? 
 And let us see what " object-lessons " chiefly deal 
 with. Last year, in a normal school of the Em- 
 pire State, a teacher of primary methods, proudly
 
 40 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 claimed b}' her principal to be the best in the 
 State, gave thimbles, scissors, chairs, etc., as suit- 
 able subjects for object - lessons, and carefully 
 led her pupils through the steps required to de- 
 velop in children's minds ideas of the parts and 
 the uses of these objects. Is there one child in 
 five hundred, at six years of age, ignorant of 
 these parts and uses ? Then the so-called devel- 
 opment process is a farce, and a waste of time and 
 energy. Look over manuals of object-lessons and 
 courses of study for primary children : you will 
 usually find but few subjects leading the child 
 from the beaten path of his daily life into new, 
 inviting, and fruitful fields ; and of these, note the 
 directions as to what is to be taught. Such di- 
 rections often resemble a lesson on a butterfly 
 that I heard given by a kindergartner. With a 
 single butterfly held in her hand she led the chil- 
 dren to speak of its flying in the sunshine, sipping 
 food from the flowers, living through the summer, 
 and of the beautv of its colors. Not a word was 
 said of the three parts of the body, the two pairs 
 of wings, the six legs, the antenna), and the tube 
 through which it sips food — all of which and more 
 the children could easily have been led to see. 
 Doubtless the teacher thought the children had 
 had a beautiful lesson ; but had they received 
 anything at all? Although city children, they 
 spent the summer in the country — they had all 
 seen and probably chased several s))ecies of butter- 
 flies, and possibly some of them knew more than 
 their teacher about the habits of butterflies. 
 Think of children gathered by fifties in thou-
 
 AT EKGLEWOOD 41 
 
 sands of school-vooms, spending the first years of 
 school-life in repeating trimal facts andideas that 
 have heen familiar from habyhood; in learning tlie 
 symbols for these ideas, and in counting beans 
 and bits of chalk! The five-year-old boy who 
 described a kindergarten as " the place where they 
 are always pretending to do something and never 
 doing it," and the eight-yearold girl wlio, after 
 reading the first few paragra])hs of some ordinary 
 primary reading matter, looked up at her teacher 
 and said, " I think these sentences are very silly, 
 don't you?" are not alone in preferring the les- 
 sons of the street and the field to those of the 
 school-room. In such dealing with trite ideas the 
 child gets little mental exercise, gets no addition 
 to his knowledge save the written and printed 
 symbols, gets no increase to his vocabulary, and 
 little facility in using it. For these slight gains 
 he gives the freshest, best years of life, and ex- 
 hausts in weariness of spirit the fountains of in- 
 tellectual interest and enthusiasm. 
 
 In the experiment an effort was made to bring 
 the child at once into contact with the real sub- 
 stance of education. It is this concentration of 
 attention upon the subject-matter, not upon the 
 method of teacliing it ; on the kind of ideas, not 
 upon the symbols of ideas, that chiefly differenti- 
 ates this experiment from ordinary primary work, 
 and makes the use of the word experiment legiti- 
 mate. The value of method is heartily conceded, 
 but what shall be taught was thought to be of 
 more importance. Is it not a law of Nature that 
 new and valuable ideas only can arouse inter-
 
 43 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 est and lead to worthy tbouo-bts? When snch 
 thoughts exercise the mind, do they not exclude 
 the transient and trivial, lead to culture and right 
 conduct, and so further the true end of existence 
 — the perfectionment of the soul ? 
 
 Do not the showy, the superficial, the transient, 
 the seeming, rule the hour? "Where do we find 
 the heroic dignity that should inhere in man and 
 woman? Few pursue truth and righteousness 
 for their own sakes regardless of consequences ; 
 in few does the love of humanity overcome the 
 shrinking from poverty and calumny. Are we 
 becoming a nation of cowards and infidels, that 
 we can fear nothing but material and intellectual 
 discomforts in this one short life ? 
 
 To awaken love for great literature, to arouse 
 interest in local history, to develop a habit of ob- 
 serving Nature's phenomena — to do these before 
 the mind has sunk itself in materialism and the 
 love of sensual delights — to do these while the 
 child is still so young that mind and heart are 
 plastic and responsive, is indelibly to impress the 
 idea that these are the legitimate objects of study 
 whose pursuit leads, not to learning only, but to 
 nobilit}^ of mind and to real, satisfying pleasures. 
 One cannot know and love the great in the 
 world's literature and not be ashamed of mean 
 thoughts ; one cannot be a student of history with- 
 out bringing to bear upon the affairs of our own 
 time a greater intelligence than the majority of 
 our politicians exhibit ; one cannot habitually ob- 
 serve Nature's phenomena without extending that 
 habit to the highest and most interesting of her
 
 AT ENGLEWOOD 43 
 
 creatures — man ; and one cannot observe man, 
 with any depth of insight, without being pro- 
 foundly impressed, not alone b}^ the miseries of 
 the very poor and the never-ending drudgery of 
 the laboring classes, but by the lack of unselfish 
 zeal, heroism, dignity, truth, gentleness, generosity, 
 and purity among the well-to-do ; one can hardly 
 view the course of Nature and history from re- 
 mote ages to the present without seeing through 
 all a tendency to completion, order, and beauty 
 on an ever-rising plane, like the threads of a spiral ; 
 and, seeing this, to desire to be himself in harmony 
 with that tendency and a factor in aiding it in his 
 own time. 
 
 I put forth no claim to the Boston experiment 
 or the Engiewood trial as a cure for existing evils; 
 but I urge every educator who loves mankind to 
 investigate each new^ departure in education, to 
 test any that seems to have good in it, to cease to 
 concentrate attention on symbols and shows, and 
 to turn thought to such realities as can nourish 
 the mind and heart, and be retained as valuable 
 furnishings for all the years to come, and to do 
 these from the first day in the primary school.
 
 part IFIT 
 
 IDEAS UNDERLYING THE EXPERIMENT 
 
 These ideas were by no means all appreciated and formu- 
 lated when the experiment began nor during its progress. 
 Most of them were but vaguely felt after. The one clear 
 thing then was that children must be at once introduced to 
 real knowledge, be given something worth their efforts, and 
 treated as rational, natural human beings who ought not, even 
 if they could, be made to greatly care for the symbols and 
 shows of learning in the absence of the real substance, nor 
 led to imagine that they were being mentally and morally 
 nourished — that is, educated— when fed on chaff mainly.
 
 QUALITY OF STUDIES 
 
 A HEALTHY bodj IS approximatel}'' straight, sup- 
 ple, and symmetrical ; and in a healthful envi- 
 ronment, with proper nourishment, it remains so. 
 Such a body seizes with avidity upon the nourish- 
 ment provided for it, and by inherent selective 
 processes takes out and assimilates into good bone, 
 nerve, and muscle certain elements in its nourish- 
 ment, and as inherentl}^ and unerringly rejects 
 and ejects other elements. 
 
 These apparent facts about a child's bod}^, 
 transferred to his mind, constitute an assump- 
 tion which was made the fundamental basis or 
 hypothesis on which the experiment was con- 
 ducted. 
 
 The first fundamental excellence of mind, ac- 
 cording to this analogy, is an inherent integrit}^, 
 which, put into other words, means a fairly un- 
 erring capacity to discriminate between the nu- 
 tritious and the non-nutritious, between mental 
 substance and mental chaff ; and not to discrim- 
 inate only, but to retain the substance and to 
 eject the chaff. This integrity would have its 
 basis in powers of attraction and repulsion, which 
 would be natural and spontaneous in action, and
 
 48 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION" 
 
 approximately unerring for each unspoiled child, 
 at anv stao;e of trrowth. 
 
 Variations in tliese attractions and repulsions 
 would arise between different children, and in the 
 same child under varying conditions of circum- 
 stance and age ; but if the right sort of mental 
 environment and nourishment could be hit upon, 
 these variations must be sufficiently slight to al- 
 low of uniting a small number of cliildren in one 
 group for school work; and ultimately, after many 
 and varied experiments, certain general laws 
 about mental growth ought to be determined, the 
 application of which would allow due weight and 
 play to these normal variations. 
 
 This theory presupposes, not only natural at- 
 tractions and repulsions, but that the qualities of 
 these at any given age are what may be called 
 normal ; and by normal is here meant such at- 
 tractions and repulsions as by their use would 
 preserve and increase the present mental status 
 of the individual and the race. 
 
 If such a condition exists as a fact in human 
 psychical life, it has existed in past ages ; and, 
 despite of conditions adverse to its best preserva- 
 tion and development, may be supposed, in the 
 long-run, to have had its way with the race ; so 
 that the present mental status and condition are 
 as normal as the present physical status and con- 
 dition are. In childhood, under the best human 
 conditions, the latter is certainly charming, and 
 its natural tendencies are approximately trust- 
 worthv : and it is here assumed that the former 
 is equalh" so.
 
 QUALITY OF STUDIES 49 
 
 According to this theory, whatever is worth re- 
 taining would be retained firmly, subject to in- 
 stant use, and ejected or lost only when its owner 
 had no immediate further use for it. This is not 
 intended to push the physical analogy to ex- 
 tremes with reference to limits of time, but to 
 leave each child to retain what he will and so 
 long as he Avill, be it a day or a lifetime; and to 
 trust his mind at least as much as his physical 
 body is trusted, to take, to keep, or to refuse and 
 to eject whatsoever and whensoever it pleases. 
 
 In a few months of fetal life a human body 
 passes through the stages of its inherited animal 
 ancestry, and in the remaining it gets through 
 with its inheritance of a savage human ancestry ; 
 so that at birth a child who is born in an averafje 
 American family is no more a savage than a tad- 
 pole. 
 
 It is not intended to discuss here the facts of 
 evolution and heredity, or to express belief or 
 disbelief in a human genealogical tree which is a 
 continuous development, whose missing parts will 
 yet be restored by science, or a tree whose bole 
 is an assumed life process which has not yet had 
 physical expression, and whose branches each 
 represent some specialized expression of that life, 
 but which have no organic, causal connection 
 from branch to branch, save in that unknown, un- 
 expressed central core or bole. With these ques- 
 tions this book has nothing to do; but what it de- 
 sires to insist upon is that, granted the main facts 
 of heredity as generally stated and accepted to 
 be true, at birth a child has presumably passed
 
 50 AlSr EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 as many hereditary mental mile-stones as it has 
 physical ones. 
 
 Two years after birth a child begins to eat of 
 the physical food which his parents eat, and to 
 ask questions which his parents cannot ansAver ; 
 and thereafter an exclusive diet of pap is as ridic- 
 ulous and as harmful to his mind as to his body. 
 
 But physical pap is luxurious nourisliment com- 
 pared to the mental diet which is daily served in 
 thousands of school-rooms to children not two 
 but six years of age ; for pap is made of the finest, 
 most nutritions portion of some grain and of milk, 
 the most universally nutritious of all foods ; while 
 husks and not kernels, expressions and not ideas — 
 the poorest and simplest symbols of knowledge — 
 constitute the chief elements of the daily mental 
 food of children in the average school-room. 
 
 That kind and quality of physical food which 
 are most wholesome for an adult are also most 
 wholesome for a child of school age ; and it is 
 here assumed that the kind of mental interest 
 and activity which most conduces to the health- 
 ful satisfaction of an adult mental life will best 
 conduce to a child's mental happiness and normal 
 mental growth. 
 
 Excluding a few specialists, unspoiled adults do 
 not select fairy tales, myths, goody-goody or sen- 
 sational stories, nor silly and meaningless rhymes 
 for their exclusive daily mental nourishment. 
 What a man of average mental cultivation would 
 choose for entertainment in hours of relaxation 
 from business — that book or occupation with 
 which he would till these hours, provided that
 
 QUALITY OF STUDIES 51 
 
 from all books and all occupations he could choose 
 — that is equally good for the child at his knee. 
 The child could not take so much of that book 
 or occupation as the father; but the differences 
 would be of quantity mainly, not usually of 
 qualit}". 
 
 Wlien freed from necessary cares and allowed 
 spontaneous choice, men instinctively turn from 
 the details of their necessary occupations and 
 from all familiar and forced activities to those 
 which are unknown, unfamiliar, and which satisfj^, 
 or are supposed to satisf}^ some permanent want. 
 As fresh food is sought for the body, so are strange 
 by-ways of mental life sought for mental rest and 
 recuperation ; and the more unlike his daily men- 
 tal labors a given by-way is, the more restful it 
 is to the man's jaded mind. 
 
 In every child's home environment is that 
 wdiicli corresponds to a man's regular occupations 
 — familiar sights, sounds, and activities, which, for 
 a while engrossing, become intolerable ; hence the 
 proverbial restlessness of children. Why should 
 school life prolong this mental torture? Yet the 
 maxim " Begin with the familiar and childish 
 things" has long been the guiding principle for 
 the direction of the child's first years at school. 
 
 Not the familiar, but the new ; not the near, 
 but the far ; not the easy, but the difficult ; not 
 the symbols and shows of man's superficial exist- 
 ence, but the realities and substance of that which 
 man preserves from age to age are w^orthy to be 
 offered as the mental diet of a child. 
 
 The fact that a child can frame a question
 
 53 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 about a topic is presumable evidence tliat he can 
 receive the rational answer which a man learned 
 in that topic could give him. Stripped of techni- 
 cal expressions, some of the greatest facts and 
 ideas admit of being truly embodied in such 
 words and illustrations as an average child can 
 understand. 
 
 Understanding is not necessarily such a com- 
 prehension of all phases and points as admits of 
 re-expression in some glib phrase ; and one of the 
 greatest tortures inflicted on childhood to-day is 
 the forced reproduction or giving back of all 
 mental food received. The hour of entrance of a 
 child into an average school-room is the hour of 
 entrance into mental bondage, of life under an in- 
 quisitorial system which gradually stultifies nat- 
 ural mental activities and choices. From such a 
 school-room the child is turned out at last, after 
 a few years more or less, little better than an 
 artificial mental machine. Thereafter, in actual 
 life, the man laboriously unforms, bit by bit, the 
 habits so painfully acquired in school-days ; and 
 the average man goes to his grave without know- 
 ing what a precious inheritance he had possessed, 
 which a well-meaning school regime made him in- 
 capable of appreciating or using. 
 
 Who advance the frontiers of learning and 
 make use of great libraries ? Out of our seventy 
 millions, how many are there? Each child is 
 born into the inheritance of all there is, and with 
 some degree of capacity for improving or increas- 
 ing that all ; and yet few of those who are most 
 carefully educated justify by use to themselves or
 
 QUALITY OF STUDIES 53 
 
 to their fellow-men their right and share in this 
 vast inheritance. 
 
 It is not that love of learning- is dead, nor that 
 specialization has made it impossible for all but 
 geniuses to be much more than mental machines 
 for the working out of minor details in a very 
 small field ; it is because during childliood and 
 youth natural, normal mental growth is thwarted, 
 and for college and university is reserved near- 
 ly all of that portion of our great inheritance in 
 which men have or can have any vital, instinctive 
 interest. 
 
 Let children and 3^ouths be given the best 
 which the race has cared to preserve, a little of 
 every kind, and a specialist who is such and no 
 more, lamentably ignorant of everything outside 
 of his chosen field, could no longer exist — he could 
 not be produced ; this would in itself be a gain to 
 humanity devoutly to be thankful for. The few 
 great who survey the "whole field, and have re- 
 gard for the whole in every advance of their own 
 chosen lines, are not here meant, but that army 
 of lesser specialists whose mental life always re- 
 mains provincial, and who, in consequence, aid in 
 still further warping every younger mind with 
 which they come in contact. 
 
 This, then, is the fundamental need of educa- 
 tion — to give the child from two years old and 
 upward, according to his powers, such mental 
 pabulum as adults find nourishing and satisfy- 
 ing ; and to do this fearlessly, throwing aside all 
 notions of wdiat a child can, and what he can- 
 not, comprehend ; and to trust tiie child's own
 
 54 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 inherent mental life to take, to keep, or to reject 
 and eject what is offered. 
 
 All natural phenomena are presumably under 
 law, which is the stable reality in changing 
 phenomena. When such a stable reality for the 
 varied processes of education has been discovered, 
 on and through it can be created such system and 
 order in school life as have not yet been known ; 
 for either it must be presumed that torture is the 
 normal stimulus to mental growth, or that such a 
 stable reality wdien found will make mental activ- 
 ity as natural and spontaneous a delight from cra- 
 dle to grave as physical activities now are, and 
 this to all people. 
 
 And when the natural, normal integrity of a 
 health}", vigorous mental life is restored, not to 
 childhood where it perpetually recurs, but to 
 youth and manhood through its preservation from 
 childhood, the social questions which baffle the 
 statesmen and make tlie interior moral misery of 
 the earnest man will, by virtue of that integrity, 
 find natural and wise solution, not in forced but 
 in spontaneous reforms.
 
 II 
 
 ORDER OF STUDIES 
 
 To the average adult it is the content of knowl- 
 edge, and not its forms or modes of expression, 
 that is of chief importance, either for practical use 
 or for entertainment. The forms of expression 
 per se, in which knowledge has been handed from 
 age to age are, with few exceptions, studies for 
 specialists only, for grammarians and philologists ; 
 to most other students of these forms their study- 
 is a drudgery to be gone through with for the 
 purpose of getting at the contents locked up in 
 the forms. 
 
 This may be due to the fact that most teaching 
 of languages in schools and in private classes is 
 either superficial or vicious in being divorced from 
 the true end of language — viz., to be a symbol of 
 thought. This is not the place to discuss this 
 matter; and what is desired here is to point out 
 that, under existing conditions, language as lan- 
 guage merely, a system of symbolic forms, is not 
 for the average person a subject of study or of 
 special interest. For the purposes of this chap- 
 ter, then, it may temporarily be excluded from the 
 child's curriculum. 
 
 Mathematics also have little interest to the
 
 56 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 average adult beyond the necessities of business 
 transactions. Beyond the requirements of daily 
 intercourse with his fellow-man, mathematics are 
 dropped almost completely from consciousness ; 
 and forced attention to them would be regarded 
 by the average adult as even more irksome and 
 useless than forced attention to languages. 
 
 By the average adult, languages and mathe- 
 matics are regarded, not as knowledge or content 
 of learning, but as its tools merely. To an arti- 
 san tools are indispensable ; but no condemnation 
 would be considered too severe to pass upon that 
 artisan Avho should almost exclusively keep an 
 apprentice for ten years looking at and arranging 
 in varied combinations the tools of his trade. All 
 children are apprentices to the art of living; par- 
 ents and teachers are the artisans who are sup- 
 posed to train them for this art, and it seems not 
 unreasonable to ask that tools shall be given no 
 faster than a child can begin to make intelligent 
 use of them. 
 
 This discussion luis been pursued far enough if 
 the reader understands that what is desired here 
 is to express the idea that instruments of expres- 
 sion as such should not be presented to a child as 
 its object of attention ; but rather some fact of 
 knowledge, some content of experience, to get 
 which or to communicate which he must use an 
 instrument. 
 
 The primary instruments which are used by 
 child and adult alike to get at knowledge are the 
 physical and mental powers; and forms of ex- 
 pression are but secondary instruments, interme-
 
 ORDER OF STUDIES 57 
 
 diate symbols which serve as links between man 
 and his fellow-man. The s3niibols are of no value 
 save when filled with content; and the association 
 of a given symbol with its best, usual content, 
 and the arrangement of symbols when filled so 
 as to convey the greatest possible amount of con- 
 tent in the most agreeable way, are the only 
 uses, and the highest, fullest uses, which these sym- 
 bols can have to all but the students of their ori- 
 gin, past uses, and development. 
 
 Reading, writing, composition, grammar, and 
 rhetoric must share the fate of that which in- 
 cludes them — become the incidentals and not the 
 objects of study in a child's curriculum ; and all 
 number, arithmetic, geometry, and algebra must 
 also be excluded unless some better way than 
 the manipulations of numbers and forms, as 
 numbers and forms, can be found, even for the 
 youngest child. Drawing, as an object of study 
 pursued for its own sake, is open to the same 
 objection, since in essential nature it is a mode of 
 expression, a form of language, and does not rise 
 to the dignity of anything more, save in the hands 
 of a few great artists. To make the subjects 
 named objects of study is to specialize, and spe- 
 cialization is usually reserved for the colleges. 
 
 The content of knowledge, for the purposes of 
 this book, may be roughly classified under two 
 heads — nature, or the physical universe, including 
 man's body ; and man, or the psychic universe, 
 which is known to man in himself and his fellow- 
 man. It is not intended to base this classifica- 
 tion upon any distinction between bod}^ and mind
 
 58 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 jper se, but to use tlic average man's thouglit 
 that the external world, including his own bod}^, 
 is not himself; and that his fellow-man, like him- 
 self, has a realm in consciousness which, at pres- 
 sent at least, he does not regard as physical — to 
 use these ordinary common -sense notions as a 
 basis for a convenient classification. 
 
 Under this classification, nature will include the 
 physical and biological sciences ; and man, the his- 
 torical and social. These might be further ex- 
 plained b}^ being included under physical phe- 
 nomena and ])sychical phenomena, wiiicli together 
 make up the content of each individual conscious- 
 ness, and of all knowledge to which man has ac- 
 cess. All the conditions of life and all objects of 
 thought are referred to one or the other of these 
 realms, by the adult consciously, and by the child 
 unconsciously. 
 
 Whatever be the reality in the relations be- 
 tween mind and body, in the present stage of 
 man's development, it seems desirable that he 
 should distinguish clearly between them as two 
 sets or series of realities which should neither be 
 confused nor mistaken the one for the other. 
 
 If this distinction is to be valid to the adult, it 
 must be made valid to the child ; for that con- 
 fusion which becomes a habit in childhood will 
 probably never be wholly eradicated. 
 
 And this constitutes what seems to me an ade- 
 quate reason for excluding myths, fairy tales, and 
 fiction from a child's mental pabulum until the 
 distinction between ph3'sical phenomena and psy- 
 chical phenomena is clearly established in his
 
 OKDER OF STUDIES 59 
 
 mind. To live largely in a dream- world jieopled 
 by fancies is neither natural nor rational ; and 
 they who insist on making such a world for a 
 child on the plea of leading it through the early 
 experiences of the race, do what those early expe- 
 riences never did, and make for the child a world 
 which has no counterpart in any historic time. 
 
 Myths, at their germination and growth, were 
 to the peoples who produced them the most ulti- 
 mate, sacred realities ; and at lirst, being pre- 
 sumably objective, physical facts, they in course 
 of time came to have a psychic, symbolic exist- 
 ence which was disassociated from those physical 
 objects which were the germ of their being. It 
 has always been true, and still is, that ordinarily 
 when myth or story has been completely disasso- 
 ciated from physical content men have had no 
 further use for it save as a curiosity of what men 
 are then pleased to call a cruder, more rudimen- 
 tary phase of development. 
 
 Could a parent or teacher be found who would 
 in good faith teach myths and folk-tales as reali- 
 ties now, that parent or teacher would be entitled 
 to teach them ; but this would imply the posses- 
 sion of a mental content which most men would 
 despise. The claim that courtesy, kindness, and 
 certain moral precepts can best be inculcated 
 through such tales is a claim that object-lessons 
 in the virtues cannot be found in the child's pres- 
 ent and actual social environment ; and that the 
 moral experiences of the present age are inferi- 
 or to those of past ages ; and indirectly it con- 
 fesses that the present social and moral stimuli
 
 60 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 which can be brought to bear upon a chikl's de- 
 velopment are inadequate. This arraigns the 
 whole social and moral structure of our civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 In reply to this it may be said, with the old 
 Greek Heraclitus, that good comes to conscious- 
 ness as good only when seen beside an evil which 
 is its negation. However evil our civilization is, 
 the consciousness that it is evil or inadequate at 
 any point is the fundamental step towards the 
 doing away of the evil ; and, furthermore, the en- 
 vironments of to-day afford opportunities for the 
 inculcation of all the virtues which can be under- 
 stood or practised. 
 
 Confusion between thinking and doing, be- 
 tween the physical and the psychical, is nowhere 
 more widespread and pitiful than in just this di- 
 rection of the moral virtues. To hold certain 
 ethical standards as ideally true and approxi- 
 mately perfect, and daily to commit and approve 
 acts which, according to those standards, are moral 
 atrocities, is no uncommon experience of even the 
 best people. Either some ethical ideals which 
 man has cherished for centuries are inherently 
 false as human ideals or have been misunderstood; 
 in which case they should be openly rejected or 
 explicitly stated in terms which cannot be misun- 
 derstood, or ways of avoiding the present confu- 
 sion should be devised. 
 
 It is not meant, in the above paragraph, that 
 man has or should have no ideals which are unat- 
 tainable in his day and environment. As soon as 
 attained, an ideal ceases to be ideal and becomes
 
 ORDER OF STUDIES 61 
 
 actual; and the ideal, as such, is continually re- 
 ceding — because continually transformed — from 
 even the most ardent seeker ; but to hold ideals 
 which reason and common-sense declare to be un- 
 attainable, because incompatible with the sup- 
 posed trend of human development, is to divorce 
 the ideal world from the actual, and so to remove 
 the ideal from the realm of conduct to that of 
 mere sentiment. 
 
 It may be objected that this divorce of conduct 
 and thought is proof of clear distinction between 
 the physical and the psychical. As immediate 
 fact it may be ; but that it is an outcome of a 
 former confusion, a reaction against a dream-world 
 which could not be made real, is probable. Hav- 
 ing possessed a dream-world which was once real, 
 and found the actual world of life so different that 
 dream -realizations were impossible, the person 
 consciously or unconsciously settles down to the 
 acceptance as final of what he has been so rudely 
 taught — that ideals and realities are far apart. 
 
 A distinction between ideals and realities is not 
 what is here meant b}^ a distinction between a 
 physical phenomenon and a psychical phenome- 
 non. Metaphysical or technical psychological dis- 
 cussions are foreign to the purposes of this book ; 
 and yet an effort must be made to make this dis- 
 tinction clear, not exactly nor scientifically, but 
 sufficiently for the purpose of conveying the mean- 
 ing here intended. 
 
 A physical phenomenon is one which has actual 
 existence in an external world, including man's 
 own body, and which, as a fact, is capable of be-
 
 C3 AN EXPERI^IEXT IN EDUCATION 
 
 ing verified by other men. A psychical phenom- 
 enon is a fact which has existence in consciousness 
 only, and may not be verified by other men. One 
 man may find that his psychic content is like some 
 other man's psychic content, but no verification 
 is at present possible. All verification is through 
 physical channels, and is, therefore, a pliysical 
 verification of physical processes, and not psy- 
 chical at alL 
 
 In psychical content mankind demands that a 
 sharp distinction shall be made between what cor- 
 responds to physical phenomena and what does 
 not. All that which corresponds to physical 
 phenomena in having or having had its counter- 
 part and source in that world of physical exist- 
 ence is called real, and worthy of credence ; and 
 all else is called unreal, and relegated to the 
 realms of illusion, hallucination, and fancy. Then 
 from the present point of view of average cult- 
 ure a clear distinction between a physical fact 
 and a psychical fact is essential to a distinction 
 between valuable and worthless psj^chical facts. 
 
 The world asks to-day of a man, not what he 
 thinks, but wdiat he knows; and rejects his know- 
 ing unless it has its basis in a doing which other 
 men repeat and verify. This is thought to be 
 true of the average state of our American life 
 to-day ; and it is into this average state that our 
 children are born, and for which education ought 
 primarily to fit them. This requires that a child's 
 thinking be grounded in doing, and that his psy- 
 chical world be built up from contact with wor- 
 thy physical realities.
 
 OEDER OF STUDIES 63 
 
 All physical realities are, in last philosoi^hical 
 analysis, expression of psychical realities ; but the 
 process by which a given individnars psycljical 
 world is built up suggests that, whatever may be 
 the actual story of evolution, the true genesis of 
 either physical or psychical fact, the physical 
 precedes the psychical as its immediate stimulus 
 in the human being of to-day. If this be true, 
 physical phenomena are not only those which are 
 of the most immediate concern and interest to a 
 child, but the onlj^ point for a rational beginning 
 in the process of education. Certain elementary 
 physical facts are the foundations of the content 
 of most phases of learning, and with these study 
 should begin. An adult wdio is totally ignorant 
 of a subject is not set to learning it, indifferentl}^, 
 at any point, but at the point of simplest, most 
 elementary — that is, most fundamental — phenom- 
 ena ; and the same rule would apply equally to 
 the child. 
 
 The simplest elementary phenomenon or series 
 of phenomena on which a given subject is based 
 are always inclusive — are some sort of a whole. It 
 is a fundamental fact in consciousness that sensa- 
 tions and perceptions are units. No matter how 
 complex they are in original structure, in them- 
 selves they are felt or perceived as units or 
 wholes. As the mind is piqued, baffled, and ill 
 at ease when a partial view of an object or phe- 
 nomenon is had and only a whole view can satis- 
 fy, so peeps at facts, unrelated to some known 
 whole, produce mental unrest, and finally mental 
 ennui and disgust. It is like travelling a road
 
 64 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 with continual expectation of arriving at some 
 resting -point, and never getting there. Mental 
 unrest is as pernicious as physical, and to a child 
 it is destructive of normal growth. At each step 
 a child should have some whole witliin his grasp 
 to which he can relate what details he gets. If 
 that given whole can be that which, as boundary, 
 defines the limits, or as centre makes the unifica- 
 tion of that special study for all men, so much 
 the better for the child. 
 
 One illustration Avill serve to show what is 
 meant. Before teaching a child about varie- 
 ties of rock, or characteristics of a given rock, 
 he should be led to a conception of rock as dis- 
 tinguished from other objects. As soon as this 
 conception is assured — most children of six years 
 have it sufficiently defined on entering school — 
 the child should be led to some conception about 
 the size of the earth, and to tliink of it as a ball 
 of rock, with an exceedingly thin cover of soil over 
 the rock. Thereafter, when a rock is studied, 
 that rock will be thought of as a bit out of the 
 superficial mosaic of the great ball; and the 
 place in that mosaic whence came the given spec- 
 imen under study should be made real to the. 
 child by proper devices — use of globes, maps, 
 pictures, drawings, modellings, and in imaginary 
 journej'ings. 
 
 Tliis chapter is meant to add to the fundament- 
 al basis which was enunciated in the first chapter, 
 the following as corollaries : 
 
 The content of knowledge and not its forms of 
 expression should be the objects of study.
 
 ORDER OF STUDIES 65 
 
 Of this content, that which lias embodiment in 
 physical reality should take j)i'ecedence of that 
 which has psychical existence only. 
 
 This content should at lirst be presented in cer- 
 tain great inclusive wholes,, to furnish the proper 
 bases for the true co-ordinations and associations 
 of details.
 
 Ill 
 
 EFFECTS OF STUDIES 
 
 That to which an individual habitually gives 
 attention makes up the major part of his con- 
 sciousness and largely determines his conduct. 
 This realm of habitual attention is each man's 
 world of realities. This much is a fairly constant 
 quantity, and is separated from the minor portion 
 of consciousness by this element of permanence 
 and by trust in it as tangible, while the minor 
 portion is a fluctuating element, less strongly 
 grasped, which may or may not be thought real. 
 
 Some facts in this major portion of individual 
 consciousness are the same for all men, some are 
 peculiar to men of certain trades and occupations, 
 and some are shared by a still smaller number. 
 
 The full content of individual consciousness 
 varies from man to man, not in quality only, but 
 in quantity ; but that individual content which in 
 quality and quantity is presumably great must 
 be a very small unit when compared with the full 
 content of human consciousness at any given 
 point in time. This discrepancy between the full 
 content of human consciousness— provided that 
 one being could possess and grasp that full con- 
 tent — and an average individual content suggests
 
 EFFECTS OF STUDIES G7 
 
 that some notion as to what ought to be found in 
 an individual consciousness is a fair subject for 
 educational discussion. 
 
 Either the universe is without order and de- 
 sign, or the past growth and present content of 
 human consciousness arc of vital importance to 
 all men. It is a marked feature of individual 
 consciousness that it (h'ops from sight unused 
 elements, and keeps carefully in view what is 
 or seems of use. If there he order and design in 
 human development, the is and not the seems is 
 the right word to use in the foregoing sentence. 
 Granted the is, it follows that what is now in 
 human consciousness is there because it has been 
 of use. If there be order and design, it follows 
 that those elements in consciousness which are 
 capable of the most service to the greatest num- 
 ber of men whose individual content is relatively 
 largest would, in the long-run, yield most service 
 to all men. This would imply that a theoretical 
 content — made up of the like elements of indi- 
 vidual content, of the minds of men who have 
 had greatest opportunities — could be mapped and 
 made a basis for educational work. 
 
 Also, if there be order and design, the more 
 useful elements are those which have been iong'est 
 preserved, and for the use of which nature has 
 provided the most elaborate human mechanism. 
 So far as science can speak with authority, each 
 individual content is limited : first, by the perfec- 
 tion or imperfection of the physical body, espe- 
 cially of its nervous system and organs of special 
 sensation ; and, second, by the amount of skill
 
 68 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 Avith which this physical mechanism can be used. 
 This skill depends, primarily, not so much upon 
 use, ^er se, as upon the methods pursued in use. 
 Through the methods of using this phj^sical 
 mechanism, each man comes into, or takes, con- 
 scious possession of the content of his conscious- 
 ness ; and all processes of education are processes 
 of building or changing such individual content. 
 
