Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1880 — Educational Follies. [ARTICLE]

Educational Follies.

Christ wept over .'Jerusalem, and His Creator has undoubtedly wept ovur whit men have done in the name of religion in burning people at the stake. In fact wa may sometimes be doubted whether advancing civilization is not a Juggernaut that crushes its devotees under it* wheels What misery education has brought into the world! Once tbe school room was the place of tortue. Whippings, endings, cudgelings, and tbe consequent groans, cries, and tears were familier to the schoolboy, No wonder Shakespear depicts him as creeping unwillingly to school. The knowledge forced upon him was just what he did not need to know. Nor te the school room yet purged of folly. Let us enter one and see There are boys and girls arranged in a rises. They have a book in their hands. In it th« climate of Memcu, for example, is described. The child is requiied to learn this by heart, and he does so. Now of what use can H be when he doss not know

anything about the climate of hi. o*» country 1 when, in fwtX, he has no sinw—tion ot what climate Ia at all. ThisL Lot a sample of the Whole wijtff. ‘Wwwhfi ev«n la high schools that steam engines are explained from the b-4Jk t A diagram ia given, and that the teacher thinks We remember one sis these. A lady who was walking with her pupils, and passing a sho->, they pressed her to show them the steam engine They went la, and she was unable to point out or show them a single part, and yet she had taaght philosophy for years—at least, she sap. posed so— and she had no mean rank la an institution of good standing. These wee another lady who taught drawing in a school. One day several of the pupfk visited her, and while there asked her Is draw oi object for them. Bhe was obligad to confess that she could not I * And yet she had taught drawing in a normal school to 200 pupils, and held the poet fim A young man took charge of a depart, mentof natural history hr a high school, and in due time was put in charge of a class mineralogy. He got along awhsmingle until a boy brought in a pebble sad asked him what kind of mineral it was. “it is not any kind:its only a aUme." But he was set to thinking, and he felt he knew nothing of mineralogy, though his class recited beamßully and delighted the examining committee. •A professor had taught chsmistnr acceptably, hearing lessons from the book, and occasionally manufacturing some oxygen and hydrogen. One-day a pupil said to him' “Professor, ir there any good iu knowing this chemistry!" “Hot m«*ob, unless you are going U> teach!" The folly of the middle ages was exploded somewhat by Prstalozxi, the book was the soul and center of all things until then. The glorious old German laid aside the book, the everlasting book, and then the world stared. Hear what a \ iattor says, who inspected his work in' 1818: “Very good books are used; to teach iu his way is extremely laborious; thetea cher most talk, question explain, and re port. But in this way their capacities are brought into the field of the inatrnotior." When will the rank lolly be overthrown?" —N. Y. School Journal.