Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1875 — Science in Common Schooling. [ARTICLE]

Science in Common Schooling.

If it were possible to dispossess an average school-boy of all the mental de-‘ velopment and discipline, with all the knowledge, general and special, which he did not get in school, there would, we fear, be precious little left for the schoolmaster to take pride in. Still more, were it possible to set off against the certain .benefits of schooling of the usual sort' the advantages which a betterordered system of primary culture would afford, the popular appreciation of the schools woul(l,'We are certain, be seriously disturbed. There are few places that can boast a more liberal scheme of public schooling —liberal, that is, in time and material—than this city of New York. Her children may begin with the alphabet and end with a college diploma without other aid than that which the free schools afford. Yet the records of the schools show that of the hundreds of thousands of children who have begun their schooling in them more than half have gone out unable to read intelligently an easy page of print. Of those that are able to stay longer—that is, more than three or four years—it is but the fortunate few who are able, when their schooldays come to an end, to read with understanding the foreign telegrams in the morning paper; probably to not one in a hundred is the daily report of prices current any more intelligible than a page of integral calculus. The fault lies less with the brevity of their school life than with the misuse of it which the school system entails —a system which makes a fetich of alphabet and multiplication table, and wastes on these tools of culture the children’s best opportunities for gaining power to use them.

To insist that science teaching be grafted on a system whose practical results are so meager is only to make matters worse. The sciences belong to a higher level of education and should be less for riper-years. At this stage of the child’s development the sciences, as systematized groupings of related facts and principle 3,have no existence; only obj ects and sensations, palpable facts and tangible relations have being in the child world; and the child is merely the observing traveler and explorer. The scientific geographer, geologist, and the rest come later. Could we control the work of the common school, therefore, we should rigorously exclude all science teaching, real or pretended, and all teaching not scientific. Schoolmasters who imagine that teaching scientifically means cramming children with facts, principles and theories in geography, grammar, physiology, physics and what not may accuse us of making a distinction where there is no difference; but the difference is as wide as between right and wrong. The most unscientific teaching which the common schools —and not a few of our higher schools, also —are guilty of appears in their teaching of the sciences. We would have none of it. Nevertheless, we say, as we have said before, that to educate truly, the work of the primary school, in matter and spirit and method, should be, from first to last, purely scientific. In other words, the work of the primary schools should be shaped to accomplish these three ends: 1. The systematic development and training in quickness, keenness and accuracy of all the child’s faculties of sense through the pleasurable exercise of the senses; for in primary culture joy is the great quickener and inspirer of effort. 2. The systematic development of the child’s mental faculties by varied acts of discrimination, judgment and memory, dealing primarily if not exclusively with sensations.

3. The formation of right habits in knowledge-getting and in applying knowledge through the personal observation, handling, investigation and using of common things. As the young surgeon is set to study the human body; as the student of mining engineering is made sensibly acSuainted with the ores he expects to eal with, their mineral associates and the conditions of their existence; as the practical machinist studies mechanics, so the child should be taught to study the world he has come to live in; not as a specialist in science but as a practical man determined to master his environment. In this way only can his powers of sense and intellect be rightly developed and trained and he be fitted to play well his part in the great game of life. To this end letters are useful as auxiliaries and for the cultivation of the wide fields of thought that lie without the pale of science; but they should not be made the beginning nor the end of instruction. If one part in ten of a child’s school-life be devoted to letters and the rest employed as we, have indicated he will not make less progress in reading than if the whole time be given to them, and he will be. immensely better fitted to turn the art to advantage in after years. Beside, if the child’s schooling be ultimately cut short, as now happens in the majority of cases, his scientific training would fit him to make something, nay, to make the most, of his out-of-school opportunities. Far better absolute ignorance of letters with the inquiring habits of mind and educated senses to be got by scientific training for a year or two than the half-ac-quired art of reading which the majority of children carry from the schools, weighted with the unawakened faculties and apathy of knowledge which they too commonly exhibit. —Scientific American. To Secure a Kicking Cow.— l have tried every way that 1 have heard or read of, but have found none so effectual as the following: I fasten the cow in the usual manner in the stall. From the front part of her manger to the back of the stable is nine feet; I therefore procure a stout, smooth pole, nine feet six inches long, about three inches in diameter, bore a hole about three feet from the floor in the manger, and fit one end of the pole in it; iake hold of the other end and crowd the cow close up to the side of her stall by pressing it firmly acainsi her thigh sufficiently high to be out of, the way of milking, and drop the end in a notch prepared in the right place at the back of the stable, 'When the pole has* been fixed in its proper place it can be replaced with very little trouble and no risk, a considerable advantage when women do the milking.— Cor. Rural New Yorker. „ Mice. Thiers says: “What makes men so unhappy is their inordinate thirst for happiness.”