 If the human mechanism play such an impor- 
 tant role, an examination of it may do something 
 towards giving that theoretical content. An ex- 
 amination of the chief courses of study which are 
 offered in universities ; of the books which have 
 been preserved from age to age ; of the occupa- 
 tions of men which most conduce to the enlarge- 
 ment of individual content — these taken with a 
 study of the physical mechanism ought to yield a 
 fair approximation to such a theoretical content 
 as would be in harmony with the general order 
 and design of human progress. 
 
 It is no part of the jmrposes of this chapter to 
 furnish such a theoretical content ; but here, in 
 passing to other topics, to point out the need of 
 one. The topics under present discussion are the 
 facts that the content of an individual conscious- 
 ness, whatever be its qualit}^ or quantity, consti- 
 tutes for its possessor his world of realities, and 
 bounds his possibilities of the understanding of, 
 and S3"nipathy with, his fellow-man ; and that the 
 major part of that content is due to habitual at- 
 tention, and hence comes under an educator's re- 
 sponsibilities. 
 
 Habits of attention are products of will. What
 
 EFFECTS OF STUDIES G9 
 
 a child docs, he must attend to; and what he at- 
 tends to inevitably calls forth exercises of Avill. 
 Attention itself may or may not be a conscious 
 act of will ; but it readily passes into such, and 
 always does so when prolonf^ed. Then the major 
 part of a man's consciousness — that which he now 
 has power to respond to — is a product of the past 
 deeds of his body and mind. 
 
 What a child does either through spontaneous 
 or acquii'ed acts of will fashions, day by day, that 
 which he will be and will have power to do. A 
 stimulus to which no past act of attention and 
 will has responded will probably find him indif- 
 ferent, and may find him insensible. 
 
 That all indifference and insensibility have 
 these sources is too much to claim in the present 
 state of psychological science ; but that they may 
 be largely traced to such sources is a matter of 
 e very-day experience. 
 
 Ten men look at a landscajie. One sees its com- 
 mercial value as a land speculation ; another, its 
 agricultural possibilities; another, its desirability 
 as a country retreat ; and another, its sporting 
 facilities. To another it is a paragraph in geolog- 
 ical history, or the habitat of certain species of 
 fauna or flora ; while to an artist, a poet, or a 
 philosopher it suggests quite other conceptions. 
 The landscape is the same : each man responds to 
 its stimuli according to the content of his indi- 
 vidual consciousness ; and for each, that to which 
 he is not responsive is non-existent, has for him 
 no reality. Could one consciousness blend the 
 ten into one unified whole, tlie landscape would
 
 70 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 be more perfectlj^ seen ; and that one conscious- 
 ness would be greater and more serviceable to its 
 possessor than any one of the ten. 
 
 Let him who has a comparatively full content 
 try to realize the state of one with a meagre con- 
 tent, and ask himself if 'i^;iconsciousness of such 
 a dwarfed, rudimentary state is any compensa- 
 tion for its possession, or any reason "why he 
 should be willing that it continue in his fellow- 
 man. The wistful look that not infrequently 
 comes into the eyes of ignorant men in the pres- 
 ence of knowledge, whose presence they dimly 
 feel but may not share, is an appeal for possession 
 of a larger share of that full content of human 
 consciousness to which all are presumable heirs. 
 
 Ignorance of wholes, of great underlying con- 
 ceptions, bars a man completely from sympathetic 
 association with general fields of study. Given 
 the wdioles spoken of in Chapter II., their possessor 
 may touch with intelligent appreciation men of 
 varied occupations and interests; while without 
 such wholes, some knowledge of details leaves 
 him to endless blunders and such a superficial 
 general outlook as repels all who are not equally 
 superficial. A man who has a few details only 
 continues in a state of illusion about the relative 
 amount and value of his knowledge, and often 
 fails to comprehend his limitations. 
 
 Largeness of content is not necessarily fulness ; 
 fulness implies depth ; and it is depth of content 
 which the wholes give. The detachment of idea 
 from the special facts of physical detail, and the 
 lodgment of it in a law or principle, is what gives
 
 EFFECTS OF STUDIES 71 
 
 most fulness and meaning to any content. In 
 Chapter II. an effort was made to show that edu- 
 cational processes should begin with the largest 
 wholes which can be grasped, and that at every 
 stage these wholes should precede much detail 
 work. 
 
 In so far as the historical genesis of laws is re- 
 garded, this order may seem unscientific ; but it 
 needs only to be pointed out that a law starts as 
 an hypothesis and is proved by detail afterwards ; 
 that the h3^pothesis is framed, not only because 
 there are details to be unified, but because some 
 mind has been able to grasp and to deal with a 
 mass of details as a unified whole ; that hypoth- 
 esis and laws are the rightful inheritance of all 
 who can grasp them and use them as bases for 
 thought and conduct ; that the mind naturally 
 takes in units with utter disregard of their com- 
 plexity ; and that to deny a child a psj^chical 
 whole of large dimensions lest it hurt his mind is 
 as fundamentally foolish as to deny him a view 
 of a whole landscape. 
 
 From the foregoing it may be presumed that 
 the major part of that theoretical content which 
 should help to guide a teacher's ste])s Avould be 
 largely made up of such concepts as give the 
 main, simple outlines on which, and within which, 
 are built and included the most interesting and 
 serviceable phases of human learning. 
 
 This view of human need deprecates all schemes 
 of education which seek, primarily, practical adap- 
 tations to given environments. Such schemes of 
 adaptation are certainly necessary ; but the cousid-
 
 73 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 eration and application of them, from this point of 
 view, naturally belong to the age of specializa- 
 tion, not to the beginnings of education. 
 
 Granted that some portions of civilized com- 
 munities are so unhappily conditioned that such 
 so-called practical schemes of education seem nec- 
 essary as the beginning and end of education for 
 them ; it is not for a moment granted that such a 
 reversion to the savage ideal of education should 
 be acquiesced in or tolerated as a good thing in 
 itself. It should be the aim of the educator to 
 assist in annihilating these centres of barbarism 
 by claiming for children who are so unhappily 
 placed the elements of a liberal education before 
 subjection to the yoke of a purely industrial train- 
 ing. 
 
 By these elements is not meant a superficial 
 smattering of a few details, but that grasp of un- 
 derlying concepts without which much learning 
 is of the dictionary and scrappy encyclopoedia 
 order, and with which a little learning — details 
 of such number and quality as to give some grasp 
 of wholes — is a liberal education. It is not so 
 much the quantity as the quality of mental pos- 
 sessions which differentiates the cultivated from 
 the uncultivated. 
 
 The content of consciousness, as content, is but 
 one half of life ; and habitual attention does as 
 much to determine the other half — the applica- 
 tion of that content to action — as to furnish the 
 content itself. Content and conduct continually 
 react upon and reinforce each other, and to the 
 teacher one should be as important as the other.
 
 EFFECTS OF STUDIES 73 
 
 That quality of conduct which is fostered in 
 childhood tends to maintain itself in adult life. 
 The principles underlying that quality, or the rea- 
 sons for their application to a given case, may not 
 enter into the consciousness of the individual, or 
 be so vaguely understood that no other account 
 of them can be given by him tluin that a feeling 
 of interior necessit}^ forces him to act so and so, 
 and by the friends of the person that the given 
 conduct is consistent with his character. 
 
 What character is, in ultimate essence or foun- 
 dations, this book does not attempt to define; but 
 that, as men realize it in themselves and see it in 
 other men, it is largely a result of co-ordinated 
 lines of habitual action is probable. We are deal- 
 ino- here, not with action as action, but with the 
 qualities of action — that which makes many va- 
 ried actions alike in intrinsic excellence, as good 
 or bad. 
 
 There are two qualities of action that seem to 
 be conspicuous and to have stood out as conspicu- 
 ous in all times— selfishness and unselfishness. 
 Much praise has been bestowed on the latter qual- 
 ity, and much blame on the former ; while the 
 actual conditions and needs of human society 
 have often been overlooked. Those conditions 
 seem to demand, and the}^ certainly pay a pre- 
 mium on, self-assertion; and, at the same time, 
 teachers, secular and religious, and most moral- 
 ists have made self-abnegation and self-efface- 
 ment the highest ethical virtues. Thus the ideal 
 aspiration and the practical necessity are ever at 
 war.
 
 74 AN EXPERIMENT IX EDUCATION 
 
 This war seems to have been accepted as in- 
 evitable, a part of the duahsm of good and evil 
 that cannot be got rid of. Men have alreadv ad- 
 vanced to the state of regarding physical war as 
 barbaric, and expressive of a rudimentary condi- 
 tion. It remains for them to advance to this state 
 with reference to the psychical life ; and to see 
 that conflict between ideal aspirations and real 
 practical necessities is also barbaric and rudimen- 
 tary. 
 
 The practical necessities may or may not be 
 changed ; but as they are, they can be so exam- 
 ined as to give some sort of principle to guide 
 one's yielding or resistance to them. The same 
 is true of the ideal aspiration ; and it is possible 
 to discover some principle which might so adjust 
 the relations between the two as to make it a 
 balance : so that peace and arbitration could take 
 the place of war, and the rudimentary barbaric 
 stage pass from an individual private life, as it is 
 passing, as a shie qua non, from public life. 
 
 If an inner psj^chical reality precedes all outer 
 ph3^sical expression — function being more and 
 prior to organ, as scientists are beginning to af- 
 firm — it follows that an adjustment of the forces 
 within a man must precede such adjustment with- 
 out ; and that war will pass completely from pub- 
 lic life onl}^ as, or after, it shall have passed from 
 the inner, private life of individuals. Traced 
 back to the individual, it has become a fit subject 
 for educational discussion. 
 
 What can save an adult from being torn be- 
 tween aspirations and necessities? Nothing but
 
 EFFECTS OF STUDIES 75 
 
 such a habit of thought and feehng as makes such 
 war foreign to his nature. Shall necessity be put 
 first, and the child taught to smother what tends 
 to its neglect ? This is the so-called world's way, 
 which the majority of men follow and society 
 applauds. Shall aspiration be put first, and the 
 child made to feel that to lower or to change his 
 ideal is ignoble ? This is universally taught and 
 rarely practised. To so teach a child or youth 
 that, as soon as practical life is reached, he must 
 either kill his aspirations or be himself killed by 
 his necessities is to bring about one of three evils 
 — to smother the aspiration or the necessit}^, or 
 live in a state of war. 
 
 If life means anything to a man, its value is 
 presumably in proportion to its length, unless 
 length be itself conditioned on qualit}'. At least, 
 few will quarrel with the notion that the value 
 of a life is in proportion to its quality; and that 
 the more of a superior quality a given man ex- 
 periences, the more valuable he is to himself and 
 to societ3\ In this latter sense, value may be 
 conditioned on length. 
 
 Prolongation of life is, then, one of the neces- 
 sities of an individual ; and as most of the so- 
 called necessities minister primarily to prolonga- 
 tion, it may be said — bearing in mind what is said 
 above about quality — that prolongation includes 
 all other necessities. Hereafter, in this chapter, 
 necessities will mean the prolongation of a life of 
 presumably the best quality possible to its time 
 and environment. 
 
 A discussion of the necessities and values of
 
 76 AN EXPEEIME^STT IN" EDUCATION 
 
 life will form a part of tlie fourth chapter, and 
 for the purposes of this chapter the above as- 
 sumptions will be taken as granted. Without 
 furtlier discussion, it will be also assumed that in 
 the present social state sucli prolongation, or the 
 satisfaction of the necessities of human existence, 
 cannot be maintained by conduct which follows 
 purely altruistic principles ; that a man cannot neg- 
 lect these necessities without lessening the value 
 of life itself ; and, furthermore, that he cannot, 
 if he would, set aside or neglect these necessities 
 without committing suicide on some phase of his 
 beino;. 
 
 Then, for war to cease and a balance of peace 
 to be maintained between necessity and aspira- 
 tion, the latter must change or be differently re- 
 garded. To regard a given aspiration as of no 
 value is a self-contradiction; it is no longer an 
 aspiration. 
 
 In passing, let it be pointed out that to be 
 taught one thing in youth and to be obliged to 
 practise another in manhood is to beget the habit 
 of regarding ideals as unattainable, and to be 
 responsible for the impotence and lethargy of 
 men in the presence of national, municipal, social, 
 and domestic needs for reform. 
 
 It is to the ideal itself that the question is now 
 brought; and some examination of the two chief 
 qualities of action is the remaining object of this 
 cha])ter. 
 
 Self-mutilation is regarded as evidence of fanat- 
 icism or insanity; and conscious, deliberate self- 
 mutilation would be regarded with horror by all
 
 EFFECTS OF STUDIES 77 
 
 rio^ht-mindcd men. This instinctive feelino: has, 
 unfortunately, come full}^ to consciousness with 
 reference to the physical life only. That it is 
 coming to consciousness with reference to the 
 psychical life is evinced by certain educational 
 and social efforts. Compulsory attendance at 
 school, libel, and kindred laws are in evidence ; 
 but as law usually lags some decades beliind pub- 
 lic opinion, it may be inferred that there is a good 
 deal of consciousness about the wrongs of psychi- 
 cal starvation and assault. But the school law is 
 often put on general rather than on individual 
 grounds. A child should be educated that he 
 may be a law-abiding citizen, worth something to 
 the state; it has not yet come to consciousness 
 that a man is worth something to himself. 
 
 When famine sets in and body -starvation is 
 conspicuous anywhere on earth, Christendom 
 arises and gives alms, while there is compara- 
 tively little concern over the fact that psychical 
 famine is the chronic condition of two-thirds of 
 the human race. AVhen massacres or other phys- 
 ical atrocities are committed in some obscure cor- 
 ner of the earth, most civilized men rightly con- 
 sider it every nation's business to make an effort 
 to put an end to these atrocities ; and still, the 
 world over, psychical atrocities are so common as 
 hardly to excite comment. 
 
 It is individual responsibility that makes na- 
 tional responsibility; and only when the indi- 
 vidual ceases to be cruel to himself will cruelty 
 between men and nations cease. It is this cruelty 
 to self, this barbaric self-mutilation on the ps3xhi-
 
 78 AN EXPEEIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 cal plane, that seems so desirable to bring to birth 
 in consciousness. 
 
 Most psychical mutilation is at present uncon- 
 scious because men have not come fully to con- 
 sciousness on the psychical plane. It is the es- 
 pecial business of education to bring consciousness 
 to itself on this psychical plane, and to furnish 
 principles and habits to guide its conduct on that 
 plane. 
 
 And herein is the most difficult point of this 
 discussion — to express the main idea of this part 
 of the chapter without an exaggeration that shall 
 condemn it. The doctrine of self-sacrifice as com- 
 monly taught and understood is pre-eminently 
 the doctrine of psj'chical self-mutilation. 
 
 Upon that child in whom racial instincts are 
 strong, the ph3^sical life gross, and the psychical 
 life comparatively weak and unconscious, the doc- 
 trine of self-sacrifice makes but small impression ; 
 but upon the sensitive, delicate, highly wrought 
 product of our finest civilization, it tends to make 
 lasting impression, if it make any at all. It is 
 these generous, high-minded children who should 
 be protected from the abuse of a principle which 
 the}?" easily absorb into habit, and which, un- 
 checked, often leads to a permanent dwarfing of 
 life. 
 
 So far as the span of human vision goes, losses 
 are not made good, bread does not return ; and it 
 is as foolish to say that to stop the development 
 of a capacity will not mutilate the mind as that 
 to put out an eye will not mutilate the body. 
 Time and opportunity come : he that uses them
 
 EFFECTS OF STUDIES 79 
 
 reaps the fruits of them; he that gives tliem 
 away must not only expect to see his neighbor 
 reap those fruits, but himself to be permanently 
 impoverished by all which that opportunity might 
 have yielded to him. 
 
 The relations of the individual to the social 
 whole will be touched upon in the next chapter : 
 it is his relations to himself that are here under 
 discussion ; and the following will now be given 
 as fundamental principles of right conduct tow- 
 ards one's self : 
 
 My neighbor's right is no more than mj' right. 
 What his right is, let his own capacities and de- 
 sires determine. What my right is, let my ca- 
 pacities and desires determine. He shall not 
 choose for me ; I shall not choose for him. The 
 one inviolable limit between us shall be, that he 
 shall take nothing from me which I need and 
 can rightl}^ use ; and I shall take nothing from 
 him which he needs and can rightly use. 
 
 If this principle of power to use were inculcat- 
 ed in children, and they were forbidden at home 
 and in school to give awa}^ any sort of opportu- 
 nity which they had, or could make for them- 
 selves without taking what was already held by 
 some one else, a habit of responsibility to self for 
 the use of opportunity would bring about a fuller 
 development of individual capacity, and so the 
 value of life to the individual and to the social 
 whole would be increased. 
 
 There are varied waj^s of using opportunity, 
 but an application of the above principle would 
 forbid one individual to sacrifice to another any-
 
 80 AN EXPEEIMEXT I>T EDUCATION 
 
 thing essential for the fullest development of his 
 own being, or to accept such a sacrifice from 
 another. One may properly sacrifice himself to 
 the state or to some social whole ; but such sacri- 
 fice would ordinarily not come to consciousness in 
 youth. Use of opportunity is not abuse of it, nor 
 the holding and hoarding of what cannot be used; 
 so that the miser of opportunity is as reprehensi- 
 ble as the spendthrift of it. The gluttons and 
 misers are wholly, and by intention, left out of 
 this discussion. 
 
 The chief application, then, which the principle 
 of self-sacrifice could have for children would be 
 interior and individual — the sacrifice of one class 
 of desires to another. In this interior realm the 
 principle would hold good until psychology had 
 advanced far enough to show how to form such a 
 group of balanced desires that a sacrifice of one 
 would be a mutilation. This points to an ultimate, 
 entire abandonment of the principle as now com- 
 monly taught. 
 
 As for the opposite principle — that of selfish- 
 ness — this chapter may be thought to be given 
 Avholly over to its expression ; but if that be the 
 impression conveyed here, it is hoped that the 
 next chapter will correct that impression. 
 
 The ideas thus far presented suggest that the 
 war between aspirations and necessities finds its 
 ultimate occasion in the holding of pernicious 
 ideals ; and that the balance so much desired can, 
 in the present social state, be achieved and main- 
 tained only by adapting the aspirations to the 
 necessities, at least during the period of youth.
 
 EFFECTS OF STUDIES 81 
 
 The purpose of this chapter is intended to be 
 as follows : Whatever choice of studies and meth- 
 ods is made for the governance of a child's edu- 
 cation, that choice largely determines the content 
 of his consciousness and the presumable lines of 
 his conduct.
 
 IV 
 ENDS TO BE SERVED BY STUDIES 
 
 The necessities "which were mentioned in the 
 last chapter it is the object of this more fully to 
 elucidate. To satisfy those necessities nobly is to 
 make of living an art ; and in this chapter it is 
 proposed to treat of life for its own sake, as an 
 art. 
 
 Art is the perfection of the application of 
 means to worthy ends ; and means here includes 
 human thought and energy, as well as external 
 tools and appliances. Living, then, as an art re- 
 quires a consciousness of and a capacity for the 
 use of means to worthy ends ; and it is that con- 
 sciousness and capacity which are the duty of the 
 educator to develop and train. 
 
 'No man can be conscious of that to which his 
 attention has not been directed, nor exercise a 
 capacity which he is nnconscious of possessing: 
 moreover, to be conscious of a thing, and to realize 
 that thing as important, are two states ; and it is 
 a sense of the values of an experience or an op- 
 portunit}^ which should be awakened in a child. 
 
 The ends of life may be said to constitute its 
 being, that which it is in itself; and the applica- 
 tion of means to these ends, its expression. Be-
 
 ENDS TO BE SERVED BY STUDIES 83 
 
 fore expression, comes that ^vbicll is expressed ; 
 before the means of living, the ends for which wo 
 live. In the various aspects of man's being are 
 found that without wdiich existence, as we know 
 it, cannot be maintained ; and the preservation 
 and perfecting of those aspects are the necessities, 
 in which is the prolongation of life, which Avere 
 mentioned in Chapter II., and which, since life it- 
 self depends upon them, may be taken as the fun- 
 damentally worthy ends to be pursued in making 
 of living an art. To question the worth of these 
 ends is to question the worth of life itself. "We 
 are : and it is here assumed that the fundamental 
 necessities of life constitute ends than which none 
 worthier can be conceived, or made the objects of 
 education. 
 
 Man is, first of all, a physical being, surrounded 
 by a physical environment — first of all, not nec- 
 essarily because man's being begins in his body, 
 but because w^ithout the body little is known of 
 his being ; and all other aspects during the years 
 of man's existence which are known to us are de- 
 pendent upon this one. 
 
 For more than twenty centuries man's body 
 has been studied, and still imperfection and de- 
 bility are common. During all those centuries 
 physicians have abounded ; and yet, to-da}'", there 
 are no simple, sure rules for the preservation of 
 the body from youth to age. This hoary uncer- 
 tainty tends to make one timid, even about theo- 
 rizing ; yet some attempts in this direction seem 
 necessary to this discussion. 
 
 Negative reasons are apt to be neglected ; and
 
 84 AN EXPEEIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 it is the negative aspects of man's physical needs 
 that are the more frequently emphasized, "Do 
 this in order that you may not get ill" usually 
 ends in " Do this because you are ill," so quick is 
 man to neglect the coming of an evil day until 
 that day is upon him. 
 
 To teach a child to pursue certain lines of con- 
 duct and of care lest something which he has not 
 experienced, and so has no consciousness of, shall 
 come to him is to imagine that the order of nature 
 can be reversed. Man understands that which 
 he has experienced, and veiy little more ; and it 
 is sheer waste to try to filter experience through 
 a child's thought. He gets nothing abiding by 
 that process ; and what he cannot immediately 
 be made to experience in action will make small 
 impression upon him. 
 
 Then, to make the preservation and perfecting 
 of his body an abiding end in his consciousness, 
 he must in some w^ay be made to feel the worth 
 of that which does preserve and perfect it. To 
 put a child through a course of illness, or to take 
 him day by day to hospitals in order to make a 
 sufficiently vivid impression of the horrors of ill- 
 ness, would be a way of acquainting him with ill- 
 ness, and to fill his mind with apprehensions and 
 fears ; but it w^ould do nothing towards teaching 
 the avoidance of such misfortunes. 
 
 Trainino- similar to this is common in all de- 
 partments of life ; and it fosters that negative at- 
 titude which makes of existence a series of escapes 
 from peril. Fear is not considered an ennobling 
 quality ; and, in itself merely, escape from peril is
 
 ENDS TO BE SERVED BY -STUDIES 85 
 
 not supposed to indicate liigli powers or to be a 
 worthy end of effort ; yet children live in this at- 
 mosphere of fear and peril from babyhood up, at 
 home and in school. 
 
 Let us now turn life around, take it up from 
 another side, and see what it will yield about this 
 physical aspect of man. 
 
 A child grows. What makes him grow ? Nour- 
 ishment, activity, and sleep — the expenditure of 
 energy and the replenishing of energy. Replen- 
 ishing is not necessary without expenditure ; and 
 here is the first lesson to be impressed. He does 
 something : he expends energy ; therefore must 
 he eat and sleep. This is of external action and 
 food. The next step is finer. His heart throbs, 
 his blood flows, his chest heaves : day and night, 
 waking and sleeping, something within him 
 works; and that worker must have supplies of 
 energy. Then show him the replenishing which 
 is always going on, and lead him from that fact 
 to infer its importance. 
 
 Do not expatiate on the impurities of indoor 
 air, nor the evils of tight clothing ; lead him to 
 love outdoor air, and to take deep, full respira- 
 tions ; and the impurities and clothing may be 
 left to his own instincts. 
 
 Later, he should be taught to understand these 
 instincts, and to know that his outflowing breath 
 is excreta which should be regarded as other ex- 
 creta are, and its retention in any room be pro- 
 vided against, not because retention will produce 
 disease, but becausQ retention is filth. 
 
 There is a third, more difficult step to which
 
 86 AN EXPERI5IENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 mankind has paid little attention. The human 
 skin throws off excreta. Take a child to the 
 country and tnru him loose in meadows and 
 "woods with nothing on but a single slip, like the 
 simplest Greek tunic. Give the child six months 
 of such life, and the common, close-fitting gar- 
 ments will produce a sense of intolerable suffoca- 
 tion. Also, let the tunic be light-colored. Plants 
 will die under black covers and go on thriving 
 under white ones ; and it is a fair inference that 
 the color of human clothing is fit subject for ex- 
 perimentation. 
 
 To know such health and vigor as may fairly 
 be said to constitute a worthy end of life, the 
 child must possess them, and for so long a period 
 as to have them so identified with self that devia- 
 tions will show themselves in consciousness and 
 be remedied at once. If well taught in child- 
 hood, these remedies w^ould be sought in an ex- 
 amination and readjustment of the fundamental 
 phenomena of the physical life — the expenditure 
 of energy, the excretion of waste products, and 
 the replenishment of energy. 
 
 Most children grow up so acquainted with, and 
 educated into, tolerance of small ailments that 
 these are unnoticed until their cumulative effects 
 have produced serious acute diseases, or chronic, 
 organic lesions. The opposite is here urged : 
 training into such a condition of health and vigor 
 as makes a slight disturbance noticeable, and re- 
 moval of cause as instinctive as to withdraw the 
 hand from a pin-prick. 
 
 There are two ways of stimulating growth:
 
 EISTDS TO BE SEEVED BY STUDIES 87 
 
 one is by bringing about a realization of some- 
 thing to grow to, and tlie other is by bringing 
 about a realization of something to grow away 
 from. The former is by power of attraction, 
 the latter is by repulsion ; the former is by con- 
 sciousness of perfections to be attained, the latter 
 by consciousness of ugliness to be avoided. Give 
 a child the former and he will be so sensitive to 
 the latter as to recoil. What is said of attention 
 in Chapter III. has application here. Habitual 
 attention determines reality ; and if ugliness of 
 all sorts were the most desirable reality, then only 
 would the philosophy of training by repulsion be 
 justified as an educational factor. 
 
 Would that there were anywhere, in any land, 
 a school and environment where, from two to 
 eighteen years of age, a child might live without 
 seeing a deformed thing, knowing of a sham or 
 illusion, or feeling the power of a repulsion ! In- 
 completeness is not here meant as deformity, nor 
 any steps in the process of normal growth, but 
 those malformations of life and character which 
 make tolerance of defects in body and mind a 
 daily virtue. 
 
 The greatest stimulus to perfection that the 
 physical aspect of man's being has, is found in its 
 environment. Make a child feel and respond to 
 that stimulus. To know nature intimately, and 
 to be equal to her at every point, has been the 
 effort of man for ages. Let a child see this, and 
 try to understand where man has succeeded, 
 vv^here failed, and why he has failed. 
 
 Let the child begin with the more common phe-
 
 88 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 nomena — the chano;es of the weather. To trv^ to 
 respond, to react against these as do the birds 
 and squirrels, will be a lesson which no child will 
 forget. To enjoy a walk against the wind, to 
 take delight in whirling snow, to feel the glow 
 and tingle of reaction against fierce dry cold, to 
 get wet through in a summer rain — these are ex- 
 periences which a child should repeat year after 
 year, until he feels himself more than equal to 
 anything which nature offers for his strength to 
 overcome. 
 
 Such experiences as these the city child can 
 have ; but the country child has, besides, forest 
 depths to penetrate, mountains to climb, rocky 
 caverns to explore, streams to follow from source 
 to mouth, and many other advantages. When 
 means of transportation are sufRciently great and 
 cheap, it is to be hoped man will return to ways 
 more wholesome for children — live in villao^es, 
 and let cities dwindle to mere distributing sta- 
 tions of a nation's products. 
 
 The intellectual aspect of man's being consti- 
 tutes an object whose preservation and perfec- 
 tion are a second worthv end in the art of living-. 
 
 The dawn of self-consciousness in a child mav 
 be considered the birth-hour of this intellectual 
 aspect. From that hour he has an intellectual 
 life as truly as he has a physical. The adult con- 
 sciousness vibrates between a general conscious- 
 ness which is diffused over many objects or is 
 absorbed in an action, and a consciousness of self 
 as something apart from those objects and actions. 
 This vibration is the basis of all thought; and so
 
 ENDS TO BE SERVED BY STUDIES 89 
 
 soon as self stands in consciousness as sometliing 
 apart, a self to wliicli tlio " my " consciousness 
 belongs, thought begins ; and every process of 
 identiiication of an object as a not-me or of an 
 action as " my " action is a process of thought. 
 
 How early these thought processes begin is 
 not known, but probably within the first year. 
 Whether a child ever has a diffused consciousness 
 which makes no distinction between self and not- 
 self is a question for the psychologist ; it is here 
 desired to point out only that the intellectual life 
 as such begins very early. 
 
 Analogies may be faulty and misleading ; yet 
 to the writer there seems no better way of treat- 
 ing this intellectual life than by pointing out cer- 
 tain analogies to the physical life, which are 
 plainl}^ shown in adult years, and may be pre- 
 sumed to hold equally good in childhood. 
 
 All people who have had much intellectual ex- 
 perience know what intellectual hunger is, and 
 that it is as imperative a craving as is physical 
 hunger; also, such people do not often mistake 
 intellectual activity for intellectual nourishment. 
 
 The expenditure of energy in, or by, the phys- 
 ical body is not replenishment, but exhaustion, of 
 energ}^ Expenditure aids growth, because by 
 the process of destruction it makes demand for 
 the processes of construction ; and if the sup])lies 
 for reconstruction are at hand, the recuperative 
 processes go on rapidly — the body is renewed and 
 enlarged : yet those processes of destruction are 
 but one half of the whole vitalizing process of 
 life; the other half is the upbuilding, reconstruc-
 
 90 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 tive processes which require the ingestion of new 
 material. 
 
 Comparing the mind to the body, it may be 
 said that intellectual activity alone is no more 
 intellectual nourishment than physical activity is 
 physical nourishment; and that activity without 
 nourishment, or an inadequate amount, will pro- 
 duce similar effects in these two aspects of being. 
 
 It will now be assumed that the fundamental 
 processes of the physical aspect of being have 
 their counterpart in the intellectual aspect — ex- 
 penditure of energy, excretion of waste, ingestion 
 of new material, and processes of construction. 
 These four make two groups — the destructive, 
 eliminating group, and the intaking, constructive 
 group. Perfection in the physical life depends 
 upon the adjustment of these two opposed groups 
 of processes ; and it is assumed that perfection in 
 the intellectual life is found in the adjustment of 
 a similar balance. 
 
 To keep a child sufficiently active, so that the 
 destructive forces may keep up a continual activ- 
 ity of the constructive forces in his body, he is 
 provided with various stimuli to activity in the 
 shape of objects to manipulate, places to go to, 
 etc. These may be called the means or tools of 
 his activity ; and if they are wisely chosen, they 
 may serve to train physical powers to such skill 
 and care as will be needed in later years. But 
 these appliances to activit}'' serve the destructive 
 forces directly, and only indirectly the construc- 
 tive ; they can in no wise take the place of food. 
 
 In like manner there are tools to the intellectual
 
 ENDS TO BE SERVED BY STUDIES 91 
 
 life, stimulating to activity, necessary to certain 
 processes, but no more capable of serving directly 
 the constructive intellectual i)rocesses than are a 
 chikrs playthings or an artisan's tools capable of 
 taking the place of a pliysical dinner. 
 
 Eeading, writing, arithmetic, drawing, as com- 
 monly taught and used, are tools pure and simple. 
 To adult non-specialists languages, mathematics, 
 drawing, and much material in all studies are no 
 more than tools. That subject or that phase of 
 detail of a subject which to the average adult is 
 but a tool should be so reo'arded in the arrano-e- 
 ment of educational matter and methods for chil- 
 dren. 
 
 A well-trained artisan gives tools to his appren- 
 tice or pupil so fast only as a beginning can be 
 made in their appropriate use : so should the tools 
 of the intellectual life be given out with discretion. 
 
 It is fair to ask, If so much of the common 
 studies are but stimuli to activity and not nour- 
 ishment, whence is the intellectual life to be nour- 
 ished in childhood? An answer to this question 
 has been given in preceding chapters : that which 
 nourishes the adult will nourish the child. 
 
 Let us return to the physical analogy. Food 
 is taken into the body; it is felt as going in, the 
 taking is a pleasure, and is followed by a feeling 
 of satisfaction. In the body this food is worked 
 over, selections are made, desirable portions are 
 worked up into integral parts of the physical tis- 
 sues, and all else is excreted. 
 
 Such processes as these take place in the mind 
 of every scholar. The child has not the scholar's
 
 92 AN EXPERIMENT IN" EDUCATION 
 
 power of selection ; but often a stronger, more 
 healtliy, excretory power. If children were al- 
 lowed to forget, if their minds were trusted to 
 excrete useless material as their bodies are, this 
 process alone would soon demonstrate what is 
 nourishing and what is not ; and what tool the 
 child is prepared to use and what not. In the 
 writer's experience with children, no intellectual 
 tool which the child was ready for and had used 
 in legitimate connection with what was not mere 
 tools was forgotten, either in itself or in its uses. 
 And here a distinction should be made between 
 tools as tools and tools in use. No tool is of 
 value save in its application to some labor; and 
 tools looked at or handled without such applica- 
 tion are the mere shows of an idle hour. 
 
