and the
most recent treatises,--among which, notwithstanding the abatement we
must make for their having been, through adventitious circumstances,
pushed in our country to a sudden and not wholly merited prominence,
Sir. Spencer's republished essays may be named,--while they acknowledge
some progress in details, disclose an undertone of growing conviction of
the incompetency and unsatisfactoriness of our present modes of teaching
and training. The Oswego School Report, speaking of primary education,
tells us 'There has been too much teaching by formulas;' and that 'We
are quite too apt, in the education of children, to "sail over their
heads," to present subjects that are beyond their comprehension,' etc.
Its way of escape 'out of the rut' is by importation into our country of
the object-lesson system, as improved from the Pestalozzian original
through the labors of Mr. Kay, now Sir J.K. Shuttleworth, and his
co-laborers, of the Home and Colonial Infant and Juvenile School
Society, London. In the report of Mr. Henry Kiddle, one of the four
making up the collective School Report of the City of New York for 1861,
the radical error of our present teachers is very forcibly
characterized, where the danger of the teachers is pointed out as that
of becoming 'absorbed in the mechanical routine of their office, losing
sight of the _end_ in their exclusive devotion to what is only the
_means--teaching the_ THING, _but failing to instruct the_ PERSON--eager
to pour in knowledge, but neglecting to bring out mind.' Is there not
indicated in these words a real and a very grave defect of the manner in
which subjects are now presented, studied, recited, and finished up in
our schools? We think there is. And then, what is the effect of this
study and teaching, with so much less thought toward the _end_ than
about the _material_?--what the result of this overlooking of the mind,
the individuality, the person?--what the fruitage, at last, of having
given so much time to the 'finishing up' of arithmetic, geography, and
the rest, as to have failed _to bring out the mind_ that was dealing
with these topics, and is hereafter to have so many others to deal with?
The physiologists have to tell us of a certain ugly result, occurring
only in rare instances in the _bodily_ organization, such that in a
given young animal or human form the developing effort ceases before
completion of the full structure; the individual remaining without
certain finge