Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1876 — English Education of To-day. [ARTICLE]

English Education of To-day.

Water is the avowed object and purpose of the higher English school education? la ft toe even aad progressive development of young minds f the strengthening in equal proportion. of toe faculties at imagination, memory, reason, observation* the opening doors of knowledge in the plastic time of youth, which if not opened then will be fest closed fnlater' years by toe pressure of active wink, ‘ habitual exclusiveness, or energise paralyzed through disuse? Nothing es ftekind It is eonstsnetad entirely Wito-ton-aim of winning oertain prizes; fOTtcbolarshipa with which a'costly university bribes-men to come to it for education; for class-lists leading up to college fellowof all where the universities can Writofe| mine toe ordeal-, one principle of emretoO? haobeenestabtishad andftatprindple_ to ■ tor Woolwich, for Cooper’s Hill, uuuu at an early age select certain subjects anto throw overboard, all the rest. The childish aspirant to the entrance scholarships, ol a public school is placed in the of a erammer at eight years old, that to thirteen he may tore but Latin verse* MO K.'SS 1 STSW head-master has lately said, to the-ejia' a teacher searching for tatelligenoe, thoughtfulness, promise, totetoetafe''*»«*! stupidity which is absolutely His sehblanhlp won he is pledged to PtoM sue a course whose benefits are tangible I and its evil consequences remote. The universities have Atqmped upon all the schools one deep certainty, that ? for a boy to be “all around,” •»'J it is called, is toe irnantoibie sin; tonk j a schoolmaster whp teaches with ref- i erence to intellectual growth and. width of culture sacrifices thereby all hopeofg the distinctions whlflh make a school 3 famous and increase its numbers. If dSI classical scholarship is derived, sefeneffl and mathematics are abandoned, nay, £ the palm of literary excellence is s eiq ceded even to men ignorant of toe nobiatofi literature in the world, thrix ownbirttoja right and inheritance, and knowing I or the history and stru«ture of iSfl|jS| glish language than a fourth-form boy knows ol Greek. If mathematical cess is aimed at, literature and sciMgM are ignored; if the few science sefioWM laboratory,” mathematics In part and UH erature altogether must be given up. wM would be waste of words to point out toH fatal tendency of this separative proceSS to show how mere linguistic induing needs the rationalizing aid of scianitiM study, or how exclusive science harOMl and materializes without the refiningtociety of literature; yet such. divoreO inevitably due not to the convic*ioiu« schoolmasters, not tp. the intoumce fi parents, not to the prepossessions public, but to the irfesistibte force pf « university system, which makes narrow ness of intelligence and imperfect kbcw! edge the only avenues to atfetfnctieawi to profit Ret. W*. TWwsti, ft» BtpriM Science Mont Hy. ' 3®*