 This brings us to another consideration which 
 the writer deems vital in the education of children. 
 To no child, even the youngest, should ever be 
 given a mere plaything, either physical or intel- 
 lectual — an object or story which has not its coun- 
 terpart and use in adult life. The child should 
 have the adult world in miniature— he should not 
 have a different world ; his playthings should be 
 steps in some skill which is of use in the markets 
 of men, and he should be taught to so handle 
 and use his playthings as to acquire that skill. 
 Playthings and plays should be direct preparation 
 for practical life. An unspoiled child is always 
 more interested in real grown-up things than in 
 shams and makeshifts ; and what his interest im- 
 pulsively chooses, that he should have, provided 
 that he has had a fairly large, well-stocked field
 
 ENDS TO BE SERVED J?Y STUDIES 93 
 
 of choice. It is tlie educator's business to provide 
 such a field, and to guide the impulsive choices, 
 not by inhibitions, but by appeal to new attrac- 
 tions. 
 
 There is a limited range of living physical ob- 
 jects that are fit for human food ; other objects 
 and phenomena are either useless now or are 
 means of external activities. Without desirins: 
 to push the analogy too far, the same may be said 
 of intellectual objects — the vast majority are 
 means of activity, and not food. There are intel- 
 lectual structures that are dead, and from them 
 life can no more flow than can a fossil tree bear 
 fruit. The physical life rests upon to-day ; it 
 were better if the intellectual did also. In the 
 knowledge, the thought, the vital, moving, intel- 
 lectual life of our day and time is the best mental 
 pabulum for our children. 
 
 A thing is not dead because it has lived in the 
 past. There are intellectual trees which have 
 borne fruit for centuries, and the seeker of to- 
 day finds them still alive and their fruit nourish- 
 ing. It is the dead and fallen that should be al- 
 lowed to decay and pass from intellectual sight. 
 
 What was said earlier in this chapter about the 
 positive and negative means of development ap- 
 plies here also. That child who is nourished on 
 real science and good literature will have finely 
 discriminating intellectual sensibilities and a strong 
 intellectual life, and will instinctively avoid in- 
 tellectual trash. 
 
 Also is there this great similarity between in- 
 tellectual nourishment and physical : tliat which
 
 94 AN EXPEKIMENT IK EDUCATION 
 
 is good may be selected and stored until sucli 
 time as it can be used ; so that which is given to 
 the child to-day and which may apparently re- 
 main forgotten for years may not be excreted, 
 but saved until the day of its need. The in- 
 tellectual activity required to memorize a jingle 
 from Hot her Goose may be as great as for a fine 
 passage from Shakespeare. The former is a use- 
 less bit of husk ; the latter, an everlasting suste- 
 nance. 
 
 If nervo-muscular arcs, brain paths, and grooves 
 of habit mean anj^thing, they condemn as imbecile 
 the education which occupies the child's mind 
 with what is avowedly trivial and transient, but 
 wliicli these arcs, paths, and grooves make per- 
 manent qualities of the intellectual life. 
 
 Every child is born into some social environ- 
 ment, and is therefore a member of some social 
 whole. A recognition of this fact, an under- 
 standing of what it involves of personal right and 
 of personal service, a feeling of what social life is, 
 and what social ostracism or social suicide means 
 to the indiv^idual and to the social whole — these 
 are necessary to an intelligent preserv^ation of, 
 and effort to perfect, the social aspect of being as 
 an end of human existence. 
 
 In a child this social aspect may, perhaps, best 
 be brought to consciousness by a comparison of 
 his social whole to his own body. The foot sup- 
 ports him and does his walking, the hand brings 
 and carries, the heart pumps the blood. Each 
 part which the child can feel or voluntarily move 
 has some use, does some labor which he, as a
 
 ENDS TO BE SEEVED BY STUDIES 95 
 
 whole, needs for Lis well-being. From these parts 
 to the microscopic cell is an easy step for a child's 
 imagination, provided that the step be properly 
 prepared for by instruction and illustration, with 
 the microscope, of what cells are and of their re- 
 lations to the tissues and organs. A comprehen- 
 sion of the cell as the unit of the organism, of its 
 individual labors, and of these as making up the 
 various organs that tliemselves compose the body 
 ■ — this can be given comparatively earl3^ 
 
 The child might then be led to see that a cell 
 which did not take care of itself — replenish its 
 own waste and rebuild its own walls — w^ould be a 
 burden to other cells, if for no other reason than 
 that it left a weak spot in the chain of continuous 
 life and movement ; that one which took care of 
 itself only, and refused to make effort with its fel- 
 lows for the common good, would likewise inter- 
 rupt the continuous life movement and so be a 
 weakness. 
 
 If there is no food to be taken, the hands can- 
 not till the mouth and the stomach be provided 
 with material to digest ; if the blood is poor, or a 
 cell is shut off from contact with its flow, that cell 
 cannot take from the blood what is necessary to 
 reconstruct its w^orn self and to make stores of 
 energy to be used for the common good. An 
 examination of the various parts of the body re- 
 veals that everywhere there is an equality of 
 health, of sustenance, of physical w^ell - being. 
 There are differences as to quantities and quali- 
 ties of labor performed, but no difference of indi- 
 vidual comfort and apparent content, and no sane
 
 96 AN EXPEEIMEN"T IN EDUCATIOZST 
 
 person would consciously neglect to preserve that 
 equality of individual well-being. 
 
 A series of lessons, about which the above is 
 intended as no more than a suggestion, belongs 
 to the first topic of this chapter — the physical 
 body as an end of being ; but each step in such a 
 series is a step in the process of laying a founda- 
 tion for the understanding of social relations. 
 
 A man is to his social whole what a cell is to 
 his body. By right of being a part of that whole, 
 that whole should provide means of physical com- 
 fort and well-being ; he should so use those means 
 as to keep himself an integral unit, and to be 
 provided with stores of energy which he should 
 freely give forth whenever the social whole needs 
 them. To work with and for his fellows should 
 be an instinctive, spontaneous part of his being's 
 impulses. 
 
 There is a more vital connection than that of 
 labor and responsibility for labor — there is the 
 continuous life flow, the continuous disturbing 
 and readjusting of the balance between the forces 
 of destruction and of construction, a change and 
 a movement within and among the parts which 
 compose the whole. To make the social whole 
 strong and able, to put no limit to the flow of life 
 within it, no unnecessary weight on either side of 
 the balance — this requires that the individual unit 
 feel the social whole as himself. 
 
 Only in the disease of the human body does 
 one part take upon itself the labor of another 
 part ; so in a healthy social whole, that member 
 would be of most value who, developed to fullest
 
 ENDS TO IJE SERVED 15Y STUDIES 97 
 
 capacit}^, should abide in bis own place — presum- 
 ably the largest place which he has capacity to 
 fill — and there use his energy in the particular 
 way for which he is best fitted. 
 
 Equality of physical well-being there should be 
 in every social whole, and in humanity as one 
 whole ; but equality of labor or of position, of 
 association or of environment, of amount and 
 quality of possessions, or of capacity to know, to 
 do, and to enjoy — these can never be ; and every 
 child should be taught to comprehend this great 
 fact, and to accept it cheerfully. 
 
 A natural criterion of honor and dishonor in 
 labor and position is found in capacity, and by 
 capacity here is meant the entire quality of the 
 man as a whole. The criterion of honor and dis- 
 honor in labor itself is found in its value to the 
 social whole. These two criteria — the worth or 
 worthlessness to the' social whole of a given kind 
 of labor, and the relative fitness of a given worker 
 to discharge a given labor — these should be in- 
 stilled as the chief elements of degradation and of 
 honor. To occupy a position w^iich one cannot 
 fill, to shrink from taking a place which one can 
 best fill — these are equally dishonorable ; for they 
 cheat the social whole of its rightful meed of in- 
 dividual service. To have a position which is of 
 value to the social whole, which uses all of one's 
 capacities without exhaustion, and into which one 
 fits happily without worry or strife — this is to 
 have an honorable position. 
 
 This does not mean that a shoemaker's son 
 must follow his father's occupation. The first 
 
 7
 
 98 AK EXPERIMENT IInT EDUCATIOIS" 
 
 clut}'- of a youth to himself, and of a state to its 
 children, is such individual development as tests 
 the presence of inherent capacities and brings 
 them forth to conscious use ; and only when this 
 is done can an IndividuaFs place in the social 
 Avhole be adequately determined, either by his 
 own choices or by those of his fellow-men. Sucli 
 development would in time raise the general level 
 of capacity ; but it would not therefore leave any 
 phase of labor lacking its laborers. It w^ould in- 
 crease the skill brought to bear in a given field, 
 and so elevate the field itself, until all loathsome 
 and unwholesome forms of labor were performed 
 by machinery or made less noxious. 
 
 These far-away, Utopian conditions seem not 
 impossible of being brought near and made actual, 
 through a proper education of youth from child- 
 hood up, in this social aspect as an end to be con- 
 sciously pursued. 
 
 Tlie next aspect to claim attention will be 
 called, for want of a better term, the human as- 
 pect. Beyond and including each individual's 
 limited social whole is the human whole. To 
 serve the human whole indirectly, by aid in per- 
 fecting some limited social whole, is possible to 
 all; but to serve it directly is possible to few. 
 Those who advance knowledge, those who apply 
 knowledge to increase the general well-being, 
 those who produce masterpieces in literature and 
 art, and those whose conduct makes a conspicu- 
 ous example which is worthy the emulation of 
 men — these are they who serve the human whole. 
 
 The child should be taught to reverence this
 
 ENDS TO BE SEKVED BY STUDIES 99 
 
 human whole, and all who have conspicuously 
 served it. To serve it should he no part of his 
 expectations ; for he who has best served it has 
 done so unconscious!}', or by choice of his fellow- 
 men or of circumstance, rather than by his own 
 choice or will to render such service. To each 
 child such an eminence is possible : it is not prob- 
 able ; and if it come its recognition is apt to be 
 long delayed. Let a child know that something 
 which he may do may prove of value to the hu- 
 man whole, but that he may not hope to know 
 of it in his lifetime ; for many an ai)parent ser- 
 vice time discounts, until in a subsequent age 
 nothing is left of it. 
 
 Yet is this human whole the greatest tangible 
 aspiration or end of being which a teacher can at 
 present give to a youth ; but, for the most part, he 
 must be content to feel the human relation— to 
 feel the human support and care over himself, 
 and to return to the human need his modicum of 
 service — these he must be content to receive 
 and to give through his limited social environ- 
 ment. 
 
 Besides these four aspects — physical, intellect- 
 ual, social, and human — there are two more : a 
 subhuman and a superhuman. 
 
 By the subhuman aspect is meant that tie of 
 descent which binds man to all which in form 
 and consciousness is supposed to be below him. 
 Each man is bound by a recognized responsibil- 
 ity to his immediate human parentage. Whether 
 such a tie of responsibility can rationally be set 
 up between man and that lower world in which
 
 100 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 he is supposed to have had his genesis, and which 
 as a stream of life has flowed down the ages be- 
 side him, is a fair question. 
 
 That living stream is here : in it and through 
 it man's physical being exists. It is now, not 
 once and remotely, but now the immediate, indis- 
 pensable purveyor to man's life. What does he 
 owe to this purveyor? It is a living thing: 
 scholars are beginning to hesitate about denjing 
 consciousness to the lowest living cell ; and a few 
 ask that the supposed gap between the organic 
 and the inorganic be closed — because, say these 
 few, that gap has existed only in man's imperfect 
 thouo-ht — and life be granted, and with life con- 
 sciousness and an intelligent use of means to 
 ends, to the long called dead but really living 
 crystal world. 
 
 If this subhuman stream be living, conscious, 
 and intelligent — after its kind — should not man 
 refrain from wanton ruin, useless deatl], and sense- 
 less cruelties ? May not man take what he needs 
 gently, and should he not desire to return to the 
 great stream as much as he takes out ; return, not 
 for his own sake, nor out of regard to his human 
 successors, but from desire to be honest, courteous, 
 and helpful to the stream itself, fountain of and 
 purveyor to his own existence ? 
 
 It can be imagined that a people whose chil- 
 dren from infancy had lived in such an atmos- 
 phere of feeling towards this lower living world, 
 and had been educated to regard its well-being 
 and happiness as necessary to itself as well as to 
 humanity, would, in a single generation, do much
 
 ENDS TO BE SERVED BY STUDIES 101 
 
 to change and to renew the natural features of 
 our great mother earth. 
 
 Man's rehitions to this lower world have been 
 merely those of slave and muster; between these 
 relations he has vibrated. Has the time not come 
 when both may be supplanted by that higher re- 
 lation of friend, and a child be taught what that 
 friendship must mean to himself and to that world? 
 
 If man's life has its genesis in more rudimen- 
 tary states, why regard it as a completion? If 
 this lower world is its foundation, why regard 
 man in this present physical environment as any- 
 thing more than the four walls of a single story, 
 without even a fixed roof? Has not man in all 
 ages aspired to something which he is not, and 
 which cannot be realized — at least, has not yet 
 been — in the forms, conditions, and environments 
 with which we are familiar? Why think other 
 environments and conditions impossible? Per- 
 haps these exist now and here, but hid by man's 
 imperfectly developed senses. Perhaps man's as- 
 piration is a reaction on a real stimulus which his 
 imperfect consciousness does not quite grasp and 
 tangibly locate. 
 
 Of this superhuman aspect of man's being, 
 which assumes as essential to the existence of 
 such an aspect a superhuman environment to 
 which man has relation — of this no account will 
 be attempted. Neither will any suggestions be 
 framed about this aspect as an end for which 
 means must be found and to which applied. That 
 such an aspect is, and that some means to its 
 preservation and the perfecting of relations to
 
 103 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 that upper environment whence stimuh come to 
 that aspect of man's being — tliat these are is be- 
 lieved by the writer ; but in a field Avhere discus- 
 sion so easily leads to blind passion or dogmatic 
 scorn it is thought best to be silent. It is hoped 
 that the time will come when this aspect of man's 
 being will be put upon the same basis as are the 
 other aspects ; will be subjected by duly qualified 
 persons to the same unemotional research ; and 
 that the common man will accept the results of 
 that research with the same matter-of-course air 
 that now characterizes his acceptance of the so- 
 called scientific facts. 
 
 Until this aspect of man's being can be regard- 
 ed dispassionately it is useless to hope that justice 
 will be done it, either by the materialist or the 
 religious sentimentalist. The integrity which was 
 spoken of in Chapter I. may be relied upon to 
 preserve the aspect so long as no direct effort to 
 destroy it is made ; and certainly educators have 
 a right to protect children against such effort. 
 To let that aspect alone seems at present the 
 wisest way for the teacher. Also, it is doubtful 
 if questions put to children in schools about God, 
 angels, devils, etc., can demonstrate the presence 
 or absence, the quantity or quality, of such a 
 phase of man's being as is here meant by the su- 
 perhuman. Answers to such questions show the 
 quality of the environment in which the child has 
 lived and are an index of the state of adult 
 thought in that environment, rather than an ex- 
 pression of anything inherent in the nature of the 
 child. The superhuman aspect, if it exist, should
 
 ENDS TO BE SERVED BY STUDIES 103 
 
 be found showing itself, reasonably free from taint 
 or artificial form, somewhei'e along the years of 
 childhood, Avere it not forestalled and spoiled by 
 a too early, artificial, and sentimental bias. 
 
 Living as an art, for its own sake, includes the 
 preservation and perfecting of these six aspects of 
 man's being. For these as ends man lives, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously. It may be presumed 
 that the more conscious he is of these ends, the 
 more perfectly he will adapt to them the means 
 which come to his hand. At present the educa- 
 tional means of bringing these ends to conscious- 
 ness as ends are mostly reserved for the higher 
 institutions of learning, and even there they are 
 not adequate. 
 
 If they be true fundamental ends of human 
 learning, every child, in his measure, has a right 
 to them; and the primal duty of education is to 
 bring them to consciousness in every child. 
 
 It is no part of the purposes of this chapter to 
 state explicitly the means by which this may be 
 done — that is, the ends as ends may be known 
 and understood by a child ; nor to state by what 
 means the man from childhood to age may attain 
 these ends — that is, preserve and perfect these 
 aspects of being. It is here desired only to point 
 out these ends as ^vorthy ones, whose pursuit 
 makes of living an art, desirable for its own sake; 
 and this being true, that these ends become the 
 guiding lines for all educational processes — an aid 
 to the determination of all subject-matter to be 
 taught, and of all methods to be used in teaching 
 that subject - matter.
 
 part llllir 
 
 SOME DETAIL ABOUT THE TEACHING OF 
 SPECIAL SUBJECTS
 
 SCIENCE 
 
 "Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? 
 Loved the wood-rose, and left it ou its stalk ?" 
 
 These lines from Emerson's poem " Forbear- 
 ance "express the spirit which should guide the 
 teaching of science to children. The curiosity 
 which demands to " see the wheels go round," 
 and that cuts open the doll's body to see what it 
 is stuffed with, partakes more of wantonness and 
 cruelty than of true investigation. 
 
 If a college student choose to inject hot wax 
 into the veins of a living lobster, it is supposed 
 that the student knows and accepts the condi- 
 tions and consequences of the act ; but such sup- 
 position could not be made about the average 
 child ; and it seems not too much to say that few 
 boys and girls under fourteen years of age should 
 be allowed to make experiments which cause suf- 
 fering to any sentient thing, or to make prepara- 
 tions of livino- oro^ans or tissues which involve the 
 death of the object. 
 
 The mind whose first impulse is to pick or to 
 catch, to transplant or to imprison, to pull to 
 pieces or to cut open — is barbaric. He who has
 
 108 AN EXPEKIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 i'elt the (juick moisture in his e3'es at siglit of the 
 first wild blossom encountered in his spring ram- 
 bles, or stopped and remained motionless lest he 
 interrupt the song of a bird in some wild spot, 
 he and such as he only are fitted by S3aupathies 
 to introduce children into the kingdom of nature. 
 
 Our civilization is certainly barbaric in its wan- 
 ton destruction of all the beautiful things which 
 nature spontaneously produces. We seem inca- 
 pable of appreciating any wild thing until, near- 
 ing destruction, it becomes the prized pet of the 
 gardener. Many an inhabitant of New England 
 and the Middle States will tell of places where 
 once the arbutus and the azalea made the slopes 
 pink with their blooms, where now not a spray 
 nor a bush can be found. 
 
 To make the acquaintance of, to try to under- 
 stand, to have a friendship for, to find out the 
 needs of and to minister to those needs — to do 
 these without destruction is the aim which should 
 animate those who seek to teach science to chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Hence, do not bring nature to the child, but 
 take the child to nature ; and when there let him 
 keep his hands off until he has exhausted the ca- 
 pacities of eye and ear. 
 
 Nature in greenhouses, public gardens, and 
 aquariums is not the best kind for children to 
 see. She is then too concentrated, too orderly, 
 too much trained and ruled by man, too tame and 
 too small to make a proper impression on a 
 child's mind. Every year Nature bows her wild 
 spirit more and more to the demands of man, and
 
 SCIENCE 109 
 
 moves in grooves which he appoints ; but fortu- 
 nate above others are they who in childliood have 
 seen her in her vastness, her untamed wildncss 
 and disorder, her solitary strengtli and original 
 beauty. In such condition only can she inspire 
 the noblest sentiments towards her. 
 
 To remain in long or familiar contact with such 
 conditions is possible to fcw^ children who can 
 have, at the same time, such guidance as to make 
 the most of the opportunity ; but within an hour's 
 railway journey of many a large city in our land 
 still remain natural features in almost undis- 
 turbed, primeval grandeur ; and we will venture 
 to say that in every such city enough is wasted 
 each year in municipal carelessness to send the 
 children of every school to these places for at 
 least one day. 
 
 Field lessons should be the beginning, and, 
 throughout, the foundation of lessons in science 
 to children in all grades up to the high school. 
 
 The object of these should be to acquaint chil- 
 dren with nature as a whole, rather than with de- 
 tached, isolated objects belonging to her; to give 
 the child general impressions and large, inclusive 
 pictures which may remain as permanent Avholes 
 in the child's mind, and to furnish an accurate 
 setting or framework into which minutiije may be 
 placed in due relation and perspective. 
 
 These larger wdioles should not be vague, unde- 
 finable blurs on the child's mind, but should have 
 as definite, clearly marked limits and character- 
 istics as are possible to man's present knowledge. 
 The very blaukness and plasticity of the child
 
 110 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 mind make it important that the impressions 
 which are made should be accurate. The notion 
 that half-truths, false notions, and slovenly obser- 
 vation are good enough for a child and will be 
 easily thrown off or corrected later in life is an 
 outrage on any reasonable psychology of a child's 
 actual conditions and needs. 
 
 An illustration from personal experience may 
 not be out of place here. I had read a few stand- 
 ard works on geology, had done some field work, 
 had taught the subject one year in a high school 
 and one year in a normal school, and had I been 
 asked about ray general notions of the subject 
 should have supposed them to be tolerably accu- 
 rate. Yet one day, on reading an article in Nature 
 about the depth of soils in river valleys, I was led 
 to examine my general conception of the earth as 
 a whole, geologically considered, and was startled 
 to find that, without ever having thought about 
 the matter, I had carried the vague notion that 
 in some places the soil was of indefinite depth. 
 Then and there my mind made its first clear 
 picture of the earth as a ball of rock, with a soil 
 which at its greatest depth ^vas relatively very 
 thin. 
 
 On speaking of this matter to an eminent scien- 
 tist, he told me that he was eighteen years old 
 when he received his first clear impression of the 
 earth as turning away from the sun at nightfall ; 
 and that, although he had known the fact from 
 childhood, the first realization came so late, and 
 when doing w^hat he had done hundreds of times 
 before — gazing at the setting sun.
 
 SCIENCE 111 
 
 The contents of adult minds would often aston- 
 ish their owners could they be put into definite 
 form ; and it is to avoid such hazy, incomplete 
 conceptions in adult life that care should be taken 
 to make definite and true to fact whatever con- 
 ceptions a child gets. 
 
 Also, treat a child with honest, high-minded 
 courtesy. If the teacher does not know, let him 
 say so frankly, and not put the child off with 
 some specious excuse. If the teacher know that 
 the child's question is one of the unanswered 
 problems in nature or life, let him not hesitate to 
 acquaint the child with the fact, thus stimulat- 
 ing both the courage and the humility of the 
 child and of himself, and deepening that most pa- 
 thetic of all sources of comradeship — conscious- 
 ness of a common ignorance and imjiotence. 
 
 Preparation for a field lesson should be care- 
 full}^ made. Prior to taking the children out the 
 teacher should go over the route, select the feat- 
 ures which are to be examined, and work out the 
 detail of the examination, so that with the chil- 
 dren there shall be no waste of time and effort, 
 and no real distraction. The possibilities of dis- 
 traction are such, in all field work, that but for a 
 quick and sure holding of attention to a series of 
 objects or phenomena which have previously been 
 selected with painstaking care, and now present- 
 ed to the children with due regard to order and 
 sequence, such lessons are apt to be valueless. 
 
 Also, do not combine study and pleasure — a 
 field lesson and a picnic — unless the teacher's 
 power is practically boundless over the thoughts
 
 113 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 and emotions of the pupils. The thought of the 
 picnic will lie in the child's mind as a disturbing 
 force, which should not be there. If luncheon is 
 required, let each child have his own, and think 
 no more abont it than he does on a stormy day 
 at the school building. From beginning to end, 
 a field day should be conducted with as much 
 quiet decorum as a house day ; and no more re- 
 cesses or plays allowed to one than to the other. 
 
 The field day should be, at once, the most seri- 
 ous and the most delightful of school experiences : 
 the most serious because in one day materials for 
 many days of indoor lessons should be gathered, 
 and children and teacher should feel a zeal not 
 to waste its precious possibilities ; and delightful 
 because, whether understood or not, if the day be 
 properly conducted both child and teacher will 
 feel that bond of kinship with the planet as man's 
 great mother which is perhaps the oldest and 
 certainly one of the finest of human sensibilities. 
 
 Advantage should be taken of special oppor- 
 tunities and unusual phenomena — eclipses and 
 transits, effects of floods, railway cuttings, borings 
 of wells, storms, etc. If such arise on a day de- 
 voted to other matters, vary the programme to 
 take it in. 
 
 On a field day whose purpose was the study of 
 some forms of sea-life in situ, a child of six star- 
 tled comrades and teacher with the exclamation, 
 " See ! that vessel is sinking." The teacher raised 
 her eyes and looked off shore. A half-dozen or 
 more vessels were in sight at different distances, 
 and so placed relatively as to illustrate well the
 
 SCIENCE 113 
 
 rotundity of the earth. It was a clear day, and 
 there was a placid sea, with but a slight breeze 
 making an occasional ripple over its surface. A 
 spirited discussion followed. The children, who 
 were from five to nine yeiirs of age, decided that 
 if the farther vessels were sinking they would 
 show signals of distress, and the nearer would be 
 putting out boats to help them. Meanwhile, the 
 children discovered that the vessels sank more 
 and more, until of one the upper part of the 
 masts and sails only were apparently above wa- 
 ter ; and one of their number suggesting that 
 the sea must "get lower" the farther out the 
 ships go, they all accepted that as a solution of 
 the puzzle, and returned to their former labors. 
 
 The topic was afterwards taken np in the school- 
 room, and some experiments made of watching 
 moving objects on flat and on rounded surfaces ; 
 and by means of these combined experiences the 
 rotundit}'^ of the earth became a living, realized 
 fact to the children. The teacher was obliged to 
 tell them the fact that observation of ships at 
 sea from any point and in any direction would 
 give the same results, so that the earth must be 
 " rounded in all directions." 
 
 Nature's changes should be noted and followed, 
 with care to avoid conclusions until the cycle has 
 been completed at least once : the migrations of 
 birds ; the formation of buds in the autumn and 
 their expansion and further development in the 
 spring ; changes in the coats and colors of ani- 
 mals ; the varying lengths of the life periods of 
 plants and animals ; the variations produced by 
 
 8
 
 114 AN EXPEllIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 differing opportunities as to soil, moisture, sun- 
 light, exposure, etc. 
 
 Teach the child to be definite about these by 
 marking locations on maps or drawings, and keep- 
 ing a record of times and conditions. For in- 
 stance, if it is desired to have the child note the 
 apparent movements of the sun from north to 
 south, see that he has a definite starting-point — 
 the chimney or gable of a house, a tree, or other 
 feature which defines the place on the horizon 
 where the sun sets or rises on a given day, as 
 seen from a given point of observation — and then 
 see that all subsequent observations are made 
 from that point and with reference to that ob- 
 ject. To secure independent observation in such 
 a matter, each child better have his own indi- 
 vidual point of observation and object of refer- 
 ence. 
 
 In this matter about the sun the child will soon 
 be astonished at the change of place ; then when 
 the sun returns npon its path instead of going all 
 round the horizon he will wonder still more. Get 
 the child's judgment of the phenomena, and be 
 sure that it is based on thought. The point of 
 observation and the object of reference have not 
 changed in relative position to each other or to 
 surrounding objects. The child will then proba- 
 bly insist that the sun moves or changes place ; 
 and he must be directly asked what other solution 
 of the problem is possible, and perhaps helped by 
 experiments with moving objects before he thinks 
 of or clearly realizes that the earth as a whole 
 may have moved. This point reached, tell him
 
 SCIENCE 115 
 
 the facts, and, as far as possible, how astronomers 
 have proved the correct solution. 
 
 In all science work avoid waste of time and 
 energy, and the carrying of rubbish, by the selec- 
 tion of discriminating features. Perhaps to the 
 eminent specialist there is no chaff in nature; but 
 certainly, for purjwses of the child's study, there 
 is much more chaff than kernel. It is not enough 
 to teach any fact in nature; there are millions of 
 facts that relatively are chaff; and school years 
 are not only too few to be wasted on such facts, 
 but the contemplation of them is apt to obscure 
 the power to discriminate the kernels. 
 
 First of all, a child should learn not likenesses, 
 but differences — those particular, distinguishing- 
 differences which differentiate one object from an- 
 other. In the study of definite object and detail 
 the child will often need to take the pieces apart 
 so as to get a perception of the individualities 
 which combined make the puzzling whole. That 
 perception gained, all minor or other detail should 
 be avoided in order that the individuality be not 
 obscured. The aim should be to leave in the 
 child's mind not a finished picture, as of fine de- 
 tail of form, light and shade, and coloring, but a 
 sharp, characteristic outline ; and all of the child's 
 expressions of his knowledge in drawing, in mod- 
 elling, and in speech should have this quality. 
 
 The last two points are regarded of prime im- 
 portance, because much of the teaching of science 
 in kindergartens and lower grades which has been 
 observed by the writer has sinned against the 
 child's mind most grievously in this regard — mak-
 
 116 AN EXPEKIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 ing as much of chaff as of kernel, of the undis- 
 crhninating as of the discriminating features. 
 
 Also, give names and use technical expressions 
 freel}^ Language is indispensable to thought ; 
 and while facts may be carried in memory in a 
 series of pictures, they can be thought over and 
 conveyed to others more easily if duly labelled 
 with the proper linguistic forms ; and babj^-talk 
 or the avoidance of scientific expression is no 
 more necessary with a student of five than of 
 twentj^-five. A word or an expression, as such, has 
 neither terrors nor difficulties to a cliild's tongue 
 or memory ; and when naturally associated with 
 a clearly defined object, phenomena, or idea, will 
 no more be lost from comprehension or conscious- 
 ness than the thing which it symbolizes. It is 
 not technical expression, but the separation of ex- 
 pression from idea — the actual substance of ex- 
 pression — that is the bane of school-rooms. 
 
 While the first aim should be to give broad, 
 general conceptions not only of large, inclusive 
 wholes, but of individual objects and phenomena, 
 some work each year should be of another sort. 
 The child should be getting "something of every- 
 thing," and also "everything of something." This 
 "everything of something" should not be neglect- 
 ed even with the youngest children. Select some 
 object, phenomena, or topic, and keep it before 
 the child's mind until it is comparatively exhaust- 
 ed according to adult standards. Give short les- 
 sons each day on it, until there are indications in 
 some child of mental ennui or repulsion to it; then 
 give a succession of varied lessons on other topics
 
 / 
 
 SCIEKCE 117 
 
 until the children have wearied of variety, when 
 a return to the former subject will be a pleasure. 
 In this manner some subject each year may be 
 exhaustively treated, and the child have a taste of 
 that minute, painstaking investigation which de- 
 velops the desire for and power of original re- 
 search. The children themselves will be the best 
 indices of the time element in this matter. 
 
 During tiie ninth lesson on the cotton-plant — 
 the only science subject the children had had for 
 three weeks — a girl remarked, " I'm tired of cot- 
 ton-plants." The teacher said nothing, but after 
 the lesson she put away the cotton-plants and all 
 other suggestions of their late lessons, and on the 
 following day took up a new topic. Nearly three 
 months later that same girl said, impulsively, " I 
 wish we could have some more lessons on the cot- 
 ton-plant," and the other children echoed her wish. 
 Children — these were from five to nine years of 
 age — will return to a former topic with the same 
 zest as to a once -loved but recently neslected 
 play. 
 
 This brings to prominence the most important 
 of all considerations in the teachins: of children : 
 it is the child, and not the teacher, who should 
 decide when enough of one thing has been taken. 
 A child's mind has natural tastes and repulsions ; 
 knows when it has had enough, when nausea is 
 imminent ; and it should be trusted — should no 
 more be forced and stuffed against its inclinations 
 than its bodv should be. 
 
 Yet a child's physical body may be so pampered 
 that its appetites are diseased, and his mind may
 
 118 AN EXPEIIIMEXT IN" EDUCATION 
 
 be similarly demoralized. It is not here meant 
 that a child's whim shall be the guide to either 
 physical or mental sustenance or activity ; but 
 that a given Avholesome mental stimulus should 
 not be forced upon all children alike, nor upon 
 any child so long or so frequently as to create re- 
 pulsion to it. 
 
 There are plenty of wholesome mental stimuli, 
 and to some of them each child will contentedly 
 and spontaneously respond ; from that to which 
 response is spontaneous he may be gently and 
 gradually led to respond to those to which he 
 may have at first no power of response. A real, 
 interior response, which can easily be detected in 
 the manner and expression of the child, should be 
 sought, and sometliing is wrong where it is not 
 obtained. 
 
 Neither is it meant that there should never be 
 any forcing beyond spontaneous response. Wheth- 
 er any one can reach skill in any line without do- 
 ing a deal of painstaking drudgery is an open 
 question. Until children are well taught this 
 question cannot be answered satisfactorily. It 
 may be a Utopian dream to think that without 
 the strain of labors that are forced drudgeries, 
 without feeling the sweat and fever of competi- 
 tion with otlier workers, a man may reach the 
 highest skill or eminence in a given pursuit ; but 
 nntil children are differently taught it is permis- 
 sible to think that, if well taught, the many Avould 
 spontaneously do from interior need and desire 
 Avhat the many now do from exterior material or 
 social necessities, and the rare few from inherent
 
 SCIENCE 119 
 
 love. Either mankind is hopelessly mediocre and 
 vulgar in possibilities of character, or the dream 
 is not Utopian. 
 
 As matters now are, some forcing seems neces- 
 sary — something to spur the average, flagging, 
 lazy, and slovenly mind. But forcing should be 
 the last resort; the child should have a chance, 
 during at least the first four years of school life, 
 to find in himself a natural, spontaneous taste for 
 mental activities; a desire for accuracy, finish, 
 and excellence in those activities; and a willing 
 zest in the exercise of them. The writer's expe- 
 riences with children favor the hope that after 
 four years of such opportunity as this book sug- 
 gests no child would ordinarily bo willing to miss 
 a day at school, or to go without mental food any 
 more than physical. 
 
 Dogmatic statements about natural phenomena 
 will often be made by children : they may be cor- 
 rected or ignored. The latter is the better way 
 where there is to be opportunity in subsequent 
 study to correct them by the child's own observa- 
 tions. 
 
