Page:Education and Life; (IA educationlife00bakerich).pdf/86

 teacher's mind in close sympathy with the life of the child, in order to observe carefully facts for the application of principles.

In an ideal course of general training, can there be, in any exact meaning, an equivalence of studies? As well ask whether one sense can do the work of another sense in revealing the world to the mind. To be sure, the fundamental conceptions of the material world can be obtained through the sense of touch alone; but we also attach importance to the revelations of sight and hearing, and these revelations have a different quality. He who lacks these other senses is defective in sources of soul development. So he who neglects important fields of knowledge lacks something that is peculiar to them. Each study helps every other, and before special training begins each is to be used, up to the time when the student becomes conscious of its meaning. By contact with nature and society, the child, before the school period, gets an all-around education. He distinguishes numerically, observes natural phenomena, notes the deeds of his fellows, gains the thoughts of others, and begins to perceive the qualities of beauty and right. The kindergarten promotes all lines of growth; the primary school continues them. Shall the secondary school be open to broad election? At a time when some educators of strong influence are proclaiming the formal theory of education, that power, without reference to content, is the aim of study, and some universities encourage a wide choice of equivalents in preparation for admission, and the homes yield to the solicitation of pupils to omit difficult subjects, it is important to answer the question in the light of the