Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1880 — The New Departure in the Public Schools. [ARTICLE]

The New Departure in the Public Schools.

At length the old system which has endured so long seems crumbling, and new methods and new ideas appear on every side. That old system, the system beloved by the true pedagogue, is only too well known. It is the jiystem of routine and of cram, and there are few people under forty who have not at some time suffered under it. To excite interest or arouse enthusiasm has not been considered the task of a master in the common schools. On the contrary, an interested school-room would probably be rather noisy, and hence objectionable. Scholarship has been held to consist in learning textbooks by heart, and irC answenng by rote such questions as were printed for the masters use; that school has been the best where the routine was most iron bound, where children were drilled in their exercises like soldiers in the manual, and where excellence, in the one case as in the other, depended on turning human beings into machines. Now, apart from the fact that such discipline is pernicious, because it enfeebles the mind by overloading it with undigested matter, and crushes out originality by discouraging all independent thought, it is equally objectionable on other grdunds. Long experience has proved that it is a doubtful blessing to teach a man to read, and then turn him upon the world to pick up such further education as the cheap literature of great cities affords. The immense sale of sensational newspapers of the worst proves the truth of this fact, and is admitted to be one of the most threatening signs of the times. There is no use in attacking the publishers of criminal literature by indictment, and by fine and imprisonment. Where there is a demand there will be a supply, all the laws in the statute-book to the contrary notwithstanding. The true way to suppress such publications is by lessening the demand, and this can be done only by educating the children in the common schools to read something better. That much can be done In this direction the believers in the new departure are thoroughly convinced, and that without any great expense or radical change, except in bringing common sense to bear upon the educational problem.—March Atlantic. *