 The spirit which is found in the best post-grad- 
 uate departments of the largest universities should 
 be the spirit of work in all grades from the kin- 
 dergarten up : a direct simplicity in dealing with 
 phenomena, an avoidance of misplaced sentiment, 
 a candid exposure of error and of the limitations 
 of present knowledge, a genuine humility, and a 
 reverent courage. Without these the first years 
 of school life will have no true dignity and worth ; 
 and the child suffers far more than the adult stu-
 
 120 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 dent from not living in an atmosphere of genuine 
 dignity and worth. 
 
 In preparing a science lesson for even the 
 youngest children, a teacher, unless already fa- 
 miliar with the latest researches in that line, 
 should as far as ])ossible read up in the largest 
 works and latest publications all that is known 
 about it. Elementary works are not a sufficient 
 guide ; they are often poorly prepared, are seldom 
 up to date, and the teacher who relies on them 
 alone carries to his pupils an outlook too narrow 
 and scrappy. 
 
 The teacher should himself be free from direc- 
 tion in this matter : he better make a poor selec- 
 tion of what is most interesting and valuable or 
 possible to teach to a child from a large treat- 
 ment of the topic than to depend upon selections 
 made by others. It is desirable that children 
 use their mental powers freely, unlimited and un- 
 hindered by any prejudices or worn grooves of 
 thought ; and a teacher must emancipate himself 
 from such grooves and deal with the larger as- 
 pects if he is to bring about so desirable a result. 
 
 The most harmful of all fetters which a teacher 
 can have are false and narrow notions as to what 
 a child can or cannot take — what a child thinks, 
 feels, realizes, actually likes, and is capable of. 
 The child is yet an unknown factor; observa- 
 tions already made are hopelessly at variance ; 
 and it would be well if every teacher could meet 
 each new class with a blank sheet on which orig- 
 inal impressions could be recorded. 
 
 Children understand far more than thev seem
 
 SCIENCE 131 
 
 to ; trivial incidents and thoughtless expressions 
 may make indelible impressions on their minds; 
 hence the necessity of the more thorough, pains- 
 taking preparation on the part of the teacher to 
 make an impression that is worth being indelible. 
 Happy, interested children are rarely given to de- 
 ceit ; so that no one ordinarily should contradict 
 a child's statements about himself or judge for 
 him. Trust him and give the courtesy due. 
 
 Never tell a child that which will take the 
 charm from a personal discovery. Let no false 
 judgments pass ; but wait time and further ob- 
 servation to correct them, if such waiting be feasi- 
 ble, and it often is. But when a child's facilities 
 for observation are exhausted, let the teacher irive 
 all that he knows about the topic as freely as he 
 w^ould to an adult, that the child may regard him 
 as an ever-living stream, with ample drink for all 
 and an abundance to go to waste.
 
 II 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 HisTOEY, like science, deals with that which is 
 perpetually in the process of becoming, has a 
 great past, and goes forward to an unknown fut- 
 ure. 
 
 Science tries to describe the web which nature 
 has woven and is weaving with an ever-changing 
 pattern. This web man affects, rending or mend- 
 ing it according to his moods or his supposed ne- 
 cessities; but these changes are like those which 
 a child may make at the loom of its mother — a 
 small tangle of broken threads or some pretty 
 variation that she untangles or incorporates into 
 her own pattern by a few skilful changes. It is 
 that child only who in the presence of the great 
 mother submits to her teaching, and willinglj'-, pa- 
 tiently tries to work out her pattern, whom she 
 long tolerates at her loom. 
 
 Is not history the same in kind, although ap- 
 parently of man's weaving ? He weaves ; but 
 does not some power behind him lay the warp, 
 choose the woof, mix the colors, reel the shut- 
 tles, work the treadles, and, despite man's best 
 or poorest efforts, determine the final ensemble ? 
 Not that man is altogether a puppet — without
 
 HISTORY 123 
 
 him the web is iiauii'ht — but lluit the final out- 
 come is not Ills, and that, in detail, he is use- 
 ful as he weaves according to a pattern not his 
 own. As an organ in the social body — a linger, 
 an eye, a foot — man as an individual is controlled 
 by something other than his own inherent, spon- 
 taneous necessities for movement. 
 
 To recognize this, to be a servant of a large 
 whole, to wait or to do according to that whole's 
 needs, to respond to the impulse which arises 
 from within or to the call from without, this is to 
 be a maker of history. All doing does not help 
 to make historj^ any more than all weeds help 
 to make gardens. To be able to distinguish be- 
 tween the doing that makes history and the doing 
 that shares the fate of the weed — for the great 
 e-ardener is not slovenlv nor neglectful measured 
 by his own hours and da3"S — is to have true moral 
 discrimination. 
 
 As power to discriminate conduct is more val- 
 uable than power to discriminate objects and phe- 
 nomena in nature, so is history a more valuable 
 study than science ; and as a child's being begins 
 and ends in conduct, he is ready to begin the 
 study of history so soon as he can make an intel- 
 ligent choice between two phases of conduct. 
 
 While the foreo-oing likeness between nature 
 and man may be true when viewed from the larg- 
 est standpoint, from a narrower view nature and 
 man present a marked contrast. Nature seems 
 to possess a background of immutable law, which 
 man has leaned upon with a sure trust, and in ac- 
 cord with which he has developed the arts of civ-
 
 124 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 ilization. This background has been the goal of 
 man's ambitions, the touchstone of his knowledge, 
 the firm ground beneath his feet, and also the 
 source of the pathos wliich is inseparable from 
 the lot of every living thing. Man, on the other 
 hand, seems to some extent to determine his lot : 
 his life may be the result of his apparent caprices ; 
 and he cannot lean with surety on the future of 
 any man's conduct, not even his own. 
 
 From this point of view nature is restful. 
 However wilful or capricious her moods or baf- 
 fling her laws seem, man believes that the seem- 
 ing measures his ignorance, and so is stung by it 
 to new efforts to reduce the apparent chaos to 
 order ; while man is not restful but inspiring, 
 with a power to stir and to teach wliich no fixed 
 changeless order can have. Law forbids the for- 
 mation of an ideal which transcends law ; but 
 where no law is all things are possible. 
 
 Man in his generous moods seeks to decrease 
 the cruelties of nature by taking some living thing 
 under his protection, ameliorating its natural lot, 
 and cheating nature out of some of her pathos ; 
 and out of such generous soil grows the egotism 
 of lordship over both nature and man which ever 
 fills the veins of youth. It takes age to see that 
 the lordship is superficial ; let the teacher respect 
 this fact, and encourage those interpretations of 
 nature and man which spring naturally in youth- 
 ful minds. 
 
 That man may do what he will accords Avith 
 youth ; that he must do what he can belongs to 
 age. There is no sharper contrast than that be-
 
 HISTORY 125 
 
 tween the attitudes of 3^outli and of age: to the one, 
 all things are possible ; to tlic other, hardly the 
 negative power " to keep himself from evil." No 
 one can fully appreciate this contrast who has not 
 himself lived in both attitudes, and been through 
 the painful experience of crossing the boundary 
 between them. 
 
 This constitutes a fundamental reason why the 
 young in attitude sliould be the teachers of chil- 
 dren, for age tends to seek fruit from stems that 
 have not blossomed. 
 
 The lessons of age are bej^ond computation in 
 value to the social whole; but to the individual 
 youth even the presence of age is hurtful, unless 
 by retrospection it return to its former attitude, 
 and give youth the freedom to grow in youth's 
 own way. 
 
 No mortal ever learns by the experiences of an- 
 other ; from them he may get intellectual percep- 
 tions, but not the emotional depth which seems 
 necessary to make of an event a reality to the 
 understanding. He learns by his own experi- 
 ences, and another's experience but serves as a 
 picture or comment by which to interpret his 
 own. This is the proper point of view for the 
 teaching of history. The child's own experience 
 is the sole interpreter of historic facts which he 
 can understand, and he should not be made to 
 learn — that is, memorize — other interpretations. 
 
 If history could be taught in accord with this 
 point of view from childhood up, the action of 
 youthful minds upon the facts of history would 
 produce the effects that reinvestigations in science
 
 126 AN EXPERIMENT IF EDUCATION 
 
 do, and present interpretations doubtless would 
 give place to others. A child now learns that in- 
 terpretation which expresses the bias of his imme- 
 diate environment, and the interpretation which 
 his own nature is capable of is either still-born 
 or strangled by parent or teacher at its first cry. 
 
 If a child is to have facts, and interpret them 
 himself, with such comments and corrections as 
 subsequent facts alone can make, much that passes 
 for history must be ignored. He must have the 
 orio^inal sources and nothing else, until the his- 
 toric spirit has taken up its abode in him and be- 
 come part of his fibre. 
 
 That history begins in legend expresses man's ig- 
 norance, and it expresses nothing more, however 
 far the argument be pushed ; and if a child is to 
 deal with facts, he should not begin with those 
 makeshifts wherewith man has sought to glorify 
 the limitations of his knowledge. Legend, myth, 
 folk-lore, fairy tale, and the historical novel have 
 their places — in both history and literature if they 
 be worthy — but they should not be included in a 
 scheme which seeks to develop in childhood the 
 germs of an historic sense, and a sane, true out- 
 look on human conduct. 
 
 A child has great capacity for vivid picturing; 
 and until this capacity is trained in the faithful 
 presentation of facts, its exercise on the grotesque 
 or fanciful may do much harm, even to the warp- 
 ino; of the whole mental attitude in favor of the 
 marvellous and miraculous. A sane and natural 
 clearness and freedom in the outlook on life seem, 
 above all things, needed at present. The dense
 
 HISTORY 127 
 
 materialism of tlie nineteenth century may be but 
 a reaction against a deeply rooted su])ernatural 
 bias, which man revolts against but is powerless 
 to quite get rid of. 
 
 To keep the student from au}^ sort of bias or 
 romancinff should be the aim of a teacher of his- 
 tory, no less than it is the aim of teachers of sci- 
 ence. 
 
 Time covers her past with new growths, and a 
 true historic spirit may perhaps be best developed 
 by contact with that which is recent — at least, a 
 child's study of history should begin with his own 
 immediate environment. 
 
 From babyhood a child lives in a world of sj^n- 
 bols ; all of his toys are representations of some- 
 thing larger and diiferent ; and he is not at all 
 deceived about the matter, so that he takes easily 
 to the use of models, drawings, maps, and globes. 
 For purposes of right method it will be necessary 
 to construct one map of the school-room or school- 
 grounds. If the latter is chosen, and can first be 
 made on the soil of the grounds themselves, and 
 afterwards transferred to paper, and thence to 
 blackboard, so much the better. This map should 
 be drawn to exact measurements and with refer- 
 ence to the points of the compass, to show the 
 children the quickest way to get at the best re- 
 sults. 
 
 Then show the child a map of the town which 
 he lives in — a good model is better if the school 
 possesses one, but an accurate map is better than 
 a bad model ; tell him only so much as to distin- 
 guish between the streets and the blocks of houses;
 
 128 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION' 
 
 and then leave him to find his own residence. 
 Children in small towns and villages will readily 
 do this if left to themselves and not hurried ; in 
 large cities they must ordinarily be helped by 
 having the location of the most prominent build- 
 ino- or feature which is nearest to their residence 
 pointed out. After locating his own residence, 
 let each locate a few other residences and as many 
 public buildings and general features as his own 
 interest spurs him on to do. Each chUd should 
 have a small map — his own possession — and the 
 accuracy of his use of it should be tested by his 
 locating the same points on a larger wall map. 
 
 These preliminaries accomplished, the children 
 are ready for their first lesson in history. Take 
 them to the nearest point wdiose condition approx- 
 imates the natural state, untouched by the hand 
 of man ; lead them to note the presence or ab- 
 sence of those features on which the lives of men 
 depend, and any features peculiar to their own 
 historic environment. Then tell them that where 
 the town in which they live now is there was 
 once such conditions as these — naming the condi- 
 tions and any special differences from what they 
 see before them. On the following day take the 
 children to the highest point available in or about 
 the town — a place from which as much of the 
 town as possible can be viewed at a glance ; and 
 after the children have taken in the sight tell 
 them to shut their eyes and think away all the 
 buildings, pavings, bridges, etc., and put in their 
 places the original forest, grassy prairie, sage- 
 brush plain, etc.
 
 v< 
 
 HISTORY 129 
 
 On subsequent daj^s model and map that first 
 condition. Then locate the lirst house in the 
 town, and afterwards on model and map. If the 
 house be still standing, take the children to it; if 
 not, to see where it was. 
 
 At this point the teacher should carefully pre- 
 pare, on transj)arent paper, a set of maps of the 
 original condition, one for each child ; if a forest, 
 shade lightly with a pencil ; if prairie, leave blank, 
 giving outline only. These maps laid over the 
 maps of tlie present will serve to deepen the con- 
 trast between past and present. Then as each 
 historic cliange is reached it should be located on 
 the transparent map, and its place on the present 
 map may be found by placing one map over the 
 other. A little spot rubbed clean in the forest 
 shade to show the first clearing, and the outlines 
 of the first house and farm fields marked in it, 
 will mean much to the child. In this manner 
 reclaiming swamps, filling in rivers and harbors, 
 changing the courses of streams, and all impor- 
 tant changes, may be intelligently followed. 
 
 After the first house is located it should be mi- 
 nutely studied with regard to size, shape, materi- 
 als used in construction, condition of these mate- 
 rials, division of house into rooms, interior fin- 
 ish, furnishings, etc. Make these details vivid by 
 drawings and models, or by having the children 
 actually construct and furnish a model on as large 
 a scale as is feasible. 
 
 Long before the details are finished the children 
 may become eager to know the people who built 
 such a house and used such furnishings, and will 
 
 9
 
 130 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 ask many questions. Lead the children to them- 
 selves find, in surrounding conditions, answers to 
 as many of their questions as these conditions can 
 answer. If the house was made of logs, the for- 
 est furnished them ; if of adobe, clay was abun- 
 dant and trees scarce ; but why logs instead of 
 boards ? or sun-baked instead of kiln-baked bricks? 
 If possible take the children to a saw-mill or a 
 brick-kiln, and leave them to find the answer. 
 Children who are not spoiled by being perpetually 
 answered have usually remarkable acuteness of 
 intelligence and good judgment, and leaving them 
 to find their own answers will preserve these pow- 
 ers and stimulate their use. 
 
 The teacher must be apt to see the means or 
 conditions which furnish the answer ; but that an- 
 swer he should not formulate until not only the 
 means and conditions but the child's own intelli- 
 gence is exhausted. At the same time he should 
 guard the children ^vith rigid care from forming 
 a habit of guessing. Better tell the child every- 
 thino; than let him make random, unreasoning 
 guesses. Teach a child to think as to shoot, with 
 a conscious care about the direction of the atten- 
 tion and the aim or object of tliat direction. And 
 avoid weariness : a child's muscles cannot long 
 stretch the bow and aim the arrow, neither can 
 his mind long retain the tension which is required 
 for good work. The rule should be concentrated 
 attention for a few moments, and then all the rest 
 which the child will take. More than this is some- 
 times necessary — actual command to cease work; 
 for a child, through his absorbing interest, often 
 
 to
 
 HISTORY 131 
 
 becomes insensible to weariness, just as adults do, 
 and needs to be protected from himself. 
 
 The environment exhausted for answers about 
 the house and its furnishings, introduce the occu- 
 pants. Wliere did they come from? why to this 
 place ? by what means ? how many days' journey ? 
 what did thev bring with them? etc. Let the 
 children live over that family life, share its la- 
 bors, hardships, and triumphs ; know the clothes 
 they wore, the food they ate, the work they did, 
 the amusements they had, and the changes they 
 wrought. Always seek answers to the " Why ?" 
 first in the conditions of the environment and 
 its nearness or distance to other environments. 
 "What cannot be so answered will lead to the char- 
 acteristics of the persons — age, health, industry, 
 thrift, intelligence, education, etc. Thus in the 
 study of the life of the first settler the child will 
 come upon the great factors in history— environ- 
 ment, human capacity, and the reaction of the one 
 upon the other. 
 
 This minute study of one beginning should 
 form in the child's mind a background of knowl- 
 edge and a method of research which may serve 
 as a point of reference — the present is always in 
 the mind as another point of reference — and a 
 model for further study. 
 
 This finished, go by rapid stages or leaps from 
 one historically important point to another. 
 Facts and persons are of no account as facts and 
 persons merely ; but a fact or person that has 
 helped the historic movement should not be 
 slighted. Dwell with such facts and persons un-
 
 133 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 til their connection with the past and the changes 
 which they produced are clearl}' apprehended. 
 
 If a child's mind is kept in contact with such 
 realities, and free from the suffocating smoke of 
 dogmatic opinions about them, from kindergarten 
 to college, he will possess a large body of valua- 
 ble historic facts ; and another, more or less co- 
 herent, of judgments about human conduct and 
 character, which latter will be an expression of his 
 own personal reaction on historic fact, and of the 
 influence of such fact on his own character. Such 
 a youth, having made and unmade his judgments 
 over and over, would be read}^ to profit by con- 
 tact with a mature and large scholarship without 
 being stultified thereby. To such the best courses 
 in histor}^ in our great universities would have 
 meaning indeed. But they who reach the uni- 
 versity are few. To all others books and com- 
 mon men only would be accessible ; so that one 
 duty of the teacher will be to introduce the child, 
 as early as possible, to the masterpieces of his- 
 tor3^ As soon as a child can read fairly well he 
 can be set to work on passages the most interest- 
 ing to him in the largest works. Let the pas- 
 sages first selected be short, piquant, stirring; so 
 that the child, instead of being wearied, will be 
 stimulated to read more than has been assigned. 
 A child who is well taught, even for a few years, 
 will not be content with summaries of history, 
 nor with the records of atrocities merely. 
 
 Begin history with the first day in school ; let 
 no week pass without its lessons; and if the child 
 must leave school at twelve or fourteen he will
 
 HISTORY 133 
 
 have gained an interest in historic movement 
 which no accident of the years can destroy. 
 
 When the ininie(hate environment is exhausted, 
 take up the thread which hnks that environment 
 with the greatest event in the national history — 
 in our land this may often be the Civil War. 
 The history of that will lead bv many interestin": 
 paths to all that is most important in the history" 
 of our nation and continent. 
 
 From tliis great story fail not to pick out what 
 youth most loves— deeds of heroism, endurance, 
 and of the iron persistence of great natures. The 
 story of La Salle's wanderings is more noble and 
 more pathetic than that of Ulysses. The charm 
 of that world-famed tale is not in its events or 
 characters, nor in its supernatural accompani- 
 ments, great as these all are, but in the combi- 
 nations of these and in the exquisite diction of 
 their final expression. Our continent needs a 
 Homer to restore its heroes. 
 
 Facts do not smother tlie poetic tire, but dog- 
 matic opinion about fact does; and it is such 
 opinion that is the curse of our age. Let us 
 make a simpler, gentler atmosphere for human 
 growth; give each the privilege to think and to 
 act for himself, without ridicule or ostracism, from 
 two 3'ears old and upward ; and lo ! poetry will 
 come back, and our heroes no longer lie in dis- 
 honored or neglected graves. 
 
 A proper study of history gives certain meas- 
 ures of value which can hardly be so well gained 
 in any other wa}'-. Minute stud}^ of the externals 
 of life in different epochs shows how relative is
 
 134 A^f EXPERIMENT IK EDUCATION 
 
 their value as indices of prosperity, and how worth- 
 less as guarantee of character or social status. 
 And a boy or girl who has seen externals change 
 from age to age will hardly think that those of 
 his own time will remain, may not be improved, 
 or in themselves are very potent factors. They 
 are opportunity, and he is or should be the ruler 
 thereof, not the slave. Moreover, this boy or girl 
 may get some ver}" old-fashioned notions about 
 success. A man who amasses a property which his 
 children squander may have missed the crucial 
 point of success — the being passed on. What 
 dies does not live ; and only that which lives and 
 maintains its individual thread in the historic 
 movement can be said to have succeeded, using 
 the terra with its truest meaning ; and this is true 
 of measures as well as of men. 
 
 This is still more true of thought. A plant dies 
 for want of water within a few feet of a flowing 
 brook ; so a man dies intellectually when he be- 
 comes rooted to the soil of his own thoughts, and 
 neglects to drink, day by daj^ from the onflow- 
 ing stream of living books and men. The plant's 
 helplessness may be pitied and water carried to 
 it; but nothing can revive that man who re- 
 fuses to pull his feet out of his own hard-pan 
 and go drink freely for himself. This is one of 
 the greatest lessons which the study of history 
 teaches. 
 
 Do not require or expect that the children will 
 remember all that they show interest in, or even 
 that the teacher thinks important to be remem- 
 bered. One child will remember one set of facts
 
 HISTORY 135 
 
 or historical pliasos, and another a different set; 
 trust them and let each retain what he will. 
 
 The one care of the teacher in the matter 
 should be not what but how the child remem- 
 bers. The what each child's own nature will de- 
 termine. However much the teacher may labor 
 in this regard, his results will be superficial and 
 transitory, unless seconded by the child's nature, 
 which inevitably is the real arbiter of its own pos- 
 sessions. The how is the teacher's peculiar field, 
 and in the matter of memory he largely deter- 
 mines the order and accuracy of the child's men- 
 tal habit. The teacher's mental liabit will effect 
 the result in the child's mind, whether the teacher 
 desires that it should or not; but whatever his 
 own mental habit, he may do something to form 
 in the child's mind habits of order and accuracy. 
 
 Insist not that the child shall remember and 
 reproduce any given facts or series of facts, but 
 that what he attempts to reproduce he shall do so 
 perfectly and in good order. 
 
 Slovenly mental habits incessantly disturb the 
 whole machinery of life everywhere ; they are the 
 flaw in evidence, the friction in government, the 
 irritation in social life, and the skeleton, first and 
 last, in every man's closet. To know when you 
 know and wdien you do not know ; and to be ca- 
 pable of fearless, not-ashamed reticence or speech 
 about the latter as about the former — this is one 
 of the greatest boons educational training can con- 
 fer; and to confer it is the teacher's privilege. 
 He cannot make mind, he cannot greatly alter 
 the inherent, natural bias of a given mind — and
 
 136 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 perhaps he ought not to desire to, lest he warp 
 what is better than his own ideal — but he can 
 train mind, and, in a large measure, determine 
 the quality of its activities. 
 
 To set a child a task which is beyond his ca- 
 pacities is folly ; but a task assigned, the child 
 should — time enough being allowed — do it as well 
 as an adult would under the same circumstances. 
 Age should not be allowed to determine the qual- 
 ity of results in any department of effort ; the 
 kind and amount age must determine, but the 
 quality never. The child must learn, must do 
 over and over, in order to reach the proper qual- 
 ity ; but so must adults at all ages. A woman 
 who has never handled a needle may be as awk- 
 ward with it, on first trial, as a child is. Ask lit- 
 tle of a child, and see that he reaches perfection 
 in it. 
 
 Also, if a child choose his task, insist on the 
 same perfection, if within his capacities, no matter 
 how irksome to the child, or how ill-adapted the 
 choice. The teacher should try to protect a child 
 from bad choices ; but once made, they should be 
 borne to the bitter end ; so shall a child learn the 
 limitations of his capacities and tastes, grow mod- 
 est and truth-loving, and become fitted for the in- 
 evitable burdens which circumstances and his own 
 choices will surely bring to his lot. 
 
 It is customary to teach a child something— a 
 bit of poetry, a fairy tale, etc. — and when the child 
 has learned it in a haphazard way to praise him, 
 and to laugh at his picturesque or humorous vari- 
 ations. Remonstrance at this usually brings the
 
 HISTORY 137 
 
 excuse, " Why, he is only a child." During a visit 
 to a famous school a class of children from eight 
 to ten years of age was taken from the usual ])ro- 
 grarame to illustrate and recite some tales, be- 
 cause tlie work in them was thought to have been 
 exceptionally good. Each child was told where 
 to begin, and not one of them told his part of 
 the tale witliout gross inaccuracies. Is inaccuracy 
 synonymous with childhood ? Nay, childhood can 
 especially be accurate, since it is fearless, unbiassed, 
 and has keen perceptions and great retentive grip. 
 Forbid an inaccurate, slipshod, slovenly statement 
 in childhood, and the unconscious liar will cease 
 to exist. 
 
 In some schools history is begun in the lower 
 grades by teaching the mythological tales. My- 
 thology is certainly a part of history, because it is 
 a part of the lives of the people; but it can be un- 
 derstood as history from the standpoint only of 
 the peoples of whose lives it was a part. To them 
 it was a religion, the highest, holiest thing they 
 knew, and can be understood only in connection 
 with other aspects of their being; and there seems 
 no valid reason for beginning the study of any 
 people with the religious aspect of that people. 
 
 Indian myths also are given, as though they 
 were the beginning of our history. The Indian 
 has played a small part in the historic movement, 
 and his superstitions can never be more than one 
 of the curiosities of human belief— Avork for the 
 antiquarian and specialist, but hardly a fair gift 
 to a child whose years in school are few. More- 
 over, the Indian has few points in common with
 
 138 AX EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 US. llis nature is alien and does not assimilate 
 with ours, and his nearness to us is superficial, the 
 accident of a previous occupation. 
 
 The Scandinavian and the Greek are our kin- 
 dred, our legitimate ancestors in blood and in 
 spirit ; but as a good man does not teach his child 
 those superstitions of his forefathers which he has 
 himself outgrown, so should the religions of the 
 Greek and the Norseman not be given to our 
 children. Let all mythologies w^ait until they can 
 be understood for what they are, and their beauty 
 and force felt in connection with the life which 
 they adorned and solaced. 
 
 Remember that a child's mind is not yet fixed 
 in grooves or limits ; and that the finest seal will 
 make as indelible an impression on his plastic ca- 
 pacities as the coarsest. 
 
 That optimistic view of life— unfailing reward 
 for good and retribution for evil conduct— wdiich 
 it seems to be thought necessary to keep before 
 children, this study of history will correct. What- 
 ever views a man may cherish about the final out- 
 come of human conduct, the actual results in all 
 communities sometimes favor the immediate evil 
 instead of the immediate good. Youth is not slow 
 to see the fact, and sometimes to make of it a li- 
 cense for his o\vn bad passions or greed. To some 
 minds this may seem a sufficient reason why his- 
 tory should not be taught to children unless from 
 expurgated or selected documents, or b}'' a teach- 
 er who will counteract the effects of actual facts 
 by insisting that there must have been blame 
 where no evidence of blame is, or somehow, some-
 
 HISTOllY 139 
 
 whei'e beyond our ken, justice must liave ruled. 
 It might be well for such objectors to spend a few 
 days and nights with Plato's ideas about justice, 
 as the perfect doing of his own proper work by 
 each social unit. This conception might possibly 
 come to seem a feasible one for the bringing up 
 of a child by. 
 
 The natural world is full of catastrophe and ap- 
 parent cruelty to the individual, and so is the hu- 
 man. To hide this fact from a youth is to fill his 
 mind with illusions ; to misinterpret it, with ego- 
 tism, rancor, or a misplaced humility. 
 
 From the point of view of this cha])ter history 
 is the movement of events and what moves, be it 
 persons, ideas, customs, or institutions, and is con- 
 cerned with the records as merely vehicles of this 
 content. 
 
 A child's consciousness is continually occupied 
 with movements and what moves, and rarely with 
 record keeping; and to fasten his attention upon 
 the record is to give him the dry husks of history 
 instead of its living reality. 
 
 The records themselves he will retain and learn 
 to discriminate their values in proportion as his 
 mind is concentrated upon the trend of events 
 and the conditions which produce that ti'end, and 
 the record is lost sight of save in its to him un- 
 conscious use as an adjunct to his thinking and 
 picturing the events. 
 
 Such corrections of the historical narrative as 
 are made from age to age depend less upon the 
 discovery of new documents than upon the new 
 point of view v^bich some one gets of the move-
 
 140 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 ment, and so gives to tlie same old documents a 
 new content. 
 
 Records are to history " the letter that killeth," 
 for the movement itself has charm to students of 
 all ages, and especially to children ; and it is here, 
 in connection with the actual movements of our 
 human whole, that a child's fondness for stories 
 should be fostered and fed.
 
 Ill 
 
 LITERATURE 
 
 Literature lifts one into an ideal world, as dis- 
 tinguished from the actual world of science and 
 of history ; and the excellence of any given prod- 
 uct in literature depends chiefly upon the quality 
 of that ideal. 
 
 For youth, literature as an educational factor 
 has uses for instruction, correction, refuge, and 
 delight. 
 
 All changes over which man has control occur 
 first in the mind ; so that which changes man's 
 conceptions of what is desirable helps to create 
 that which shall be. In this sense literature is a 
 prophec}" — a creation in the ideal world, by tlie 
 greatest minds, of those models or patterns ac- 
 cording to which lesser minds continually work 
 out the actual world. 
 
 Hence, from childhood up, literature should sup- 
 plement all other departments of stud}'', in order 
 that those processes of transformation which stead- 
 ily go on in humanity, as a whole, may not be 
 lacking to any individual mind ; for only through 
 those transformations which take place in his own 
 mind does any man help to create the future. As 
 a mere machine, he may perform the will of an-
 
 143 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 other mind ; but such labor affects the body onl}^, 
 never the soul or vital principle of any reform. 
 
 As the point of view and the thing viewed are 
 of equal importance in scientific and historical re- 
 search, perhaps the best corrective for distorted 
 facts is a change in the point from which those 
 facts are viewed ; and one of the especial offices 
 of literature is to correct our points of view. 
 
 Scientific and historical studies, pursued by 
 themselves alone, are prone to beget a hard way 
 of looking at both nature and man— the so-called 
 matter-of-fact wa}^, which regards sentiment as a 
 hinderance, and forgets, for a time, that emotion 
 is as fundamental a factor of mind as perception, 
 and is quite often a truer interpreter of facts and 
 phenomena. If there be mind in nature, there is 
 feeling there ; and feeling alone can interpret 
 feeling; and no man is without emotions which it 
 takes emotions to interpret, so that both nature 
 and man demand the free play of the emotions 
 for their fullest interpretation. 
 
 Moreover, if, as psychologists affirm, feeling 
 probably precedes thought, is the initial phase of 
 all mental phenomena, all ideal conceptions have 
 their germination in the emotions. Certain it 
 is that in literature, which is an expression of 
 man's ideal world, and the prototype of tlie actu- 
 al, the emotions are allowed a freedom which is 
 denied them in scientific and historical research. 
 
 Also a man often feels the falsity or truth of 
 a thing, or the ugliness or beauty of it, long before 
 he can give to his perceptions or reason a satis- 
 factory account of why he feels as he does ; and
 
 UTERATUKE 143 
 
 in the best literature one is continuallv findinn: 
 his own vague, undefined emotions put into clear 
 expression, so that thenceforth he can give a 
 clear account of the faith that is in him. In this 
 Avay literature helps a man to have faith in him- 
 self, and to correct those petty, limited points of 
 view which may belong to his environment by 
 those of the larger, greater minds who have inter- 
 preted mankind to itself from age to age. 
 
 Everv man needs a refug'e, even from himself: 
 and literature is perhaps the only refuge which 
 will never fail him. It is probable that every 
 problem of our human life has somewhere had a 
 solution, every aspiration of man somewhere an 
 expression ; and in so far as literature is a record 
 of these solutions and expressions, it may help to 
 supply every human want. The world of mind 
 is as real as the world of matter ; and he to whom 
 the world of matter is especially hard, narrow, and 
 cruel may find in the world of mind that fulness 
 of being— that is, of experiencing — which each 
 man instinctivelv craves. 
 
 The harder the lot, the narrower tlie life in 
 matter, the greater the need of fulness in mind ; 
 hence literature should not be the possession of 
 a leisure class, but peculiarly the possession of 
 that hard-working class which most needs the 
 refuge and enlargement which literature gives. 
 Literature is pre-eminently the tribute Avhich the 
 leisure class- pays to the laboring class, as the la- 
 boring class pays to the leisure class the tribute 
 of physical toil ; but thus far the laboring class 
 seems not to have realized its privilege, and one
 
 144 AN EXPEllIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 of the fi-reatest duties of a teacher is to brino: this 
 reahzation to consciousness in each mind. 
 
 This is, perhaps, a bad use of the Avord leisure. 
 The production of literature requires exemption 
 from physical toil and the nagging irritations of 
 extreme poverty ; but none tlie less is that pro- 
 duction labor of a most exacting kind; and a 
 youth who does not realize this fact will have 
 missed consciousness of a vital point in human re- 
 lations. 
 
 It is a matter of tlie focus-point of attention. 
 If circumstances compel that point to be in the 
 material realm, it cannot at the same time be in 
 the mental ; but because the ideal is the pattern 
 for the actual, the worker in matter should be fa- 
 miliar with tlie ideal workl, although it may not 
 be his province or within his power to create in 
 that world. 
 
 It is this ideal element which makes literature 
 so peculiarly a refuge for all sorts and conditions 
 of men, and at all ages. To childhood and youth 
 life is especially hard where circumstances pull 
 one way and inclinations another, and the scald- 
 ing tears which youth sheds over hopes that are 
 crushed and limitations that are inexorable have 
 no balm so sweet as that which books afford ; 
 and when the spirit is finally bent to the inevita- 
 ble conditions of one's lot, books keep alive in the 
 nature much that would otherwise die, and for- 
 bid the formation of those rigid lines in thought 
 which prevent further mental growth. One who 
 loves, not the confirmation of his pet dogmas, but 
 fresh ideas, will always be hospitable towards
 
 LITEKATURE 145 
 
 books, and by means of them continue to grow as 
 long as life lasts, no matter what his exterior, 
 physical lot may be; so that literature is a pre- 
 server as well as a refuge. 
 
 To the body of the worst criminal, men allow 
 sleep ; how much more needful the cessation of 
 action in a vicious mind. Mind, whether virtuous 
 or vicious, needs to have, every da}^, the pulses of 
 its life beat without conscious effort of its own, 
 needs a rest in which the great, normal forces of 
 mental vitality resume their sway. The reading 
 of a book which is an absorbing pleasure Avhile it 
 lasts supplies this need. What sleep is to the 
 body are hours with such books to the mind — a 
 readjustment of the vital energies, a return to men- 
 tal health and vigor. This is the last and the 
 greatest use of books ; and a use from the need of 
 which no mortal is exempt from cradle to grave. 
 Other things may temporarily perform this office 
 — a day among mountains or by the sea ; the con- 
 templation of a work of art ; the satisfaction of a 
 great affection ; music and the drama — but noth- 
 ing which is within the reach of all can perma- 
 nently do it but literature ; because, like the 
 body's need of sleep, the mind's need of this rest 
 returns day by da}^ and books only can always be 
 on hand. 
 
 One who has access to a good public library 
 need not lack for those uses which books perform ; 
 thousands who might have such access do not 
 know how to seek it, and would not know how to 
 use it if they had it. Hence to teach a youth 
 how to use books, and to form in him a habit of 
 
 10
 
 146 AN EXPEEIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 using them, will go far towards securing for hira 
 all the benefits which an habitual use of books 
 confers, for to increase the demand will increase the 
 supply of libraries and their facilities. Moreover, 
 a real lover of books will possess some copies of 
 his own, no matter how poor he is, for the " must 
 haves" of daily existence are usually supplied; 
 and a book which costs but half a dollar may last 
 a lifetime and be a perennial pleasure. 
 
 A book is, on first publication, of value in pro- 
 portion to what its readers get out of it, quite in- 
 dependently of what its author meant to put into 
 it. This value changes because the readers change ; 
 but, at last, a book which survives more than one 
 generation of men comes to have an intrinsic val- 
 ue ; and books which have survived for centuries 
 may be said to express something w^hich is generic 
 and constant in huraanitj^ — to supply needs which 
 are universal in time, and know no distinctions of 
 race, sex, environment, belief, or condition. Be- 
 cause this is true, such books should be made the 
 basis of all work in literature during the first 
 years of school life ; in order that no child may 
 leave school unacquainted with them. 
 
 Good literature has a power of charm, even to a 
 child, which no lesser product has — a rhythm and 
 a harmony of thought and emotion which insensi- 
 l)Iy pass into those who hear it well read, and af- 
 fect the innermost being. Therefore, read to the 
 little child the greatest products of the wisest 
 men, a saying, a paragraph, or stanza at a time, 
 and repeat them over and over; and when school- 
 days come, treat the child with the respect which
 
 LITERATURE 147 
 
 it is lioped may be due to the man or woman 
 which he or she may become; and leave the 
 weeds and transient growths in literature to those 
 who do not yet know them for what they are. 
 
 Hunger is sharp in childhood, and will stuff it- 
 self with scraps and porridge if the parent be too 
 poor or too penurious to provide a better diet. 
 Mental hunger shares a worse fate ; for it is not 
 even wholesome scraps and porridge which most 
 children get. 
 
 Can pyrites deceive the miner who has taken 
 out thousands of gold ? No more can the " fool's 
 gold" of literature delude those who have been 
 made familiar with the real metal. The pyrites 
 of life an adult cannot hope to escape contact 
 with ; but that adult only will surel}^ know it at 
 first glance or touch who has from childhood been 
 familiar with the gold. 
 
 A thing cannot be defined in terms of itself; 
 and the true character of an inferior thing is fully 
 appreciated by him only who is acquainted with 
 its superior. Childhood is the period when stand- 
 ards are formed ; and no adult ever quite escapes 
 from bondage to those values which he learned in 
 childhood. If then it is desirable to possess pow- 
 er of instinctive recoil from tljat which is unnat- 
 ural, disorderly, ngly, and foul, either in life or in 
 books, a child must live long enough in contact 
 with the opposites of these to have his own being 
 attuned to tliose opposites. 
 
 The teacher himself may not care for the great 
 books, but let him not on that account keep them 
 from his pupils. A child may take dehght in a
 
 148 AN EXPERIME^STT IN EDUCATION 
 
 work which an adult is untouched by ; and a 
 teacher may assist at the development of tastes 
 and the formation of habits that in quality may 
 transcend anything which he is capable of. 
 
 One evening a child of nine overheard the 
 reading of Romeo and Juliet. On the followino; 
 day she asked permission to take the book ; and 
 thereafter, throughout the winter of her tenth 
 year, she read Shakespeare until she had read his 
 complete works, and several plays many times 
 over. At first it seemed incredible that a child 
 whose parents were uneducated, who until eight 
 years of age had neither seen books nor heard 
 them much talked about, and who at nine pos- 
 sessed copies of Tlie Arahiaii Nights and Ander- 
 sen's Fairy Tales, should appreciate Shakespeare 
 suiRciently to leave for him, day after da}^ other 
 books and play. Rallied and chaffed about the 
 matter, she proved her interest by repeating pages 
 with a manner, a tone, and a facial expression 
 that were unmistakable. The writer's liking for 
 Shakespeare came late, and perhaps has never 
 reached such a pure and absorbing delight as that 
 child felt at ten. 
 
 It is not that every child can reach such heights 
 of appreciation, but that he should be provided 
 with opportunities and incentives, and then left 
 to deal sincerely with the books and with his own 
 nature. 
 
 Let the greatest books be always a presence to 
 the child, free to his touch, and, as he learns to 
 read, free to his explorations. Do not fear con- 
 tamination. Impurity does not exist for him who
 
 LITEKATURE 149 
 
 is unconscious of it. The child above mentioned, 
 through three years of intimate familiarity with 
 Shakespeare, asked no questions, and gave no 
 sign of being in an v wise conscious of that \vhich 
 the most scrupulous would wish a child to be un- 
 conscious of. 
 
 This earlv familiaritv with the greatest works 
 is the child's opportunity^ the stimulus to his nat- 
 ure. If his nature respond, the teacher's task is 
 thenceforth eas}^ ; but it is not yet accomplished, 
 for there remains the necessity to build up a habit 
 which shall last a lifetime. The capacity to enjoy 
 a good book does not insure the reading of one. 
 Thousands have the capacity and do not know it, 
 and other thousands know it and do not use it. 
 The first duty of a teacher, in literature, is to 
 bring the capacity to consciousness in each mind ; 
 but a far greater task it is to build on that con- 
 sciousness a life-long habit. 
 
 This can be done by reading only. At first 
 nothing should stand between the child and what 
 he hears read or reads. JSTo fear should be allow^ed 
 to come near his mind, no comments should be 
 made, no unasked-for instruction given. The child 
 should be asked no questions, nor be required to 
 ask any himself, nor to repeat or reproduce any- 
 thing heard or read. lie should be free to re- 
 spond naturally, and to let whatever love for lit- 
 erature there is in his mind germinate and grow 
 unchecked, and all of his questions should be 
 truthfully answered. 
 
 During the first years of school life read to the 
 child from the greatest thought the world has.
 
 150 AN EXPERIMENT IX EDUCATION 
 
 The voice of the reader should be melodious, 
 pleasant to hear, and the reading should be sim- 
 ple and clear; so that whether the child get any 
 definite results or not, he shall like to listen. As 
 soon as the children can read, copy on the black- 
 board some fine, short passage, and let them read 
 that passage, the teacher stopping for it at the 
 right place. That passage the children will prob- 
 ably remember. Put the picture of the author on 
 an easel before the children, that the eyes shall 
 have a focus-point, and the mind build up a true 
 association between the author and his thoughts. 
 Pictures of places, buildings, etc., should also be 
 used whenever it is convenient to get them. But 
 be not too scrupulous about this matter of illustra- 
 tion. A child takes in through his ear more easily 
 than through his eye; he is alive to sound far 
 more than most adults are. In scientific and his- 
 torical studies he will have abundant training in 
 getting at knowledge through the eye ; in litera- 
 ture he should have cultivation through the ear, 
 until he is sensitive to all that is best in the sounds 
 and rhythms of human speech, and accurately and 
 quickly grasps ideas and forms mental pictures 
 through sound alone. 
 
 When a child is able to read give him books 
 galore, the best in every line, until he knows that 
 many books and many lines of thought yield the 
 uses of literature — instruction, correction, refuge, 
 and delight ; and not until the refreshment of a 
 good book is as imperative as the refreshment of 
 a good dinner can the habit of reading be said to 
 have been formed.
 
 LITERATURE 151 
 
 If a child's nature does not respond to the stim- 
 ulus applied, do not infer mediocrity nor judge 
 future possibilities. A woman avIio had twice 
 failed to get an3^thing out of Dante — once in her 
 twenties and again in her early thirties — at forty 
 picked up a copy and was surprised to find it 
 interesting ; and thereafter for some weeks her 
 leisure was absorbingly filled with it. 
 
 The teacher may hope that if the response does 
 not come early it may come late, and that the 
 early contact is not time and energy wasted, since 
 it leaves a memory of something to which others 
 respond, without which memory the stimulus 
 might not be applied when the power of response 
 has been gained. 
 
 After one trial — extending at intervals over 
 several years — ^of the great books, the child should 
 be allowed to reject them if he wishes to do so ; 
 also, these years of trial should be broken by ex- 
 cursions into lesser fields. The teacher should trv 
 now one book, now another, until he thinks he 
 knows what is the phase of literature to which 
 each child can instinctivelj'' respond; then, for 
 each, the best in his chosen phase should be pro- 
 vided. This is food to the individual self, and it 
 should not be stinted ; but along with it should 
 go conscientious work in lines which all follow 
 alike. In literature a double life must be provid- 
 ed—that which the wise have declared to be good, 
 and for each that which he himself likes. 
 
 Let the teacher not forget that to each child a 
 book is of value, not in proportion to what its 
 author has put into it, nor to its intrinsic excel-
 
 152 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 lence, but in proportion to what the cliikl gets out 
 of it ; and be slow to censure, despise, and, more 
 than all, ridicule a child for his judgment of any 
 book. The child's ultimate needs are known to 
 himself alone, and, whatever they are, they should 
 be respectfully treated. 
 
 Fiction may be as necessary to a child's men- 
 tal life as sweets are to his physical, but neither 
 should be allowed to take the place of other nour- 
 ishment or be too frequently indulged. That a 
 child has so insatiable a craving for " stories " tliat 
 nothing else can delight him is about as true as 
 that his liking for candy necessarily forbids a rel- 
 ish for good bread. The wide-spread notion that 
 a child must be fed on fictitious and romantic 
 stories may be quite as responsible for common hab- 
 it in this matter as is the nature of childhood. A 
 child may live in an unreal, dream world because 
 it has been created by others and forced npon 
 him rather than because his own nature finds in 
 such a world its natural expression and sustenance. 
 There are intelligent children who ask of a tale if 
 it be true, and, receiving a negative answer, re- 
 fuse to listen further. It is possible that the great 
 mass of juvenile books of all sorts would rot on 
 their shelves if schools were provided with an 
 abundance of historical and biographical narra- 
 tive, true tales of travel and adventure, and the 
 best books in the literatures of all times and peo- 
 ples. It is, perhaps, not fiction^?,?;' .w that is so ob- 
 jectionable, but the poor quality of most that is 
 offered. Yet of the very best fiction — fairy stories 
 included — it is perhaps most wise to regard it for
 
 LITERATUKE 153 
 
 the young child as the sweets of mental nourish- 
 ment, to be most carefully selected as to quality, 
 and given in the play hours of the mind. 
 
 In considering the later years of school life the 
 modern novel must be taken into account. The 
 youth cannot be kept away from what he finds at 
 home, in society, in travel, everywhere. The ex- 
 ceptional youth of exceptional training can be left 
 to his own tastes and judgments, but the average 
 youth with the average training cannot. 
 
 The motlern novel is a vehicle for seri'ous prop- 
 aganda, is realism gone mad on the most vicious 
 side of life, as though there were no more a real- 
 ism of the virtuous side. "We are too near to 
 judge whether this is a vagar}' or a serious de- 
 parture. Certain it is that some people still pre- 
 fer their viands separate and a clean plate for 
 each. 
 
 Serious subjects of study are not in themselves 
 disgusting or nauseous, however painful to the 
 emotions or destructive to self-love their revela- 
 tions are ; it is when out of place that they irri- 
 tate beyond endurance. Iso sincere, thoughtful 
 person objects to knowing the true state of hu- 
 manity, in slums or elsewhere, nor doing some- 
 thing towards ameliorating the common lot ; but 
 all have a right to object to being treated insin- 
 cerely or taken for imbeciles. 
 
 Is it not insincere treatment to have intense 
 sentimentality, a prurient, morbid sensuality, and 
 vicious, crime-stained personalities held up as pict- 
 ures of modern life — conditions contradicted in 
 the experiences of us all? Is it not being taken
 
 154 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 for imbeciles when it is thought that persons 
 whose touch would be a loathsome contamination 
 in real life can be pleasant company in a book ''. 
 
 Why try to make familiar to the mind's senses 
 what the body's senses must hate and loathe ? 
 There must be one of two results — a breaking 
 down and debasement of all the sensibilities, or a 
 hopeless, pessimistic outlook on life. This is no 
 plea for that innocence which is ignorance ; for 
 all knowledge of all sorts which a man or woman is 
 likely to find useful through life's journey should 
 not be stinted ; but there are times, places, and 
 conditions which "good form" for the mind re- 
 quires for the giving of certain kinds of instruc- 
 tion, as surely as "good form" in social relations 
 requires the seclusion of certain personal oifices 
 to the privacy of one's own apartment. It is the 
 horrible mixture of things, all sorts on one plate 
 — nauseous medicines and nasty herbs mixed up 
 with the daintiest fruits — that makes some mod- 
 ern novels so exasperating to a refined and dis- 
 criminating palate. 
 
 Aside from the fact that a false extension of 
 one's outlook on life may be worse than no exten- 
 sion, there is a limit to the burden which any 
 mortal can healthfully carry : to increase the bur- 
 den is to take from the efficiency of the man as 
 a worker ; and there is such a thing as having too 
 much knowledge of human vices and miseries. 
 
 If it be desirable to carry a sunnv, flexible, 
 growing spirit through all the cares and sorrows 
 of life, give to the youth what will nourish such 
 a spirit — contact with all possible brightness,
 
 LITERATUEE in") 
 
 beauty, movement, and growth ; and keep him 
 away from what is stagnant and loathsome until 
 he has tlie strength of a man in him, and knows 
 where refuge can be found from stagnation, wea- 
 riness, and foulness. 
 
 The average man can do but little to change 
 the lot of any other man ; he can hardly keep his 
 own feet from sli piling. Then teach to the average 
 child and youth what he is most likely to need as 
 a man to make his own lot mentally endurable; 
 and let tlie offices of literature be for personal use 
 in interpreting the man to himself, and in satisfy- 
 ing those needs which are the deepest and most 
 universaL
 
 IV 
 LANGUAGE 
 
 In the work which is described in Part I. no 
 experiments were made in teaching foreign hin- 
 guages, because of certain difficulties in the way 
 of making sucli experiments as were desired. 
 French was taught to the children throughout 
 the three years by a competent Frenchwom- 
 an, but it had no connection with their other 
 studies. 
 
 It was desired that the sentences which the 
 children themselves constructed, and which were 
 the basis of their reading and writing in Eng- 
 lish, should be made the means of introducing the 
 children to another language ; and, as nearly as 
 work which has never been done can be described, 
 it would have been as follows, no allowance being 
 made in this general statement for the opportu- 
 nities which those children had for hearing another 
 language spoken, either at home or about Boston. 
 Any general plan must, for intelligent application, 
 be modified to conform to the conditions of the 
 child and of his environment. 
 
 Before teaching a foreign tongue some desire 
 to know it, some curiosity and interest about it, 
 should be awakened, in order that the child may
 
 LANGUAGE 157 
 
 have something within his own mind which can 
 make an intelhgent response to the stimulus from 
 without. 
 
 If the lano:uao;e be French and there is a French 
 quarter of the town, make several trips to that 
 quarter to impress the fact that there are people 
 of all ages who habitually speak French to one 
 another. Then, hy means of models, maps, globes, 
 pictures, and narratives, make France as real to 
 the children as possible, particularly the lives of 
 French children — their homes, toj's, games, and 
 schools. When the child has taken in the fact 
 that there are miles and miles of populated coun- 
 try, many villages, and large cities where all the 
 people speak this strange tongue, where even the 
 baby thinks "Z't'rt?^" instead of "the water," he 
 has begun to appreciate the artificial character 
 of lanffuacfe and the inexorable barriers which it 
 creates — artificial because the human need is the 
 same, the expression only varies ; and inexorable 
 because nothino- but hard toil can cross the bar- 
 rier. The language must be learned sentence by 
 sentence, phrase by ])hrase, word by word, idiom 
 by idiom. 
 
 Fortunatelv, the child cannot feel the difficul- 
 ties of this barrier as an adult may, but he will 
 realize that he cannot enter into the French child's 
 life and share it, nor the French child into his, 
 without each learning to speak as the other does ; 
 and as in schools all over France children are 
 learning to use his mode of expression for our 
 common wants, so children in this land are learn- 
 ing the Frenchman's mode ; and both are neces-
 
 158 AN" EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 sarv to each if thev are to understand one another 
 when the}'^ meet. ■ 
 
 This prehminar}^ work done, the child is ready 
 to begin tlie language. The sentences which are 
 kept for their reading of English (see Part L, 
 pages 3 to 13) are their own expressions for ideas 
 which they have gained by their own personal 
 observation, experiment, or other effort. It is 
 presumable that those ideas are clearly appre- 
 hended. To express those ideas in good, idio- 
 matic French ; to write them on the blackboard 
 in columns parallel to the English expressions ; to 
 have the idea suggested, and then its expression 
 in English and in French alternately given, not 
 only in speech, but in silent thought ; to have 
 the French sentences printed opposite to the Eng- 
 lish sentences on alternate pages; to have the 
 children write the French as often as they do the 
 English — to have this done until, for these sen- 
 tences, the French expression is as familiar as 
 the English expression ; and this work continued, 
 month by month, would insure that the children 
 learned to read and write French as rapidl}^ as 
 they learn to read and write English. 
 
 If from the beginning and throughout every 
 lesson care is taken to have the child think a 
 given idea or statement in French after read- 
 ing it in English, and the child is urged to try 
 to pass directly from the object or phenomenon 
 to the French expression as the French child 
 would, he would soon be able to give the French 
 expression first. For instance, suppose a science 
 lesson has been finished in which have appeared
 
 LANGUAGE 159 
 
 ideas for which the child has already all or nearly 
 ail the materials for expression, and during the 
 lesson has, without thinking about it, used for 
 such expression his own language; suppose that 
 the reading lesson follow, and the teacher, in- 
 stead of asking the chiklren to tell, as hitherto, in 
 English what they have learned — as the child 
 naturally has done and would do without the 
 word English being used— says, " Let us fancy 
 ourselves in France and tell what we have learned 
 as we should if we were French children and had 
 
 just had a lesson on ■" This effort should be 
 
 made until it can be saccessfully accomplished. 
 
 In this manner a child might learn more than 
 one foreign tongue while learning to read, write, 
 and correctly use his own. The time would be 
 lengthened some, the learning to read and write 
 English would progress more slowly, and fewer 
 sentences would be used ; but the gains would 
 more than balance these losses. Moreover, the 
 losses would not be real ; for these conditions 
 would last througli the initial stages only, and the 
 use of three or more languages so increase facil- 
 ity in the use of any one of them that after some 
 years the child so taught would know his own 
 language quite as well as does the youth who 
 knows no other, and would have, besides, the same 
 eas}^ familiarity with two or more foreign lan- 
 guages. 
 
 A child so taught would come to reo:ard Ian- 
 guages as a sort of clothes to the pictures and 
 ideas in his mind. These are the same, whatever 
 speech is used for expressing them, just as his own
 
 160 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 body is not changed by putting on a different suit 
 of clothes. Then, without embarrassment or hes- 
 itation, he could put the same living idea into one 
 suit or another at pleasure. 
 
 This is what it was hoped to do with both 
 French and German in the Boston experiment ; 
 but as no attempt of the sort v^as made, it is im- 
 possible to tell how far such an experiment would 
 have justified the anticipated results. Certain 
 it is that few people ever reach such freedom 
 from bondage to one language and such famil- 
 iarity and easy use of several as it was tliought 
 could be acquired by a proper beginning in child- 
 hood. 
 
 Also, it w^as thought that Latin and Greek 
 could be taught in a similar manner, since it 
 would be almost as easy to make old Rome and 
 Athens live again in a child's imagination as to 
 present Paris and Berlin. Moreover, tlie associa- 
 tions of these ancient lang'uao'es would make a 
 more quick and indelible impression than those of 
 the modern tongues, because the life was so dif- 
 ferent, and the very order of thought different; 
 so that in entering into and trying to live over 
 the life of a Greek or Roman child, the child of 
 our day constructs a world with differences of a 
 sort that have an especial charm for him. 
 
 In some spring month dress the children in 
 Greek garments and have a Greek flower festival. 
 On some winter night collect them in a Roman 
 room, in Roman dress, and give them Roman 
 games and a Roman supper. Would the children 
 forget such experiences ?
 
 LANGUAGE IGl 
 
 Greek and Latin could be made as living and as 
 real to a child of our day as an}^ modern tongue is 
 if Greek and Latin scholars would but turn atten- 
 tion to the needs of children and supply thera in 
 this line. Many who are lovers and teachers of 
 children would gladly try this experiment if their 
 own knowledofe of Greek and Ilomau childhood 
 and their power to use those languages were but 
 adequate. The reproach which Milton makes, 
 that after seven years of study a classic cannot 
 be read -without a dictionary at the elbow — true 
 of college students to-day also — could not be true 
 of those taught so early and so well. 
 
 If it be worth while to learn a foreign tongue, 
 either ancient or modern, it is worth while to 
 make experiments in teaching languages until 
 means are reached of decreasing the present felt 
 burden of learning a language and of making it a 
 permanent possession. 
 
 Even the rank and-file of teachers of languages 
 turn to their own for refreshment, and will read 
 a good translation of a classic in preference to the 
 original ; and of college graduates who are not 
 teachers, fewer still read in a foreign tongue any- 
 thing which they can read in their own. To 
 spend from six to ten years at Latin and Greek 
 and yet make no direct use of them through life 
 seems to be an enormous waste, a pitiful misap- 
 plication of energy. The culture value of linguis- 
 tic studies must be large, indeed, to justify such 
 expenditure and such results — the more so as all 
 the greatest works have been translated, and to 
 the average college graduate the translation mani- 
 11
 
 162 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 festly gives more thongbt and more charm than 
 does the original. 
 
 Moreover, these great languages and all that 
 they embody of profound thought and of linguis- 
 tic charm are themselves the products of peoples 
 who, for the most part, knew no tongue but their 
 own. Was that limitation one factor in produc- 
 ing the excellence which we moderns praise? 
 What would be lost from modern culture if Greek 
 and Latin were dropped entirely from our second- 
 ary schools and retained in colleges as specialties, 
 on a par with Sanscrit and Hebrew, and the time 
 now given to them occupied in minute studies of 
 the social life, art, and literature of those peoples, 
 and in a more thorough acquaintance with mod- 
 ern lano-uao-es ? 
 
 The fact that Latin and Greek have survived 
 through so many centuries and that still so many 
 students choose them is unaccounted for. Fash- 
 ion in education can hardly be so great a tyrant. 
 If there be something in the nature of man, in the 
 qualities of these languages, and in the discipli- 
 nar}'^ value of such intimate, long-continued con- 
 tact with those qualities, which justifies the reten- 
 tion of their present importance in our schools, 
 let them be begun in childhood, and pursued in 
 such a manner that they shall become vital, per- 
 manent possessions. 
 
 For want of possession of knowledge adequate 
 to such an undertaking — for the knowledge pos- 
 sessed opportunity for experimentation could have 
 been found or made— the writer has been able to 
 dream onlj^ of what might be done in the teach-
 
 LANGUAGE 163 
 
 ing of languages; and this dream has always in- 
 cluded the beginning, before the twelfth year, of 
 five languages— English, German, French, Latin, 
 and Greek. 
 
 Begin in the kindergarten with the child's 
 mother-tongue, soon introduce one foreign tongue, 
 and others at intervals of one or two years. At 
 the beginning of each new language, by aid of 
 maps, models, sculpture, pictures, etc., fill the 
 child's mind as much as possible with pictures of 
 the life and environment of the people whose ex- 
 pressions they are to learn. Then let a sentence 
 whose ideas have interesting associations to the 
 children be spoken and Avritten in all the languages 
 thus far learned ; and to these should be added 
 its oral and written expression in the new tongue. 
 Thus slowly, step by step, use what has been al- 
 read}^ acquired, and add the new expressions, 
 until the child uses one language as easily as 
 another, and possesses a fair command of the 
 five. 
 
 A class of children taught in this manner would 
 travel the earth over in learning to read; for in 
 addition to what has been suggested, the wan- 
 derings, colonial settlements, and historical move- 
 ment of these peoples should be given bit by bit, 
 in fresh narratives week by week. 
 
 As familiarity grew, the five school -days of 
 the week could be each given to one language, and 
 all work for that dav conducted in that tongue. 
 The daily lessons would be the same, but teacher 
 and children would for that day be Greeks, Ro- 
 mans, Germans, French, or English ; so should
 
 164 AN EXPEKIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 they become in speech citizens, in a narrow sense, 
 of the whole world, both in time and space. 
 
 That no teacher knows enough to teach lan- 
 guage in this manner is nothing against the ideal 
 worth of the plan. A demand would create a sup- 
 ply ; and a demand can come only from an intel- 
 ligent understanding of the values of linguistic 
 studies, and of the best means by which to real- 
 ize those values with the minimum of effort and a 
 maximum result to the child. 
 
 In all use of language care should be taken that 
 a child neither hear nor see error, and discrimina- 
 tive criticism should not be asked until the stu- 
 dent's own usage approximates excellence. The 
 aim should be to form in the child's consciousness 
 a standard of good usage that is so fixed and in- 
 corruptible tliat he is unconscious of it, save when 
 violations of it occur outside himself and jar on 
 his sensibilities. 
 
 This is meant to include what is essential to a 
 fair degree of accuracy and charm in spoken and 
 written speech — delicate enunciation in sound, 
 length of syllables, and accent ; correct idiomatic 
 and syntactical forms ; quick perception in choice 
 of the meanings of words and phrases; felicity in 
 the arrangement of words, phrases, and sentences, 
 and of grouping in paragraphs ; spelling, use of 
 capitals, and punctuation. 
 
 During the first school years the child should 
 imbibe these excellences unconsciously — learning 
 correct usage as he learns to speak, read, and 
 write a given tongue, because he has in the school- 
 room no acquaintance with incorrect usage.
 
 LANGUAGE 165 
 
 To give a child the permanent possession of 
 right standards and measures of value is the chief 
 concern ; not to have him make use of sucli as 
 he can temporarily grasp and hesitatingly apply. 
 He has before him a lifetime of application ; his 
 first need is firm possession of the thing to b6 
 applied — a personal, unconscious habit of good 
 usage. 
 
 Good usage in language rests upon good usage 
 in thought. Accurate, clear-cut, finished, logical, 
 and well-arranged thought should be the aim in 
 all departments of study ; and in proportion as 
 this aim is realized will the habit of good usage 
 in any language be more easily acquired. Finish 
 in thought insures that a child use what vocabu- 
 lary he has to its best advantage ; and by listen- 
 ing to a child when at pla}^ a teacher can soon 
 determine whether habitual faulty speech in the 
 class-room comes from fault}^ thought or from ig- 
 norance of words and their uses. If the latter, 
 the correction is of the form, not of the vital es- 
 sence of language. 
 
 Each language must express some variation in 
 human thought, some change in mental functions. 
 Suppose, for instance, that an inflected tongue 
 represents a phase when the relation is not de- 
 tached from the thing related, either in time or 
 space ; and that one not inflected marks an ex- 
 treme of individuality of ideas, a greater analytic 
 power, where detachment and isolation are ex- 
 treme. 
 
 If the differentiating characteristics in the men- 
 tal functions or thought processes of a given peo-
 
 166 AK EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 pie could be determined and isolated so that they 
 could be intelligently grasped by a student, and 
 by effort he could learn to take them on as his 
 own, the learning of the language of that people 
 ■ — to an adult, surely — would be a comparatively 
 easy task.
 
 MATHEMATICS 
 
 Mathematical ideas and principles are compar- 
 atively few and easy of understanding, while tlie 
 computations which may be based upon them are 
 numberless and often exceedingly complex, va- 
 ried, and tedious. It is the former — the ideas and 
 principles — which teachers should aim to give to 
 children, rather than facility in the solving of puz- 
 zles and in rapid computation. 
 
 Rapid computation is required in certain occu- 
 pations ; but when a youth enters on such an oc- 
 cupation he can acquire this skill, just as he can 
 and does any other purely technical facility which 
 the majority of men neither possess nor need. 
 
 The mathematical ideas and principles which 
 can be grasped and intelligently comprehended 
 at any given school age are, compared with those 
 Avhich may be taken from almost any other study, 
 very few ; hence, small as is the actual bulk of 
 all known mathematical ideas and principles, the 
 study must extend over the entire school life, 
 from kindergarten to the highest graduate work. 
 
 What the average child's mind can grasp and 
 intelligently use of mathematical ideas and prin- 
 ciples before the age of fourteen can be taught to
 
 168 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 him in a single year; and all that he is able to 
 understand — the average student is meant — from 
 fourteen to college age in another year. 
 
 The average of persons who are at once thought- 
 ful and intelligent will probably find, on reflec- 
 tion, that they manipulated mathematical proc- 
 esses in school long before they had an intelli- 
 gent grasp of the real meanings underlying those 
 processes ; and no matter how carefully and ob- 
 jectively those processes were explained or " de- 
 veloped " step by step, the actual comprehension 
 eluded the mental grasp, and there remained in 
 the mind the husk only of facility in manipula- 
 tion. 
 
 A baby's hand fails to grasp what a well-grown 
 hand can completely cover; so there are mathe- 
 matical ideas usually taught in primar}^ grades 
 which the average mind cannot grasp before the 
 age of fourteen. 
 
 This is, perhaps, the chief reason why the re- 
 sults of mathematical studies in our schools are 
 so out of proportion to the time and effort spent 
 upon them. Every teacher of children knows that 
 mathematical ideas fall away from the child's 
 memory very fast, and can be kept there at all 
 only by constant repetition and illustration in 
 manipulating processes. This of itself is suffi- 
 cient to show the inability of the mind to incor- 
 porate the ideas as integral parts of its permanent 
 furnishing. 
 
 The average mind learns a mathematical proc- 
 ess with extreme quickness when so far developed 
 as to easily and quickly grasp the ideas and prin-
 
 MATHEMATICS 169 
 
 ciples that arc involved in tlie process ; and the 
 time now spent in schools on processes Avhose 
 principles cannot yet be comprehended is mostly 
 sheer waste. 
 
 To stop this waste is the dut}^ of every one who 
 has interest in the preservation and development 
 of a sound nervous S3'stem in a child ; for there is 
 no more na"'2:ino^, nerve-destrovino- thino; than to 
 be obliged, day after day, to do mental work that 
 has no meaning and presumably leaves no result 
 in the actual enlargement and modification of 
 nerve substance. 
 
 To set an adult to learning Greek, Hebrew, or 
 Sanscrit without allowing him to know the mean- 
 ing of the words, and insist that he shall remem- 
 ber the proper order, arrangement, and inflection 
 of the words so well that, given a jumble or puz- 
 zle of words, he shall be able to make a complete 
 and intelligent sentence, and 3^et not know the 
 meaning of it when made — this would be some- 
 what analogous to and but little more unreason- 
 able than what cliildren are often set to doing in 
 mathematics through all the grades of our schools. 
 
 Not only the ideas and principles, but the proc- 
 esses which the majorit}^ of children have occa- 
 sion to use before the ao-e of fourteen can be 
 taught in the one year ; and all combinations of 
 those processes which are likely to arise in actual 
 experience out of school and in other studies could 
 be taught in probably one month of each other 
 school year. 
 
 If a few things were well done in a short time, 
 and the child left thereafter to such mathematical
 
 170 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 experiences as arise in other studies and in his 
 outside life, the child would have not only all the 
 mathematics he would need or use, but a large 
 amount of school time and mental energy to be 
 spent on other studies. 
 
 That many children leave school early does not 
 change the matter, save to make the case still 
 worse against present practice ; for what is not 
 comprehended drops away, and the child's school 
 time, so short, so precious, has been wasted, and 
 he defrauded of other knowledge which he might 
 have gained and kept. 
 
 If the average adult will examine and set down 
 the mathematical ideas and processes which he 
 uses from 3^ear's end to year's end, he will be sur- 
 prised to find them nothing more, ordinarily, than 
 amplifications of what can be taught in the first 
 primary year (see Part I., Chapter I., page 4) ; 
 and the exceptions that arise in ten years could 
 be learned in a single week, so that the child who 
 leaves school before the age of fourteen would not 
 usually need to blush for mathematical ignorance 
 if tauglit no more than is suggested for that year, 
 provided that he had sufficient, recurrent practice 
 not to forget. 
 
 It is not meant to imply that mathematics have 
 no culture value, but that their culture value can 
 be realized best when the mind is al^le to assimi- 
 late and appreciate them ; that present practice 
 harms every child by diverting liis time and ener- 
 gies from culture that he can assimilate ; and that 
 this loss falls most heavily on the child who leaves 
 school early.
 
 MATHEMATICS 171 
 
 Educators have agreed to banish the old spell- 
 ing- books, with their lists of long, dillicult, and 
 technical words; perha})s future educators will 
 banish to the same limbo the present arithmetics, 
 and for similar reasons. 
 
 This book recommends : tliat mathematics be 
 taught as a subject of study at long intervals 
 only, through all the years up to college age ; 
 that during the intervals it shall come up for use 
 or discussion when needed in other studies only, 
 and then onl}^ so far as needed; that stress shall 
 be laid on ideas and principles rather than on 
 processes ; that such processes only shall be taught 
 as are likely to be required in the child's daily ex- 
 periences, and shall not involve numbers or com- 
 plex conditions much beyond what such experiences 
 are likely to be. Technical, trade, and business 
 schools would need to do more work in mathe- 
 matics ; but in them the same principles might be 
 followed of confining the extent and complexity 
 of the work to the actual requirements of the oc- 
 cupations pursued, until the student's mind had, 
 through other studies and contact with life, de- 
 veloped beyond the point of merely grasping and 
 holding a process for temporary use to the point 
 of intelligent assimilation of the ideas and princi- 
 ples involved. 
 
 Every child is a natural symbolist — a corn-cob 
 with a dress on it will do for a baby, and a stick 
 with no additions for a horse. To let one thing- 
 stand for another is as easy to a child as to 
 breathe. Advantage of this can be taken to teach 
 comprehensive formulae, a^h — e should be the
 
 173 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 chikrs genGPcal expression for addition from the 
 first primary year. Moreover, he more easily 
 grasps the general idea of putting together than 
 he works out the details of a special case. Give 
 him a-\-h = c as an expression of putting together 
 in one mass what had been before in two or more 
 masses of the same stuff, and, when a special case 
 comes up, teach him to put the given details in 
 proper succession under the letters of this for- 
 mula, using the formula at each combination of 
 two masses until the whole are added, how manv- 
 soever there be. In a short time, by this means 
 alone, there will be formed in his mind an ine- 
 radicable impression of the distinction between a 
 general conception and a particular case. 
 
 As easily may he be taught to distinguish the 
 ideas of known and unknown quantities, and des- 
 ignate them as such in the simplest processes. In 
 scientific studies he will early come in contact 
 with the ideas of constant and variable, continu- 
 ous and discontinuous, and of limit. In industrial 
 work, greater, less, equal, and equivalent will have 
 continual illustration. All the axioms used or il- 
 lustrated in eiementarv mathematics can be easilv 
 tauo'ht in a livino: concrete way in connection with 
 industrial work. Opportunities are abundant — 
 at least, would be in an ideal school — of teaching 
 by contact with actual phenomena every mathe- 
 matical idea and principle required to enter upon 
 colleo-e studies — more than the average freshman 
 has — without the child's knowing he is study- 
 ing mathematics, simply by bringing out the full 
 meaning of the phenomena when an opportunity
 
 MATHEMATICS 1'5'3 
 
 presents itself, and then giving the child, what- 
 ever his ao-e, tlie mathematician's terms and for- 
 mulce for tliat meaning. 
 
 Children are perpetually basing their plays on 
 hypotheses. They say, " Let us play that it is so 
 and so " ; and having settled the limits of their 
 assumption, they proceed to work out details ac- 
 cording to it. This shows how easily they can 
 grasp the distinction between an assumption and 
 a fact ; and how readily they could be led to ap- 
 preciate the notion of a working hypothesis, and 
 of the limitations which it imposes. 
 
 To make early use of such native possibilities 
 by turning them to account in school studies 
 would lay foundations of clear distinctions that 
 are sometimes hard to attain in later life, and 
 would be a gift to any mind of immensely greater 
 value tlian quick facilitj^ in mathematical compu- 
 tations. 
 
 The arbitrary character of all symbols may be 
 impressed by leading the child to construct a ci- 
 pher alphabet and digits. Let each child con- 
 struct one for himself, write sentences, and make 
 computations. Show him how business men in 
 all shops mark their wares. A little work in this 
 line will emancipate the child's mind from bond- 
 age to symbols, and help to form the habit of 
 seeking real meanings, and of regarding all sym- 
 bols as merely convenient devices for using, con- 
 veying, and manipulating meanings. 
 
 Factoring is easy of comprehension, and from 
 it to the involution and evolution of roots is a 
 short step. Confined to easy numbers and simple
 
 174 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 processes, these can be given early, and should, 
 from the first, be associated with appropriate 
 symbols and technical terms. 
 
 The characteristics of some curves, the plotting 
 and drawing of them and their use in science, 
 could be taught even in the first primary year; 
 then how much more easily when an occasion in 
 other studies makes their understanding and use 
 desirable ! 
 
 It should be borne in mind that all higher prob- 
 lems are made up of simpler elements ; that these 
 elements rest upon still simpler ideas and princi- 
 ples ; and that these fundamental ideas and prin- 
 ciples can be separately grasped by a child and 
 made part of the permanent stuff of his mind long 
 before he can hold in the focus of consciousness 
 the combination of elements, formulae, processes, 
 and abstract conceptions necessary to the manipu- 
 lation and solution of com})lex problems. That 
 which a child can take through natural associa- 
 tions with his experiences in life or in other stud- 
 ies, give him freely at any age ; but do not waste 
 his years and energies on processes of calculation, 
 or in trying to instil complexities which the focus 
 of his consciousness will not cover. 
 
 This chapter is not meant to be anj^thing more 
 than suggestive ; for its ideas have not been test- 
 ed by experiment in the school-room by the writer 
 beyond what is narrated in Part I., pages lG-21.
 
 VI 
 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING 
 
 An ideal school might be a world in miniature, 
 where all occupations which are essential to the 
 comfort and beauty of man's existence are repre- 
 sented on a scale that is appropriate to the age of 
 the children to be tauo-ht. 
 
 Handicraft brings about the co-ordination of 
 all the senses of man, and that co-ordination is 
 complete only when great skill has been reached. 
 Complete co-ordination in one form of skill gives 
 no assurance of appreciable co-ordination in an- 
 other ; so that to reach the co-ordinations which 
 are possible to man at present he should practise 
 as many handicrafts as possible. 
 
 Man develops individually along the lines of 
 the general need, and, save in the rare instances 
 of advance to another level, he has no other means 
 of development. 
 
 The co-ordination of the senses into one act 
 means the gathering into one focus of many ave- 
 nues of stimulation, and the power to control and 
 to use that focus effectively when formed. 
 
 Modern psychology seems to tend to the notion 
 that mental processes, even to the most abstract 
 thought, depend upon plwsical processes, upon the
 
 176 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 happy combination of certain groups of nerves 
 and muscles. Whatever of truth there is in this 
 notion tends to confirm the necessity of industrial 
 training for all students from childhood up ; for 
 the co-ordination of the senses into one act of 
 skill means the delicate adjustment and balance 
 of many nerves and muscles. To give a child ac- 
 tivities where not only such adjustments must be 
 made, but where the least fiaw in the adjustment 
 expresses itself at once in the result, would de- 
 velop the capacity to make approximately flawless 
 adjustments. The child himself cannot fail to see 
 the flaw, and in the effort to remove or overcome 
 it the habit of the flawless adjustment is made. 
 
 Such results as this, in the co-ordinate activities 
 of nerves and muscles, can be at present gained 
 in no way so quickly or surely as in the various 
 handicrafts ; and, if the psychologists are even 
 one-half right, the gaining of skill in handicraft is 
 certainly an aid and may be an essential step in 
 true processes of thought. 
 
 Certain it is that our scientists are our most 
 exact thinkers ; and thej^ one and all, must, to 
 reach eminence in their fields, have acquired very 
 great skill in at least one sort of physical manip- 
 ulation. 
 
 If these ideas seem far-fetched, let the reader 
 reflect that no one is without some handicraft 
 skill, some power to co-ordinate nerves and mus- 
 cles into an approximately perfect act. The care 
 of the person requires it ; the act of writing is a 
 very delicate adjustment of this sort. 
 
 Whether the average man performs enough of
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING 177 
 
 such acts, or has from childhood acquired enough 
 co-ordinations to account for all the thinking- of 
 which he is capable, is a question which need not 
 concern us here. Certain it is that the average 
 man's thought is not skilful ; it partakes, usual- 
 ly, of the uncertain, slovenly, hapliazard qualities 
 which characterize untrained physical movements. 
 He cannot be depended upon to make a focus in 
 his consciousness of all the knowledge which he 
 has and ought reasonably to be expected to bring 
 to bear on the given point or question before his 
 mind. 
 
 Take another point of view — that of another 
 school of psychologists. Suppose the physical be- 
 ing of man stands between its exterior environ- 
 ment and a soul or entity who is independent 
 of it in existence, but dependent u[)on it for ex- 
 pression of itself in our common life ; and that 
 stimulation and co-ordination of nerves and mus- 
 cles may arise from within — that is, be initiated 
 b}^ and from the soul — as well as from without 
 or the environment. Suppose, further, that the 
 co-ordinations which arise from stimulations from 
 either source are always at first adjusted — that 
 is, determined — by the soul. It would be to the 
 advantage of such an entity to have as many co- 
 ordinations as possible established in the perma- 
 nent structure of the physical organism, so that 
 its attention could be given mainly to tlie general 
 movement of the thought or of the physical ac- 
 tivity, without dissipation in the small details 
 of that movement; and since man's sense organs 
 are a part of the mechanism which such a soul 
 
 12
 
 178 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 uses, activities whose co- ordinations depend di- 
 rectly on those organs must necessarily aid the 
 formation of habits of flawless co-ordination. 
 
 From almost any point of view, handicraft 
 stands out as essential to the complete develop- 
 ment of the mind of man ; and for such develop- 
 ment the range of activities in handicraft can 
 hardly be too wide or too varied, so long as each 
 is pursued to the point of skill. 
 
 This mental effect involves a moral effect. 
 Most of the lies and deceit in the world come 
 from slovenly thinking, and most mistakes, too, 
 can usually be traced to the same source. To 
 focus the whole mind to one given point, and 
 to hold that focus in consciousness until all the 
 threads of knowledge and of experience that are 
 combined in that focus have each had its due 
 effect — this is attained by the few wise only. 
 Most men act now from one impulse, now from 
 another, rarely from the whole being or with the 
 consciousness and consent of the whole. 
 
 To make the various handicrafts integral parts 
 of every school, so that the student from the kin- 
 dergarten up shall be as familiar with tools as 
 wntli books, and turn out articles in physical sub- 
 stance as often as he does compositions — this 
 would inevitably work a change in our social 
 structure. 
 
 Scorn of manual labor would give place to re- 
 spect for that labor, and personal skill in the gift- 
 ed and well-to-do would elevate the standards of 
 such labor. The physical laborer would take his 
 rightful place as an integral and equally honored
 
 INDUSTKIAL TRAINING 179 
 
 part of the social whole with his brother, the 
 mental laborer; and to neither would be denied 
 the privilege of sharing the other's tasks. 
 
 The present division of society into the manual 
 laborer and the non-manual laborer, with all the 
 social consequences thereof, is mainly artificial. 
 Many an idler, mental dabbler, and professional 
 man has locked within him special aptitude for 
 taste and skill in handicraft ; but should he leave 
 his present occupation, or lack of occupation, to 
 give those aptitudes the severe training which 
 alone brings skill, and then exercise that skill as 
 common laborers do, he would suffer degradation 
 in the social eyes of even fair-minded and other- 
 wise sensible people. 
 
 Tliere are always reasons even for the seeming 
 vagaries of the social consciousness ; and it is true 
 that supreme skill or excellence is usually recog- 
 nized and honored by the highest social thought 
 in our own land. Perhaps the past and present 
 attitudes towards ph3'sical labor have been neces- 
 sary to keep skill from settling into mediocrity, 
 and to force on it perpetual change and growth ; 
 but the notion that he who reaches less than a 
 supreme skill, or uses skill for gain in the ordinary 
 markets, is disgraced and not ennobled by his skill 
 may have paral3^zed the natural bent of a good 
 many men and women, and made useless or medi- 
 ocre social units that might have been otherwise. 
 
 On the other hand, the limitation of nearly all 
 forms of mechanical labor to the poor, and the 
 social conditions that force them to follow sucli 
 labor from childhood or starve, are responsible for
 
 180 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 choking in the poor whatever riches of mental ap- 
 titudes the}" possess. 
 
 An education which includes both the mental 
 and the physical, and gives to each child, regard- 
 less of his present wealth or prospects of wealth, as 
 much skill in forms of manual labor as in the va- 
 rious branches of the present studies — this would, 
 in time, do somethin"; towards makiiif*' the dis- 
 tinctions between the manual and the mental la- 
 borers natural, the outgrowth of inherent apti- 
 tudes, instead of, as at present, the accident of 
 birth or of opportunity. Society would then have 
 the products of all hef'^.ative capacities turned to 
 their best uses, and be a gainer thereby ; for the 
 present usage wastes power at both ends of the 
 social line, and all along the line. 
 
 The cause of present practice in this matter is 
 deep — it is the measure of worth which the uni- 
 versal consciousness recognizes as worth. That 
 measure should be being ; and it seems thus far 
 to have been, and to now be, doing and having. 
 Perhaps this is because man has been, thus far 
 in known human history, so absorbed in gather- 
 ing from and subduino; his environment that he 
 has had little leisure to think of that which gath- 
 ers and subdues. Yet the fact that doing in ma- 
 terial substance is dishonored in the bulk is a rec- 
 oo:nition that something is more honorable : and 
 when man has taken the further step of dis- 
 honoring the having of material substance, and 
 riches are relegated to the mentally poor, he will 
 have reached the point of discerning being as 
 apart from doing and having — being, tlio one
 
 INDUSTRIAL TllAINIKG 181 
 
 thing which a man brings to and may take from 
 his brief term of physical existence as we now 
 know it. 
 
 Before the age of twelve no child should be set 
 to work at any handicraft that requires minute 
 inspection of or attention to small points of de- 
 tail. All forms of needlework (except, perhaps, 
 that on the old-fashioned cardboard with larire 
 holes and wide spaces), most wood-carving, and 
 much modelling are objectionable on tliis account. 
 Work with glazed papers and with metals, espe- 
 cially liammered work in brass, is objectionable 
 because of the glare of light from the materials ; 
 and for a similar reason materials in strongly 
 pronounced colors should be avoided. 
 
 The eye is a very delicate instrument, and its 
 development cannot be too carefully guarded 
 from arrest or ruin. All work that is given to 
 children before the age of twelve should be as 
 large as the child's size and strength will bear, 
 and should involve no detail which may not be 
 easil}^ seen and its accuracy estimated at a min- 
 imum distance of eighteen inches from the eye ; 
 and at that distance there should be no effort to 
 hold the focus of the eyes long on a minute point. 
 Let the detail to which attention is given, aside 
 from the one detail of accurate measurement, be 
 as large as possible. 
 
 The softer woods and clay, being neutral in 
 color, are the best materials for beo'inninff lessons 
 in handicraft; and abundant work in these ma- 
 terials can be arranged which will give the de- 
 sired results to physical and mental development
 
 182 A]Sr EXPERIMEXT IN EDUCATION 
 
 without harm to any organ of the chilcVs body, 
 or to his mind through disgust Avith minute and 
 wearisome detail. 
 
 Moreover, the imperfect result of a false or in- 
 complete co-ordination of nerves and muscles in a 
 given act shoukl be so large that the flaw cannot 
 escape the child's own observation. The defect 
 which a child sees plainly he can summon cour- 
 age enough to remedy or overcome by repeated 
 effort, while a minute detail, which a trained or 
 fastidious eye alone sees, soon exhausts his pa- 
 tience. When a child has become sensitive to 
 imperfection in large details, and conscious of 
 power to make such details perfect, it is easy to 
 gradually lead to such sensitiveness and conscious 
 power through gradation down to the greatest 
 minutife which the most exacting craft requires. 
 But in this process the eye should not be forgot- 
 ten, and every child should be protected against 
 conscious and unconscious harm to it. 
 
 Household labor, such as cooking, dish- washing, 
 the laying and serving of meals, dusting, arrang- 
 ino' furniture and ornaments, washino: and iron- 
 ing, afford excellent opportunities for developing 
 a sensitiveness to that skill which is complete 
 only when its results are both fit — that is, adapt- 
 ed to the purpose — and beautiful, or satisfying to 
 the aesthetic feelings. 
 
 Gardening and horticulture appeal to another 
 side of the nature, or rather to the same qualities 
 from different points of view, and have the fur- 
 ther advantage that they take the child out of 
 doors. In this labor the child becomes a partner
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING 183 
 
 with the planet, and must wait that partner's 
 movements and learn to work according to uni- 
 versal laws. 
 
 Industrial work of various sorts, if properly ar- 
 ranged, could be followed throughout each school 
 year without taking anything from the results in 
 the usual studies ; for such labors are so great 
 a delifi-ht to the child, and their effects on the 
 mind are so beneficial, that a continuous course in 
 industrial work seems to help the child to carry 
 and assimilate the full burden of mental pursuits 
 with a less expenditure of time and energy than 
 is ordinarily given to tliem. This may be be- 
 cause of tlie help which industrial work gives to 
 the power to co-ordinate nerve and muscle into 
 complete accord in movement, and so brings the 
 mind into easy mental action more quickly than 
 any exclusively mental processes cmi. 
 
 A child desires to accomplish something the 
 effects of which he can plainly see. No purely 
 mental pursuit allows the child the full satisfac- 
 tion of this natural and just demand. The handi- 
 crafts do this at every step. 
 
 Every child has a kind of integrity w^hich 
 would prefer to deal with real things instead 
 of with imaginary ones if he could ; to be a real 
 force that makes, creates, and hel[)s along the 
 necessary work of the world. Industrial training 
 can be made to foster and to train this desirable 
 quality, tlirough so arranging the work tliat its 
 final results shall be of some use to the child, by 
 satisfying some necessity at school or home, either 
 for himself or another ; and let the child plainly
 
 184 AX EXPERIMENT IX EDUCATIOX 
 
 see that every step of the process is essential to 
 that final result. This will give a tangible aim 
 and a reasonable wortli to his effort, both of 
 which he can appreciate. 
 
 Life has dignity and self-respect in tlie individ- 
 ual in proportion to the individual's discernment 
 of his use to the social whole. It is desirable 
 to foster the sources of dignity and self-respect 
 from babyhood upward, and for the average 
 child it is doubtful if there are other means of 
 doing this so efficient as industrial education ; for 
 if the man may not reacli usefulness in other 
 lines, he certain!}' may in some handicraft. Skill 
 in handicraft thus furnishes something to fall 
 back upon ; not to replenish a depleted purse or 
 a ruined bank-account, but an empty self-respect 
 and an exhausted worth. 
 
 Since the main object of all industrial training, 
 from the standpoint of the writer, is the perfect 
 co-ordination of nerves and muscles into an effec- 
 tive act, it follows that perfect results at each step 
 can alone guarantee that that object has been re- 
 alized. This necessitates that the work move 
 along slowly, with repetitions of a detail until 
 that detail is complete ; and requires that each 
 individual ^vork and progress without regard to 
 other individuals. This requirement is of itself a 
 source of mental and moral power to the child ; 
 for it requires him to exercise mental and moral 
 effort for reasons that he appreciates. 
 
 The exercise of a sympathy wdiich would help 
 a child by doing his work or by glossing over his 
 mistakes, in order that the results of his activities
 
 INDtSTRIAL TRAINING 185 
 
 may keep pace with those of some other child, de- 
 bases the mind and heart of the child. It teaches 
 him to lie consciously and to ignore the fact that 
 he has done so, or makes him content with his in- 
 feriority. 
 
 Not to do so much as another, or so rapidly, 
 but so perfectl}', so beautifully, should be the de- 
 sire which is to be instilled into a child's heart. The 
 time will come when he must know that he can- 
 not always satisfy this desire; but that knowledge 
 should be kept as far off as possible. At least, it 
 should not be allowed to invade those formative 
 years when no teacher or parent can tell what 
 powers are within the child. Slow and painful 
 development often brings a sure and lovely result ; 
 and to each child should be given the benefit of 
 all doubt about so grave a matter as his own 
 future possibilities.
 
 VII 
 MEANS OF EXPRESSION 
 
 Reading and writing should be regarded not as 
 ends in themselves, but as means of expression ; 
 and they should be so presented to the child that 
 he would so regard and so use them from the first 
 day in school. 
 
 When a child has command of the movements 
 of hand and arm which are required in a smooth 
 and well-formed handwriting, and such a mental 
 impression of accuracy and elegance in the forms 
 of letters and of their combinations in words that 
 he can be trusted not to forget those forms and 
 combinations, he may be allowed to vary from 
 them to accord with his own taste and nature ; 
 but originality should not be allowed to become 
 a cloak for slovenliness. An illeo-ible handwriting- 
 should be as great a disgrace as indistinct speech. 
 To take time and pains to form and to finish letters 
 as carefully in writing as sounds in speech is cer- 
 tainly no more than good manners require; and 
 yet men of this generation have for tlie most part 
 a wretched chirography, with no merits to justify 
 its ugliness, and no real necessities to excuse the 
 careless haste with which it is indulged. 
 
 Speech is not much better, save in restricted
 
 MEANS OF EXPRESSION 187 
 
 circles, and a good reader is rare in any circle. A 
 habit of clear, delicate, and discriminating enun- 
 ciation and of an agreeable intonation is one of 
 the loveliest gifts Avhich a teacher can bestow 
 upon a child. This habit can be formed in the 
 average child by daily repeated vocal drill con- 
 tinued through all the school years; and, so far 
 as the writer knows, in no other way. 
 
 The study of foreign languages helps in this, 
 because such stud}^ stimulates attention to fine 
 and subtle discriminations in sound. Music helps 
 too, and is invaluable in bringing out and perfect- 
 ing the native timbre and possible delicacies of 
 intonation. But only practice in the elegant use 
 of one's own tongue, in speech and oral reading, 
 will suffice for the formation and perfection of 
 such a habit. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, it is the habit of good usage 
 that must be relied on, and not critical power in 
 details of faulty usage. 
 
 Free outline drawing should be as common as 
 writing, and as easily handled for uses of expres- 
 sion. This also requires care, drill, and long-con- 
 tinued use, from kindergarten up through all the 
 grades ; and this use should come as a natural ne- 
 cessity, in connection with the other studies, just 
 as reading and writing do. 
 
 Exercises in reading, writing, and drawing are 
 often so disassociated from one another, and from 
 other studies, that they seem to have no vital re- 
 lations to thought or to any needs and desires of 
 the child. To regard them as necessary instru- 
 ments for his own service and delight is the first
 
 188 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 thought which a child should have about them; 
 and that service and delight should not be lost 
 sight of by teacher or child, even in the most ex- 
 actino' drill. Not that the drill must be delight- 
 ful — it certainly should not be painful — but that 
 the child should recognize it as required by his 
 awkward inefficiency, in order that he may reach 
 the power and possibilities of delight. 
 
 The ancient Greeks thought music to have great 
 educational value, as a means of expression and 
 as a source of intellectual and of ethical culture. 
 Music is often spoken of now as having these val- 
 ues ; but there are comparatively few who do not 
 in their practices belie these professions. Even 
 to those wdio follow it as a profession it seems to 
 be treated, for the most part, as an ornament and 
 an amusement. 
 
 On public occasions the music rendered has 
 often no relation or fitness to the surroundings, 
 the persons engaged, or the dignity and worth of 
 the occasion ; is rather an opportunity to show off 
 a voice or technical skill, and, as such, is an intru- 
 sion and a jar. 
 
 In too many churches and Sunday and day 
 schools throughout our land the so-called music 
 is often noise and jingle which expresses nothing 
 but the barbarism of those who endure it and 
 seem to regard it as an expression of praise, wor- 
 ship, or other fine sentiment. Are not those who 
 think any fine combination of sounds can worthily 
 fit any occasion also far from the mark ? 
 
 There is nothing more enjoyable or expressive 
 than fit music fitly rendered ; and by fit is meant
 
 MEANS OF EXPRESSION 189 
 
 suitable to the occasion, whatever that may be. 
 Music should bo to condition and circumstance 
 what words are to ideas, whether the condition 
 and circumstance are primarily from within, as 
 when a person sings or plays to himself, or from 
 without, as when he performs for others ; and this 
 fitness should be in the kind and quality of the 
 music, as well as in the excellence of the per- 
 formance. 
 
 The intuitions of humanity do not so often err 
 in these matters as do the musicians and the pro- 
 fessional composers. Men use what is provided, 
 and follow the fashions in vogue in their environ- 
 ments in music as in dress — that is, men use the 
 jingles that they know rather than the nobler 
 music which they have capacity to enjoy but have 
 never heard. 
 
 To the public schools must men turn to get this 
 great want developed and provided for; and not 
 until music is as common and relatively as excel- 
 lent in our public schools as are reading and writ- 
 ing will the thing be accomplished, and music take 
 its place as an integral part of human life, an es- 
 sential means of expression i^nd interpretation of 
 man to himself and to his fellows. 
 
 The miracles of music have not been wrought 
 by its own po\ver alone. With the Greeks, mu- 
 sic as a department of study included poetic lit- 
 erature. Music and literature, in our restricted 
 meanings of these terms, to the Greeks w^ere in- 
 separably associated. It was speech wedded to 
 music that in the songs of Tyrtajus led the Spar- 
 tans to victory.
 
 190 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 The common man needs to know what his 
 sounds mean, in order to have the effect of them 
 definitely directed ; and when that meaning comes 
 in words that stir his blood, and the music fits the 
 words, the combined effect makes it easy for that 
 same common man to dare and to do nobly, even 
 unto death. 
 
 Music alone ma^^ produce its full effects on the 
 few who are especially sensitive and cultivated, 
 but the average person of all ages and conditions 
 requires for these full effects that suitable words 
 be attached to music as that ideas should be at- 
 tached to speech ; and when either speech or mu- 
 sic is not thus joined to its proper complement 
 its power is weakened, changed, or altogether de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 This makes the literature of music as important 
 as the music itself, in order that indelible asso- 
 ciations between noble sounds and noble senti- 
 ments shall be wrought into the child mind. Of 
 all the literature associated with music, how much 
 is worthy to live as literature ? Too often, on a 
 great occasion, when thousands are gathered, are 
 all the resources of musical art in fine instruments 
 and famous singers employed to sing literature so 
 unworthy that a street gamin w^ould blush to be 
 thought capable of admiring it. 
 
 Is not this — in part, at least — because men have 
 lost sight of the functions of music as a means 
 of expression, and imagine that to the common 
 mind it can be a matter of supreme indiffer- 
 ence what tlie words are — whether in a known 
 or unknown tongue; do, re, mi; hi diddle, did-
 
 MEANS OF EXPKESSION 191 
 
 die ; or some utterly mawkish or sensual senti- 
 ment ? 
 
 Of all nations, we of the English-speaking peo- 
 ples are most inexcusable for this degradation of 
 song by unworthy associations. There is need of 
 a reformer to do for our song world what Wagner 
 did for the opera — to lift it to a higher level, and 
 to consider as carefully what is to be expressed as 
 how. 
 
 Such reform to be lasting must be founded in 
 our public schools, and in them must great litera- 
 ture and great melodies be associated ; and when 
 from cradle up a generation of men have listened 
 to and sung such songs, there will, perliaps, be 
 an increase of that quality of living which a man 
 need not be ashamed of. 
 
 Modelling, sculpture, painting, and all handi- 
 crafts are means of expression, and are so used to 
 some extent. Doubtless machinery has repressed 
 the creative and expressive instinct a good deal ; 
 but when man as a whole has become the master 
 and is no longer the slave of his machine, what- 
 ever powers have been buried in factories and 
 mills will find their resurrection. For it may be 
 presumed that nature is not wholly dependent on 
 the individual ; having failed of one outlet, she 
 can doubtless make another. 
 
 An ideal school would give ample opportunity 
 for creative talent and for any other form of self- 
 expression of which a given child is capable ; but 
 in schools as they are a little is done along these 
 lines, and more can be. 
 
 It remains to speak of phj^sical culture as a
 
 192 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 means of expression. Developing the body to its 
 utmost capacity for healtli and strength does not 
 necessarily make it an adequate instrument for 
 self-expression. It is not to be supposed that nat- 
 ure has no misfits, and that a healthful adjust- 
 ment of the ph3^sical, vital forces is all that is re- 
 quired for the ease and comfort of the body's 
 tenant. Rather is it more probable that every 
 body is, to some extent, a misfit, and that many 
 souls go about like princes in tatters or in some- 
 body else's clothes. Certain it is that rare are 
 the hours, to most of us, when the body perfectly 
 renders the inward thouo;ht and condition. It is 
 a stolid thing of nerves and muscles, responding 
 slowly and uncertainly to the swiftly flowing and 
 transforming moods of the soul. 
 
 To make it somewhat less stolid and more re- 
 sponsive should be the aim of the teacher of little 
 children. JSTatural ease and expressive grace of 
 posture and movement are often seen in children, 
 but more rarely in adults. To preserve the na- 
 tive ease and grace, to develop and add to them, 
 and to bring them into conscious possession with 
 the meanings whicli they convey — this should be 
 done ; and something towards it may bo done in 
 every scliool-i'ooni in our land. 
 
 Let children try to give soundless expression to 
 their ideas, both of intellection and of emotion, 
 until they are quick at pantomime and quick at 
 reading the meanings of the pantomimic efforts of 
 others. At first, give them the aid of objects ; 
 later, require the expression to be completed by 
 their own bodies alone, until tliey handle their
 
 MEANS OF EXPRESSION 193 
 
 bodies with the same ready precision to express 
 an idea that they do words to form sentences for 
 such expression. 
 
 In the present state of knowledge about the 
 body as a means of expression, care must be ex- 
 ercised lest stereot3"ped forms are taught. A 
 teacher's best models, provided he cannot himself 
 have the instruction of a competent master, are 
 children at their games and men and women in 
 unconscious action. A habit of observation, sup- 
 plemented by effort to reproduce in one's person 
 what has been observed, will soon give a teacher 
 much material for these exercises and a fair degree 
 of critical judgment. 
 
 It may be asked of what use are these exer- 
 cises and accomplishments when habits have been 
 formed. Surely anything which makes a man 
 master of his body as a means of expression has 
 put a valuable power in his possession. Further- 
 more, it is urged by teachers of physical culture 
 that all exercises react upon tlie inner self ; so 
 that to take a noble posture is to receive a stimu- 
 lus to noble feeling and thought as truly as to read 
 a noble sentiment. In so far as posture is or can 
 be an exa.ct expression of thought this may be 
 true, whether a child be able to analyze and un- 
 derstand the stimulus and his reaction on it or not. 
 
 A study of means of expression conducted ac- 
 cording to scientific methods will form a habit 
 of attention to and interest in those means, and 
 such attention and interest must increase a man's 
 knowledge of himself and of his neighbor, than 
 which few things are more desirable. 
 
 13
 
 194 Aisr EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 Ultimately every man lives in solitude, and with 
 difficulty does he imperfectly impart his own intel- 
 lectual and emotional states to his neii^hbors or 
 apprehend theirs. A man knows his own experi- 
 ences, and he knows little more. The form, limits, 
 and quality of his neighbor's thought he guesses 
 at but does not know. He may try to repeat his 
 neighbors experience, but he cannot know wheth- 
 er the repetition is exactly like the original or not. 
 He forms judgments about his neighbor and acts 
 upon those judgments ; but those judgments are 
 based mainly not upon knowledge of his neigh- 
 bor but of himself. The fact that he cannot lay 
 a piece of his mind over a corresponding piece of 
 his neighbor's mind and see how they fit ; cannot 
 exactly experience his neighbor's experience, nei- 
 ther in the small nor in the great — this fact should 
 be brought to consciousness in every child ; and 
 one way of doing it is througli these exercises in 
 expression, for the child will soon observe that 
 the expressions and their interpretations are ap- 
 proximations onl}^ and never quite satisfactory to 
 either party. 
 
 Courage is the backbone of character, and so 
 long as it is mainly gristle the character is not of 
 much worth. To realize one's solitude and accept 
 it, even as a child can do, is to begin to deposit 
 bone in the gristle. To realize one's ignorance 
 about one's neighbor, and to act sincerely from 
 that realization, is to begin to stand upright. To 
 do unto one's neighbor as one would wish one's 
 neighbor to do unto him is to realize and do but 
 half the truth. One's neighbor is not one's self;
 
 MEANS OF EXPEESSION 195 
 
 and one may find — nay, frequently does find — tliat 
 his neighbor does not wisli or need the same treat- 
 ment that he himself does. One's neighbor some- 
 times ■wishes and needs conduct towards him that 
 one would not willingly receive from any one; so 
 that it is not alone what one wishes unto him- 
 self in like circumstances, but what his neighbor 
 also wishes, that should influence conduct towards 
 one's neighbor. To have realized this fact is to 
 have accepted both the solitude and the igno- 
 rance. To act upon this acceptance requires a con- 
 tinual study of one's neighbor — a looking outward 
 for motives and forms of conduct as well as in- 
 ward. 
 
 This looking outward will avail only when what 
 is seen is truly interpreted ; and here again most 
 men are thrown back upon self, until, through 
 many a knock for false interpretation, one is at 
 last educated to a sort of understandino- at least 
 to acceptance as fact, of that which one does not 
 experience. 
 
 When men are sufficiently developed it is to be 
 hoped that they will not ask such hard tasks of 
 one another, and perhaps then the " golden rule " 
 alone will be a sufficient guide ; but it is not now, 
 and it is the present which the child must be edu- 
 cated up to. 
 
 Do unto thyself what thy own nature approves 
 and needs ; unto thy neighbor what his nature de- 
 sires and needs. This is to be free, and to leave 
 one's neighbor free. 
 
 To do loathsome physical tasks for one's neigh- 
 bor has long been regarded as a meritorious ac-
 
 196 AN EXPEKIMEKT IN EDUCATION 
 
 complishment ; to do as loathsome intellectual 
 and ethical tasks — fully conscious that they are 
 loathsome — is a height man has not aspired to 
 consciously (save among the Jesuits, where it 
 may be doubted whether the act was or is under- 
 stood as here meant), although it has been reached 
 by individuals here and there from time immemo- 
 rial. Strangely enough, when these cases have 
 been understood they have been regarded as 
 proofs of a high degree of love ; and the hard 
 rifjhteousness that has let one's neiorlibor suffer 
 ratlier than sin for him has not won universal ap- 
 plause. 
 
 A man's conscience is his measure, to be used in 
 his own affairs as rigidly as ho pleases; but it is 
 sometimes injustice as well as "bad form" to 
 force it on his neighbor, to that neighbor's dis- 
 comfort and loss. Perhaps conscience is partly 
 an intellectual and ethical fastidiousness, for it has 
 changed from age to age quite as much as physical 
 fastidiousness has ; and it would be well for chil- 
 dren to get some inkling of this fact, and learn to 
 regard his neighbor's conscience as possibly quite 
 as respectable as liis own. 
 
 A man's self flows from the tip of his pen or 
 fingers, or vil)rates in the tones of his voice or the 
 movements of his body, only when all means of 
 expression have passed beyond the rudimentary 
 stages of conveying thought merely, and have 
 become vehicles of expression for tlie sum total 
 of his understanding. 
 
 It is this sum total which a man's gait, posture, 
 and various physical movements should express,
 
 MEANS or EXniESSION 197 
 
 but which they do express rarely. Judged from 
 his conduct, man is not so much an entity as a 
 combination of entities, all using the one body as 
 a vehicle of action and expression ; and on supreme 
 occasions only does there seem to be a focus or 
 concentration of all the entities in one act. It is 
 this which makes the expression of the self and 
 the judgment of others so crude and inadequate 
 until after long training of self and long and inti- 
 mate acquaintance with another. 
 
 The stud}' and practice of the varjous means of 
 expression will do something towards restrain- 
 ing and refining both expressions and judgments, 
 and so produce beneficial social and moral results 
 through the formation of a habit of allowing a 
 man the benefit of all that he is, rather than of 
 estimating him from one or two facets of his being. 
 
 It is conceivable that this training might be car- 
 ried so far that a person could take on at will his 
 neighbor's forms of expression at an}" given mo- 
 ment by adjustments of his own nerves and mus- 
 cles, and, by noting the effect upon himself, make 
 a shrewd guess about his neio'hbor's sensibilities 
 and reactions at that moment. Even such facility 
 could guess only ; for that which reacts in one's 
 neighbor would still be unknown. 
 
 What is desirable and to be sought in the aver- 
 age child's development is not such skill, but a 
 habit of trying to understand the meaning of his 
 own nervo-muscular combinations, and of noting 
 the quality and probable meaning of those which 
 be sees in his neighbor. 
 
 A man is not infrequently awkward because he
 
 198 AlSr EXPERIMEISTT IN" EDUCATIOIS' 
 
 has not learned a graceful way of doing the thing 
 required, and not because his intention is awkward. 
 Slowness of wits and lack of power over the body 
 keep many a kind and gracious act from realiza- 
 tion. Malicious or intentional unkindness or rude- 
 ness is so rare that if we studied our neighbors 
 instead of ourselves we should have small excuse 
 for complaint. 
 
 It is the habit of so understandino: the meanins' 
 of, and possessing power of control over, the ex- 
 pression of one's self as to select and use the most 
 desirable expression in any given case, and of 
 studying one's neiglibor, and of trying to get at 
 his real intention and his reasons for having: that 
 intention, which these exercises in means of ex- 
 pression should have for ultimate aim, in order that 
 tlie child may be prepared to be understood and 
 to go gently through the world.
 
 VIII 
 AT HOME* 
 
 A ROBix teaches its own vouno^ to fly ; a human 
 mother often leaves the training of her babies ex- 
 chisively to others. The bond of nature between 
 the mother and child puts a premium on all that 
 the mother does, and her constant association is 
 an opportunity for understanding tlie peculiarities 
 and needs of the child such as no ordinary teacher 
 ever obtains. 
 
 As one's finger may trace in the yielding soil a 
 channel for the outflow of a tiny spring, and at 
 its fountain-head determine the course of a river, 
 so in the earliest years the mother may, with lit- 
 tle effort, give direction to the energies of the 
 child. The mother's capacities, education, and 
 circumstances may not permit her to accompany 
 the child far on its course, or to contribute much 
 to the current of its intellectual life ; but let her 
 give the direction and all the powers of nature will 
 conspire with the child's inborn force to increase 
 the volume and strength of the onrushing stream. 
 
 *Re;x(l before tlie Woman's Club at Melrose, Mass., in March, 
 1883, and published under the title "Mothers and Natural 
 Science" in The Popular Science Monthly for October, 1890, 
 from which, by permission, it is reprinted.
 
 200 AN EXPEKIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 To claim for natural-science studies the moth- 
 er's power of direction, to show why mothers 
 should interest their children in these studies, and 
 to suggest how they may do so, is the purpose of 
 this chapter. 
 
 What mothers may do to interest children in 
 natural science is a question which has but one 
 answer— they may do everything ; what mothers 
 can do has as many answers as there are mothers. 
 Between the may and the can is but one barrier 
 — difficult to destroy— the mother's own habits of 
 thought. Not ignorance, not scarcity of materi- 
 als, not want of books — not all of these combined 
 need long block the way of any mother whose 
 mind still has the suppleness and sincerity of 
 childhood; for the door into this kingdom of 
 nature, like that into the kingdom of righteous- 
 ness, is the simplicity of childhood. 
 
 It would be well, in these days of the suprem- 
 acy of the material life and of increasing demands 
 for applied science, if young women who are pur- 
 suiniT courses at our colleges would more often 
 elect science studies, that they may be ready, by 
 power to teach and by assistance and appreciation 
 given to others, to further the introduction and 
 pursuit of science studies in the lower schools, 
 and to do this in a manner which shall help to 
 put science in its true place as the handmaid and 
 not the destroyer of religion. 
 
 But it is to those Avho have passed their school 
 and college days that this chapter is addressed. 
 As no body gets so stiif that proper treatment 
 cannot restore some of its lost pliancy, so no mind
 
 AT HOME 201 
 
 is so helplessly set that it cannot be drawn forth 
 and directed into other molds. What a mother 
 can do to interest her children in natural science 
 depends upon her power to direct herself and to 
 master the conditions of her life. Suppose that 
 power is sufficient, how shall she begin ? A moth- 
 er may think that she needs trained guides, lest 
 she make mistakes and waste precious time and 
 strength. She may wish to know what materials 
 to collect, what books to buy, when and where to 
 get the materials and books, how much time and 
 money they will cost, and what she is to do with 
 them w^hen obtained. Every mother has a right 
 to ask these questions of any one who urges her 
 to undertake to awaken in her children a vital in- 
 terest in Nature's phenomena; but all that the 
 writer can hope to do is to give suggestions which 
 may lead a mother to find elsewhere the definite 
 answei's required. 
 
 A mother may begin to study with her children 
 the ever-changing phenomena that surround dai- 
 ly life. The house is full of lessons. Various de- 
 partments of science have contributed to its build- 
 ing and furnishing. There is scarcely an industry 
 that is not represented in some room. The kitchen 
 is a laboratory in which the truths of chemistry 
 and physics are illustrated, and the table is sup- 
 plied with gifts from the three kingdoms of nature ; 
 and to produce these, to transport them, and to 
 prepare them for use, numberless natural agents 
 have worked tirelessly and long. And out of 
 doors — Nature's phenomena — where are they not ? 
 The snow and rain bring them ; the ice locks them
 
 203 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 across the pond, and the south wind picks the lock ; 
 the breezes blow them, the birds sing them, the 
 brooks murmur them. Every tree and flower, 
 every stone and clod, wait to tell their story. The 
 waves wash their treasures to the shore. The rain- 
 bow is their expression. The glories of morning 
 and evening write them on the sky. The sunlight 
 comes and goes, bringing the wonders of night 
 and day, of storms and seasons ; and all night the 
 stars speak of times and spaces our mathematics 
 cannot yet compute and of events before which 
 our short earth-lives shrink into nothingness. 
 
 What shall a mother take from this vast store 
 to giv^e to her children? Before answering this 
 question it is proper to consider what purpose 
 natural-science studies may serve in the education 
 of a child, and to do this the objects of educa- 
 tion itself must be known. The supreme object of 
 education is, without doubt, the development of 
 the individual to the utmost limits his conscious- 
 ness can grasp in this earth-life. Some of the lesser 
 objects are a vocation and success in it, pleasant 
 social relations, ability to help the unfortunate, in- 
 terest in national affairs, and a love of the virtues ; 
 and all these may be included under the expression 
 to be a good citizen. These objects imply health 
 and industry, that the man or woman may be a 
 producer and not a consumer only ; sufficient in- 
 telligence to recognize and perform duties to one's 
 self, to one's neighbors, and to the State; speech, 
 which is honorable and pure, and deeds which 
 inculcate respect for the laws. Besides these a 
 mother may wish her child to acquire those graces
 
 AT HOME 203 
 
 of mind and heart tliat are difficult to deline in 
 words, but whose presence or absence is easy to 
 feel in a man or woman; those graces which lift 
 their possessor above the power of petty passions, 
 of foolish conventionalities, above even the neces- 
 sity to forgive injuries. 
 
 Emerson, in speaking of Lincoln, said: "Ilis 
 heart was as great as the world, but in it there 
 was no room for the memory of a wi-ong." From 
 the davs of early manhood to the crowninon act of 
 his life, what a succession of kindly deeds are found 
 in Lincoln's history ! As the mind dwells on them 
 the great Proclamation is seen to be but the con- 
 summate flower on a plant which could bear no 
 other. Such men do not fail when the time for 
 great action comes. They do without fear what 
 lesser men shrink from or dally with until the time 
 for action has passed. Ko small soul, no life full 
 of petty motives, ever rises to a great emergency. 
 To one who meets the details of every-day life 
 with a vain, selfish spirit the great occasion may 
 come ; but his will not be the honor of seeino- it 
 and of using it worthil}^ So if a mother would 
 have her children become men and women of the 
 larger type she must look well to " the reiterated 
 choice of good or evil which gradually determines 
 character." 
 
 What can natural sciences do towards this char- 
 acter-building? Have not studies other uses? Yes; 
 but, while serving other uses, a study which does 
 not mold character is of small value. This char- 
 acter-building receives little or no consideration in 
 much that passes for education — a mistake from
 
 204 AN EXPEKIMENT IJ^ EDUCATION" 
 
 which the whole after-life of the child suffers. 
 There is at present a "craze for information," as 
 though to be a storehouse of facts were a thino: 
 desirable in itself. Information so assimilated as 
 to be a source of ready power in thought and con- 
 duct is a great good, but unless so available it is 
 of little value. The mere desire for getting infor- 
 raation might well be called intellectual avarice, 
 for he who seeks this alone is almost as useless and 
 miserable as the more sordid hoarder of money. 
 Also, there is an idea somewhat current in tliese 
 days that for children study should be transformed 
 into play. I must protest against any such no- 
 tion. Hard, patient, honest work is needed. The 
 child who plays at his studies will play at life, play 
 at everything, and will probably carry from cradle 
 to grave the deception that whatever does not 
 furnish him amusement is of no value, that work 
 belongs of right anlv to those miserable beings 
 who have little capacity for amusement. There 
 should be much delight in study, but there will be 
 disagreeable drudgery as well, and any training is 
 false which does not teach the child to do the 
 drudgery promptly and faithfully. A mother who 
 saves her child from disagreeable tasks does him 
 the grave injury of sending him forth into adult 
 life without the fixed habits which will enable 
 him to meet its responsibilities with ease and 
 dignity. 
 
 For this development of a child into a worthy 
 man or woman natural-science studies have pecul- 
 iar fitness. To secure and preserve health, con- 
 siderable knowledge of these studies is a necessity ;
 
 AT HOME 305 
 
 and their relations to preparation for self-support 
 are obvious. In the proper pursuit of natural- 
 science studies tlic capacities for accurate observa- 
 tion, for painstaking- experiment, and for unbiassed 
 sincerity are developed; and without these capac- 
 ities there can be no true progress in them. A 
 slight prejudice introduced as a factor in estimat- 
 ing a series of observations will vitiate the result, 
 and may ruin the value of the whole Avork. Nat- 
 ural-science studies are as exact as mathematics 
 in demanding obedience to their own laws. Re- 
 flection upon these considerations will show their 
 value for intellectual development and training. 
 The moral and spiritual influence of these studies 
 is not less o-reat. A child learns to be truthful in 
 the presence of truth that never swerves ; learns 
 to be gentle when at work, where one rude touch 
 may destroy the labor of weeks ; to be brave when 
 he sees the struggle which everything in Nature 
 makes for its own development ; to be patient in 
 waiting for Nature's slow processes ; persevering 
 when he sees that she gives up her secrets after 
 repeated efforts only, often to be made under cir- 
 cumstances appalling to a spirit less mighty than 
 her own ; modest when he and his little come 
 into dail}^ comparison with her and her abun- 
 dance ; obedient when he sees that obedience to 
 law brings beaut}'^, pleasure, and life, and disobe- 
 dience brings deformity, sorrow, and death; rev- 
 erent before the majesty and power and glory of 
 Him who is the life of Nature; generous, because 
 she pours out her wdiole wealth to-day, never fear- 
 ing that the morrow will care for itself ; joyous.
 
 206 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 because above all her struggle and pain rises a 
 perpetual paean of triumph. 
 
 If convinced that natural-science studies liave 
 special fitness for the training of children, with 
 what study shall a mother begin to work? Al- 
 though Nature herself indicates an order which 
 may be pursued with advantage, this order is not 
 so important that it need be attempted where 
 conditions do not favor it. This order takes, first, 
 rocks and soils, with enough of chemistry and 
 physics to explain some processes of soil and rock 
 making; second, plants, as depending on soil, air, 
 and sunlight ; third, animal life ; and, fourth, man's 
 structure. After this order has been observed 
 through an elementary course — enough to give a 
 hint of the cycle of change from the rock world 
 through the soil, plant, and animal, back to soil 
 and rock again, to show the intimate dependence 
 of ]S^ature's kingdoms and processes — these studies 
 may be carried on together, a few weeks of each 
 vear being devoted to each one. This may be 
 done until the student lias reached the years when 
 he ma}^ wisely devote himself to one branch as a 
 specialty. Attention to the whole cycle of Mat- 
 ure is not inconsistent with thoroughness, since 
 the little that is selected from each part may be 
 thorouo:hlv studied, A little work well done is of 
 more value than to run over the whole field su- 
 perficially, not only to the contents of the child's 
 mind, but to his growth in character. 
 
 It matters little where one begins, so that the 
 study be honest and thorough. Any beginning 
 will lead everywhere else, for, though there are
 
 AT HOME 207 
 
 straight roads for the specialists to follow, the 
 whole field is covered by a most intricate network 
 of roads. A mother may begin where her present 
 knowledoe is least liable to blunder. If she had 
 a fondness for ph3'sics in her school days, let her 
 take that. Let her teach her child the laws of 
 mechanics as illustrated in his daily life and ob- 
 servations. Let her teach hini to drive a nail 
 properly, and she teaches him to avoid the work- 
 ino- of the law of the wedge: teach him how the 
 windows are hung, and she introduces hira to 
 weights and pulleys ; show him a man unloading 
 a barrel of flour at the door, and she shows him 
 the inclined plane ; in teaching him to use a pair 
 of scales, a can-opener, a claw-hammer, a nut- 
 cracker, she teaches him the use of levers. The 
 ^vheel and axle may be taught from the well or 
 the clock. 
 
 The properties of bodies and the laws of expan- 
 sion and contraction find abundant illustration in 
 the daily life. Let the child fill an old jug with 
 water, cork it tightly, and set it out of doors some 
 cold night. Tlie break found the next morning 
 will not be forgotten. Then take him to a neigh- 
 borin<2: ledo-e of rock; show him its cracks tilled 
 with ice, and he will not be slow to draw the les- 
 son of how the strong rocks are broken asunder. 
 Then show the child the tiny snow-flake with its 
 six crystal arms, so delicate that you hold your 
 breath lest they vanish while you look; and lead 
 him to see that the jug and the mighty ledge of 
 rocks are broken by these fairy creatures. What 
 tale in mytliology or folk-lore is more wonderful
 
 308 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 than this? In every drop of water is the fairy 
 crystal spirit, but it cannot embody itself where 
 heat is. Cold is its good genius ; and when cold 
 comes the fairy spirit works, throwing out one 
 dainty spar after another and interlacing them 
 with threads more delicate than those in our finest 
 laces ; and the fairy spirit has a body ; the crystal 
 exists. But if the water is confined and has not 
 room enough, why, these frail things break the 
 bond, break the jug, break the giant rocks. If 
 this story be well taught the child's soul will bow 
 before it in reverence. He will learn, too, one old 
 but great lesson which may be applied in human 
 affairs — " In union there is strength.'" The single 
 ice crystal seems powerless ; the many do mighty 
 work. 
 
 If a mother is fond of chemistry, she has no 
 less a field of work from the combnstion of fuel 
 and the burning of the evening lamp to the whole 
 process of cooking, digesting, and assimilating 
 food. Here, too, comes the question of the pu- 
 rity of air, water, and foods. A child may be 
 taught to detect some impurities in all these, and 
 also to test the safety of colors in wall papers 
 and in the fabrics used for clothing and furniture. 
 These are but a few of the man}'' topics close at 
 hand for every mother fond of chemistry. Through 
 all of this work in chemistry the mother has ad- 
 mirable opportunity to impress on the mind of the 
 child the great economy of Nature. As the child 
 sees the wax of the evening candle gradually dis- 
 appear, he may be made to understand, by a few 
 simple experiments, that some portion of the air
 
 AT HOME 209 
 
 is uniting with tlie wax; tliat invisible watery 
 vapor and gas are produced and pass into the air, 
 and that soot is given off. lie is then prepared 
 to beUeve Nature's great hiw — change, but no loss. 
 The child, once impressed by this law, will find 
 abundant illustrations of it, and will seek to know 
 and understand the changes which produce the 
 seeming losses so constantly occurring. 
 
 Perhaps some mother has a preference for as- 
 tronomy. In warm evenings the little ones may 
 sit out awhile to listen to stories about the stars. 
 JSTo subject is more delightful to a child. The lit- 
 tle of the great truths which he can grasp will 
 aw^aken and broaden his young mind and fill his 
 tiny heart with noble and poetic sentiments. 
 
 Botany, zoology, and physiology will suggest 
 fields of work as boundless as they are interesting. 
 It is not necessary to suggest special lines of work 
 in each ; but let me urge that the intimate rela- 
 tions of everything studied to the life of man 
 should be kept before the child, so as to cultivate 
 that sj^mpathetic interest which tends to produce 
 gentleness and humanity towards all things. The 
 song-bird rids his garden of insects, and the pretty 
 wayside flower furnishes him medicine. By in- 
 visible but real bonds the life of man is united to 
 the lowest animal and the smallest plant. 
 
 While it does not greatly matter where a mother 
 begins, it does matter that, as she goes on, the child 
 see relations clearly. Ilence arrange the work in 
 logical sequence, and branch ofi" soon into other 
 fields, that the little mind may have a natural, 
 broad base on which to arrange its treasures of 
 
 14
 
 210 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 knowledge. All this, too, must be varied accord- 
 ing to the age and tastes of the child. Rightly 
 presented, any one of the subjects named will soon 
 win the respect, love, and enthusiasm of any child 
 not hopelessly spoiled by too early dissipation in 
 artificial social life. Such studies are one of the 
 best correctives of this evil, and I have seen them 
 cure some painful cases of it. 
 
 To a school where I was teaching there once 
 came a child of nine, with manner and face plainly 
 stamped with artificial life, and for weeks her 
 teachers despaired of ever seeing any genuine, 
 simple feeling. The child did not for a moment 
 lose a painful self-consciousness which did not for- 
 get to air her charms at the entrance of a visitor, 
 or when she wore a new article of apparel, as she 
 frequently did. The first time she was asked to 
 make a bill of materials which she might buy — 
 materials of any kind — simply to show how bills 
 are written, her bill began : 
 
 To one pink satin ball-dress , 
 
 " one pair white kid boots $15, 
 
 and proceeded through eight or ten similar items 
 of fancy and expensive dress. After our first va- 
 cation of one week this child returned with a glad, 
 eager look on her face, and, going close to her 
 teacher, said : " I am so glad school has begun 
 again ! There is nothing interesting going on at 
 home." From that day her manner gradually 
 changed ; she came to love the stones, flowers, 
 and animals which we studied, and her face lost 
 its blank, soulless look, and became sweet and gen-
 
 AT HOME 211 
 
 tie. This change in expression was so marked as 
 to be spoken of by a frequent visitor. 
 
 Materials for study in any department of natu- 
 ral science are so abundant that it seems almost 
 unnecessary to touch upon this topic. The greater 
 abundance of botanical and zoological material in 
 summer invites to those studies at that season, 
 while ph3'sical and chemical studies may quite as 
 well receive attention in winter ; but with care and 
 a small outlay in money any of these studies may 
 be pursued at any season, A window - garden, 
 where a child may plant seeds at varying inter- 
 vals and then pull them up and examine the whole 
 plant at different stages of growth, is possible at 
 any season; but this better be done in early spring, 
 when the vegetation starting out-of-doors in- 
 creases the interest of the child and supplements 
 his work. 
 
 The preservation of materials and the formation 
 of collections are important. I^lncourage the child's 
 efforts in this direction. Let the boys and girls 
 make shelves, boxes, or cabinets in which to keep 
 the collections. A set of wood -working tools 
 and ability to use them will be a useful adjunct 
 to natural-science study. 
 
 Whatever a child collects should be received 
 with a smile of encouragement, no matter how 
 worthless it is, until he has gained some power of 
 discrimination. Let a mother refrain from show- 
 ing disgust or fear of any natural object — even of 
 toads, spiders, and snakes— lest she foster in' the 
 child the common superstitions which attach harm 
 to innocent creatures. And if the child brings a
 
 213 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 handful of frogs' eggs, sticky and dripping, the 
 mother better not sa}', " Now go a\va_Y and throw 
 those horrid, dirty things out; I Avill not have 
 the house filled up with them," and proceed to 
 chide him for soiling his clothes and dripping 
 water on the carpet. Let her show the child she 
 is pleased with what he has done ; get a jar in 
 which to put the eggs ; call the child's attention to 
 the tiny dark spot in each egg; awaken his inter- 
 est by telling him how the eggs were deposited 
 and why they are fastened together in such a ge- 
 latinous mass, and that if he keeps them and gives 
 them fresh water a little animal may come out of 
 each one. This will keep alive the spirit of inves- 
 tigation ; and, after all this has been done, she may 
 show the child, how he might have kept from soil- 
 ing his clothes and the carpet. A mother should 
 never make fun of a child or laugh at his prefer- 
 ences, but try to enter into the child's thought and 
 feeling, and, having done tliis, she may lead him 
 to what she wishes. She should be patient, too; 
 for, while the child's perceptions are often more 
 keen and true than hers, he will find it hard to 
 follow her reasoning processes and to see relations 
 which are very simple to her. A mother should 
 teach kindness by her own treatment of helpless 
 creatures. Let her not crush the insect in the 
 house, nor pull the weed from the garden with 
 anger or impatience, but teach her child respect 
 and kindness for all life until he has reached years 
 when he can clearly distinguish between necessity 
 and cruelty. 
 
 Be glad when questions are asked ; hail them,
 
 AT HOME 213 
 
 if they grow naturally from the lessons, as tlio 
 dawn of a good day for the child. Kever say, 
 as many a mother (and, alas ! many a teacher) does, 
 in answer to a child's question, " Oh, that is too 
 hard for you ; you must wait until you are older." 
 Is it surprising that cliildren so treated lose cour- 
 aire and 2:0 throufiii life thinkino- of every new 
 difficulty, " Oh, that is too hard for me." There 
 is a simple side to every subject ; and if a child 
 comprehend not a tenth of what is said, he is 
 helped and satisfied by the effort to treat him as 
 an intelligent being. If the child cannot answer 
 the mother's questions or his own, he should, if 
 possible, be sent to Nature herself to find the an- 
 swer, the mother giving only so much help as to 
 direct his attention and insure his finding the an- 
 swer within a reasonable time. 
 
 The child himself should handle the objects, 
 manipulate the materials in experiments, make 
 and record observations, and so learn to give ac- 
 curate attention and to keep exact accounts of 
 what is seen, to use his own hands and eyes, to do. 
 He who can do as well as think is twice armed 
 against poverty or misfortune. 
 
 Accidents may be turned to account, not onl}^ 
 to teach how to avoid them, but the immutability 
 of Nature's laws. The sooner a child finds that 
 Nature never forgives a sin against her, the better 
 for his health and happiness. I know one mother 
 who has taught her child to see the relation be- 
 tween headaches and candy ; and so well he under- 
 stands it that now, at ten years of age, he does 
 not over-indulge, although the favorite sweets
 
 314 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 stand always on the library - table within his 
 reach. 
 
 Take advantage of any unusual phenomena. 
 The last transit of Venus was a chance not again 
 offered in the lives of ourselves or our children, 
 and every one might have seen it through a piece 
 of smoked glass. A recent railroad-cut exposed 
 fine examples of ripple-marks, which will soon be 
 buried from sight by falling earth. After some 
 storms there are exceptional opportunities for les- 
 sons in physical geography and geology. Such 
 chances are of more value than many things for 
 which we put them aside. 
 
 The relation of natural-science studies to health 
 and to the mental and moral culture of children 
 has been suggested. Their industrial uses are 
 familiar to all ; so intimately are they connected 
 with the life of man that knowledge of any 
 branch makes one more capable in the conduct of 
 his life. The relations between these studies and 
 the great workshops of the world may with ad- 
 vantage be pointed out until the child feels the 
 mighty pulse of the world's work and acknowl- 
 edges his debt of service and brotherhood to all 
 men. The habits of mind produced by continual 
 contact with things, forces, phenomena, and laws 
 promote clearness of insight and ability to look 
 over a wide field, and to gatlier the facts neces- 
 sary to form right conclusions. These are the 
 habits which give success in business. 
 
 Another important advantage in the study of 
 the natural sciences is found in their relation to 
 invention. The emancipation of man from con-
 
 AT HOME 215 
 
 tinuous manual toil is the prophecy Avhich Science 
 has already uttered ; and she but waits the men 
 to put her forces at work in the right ways to 
 fulfil this prophecy. A child rightly started has 
 before him the possibiUty of doing some of this 
 needed work, and so adding to the sum of human 
 knowledge and comfort. If he does not do this, 
 be will have the understanding which will appre- 
 ciate and encourage the labor of others ; and if 
 his pursuits early lead him quite away from the 
 impetus to those studies which his mother may 
 have given in childhood, still her labors will be 
 rewarded by the increased enjoyment which touch 
 with Xature adds to any life. 
 
 For mothers who have acquired little or no 
 knowledge of natural science, it may be well to 
 indicate some of the best sources of information 
 and direction. For the most elementary works, 
 Appletons' Science Primers and Ginn & Co.'s 
 Guides to Science Teaching are among the best. 
 For more advanced standard books, the works of 
 Dana, Le Conte, and Geikie in geology, of Dana 
 and Brush in mineralogy, of Gray and Bessey in 
 botany, of Packard and Huxley in zoology, of 
 Huxley and Martin in physiology, of Kemsen in 
 chemistry, of Meyer, AV right, and Ganot in phys- 
 ics, of Newcomb and Young in astronomy, are 
 among the best. 
 
 Better than books are the collections of a well- 
 arranged museum, if they are by good-fortune ac- 
 cessible. If possible, use them with the children, 
 not for the amusement of an idle hour, but as 
 teachers speaking more directly from Nature's
 
 216 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 heart than books can do. Also better than books 
 is contact with a living teacher, and association 
 with others interested in the same work. Such 
 help may be sougiit with assurance that one will 
 seldom fail of kindly welcome and of all possi- 
 ble assistance. The Agassiz associations, whose 
 president is Mr. Harlan II. Ballard, whose head- 
 quarters are at Pittsfield, Mass., Avill furnish any 
 mother with the opportunity of putting herself in 
 contact with workers in this field, and of getting 
 invaluable aid and inspiration. 
 
 Thus far in this paper the benefit of the study 
 of natural science to the child only has been con- 
 sidered. But what of the mother? Truly, what 
 increases the \vell-being of the child must increase 
 hers also ; but is there no personal gain to her 
 apart from her child? AVill it be nothing to be 
 introduced to Nature, and to become a welcome 
 guest where one has been a comparative stranger? 
 Will it be nothing to leave the artificial and con- 
 ventional, where so many masks are worn, and 
 make friends with Nature, w'ho cares nothing 
 about dress, income, or pedigree ? 
 
 Few mothers have not felt the renewal of 3^outh 
 which comes w^hen in the woods, on the mountain, 
 by the shore; have not found their cares slipping 
 insensibly from them when gazing into the depths 
 of the sky, listening to the murmur of a brook, or 
 inhaling the sw^eet breath of the summer wind. 
 Let me assure these mothers that every step in 
 the study of any natural science w^ill open more 
 wide the door through which Nature will pour 
 such heal in IT balm.
 
 AT HOME 217 
 
 O motlier, tired with housekeeping, give your 
 family simple, uncooked i'ruit for dessert ; let pud- 
 dings and pies go unmade, and give the time so 
 saved to the pursuit of enduring pleasures ; finish 
 the little dress with a few less ruffles, and fashion 
 for your child's mind a garment which cannot 
 fade or g^row old ; make fewer calls on vour fash- 
 ionable friends and more to the wooddot, the open 
 meadow, and the running brook ; lay aside the 
 latest novel, and go 
 
 "Read wliat is still unread 
 In the manuscripts of God"; 
 
 do not stop to gossip about the newest scandal, 
 your neighbor's new bonnet or forthcoming par- 
 ty, but pause and bend your ear in the quiet places 
 where the secrets of all life are told. 
 
 You have many hinderances in fashion and con- 
 ventionalities. Do you wish you could stop and 
 live differently — live more simply ; wish you could 
 offer family and guest alike simple bread, vege- 
 tables, and fruit without the fuss of the many 
 courses and interminable combinations wdiich con- 
 sume time and often ruin the digestions and tem- 
 pers of those wdio partake of them ; wish you 
 could get a few simple, artistic patterns for your 
 own and your children's garments, and use them 
 year after year without all this harassing discus- 
 sion of what is style and fashion ; wish you need 
 go to no large parties, or ever give an}'^, but let 
 the few chosen friends come when they desire 
 and take you and your home life as they find 
 them? Do 3'ou wish all these? Then prove the
 
 218 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION" 
 
 desire by making them all true. But you answer, 
 "I cannot unless ev^erybody else does." 'Tis the 
 old story of " foxes and tails." We actually fol- 
 low the maxim, "Your conscience, not mine "; and 
 forever is asked, not. Is it right ? but, What will 
 they think? 
 
 Why not make these radical changes? Every 
 step of progress was once a difference which some 
 brave spirit bore alone. Instead of fearing to be 
 different, one may be proud and thankful to have 
 found a better way to live: "The great world 
 will come round to you."
 
 part W 
 
 SUGGESTIONS ABOUT THE ATMOSPIIEEE 
 OF SCHOOL-EOOMS
 
 "ART FOE ART'S SAKE" 
 
 To learR for the pure love of knowing ; to do 
 for delight in activit}^ ; to make beauty for beau- 
 ty's sake— this is the natural state of all children ; 
 and most children would continue in that state if 
 they could be removed from an atmosphere that 
 seethes with effort to make money at any risks ; 
 and some would remain in that state longer than 
 they do if not so often told that their activities 
 are useless. 
 
 To do from spontaneous choice, without refer- 
 ence to use or reward ; to do because doing is de- 
 light—here all children begin ; but when pushed 
 or drawn from this path few return, and those 
 few after long wanderings in the miry ways of 
 doing for use and gain. 
 
 Not that use and gain are illegitimate, but that 
 both use and gain are most highly served where 
 they are not the chief end, or are altogether out 
 of account. It is not labor j'j't'/* se, but the motive 
 for labor, that is applauded or despised. Indolent 
 natures may need a spur, but circumstances usually 
 provide all that a man can bear ; and it is doubtful 
 if any man has ever been benefited by the posses- 
 sion of a conscience morbid on the subject of use.
 
 232 AN" EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 New England puritanism gave such a con- 
 science to our country, and some of the reckless 
 demoralization and extravagant waste of this gen- 
 eration is doubtless Nature's reaction on that con- 
 , science. What is desired to point out here is that 
 this conscience, in theory at least, survives in 
 church and school, and in one way and another is 
 forced upon the children of this day. 
 
 And market value, or ability to take the place 
 of sometliing that is marketable, is made the cri- 
 terion of use, so that a child grows to feel that 
 until he can make or be what will sell he is of no 
 account. He is educated in order to sell himself 
 or his products to the highest bidder in the world's 
 markets. 
 
 The result of this is that in the average nature 
 all the movements of being that are not in accord 
 with this marketable current are stifled. A few 
 exceptionally strong natures refuse to be so en- 
 gulfed, and strike out new channels only to be 
 made use of to force into some new turn of the 
 marketable stream those who come after them. 
 
 To delicate, shrinking natures this is suicidal to 
 their finer possibilities, and to all natures a bane- 
 ful, warping influence. 
 
 No teacher can hope to counteract or to annul 
 to any great extent the home and social influences 
 of his pupils. He can create a different atmos- 
 phere at school, and whatever recuperative power 
 there is in that atmosphere for the nature of child- 
 hood will bear its due effect during the time which 
 the child remains in it. This is too limited to al- 
 low hope of great changes in the natures of pupils
 
 " A T>T T?r>T3 A UTi'c Q A ITT? " 
 
 ART FOR ARTS SAKE ' 323 
 
 save under teachers with exceptional native en- 
 dowments. Probably the average teacher carries 
 into his school-room no new or different atmos- 
 phere ; he is himself the product of tlie market- 
 able current. 
 
 But there are parents and teachers who, though 
 themselves such products, have thoughts of better 
 things, and would be glad to give their children 
 and pupils something better than they have ex- 
 perienced. 
 
 For these it may be possible to take the title of 
 this chapter as the spirit of the atmosphere which 
 they wish to create ; to provide opportunities for 
 all forms of activity, and to encourage activity for 
 its own sake; to give as much time as possible to 
 labors that are not and cannot — at least, for some 
 years — become marketable; to keep away all 
 sorts of rewards that in themselves have a money 
 value, and to never pay nor hire a child to do rea- 
 sonable services for himself or for others. These 
 are some of the ways by which the marketable 
 tendency may be checked. 
 
 The noblest acts which history has recorded 
 have been done without consciousness of reward, 
 often with consciousness of disaster to self as a 
 probable or certain result ; and in one's own indi- 
 vidual life the high- water mark of excellence is 
 most often reached when gain, use, and self are 
 lost sight of. Self, as doer, is always intrusive ; 
 self, as receiver of reward in mone}^, praise, or hap- 
 piness, is -a demoralizing element from whose pres- 
 ence the nobler parts of man's nature flee away. 
 
 There has never been a time in recorded history
 
 224 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 when to labor for gain merely was not a reproach 
 in the eyes of the nobler classes, and probably 
 there are few such laborers who have not at some 
 time felt degraded by it. 
 
 A universal feeling of this sort has meaning. 
 Unfortunately, the feeling has been allowed to ex- 
 tend to labor itself, probably because so few can af- 
 ford to labor with no thought of self or rewards in 
 view; but this consideration obscures the question. 
 The generous - minded man delights in services 
 that cannot be paid for, and feels humiliated by all 
 unwilling services that necessity forces from him, 
 and by being forced to take pay for willing service. 
 
 This universal feeling can be neither childish nor 
 unreasonable, and its undying presence, in the se- 
 cret recesses of our minds, is a perpetual criticism 
 on a commercial and social condition that makes 
 man the slave of rewards and of necessity for self- 
 sustenance. Man holds himself within as free, hav- 
 ing choice of when and how he shall toil, while 
 outwardly he is slave only — bending his back, mov- 
 ing his limbs, and regulating his speech and even 
 his affections according to the dictates of circum- 
 stance, his master. 
 
 The faith of the lily and the sparrow may be 
 impossible to this generation; but if children could 
 be kept from all consciousness of rewards while 
 their capacities for the various activities were de- 
 veloped to the point of skill, particularly in the 
 lines of greatest aptitude, there might be more 
 men for whose labors returns were so generous that 
 self-sustenance is easily lost sight of, and labor for 
 its own sake remains the ruling motive. Still we
 
 "^ART FOR art's SAKE" 225 
 
 like not to think that the slow and the stupid can- 
 not have the same chance, and that smartness must 
 be at such premium. 
 
 Spontaneous hibor for its own sake is to a man 
 what play is to a cliild. The adult's conception of 
 play is by no means the child's conception. To a 
 cliild play is labor — is the focusing of all his pow- 
 ers in a buoyant, exuberant, happy activity. He 
 learns the play laboriously, detail by detail, con- 
 scious of his awkwardness and inefficiency. When 
 it is learned he delights in its repetition until it 
 has become so easy that it no longer stimulates to 
 effort. Effort constitutes the chief charm — to feel 
 power and to use it, until it becomes what play is 
 to an adult, is what makes the thing deliglitful to 
 the child. After that, repetition is stultification 
 until he has had time to partially forget. 
 
 So of a man : that act in which all power is 
 focused in a real enthusiasm expresses the man's 
 self, and for that act he refuses pay until his inner 
 nature has sunk to the level at which he bends his 
 self-respect to his needs. 
 
 It has been said that art arises in such moods 
 only, when the being of man, freed from sordid 
 cares, is focused to a high level of spontaneous 
 movement. Could children be kept from greed of 
 gain perhaps a new art movement would arise. 
 
 Also, one occupation, unless it involve varied and 
 frequent change of activity, sinks a man to the 
 level of a slave. He is then no nobler in his labors 
 than a machine. If gain must be thought of, let 
 there be as many channels of it as possible ; that 
 is, never turn a child out with one skill only ; not
 
 226 AN EXPEKIMEXT IN EDUCATION 
 
 that if market demands in one fail he may turn to 
 another, but that in all states of market demands 
 he may have variety of activities and interests. 
 
 Concentration of life on one activity usually 
 produces mediocrity only. Those who have been 
 the instruments of the world's advance in science, 
 in letters, and in moral purpose have usually been 
 men and women of varied attainments ; so much 
 so that if the one thing for which each is most 
 remembered were taken away the person would 
 still be eminent in some other field. 
 
 There is a sense in which use is the last and the 
 only criterion of excellence, and the phrase "Art 
 for art's sake" becomes foolishness. The indi- 
 vidual consciousness drops what is not used, and 
 the art of forgetting is as valuable as the art of 
 remembering ; so the general consciousness refuses 
 to carry useless impedimenta, and forgets the per- 
 son whose labor does not become essential to some 
 man's welfare. There is an after -delight in all 
 fruitful activity — that of having produced some- 
 thing relatively permanent — and no healthy nat- 
 ure can long emancipate itself from the desire and 
 the hope of being useful. 
 
 If all are parts of one whole and are moved by 
 one intelligence, spontaneous, joyous activities 
 would naturall}^ take the line of use. If, then, a 
 child were educated so that the bent of his inner- 
 most nature should freely flow in his labors, those 
 labors would be all-suflicing for his sustenance and 
 a reasonable social position, as Vv^ell as useful to his 
 fellow-men, without his l)cing the slave of a morbid 
 self-consciousness about deserts and gain.
 
 II 
 
 METHOD 
 
 In this age method is carried to extremes. That 
 man who can only tell what he does, but not ex- 
 actly how nor why, is not of much account. Yet 
 the finest acts are never methodical, never accord- 
 ing to rule; and this is part of their charm — that 
 the element which lifts the act above ordinary oc- 
 currences of the same kind is mysterious and in- 
 communicable. When the secret is found out, and 
 the ordinary man repeats the process according to 
 exact formulae, the result has not the same charm. 
 In the process of formulation the act has lost a 
 volatile essence — the personal equation of the first 
 actor. 
 
 Men say of such acts that they are inspirations 
 of genius. But what is an inspiration of genius 
 but the unconscious act of a man who is superior 
 to the limitations of method? 
 
 Method is the master of the fearful and the 
 feeble-minded, but to the strong it is a tool only, 
 and no teacher should forget this fact. We have 
 Iiad "Pestalozzianism," "Objective Teaching," 
 " The New Education," and other phrases to des- 
 ignate a method or methods guaranteed to turn 
 out a superior sort of youth, and pei'haps the
 
 228 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 reader has thouo-lit that this book is desii^ned to 
 inculcate a new method. May the gods preserve 
 the book from such a fate ! Not method, but 
 matter; not how, but what; not quantity, but 
 qualit}^ is its aim. 
 
 There are many waj^s of producing results, and 
 when a teacher ensnares his personal equation— 
 the spontaneous movement of his own judgment 
 and common-sense — in the meshes of a method 
 his school-room becomes no longer a free place. 
 
 This does not mean that he should have no 
 plans, no system, but that he should feel free to 
 vary or reject all plans and all systems. The 
 "new" psychology begins to talk about what it 
 will do for education — begins to give directions 
 about physical exercises wdiich will produce certain 
 definite intellectual and moral results. That virtue 
 can be taught is an idea as old as Plato, but be 
 w^ary of that man who has an infallible recipe for 
 the details of the process. 
 
 A quick intelligence, the saving salt of common- 
 sense, a touch of humor, a trifle of courage, and 
 an inexhaustible power of loving — these are the 
 indispensable qualities of a good teacher ; and with 
 these a teacher may dare to handle all methods 
 wdiich have ever been known or used by mankind 
 for the education of youth, sure that each will 
 prove useful in some degree. 
 
 If a teacher chooses to divide the mind up into 
 compartments, to label each, and then to devise 
 special exercises for each, he may do the child in- 
 estimable good, provided that he hits upon the 
 right exercise for the right child ; and if he does
 
 METHOD 229 
 
 not, he should, by use of the qualifies mentioned, 
 find out the fact before the child has received any 
 injury. 
 
 The child is not so tender a plant, neither is his 
 time always so valuable, that it will hurt him to 
 learn the alphabet or the multiplication table in 
 the \va3^s of our grandfathers ; but it will hurt him 
 — it may be irretrievably^ — to spend several hours 
 a day, five days per week, in the presence of a 
 teacher whose methods are immovably fixed, how- 
 ever good they are. 
 
 Yariety is essential to health of mind and 
 morals as well as of body. Sameness produces 
 nausea in one case quite as soon as in the other. 
 A mountain may be climbed a dozen times with 
 almost equal zest, provided that a new path is taken 
 each time; and it is the new path, as well as the 
 new mountain, that childhood, as well as manhood, 
 perpetually craves. 
 
 The what is of first importance: that decided, 
 as to quality and amount, the how becomes im- 
 portant; and let it be said here that no " how" is 
 infallible or equally useful in all cases. 
 
 It has been said that it does not matter what 
 you teach a child, provided that the best method 
 is used ; for method makes power, cultivates and 
 trains faculties, and leaves its impress in habits ; 
 and that right habits are the only valuable result 
 of learning. It might as well be said that it mat- 
 ters not what one eats, provided that he eats it 
 daintily, with due regard to good form. 
 
 Activity is not nourishment, and to bring about 
 nervous and muscular connections bv exercise of
 
 230 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 parts, when there is left no indelible impress of 
 iinything more than the activity, is about as use- 
 less as to make a net-work of roads in a desert 
 country where there are no inhabitants. 
 
 Get the inhabitants lirst, be sure of their quality 
 and permanence, and the roads will follow, whether 
 any method is used or not. Better winding cow- 
 paths between worthy settlers than no settlers and 
 the straightest roads in Christendom.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE SCHOOL AS ENVIRONMENT 
 
 American children have sensitive organizations, 
 and all children easily take on the impression of 
 their surroundings. Every object and phenome- 
 non is a stimulus to which the child's nature re- 
 acts, consciously or unconsciously, with more or 
 less power; and any stimulus frequently repeated 
 leaves an impression in the child's organization 
 which is presumably indelible. 
 
 Science tells us that from birth to the ajje of 
 twelve the brain undergoes its maximum of ex- 
 pansion, and that what cells shall expand and 
 what remain abortive, and the extent and qual- 
 ity — that is, the nature — of the expansion in any 
 given cell must depend on the time, quality, and 
 frequency of the stimuli that reach the child. 
 During this period connections between cells are 
 begun, and this process goes on presumably through 
 life. 
 
 If this be true, it ma}'" reasonably be inferred 
 that the ground-plan of a given child's possibilities 
 is determined before the age of twelve. If no ex- 
 pansions of cells take place after that age, or very 
 slight expansions, the limits within which that 
 mind shall work are fixed. It is presumable, also,
 
 232 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 that no opportunity later in life can extend those 
 limits, or do more than set up such connections 
 and co-ordinations of activity as are possible 
 within them. 
 
 If there be such limits and so early lixed, it be- 
 hooves every educator to take the fact into serious 
 consideration, in order that the child's environment 
 before the age of twelve shall be favorable to a 
 general, sjnnmetrical, and desirable expansion. 
 
 Science has so far located brain areas which cor- 
 respond to activities in the various members and 
 organs of the bod}^ as to give some direction to 
 the physical exercises which aid expansion in 
 those areas ; but as a healthy child spontaneously 
 uses all members and organs while kept happy 
 and su])plied with incentives to movement, so 
 much of brain expansion might, under favorable 
 conditions, be left to nature's own demands and 
 instincts in the child. 
 
 It would be pleasant to think that nature is no 
 less capable to expand all brain areas, those still 
 unknown — that is, unmapped — by science, as w^ell 
 as the known, and that man has only to provide 
 a healthy, happy mental environment, and the 
 child's own instincts would do the rest. This is 
 probably true; but what constitutes a healthy, 
 happy mental environment is harder to determine 
 than a physical environment of such qualities as 
 apparently affects the phj^sical life only. 
 
 The physical life is a door to the mental life ; 
 and whether or not each material thing has an 
 immaterial essence Avhich affects the soul of man, 
 each physical stimulus leaves a mental impres-
 
 THE SCHOOL AS EXVIKOXMENT 233 
 
 sion , and the total phvsical environment is the 
 
 " 1 »/ 
 
 most tangible cause of a given mental result. 
 
 These facts, if they be facts— and they certain- 
 ly have some basis in scientific investigation — 
 make the physical surroundings of a child before 
 the age of twelve of more importance than is gen- 
 erally conceded. 
 
 Have the slums of a great city ever produced a 
 genius or even a very capable man? Many a fine 
 nature has been bred in poverty, but it has been 
 poverty in the country or a small town where 
 nature's riches made up to the child for the lack 
 of such opportunity as money provides. It is an 
 interesting fact that Lincoln, about whose poor 
 beo'innino: so much has been said, never knew the 
 humiliations of inferiority durmg his formative 
 period. A splendid constitution made his physical 
 privations easy. His neighbors were as poor as 
 himself; he had all nature, and was the master 
 and not the slave of his environment and circum- 
 stances. 
 
 The country school-house may not be an impor- 
 tant factor in a child's environment, although the 
 lovelier the surroundings, the more tasteful the 
 building and its furnishings, the better ; but the 
 city school-house is one of the chief elements of 
 beauty or ugliness in the child's life. To many a 
 city cliild the school-room is the only opportunity 
 to dwell in familiar intercourse with a fine interi- 
 or. Home and streets are hopelessly sordid and 
 vulgar, and for such the school-room is the only 
 avenue for nobler stimuli. 
 
 " Unto every one that hath shall be given ; but
 
 234 AlSr EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 from him that hath not, even that which he hath 
 shall be taken away," seems peculiarly true in 
 education, as though to have were a magnet of 
 irresistible force. The noblest buildings and the 
 loveliest interiors which a city can afford to build 
 are generally put iu the best residence portions, 
 where the home life equals or surpasses the 'school 
 life. Why not reverse this process, and trust the 
 same law of attraction to do for one child through 
 the home and for the other through the school if 
 the school-rooms cannot be made equally beauti- 
 ful in all parts of the city? 
 
 Noble proportions, delicate, pure, harmonious 
 colorings, plenty of light, abundance of fresh air 
 and of heat, scrupulous cleanliness and order, hy- 
 gienic seats and desks, and a general impression of 
 artistic arrangement — these are essential. A gen- 
 eral impression of loftiness, beauty, and comfort is 
 of greater value than any isolated, small details 
 of beauty can be. 
 
 Plants in windows and pictures on walls are 
 not necessarily desirable. If plants interfere with 
 the proper ventilation of the room, any aesthetic 
 or scientific good which the children may derive, 
 or be supposed to derive, from them is more than 
 counterbalanced by the stupefying, deadly effects 
 of the vitiated air. 
 
 Small photographs fj'om paintings of the old 
 masters, if hung so that they are above the chil- 
 dren's heads when seated, and on wall spaces so 
 huge in comparison that they are mere blotches 
 on it, produce an effect the reverse of what is in- 
 tended. This is not meant to discourage the use
 
 THE SCnOOL AS ENVIRONMENT 235 
 
 of plants and pictures, but to show the futility of 
 some aesthetic efforts that are made. 
 
 A picture to produce an appreciable proper ef- 
 fect as an artistic stimulus should be so large and 
 so placed that its details are easily seen by the 
 child -when seated in any part of the room, and 
 should harmonize with the proportions and fur- 
 nishings of the room. 
 
 Small pictures may be kept in drawers where 
 children can look them over ; and the more of a 
 good sort tliere are, and the more freely children 
 are allowed to handle them on rainy-day recesses, 
 the better ; but they should not be hung where 
 they produce scrappy, untidy, or inelegant effects. 
 
 How much more true is this of the tinsel so 
 often seen in school-rooms ! The writer has visit- 
 ed kindergartens — even those drawing patronage 
 from the most cultivated families — ^ where the 
 amount of tawdy, ill -arranged decoration was 
 enouffh to disgust a sensitive adult. When will 
 parents learn that because a child is a child any- 
 thin o- is not o;ood enough for it, and that to sub- 
 ject its delicate, plastic, so easily impressed organ- 
 ization to frequent stimuli from sights or sounds 
 that would irritate a refined adult is criminal, 
 for it is nothing less than the vulgarizing of the 
 child's nature ? 
 
 The esthetic limits of a child's nature are large- 
 ly determined by what his environment gives of 
 artistic expansion before the age of twelve. Think 
 of it, parents, who give your children coarsely col- 
 ored, rudely formed toys and send them to school- 
 rooms which you would not be willing to be re-
 
 236 AN EXPEEIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 sponsible for as an expression of your own tastes 
 and natures! Think of it, teachers, whose own 
 hmits have been fixed, who vainly beat at the 
 bars of those limits trvinir to realize what to an- 
 other is so easy — limits, perhaps, made by the very 
 misfortunes which you now surround the child 
 with in decorations over which 3^ou have some 
 control ! 
 
 The a3sthetic element permeates the whole man ; 
 is a sort of spice that determines the flavor of all 
 that he does and thinks so long as he lives. 
 
 The child who lives in the country, who dances 
 with bare feet on the tender spring turf, wades in 
 brooks, climbs trees, welcomes the birds and flow- 
 ers and knows their haunts, who plays or works 
 all da}^ long within sight and sound of the ever- 
 changing beauty of sky and earth, from winter to 
 summer and summer to winter — this child has a 
 chance to gain and to keep the power to respond 
 to the highest in art, literature, and morals, such 
 a chance as a child of the same social level in the 
 city does not have. 
 
 The city child whose dwelling is far from parks, 
 whose plaj^ground is the streets, and whose house 
 is of the sort which poverty necessitates in cities 
 —this child has little to stimulate that flner ele- 
 ment ; and whatever spice he does get for the sea- 
 soning of his nature is usually of a poor quality. 
 For these children — and they are thousands — the 
 only refuge which can be supplied at present is 
 the school-room ; and surely something more can 
 be done than yet has been. 
 ~^ ^Ihe teacher is himself a part of the child's en-
 
 THE SCHOOL AS ENVIRONMENT 337 
 
 vironment. Positive ugliness and a conspicuous 
 deformity should be disqualifications for any 
 school -room below a college, and for children 
 under twelve something more than negative 
 points should oe required. 
 
 A teacher with a large mouth which was rare- 
 ly closed, and an ugly protrusion of the upper jaw 
 which brought large, ill-shaped teeth conspicuous- 
 ly into view, was selected by a college professor 
 and put in charge of a kindergarten for children 
 of well-to-do people. This woman's smile was 
 disagreeable, and her mouth at all times unpleas- 
 ant to look at. Does any one suppose that chil- 
 dren from three to five years old could look at 
 that mouth for several hours each day, five days 
 a week, through nine months of the year, without 
 hurtful impressions from its distortions? 
 
 Not alone the figure but the care of the person 
 and dress should be taken into account. Cleanli- 
 ness first of all, daily cleanliness of person and 
 dress ; and then delicacy of texture and color and 
 simple grace in outline should be the conspicuous 
 features of the dress. 
 
 The breath also is important. A dirty breath 
 is as much out of place as a dirty face, and the 
 teacher who does not watch the quality of the 
 one as much as the cleanliness of the other has 
 not yet quite realized what good manners are. 
 
 Each child in a school helps form the environ- 
 ment of every other, and the parent who lets his 
 own child go unkempt hurts the natures of all 
 other children with whom his child comes in con- 
 tact. It ought to be possible for school boards
 
 238 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 and teachers to regulate the cleanliness of person 
 and clothing of everj^ child whose parents are neg- 
 ligent in this matter. A bath-room and an attend- 
 ant for it, a-wash-room and a laundress, and some 
 extra suits of clothing to be loaned to the chil- 
 dren, with bill for such services sent to all parents 
 who were able to pay them — these would soon 
 cure some of the worst evils of this sort ; and few 
 cleanly people realize the nature or the extent of 
 the uncleanliness in the persons and clothing of 
 the vast majority of children in city school-rooms, 
 particularly during the colder months. 
 
 These are the tangible elements of the school as 
 environment, the elements which may be directly 
 controlled. 
 
 The intangible elements are the already deter- 
 mined nature of the teacher and the plastic, form- 
 ing natures of the children ; and the tangible ele- 
 ments are as nothing to these intangible ones 
 when the latter are powerful. 
 
 A negative, indifferent, commonplace teacher 
 does no special harm nor good ; and under the 
 care of such the tangible elements and the stud- 
 ies are all-powerful for good or ill, according to 
 their qualit}^ and the way the teacher happens to 
 use them. The teacher is, then, a mere channel 
 through which the studies flow and the various 
 other elements of the school as environment are 
 ordered or disordered. 
 
 On the other hand, a teacher sometimes has a 
 self so individual, original, and strong that it dom- 
 inates any sort of environment that is within the 
 range of its own limitations. When evil, this
 
 THE SCHOOL AS ENVHIONMENT 239 
 
 teacher does incalculable harm ; when good, ines- 
 timable good. 
 
 Most teachers are neither the one sort nor the 
 other, and must be thought of as having personal 
 equations that are influential but not all-powerful. 
 Most adults on looking back can classify their 
 teachers according to this element of personal 
 power, and estimate the good or ill effects of it 
 on their own natures. If sensible of it after the 
 lapse of years, how much more so in childhood 
 when it was a daily, living realit}'", making or 
 marring the beauty and the glory of life. 
 
 Mothers should take this matter to heart. Some 
 of them are sensitive and intuitive enouo-h to de- 
 termine the possible ill or good effects of a given 
 teacher merely by being a short time in that teach- 
 er's presence; and they — the mothers — should try- 
 to regulate the appointment of all teachers of chil- 
 dren under twelve years of age. 
 
 The writer sometimes wonders if ever the time 
 will come when those first twelve years — those 
 3'ears of so great possibilities and so great results 
 to the whole after-life — will be deemed too precious 
 to intrust to servants and mediocre young men and 
 women and given over to the wisest and the love- 
 liest of our race, and when nurseries and school- 
 rooms will be as carefully proportioned and dec- 
 orated as the best parlors and public assemblj^- 
 rooms for adults now are. In view of the interest 
 at stake, this seems little to ask, and yet its real- 
 ization looks like a far-off, Utopian dream.
 
 IV 
 MIRTH IN THE SCHOOL ROOM 
 
 The moral atmosphere of school-rooms is often 
 too grave. The teacher takes himself, his occu- 
 pation, and his pupils too seriously. A spirit of 
 mirth — not of levity, nor of triviality, but of that 
 mirth which is the natural expression of a health}^ 
 happy nature — this should be latent in all school- 
 rooms, ready to break loose and sweep children and 
 teachers temporarily off their feet on any legiti- 
 mate occasion. 
 
 A really merry face is rare, even among chil- 
 dren — not, it is to be hoped, from lack of native 
 capacity to be merry, bnt from the strenuousness 
 of life and the sordidness of thought about money 
 and social position which children are allowed to 
 share, even in well-to-do families, and forced to 
 consider and serve among the less well-to-do. 
 
 It is not labor nor the sharing in the thouHits 
 and plans of parents which ages a child's face — save 
 in extreme poverty, where there are real privations 
 to be endured — but the motives for the labors and 
 plans and the artificial forcing which makes a child 
 conscious of what he would otherwise long remain 
 unconscious of. 
 
 A teacher cannot change these conditions in the
 
 MIRTH IJST THE SCHOOL-ROOM 241 
 
 home nor in the social life of the child, nor hope 
 to materially undo or annul their effects; but if 
 his own heart has not become sordid or soured by 
 the sordidness of others, he can make an atmos- 
 phere in his school-room in which the natural, care- 
 free, meny state still possible to the child shall 
 unfold, expand, and drive out for the time the 
 other influences. This will give an opportunity 
 for the better side of the child to grow. 
 
 To be free, to be his real, innermost self is wliat\ 
 a child needs, and what, alas ! man}' an adult craves_J 
 with a hopeless, aching heart. 
 
 The capacity to be merry needs development 
 and training like any other capacity, and just as 
 the Imman voice needs training in speech and song, 
 so does it in laughter. A clear, ringing, delicate, 
 merry laugh is so good to hear that it is quite 
 w^orth while to teach it to a child ; so that when 
 his heart is merry and occasions arise he may ex- 
 press his mirth easily and gracefully, with charm 
 to himself and to others. 
 
 Laughing exercises of the right sort are whole- 
 some to the whole being of the child. They ex- 
 pand the lungs, deepen and sweeten the voice, give 
 control of the breath, and quicken the circulation; 
 and, while doing these services for the body, they 
 gladden the heart, because a child cannot join in 
 a laughing exercise without reaching the point 
 of natural laughter ; and not until that point is 
 reached and the natural laughter regulated and 
 controlled does the exercise reach its highest 
 value. 
 
 Laughter is "sometimes repressed as bad form, as 
 
 IG
 
 243 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 though an expression of mirth in laughter were 
 not as natural as joy in song. 
 
 But mirth must not always be artificial in its 
 beo-innino: in the school-room, although such exer- 
 cises will do to train the voice and to form a habit 
 of delicate, graceful, toneful laughter. The teacher 
 must seek and must make occasions for spontaneous 
 mirth, and in so doing cultivate and refine the 
 sources of mirth in the child. 
 
 Stories that are funny without being cruel or 
 indelicate, humorous occasions about town, epi- 
 sodes among the children themselves — these should 
 be used to train the child to a discriminative sense 
 of humor that is without malice ; and to see the 
 humor of his own conduct or condition quite as 
 simply as he sees that in another's, and to take the 
 laugh on himself as gayly as he shares in it on an- 
 other's account. 
 
 Aside from occasions for mirth and from exer- 
 cises for the refining of mirth's expression, a gen- 
 eral atmosphere of all-pervading cheeriness should 
 be in every school-room, casting its happy halo 
 around the head of every child. It is the teacher 
 alone who can create and preserve this atmos- 
 phere, and this only by being really, truly, merry- 
 hearted at all times. This is wellnigh impossible 
 to some adults, at times difficult to all ; but it pays, 
 in the long run, as nothing else does for a teacher 
 to cultivate this spirit. It is a preservative of 
 health of body and sanity of mind for both him- 
 self and his pupils.
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 A HUMAN educational experiment station does 
 not exist. The average school-room is like the 
 average farm. The farmer follows the ways of 
 his fathers, slowly and uncertainly takes on new 
 ways; and at the first signs of apparent failure 
 of a new way reverts at once to the old. So the 
 teacher timidly takes to new subject-matter or 
 new methods, and tends to revert to the educa- 
 tional ways of his childhood. 
 
 In education this is partly due to the fact that 
 there is no considerable body of ascertained, au- 
 thoritative, scientific fact about education. The 
 scientific expert has not yet adequately treated 
 the child. In many places statistics are being 
 gathered about certain mental phenomena of 
 childhood ; but these are of no more value in 
 education than similar statistics about farming 
 would be to agriculture. 
 
 The crude, undefined, uncertain notions of the 
 average farmer about soils, plants, fertilizers, in- 
 sect pests, etc., are of little value save to empha- 
 size imman ignorance and the incapacity of tlie 
 average man to reason or to experiment rational- 
 ly or to give an intelligible and reasonable ac- 
 count of the faith tiiat is in liim about agriculture.
 
 244 AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 
 
 So the average child's account of his tastes, no- 
 tions, mental processes, ideas, etc., by any process 
 of questioning, may reveal what is self-conscious 
 in the child, or can be made so by a question ; but 
 it tells next to nothing about the unconscious side 
 of child life or about the capacity of the child to 
 have had a diiferent self-consciousness. 
 
 Science perpetually asks the limits of capacity 
 to change in a living thing; that is, the sum total 
 of capacity with which nature has endowed that 
 form of life, and seeks answer not alone nor chief- 
 ly by observation of what f§, but by experiment 
 of what may he. To bring to bear a totally new 
 and different set of stimuli on a living thing is 
 to learn the capacity of I'esponse in that thing to 
 those stimuli, and there is no other vv^ay of finding 
 out. Moreover, the different set of stimuli may 
 have to be presented gradually by many interven- 
 ing and carefully graded steps to bring out the 
 full capacities of that living thing in the direction 
 of those stimuli. 
 
 So with the child. What he is to-day is no 
 sure measure of what he may be to-morrow. The 
 mental and moral content of his consciousness 
 under present conditions of home and school en- 
 vironment do not tell his capacity to have a dif- 
 ferent content, and science knows no way of de- 
 termining capacity for different content, nor the 
 extent in quantity and quality of it save by ex- 
 perimentation.
 
 If a man would speak witli force he must speak as though 
 he knew; and all the while lie may be conscious that he 
 knows nothing, and tiiat his best thinking is little more than 
 a groping about in the dark. So feels the author in closing 
 this book.
 
 MIND -TRAINING 
 
 THE EXTRAOTWINARY RESULT OF TESTS OF THE 
 
 POWERS OF ATTENTION AND MEMORY 
 
 MADE IN MANY CLASS-ROOMS. 
 
 Miss Aikkn's methods for cultivating powers of quick percep- 
 tion, alteiitioii, and memory are summed up by Dr. G. Stanlky 
 Hall, President of Clark University, as follows : 
 
 " Wishing to test the exact extent to which attention 
 and memory could be cultivated in children, and also in 
 older students, I wrote a simple story containing one 
 hundred items, and which could be read aloud in three 
 minutes. This story I caused to be read by a stranger 
 to the scholars in hundreds of schools — grammar and 
 hio-h schools, college-preparatory schools, colleges, and 
 universities — in this country and in England. The re- 
 sults have been tested by psychological experts, and 
 Misa Aiken's school xtands six per cent, hettn- than the 
 best:' 
 
 The simple methods employed by Miss Aiken are fully 
 described in the following publication, which has ex- 
 cited much interest in the educational world : 
 
 METHODS OF MIND-TRAINING. Concentrated 
 Attention and Memory. By Catharine Aiken, 
 pp.110. Ten Illustrations. 8vo, Cloth, $1 00. By 
 mail, 61 09. 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, Publishers, New York
 
 MENTAL AND MORAL SCIENCE 
 
 BOWNE'S PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. By Borden 
 P. BowNE, Professor of Pbilosopliy in Boston Uni- 
 versity, pp. XV., 309. 8vo, Cloth, $1 75. By mail, 
 
 $1 90. 
 
 It is the best book in the field. — B. P. Raymond, President of 
 Wesleyan University, Connecticut. 
 
 BOWNE'S METAPHYSICS. A Study in First Prin- 
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 Cloth, $1 75. By mail, $1 90. 
 
 To read this tlioughtful volume will be a wholesome intellectual 
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 ligion as the true philosophy of the universe and of man. — Ziou's 
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 BOWNE'S PHILOSOPHY OF THEISM. By the 
 
 same Author, pp. x., 270. 8vo, Cloth, $1 75. By 
 
 mail, $1 90. 
 
 One of the simplest in statement and clearest in thought of the 
 many works on this subject. — Critic, N. Y. 
 
 DEWEY'S PSYCHOLOGY. By John Dewey, Ph.D. 
 
 pp. xii., 428. 12mo, Cloth, $1 25. By mail, $1 39. 
 
 His method is the true one, and he will have laid the colleges of 
 the country undei' a great debt in having led the way in this (for 
 this country) new and only correct method of treating psychology. 
 — Dr. E. Benj. Andrews, President of Brown University, 
 
 DAVIS'S DEDUCTIVE LOGIC. By Noah K. Davis, 
 Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the 
 University of Virginia, pp. 218. Cloth, 90 cents. 
 By mail, 99 cents. 
 
 It would not be difficult to point out in this small work at least 
 half a dozen distinct gains to the science. — Professor Collins Denny, 
 Vanderbilt University. 
 
 DAVIS'S INDUCTIVE LOGIC. By the same Au- 
 thor, pp, 204, 12mo, Cloth, §1 00, By mail, $1 09. 
 
 Like its companion, a masterpiece. — Supt. J. T. Mdrfke of Marion 
 (Ala.) Military Institute. 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, Publishers, New York
 
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