Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/283

Rh grind of the great educational machine; and experience testifies that the policy of ever-increasing stringency of requirement to which the mechanical system tends only aggravates its evils. In this respect there is nothing self-corrective in our educational methods.

It is not to be denied that a main root of this evil is the incapacity of teachers and of those intrusted with the management of schools to judge intelligently of the results of their system upon the varying natures of children. This is a complex and extensive branch of knowledge to which the normal schools give little attention. Our teachers as now prepared, and our school-officers as now selected, are left in ignorance upon this subject. Instructors are trained in the matters they are to teach. They are drilled in all the petty niceties of preordained school-room studies, and disciplined interminably in all the technical processes of the school system. Superintendents, inspectors, and boards of education are frequently mere business men, often men who have failed in some profession, and sometimes promoted teachers, and that they should know nothing of those physical, mental, and moral characteristics of the children subjected to their charge is inevitable.

And obviously, under the present policy, they can never possess this knowledge. The time is all taken up with other things, the machine is in the ascendant, and the results aimed at must be such as will commend themselves to an ignorant public sentiment. The thorough scientific study of the natures of children, which would qualify a teacher to judge of their differences, and the unequal influence of the system upon them, whether for good or for evil, could only be brought about by a radical reconstruction of the whole method, and the rejection from it of a great deal which is now held of supreme importance. No such profound change is to be expected. There is, therefore, little hope of relief from existing difficulties by any special preparation of teachers for the purpose. And, even if the policy were entered upon, it is extremely doubtful if it could be developed and carried out for many years in any adequate way; and it may be probably laid down as wholly impracticable to qualify the mass of teachers to judge intelligently of the effects of their educational system upon children, even in the single particular of over-pressure, and its influence upon mental and bodily health. Perhaps a few teachers could be specially trained in this direction, so that some degree of intelligence might be brought to bear upon the school-room regimen; but even this is impracticable in the present state of thought upon the subject.

What, then, remains to be done? Is the most important measure of improvement in school management to be given up as forever hopeless? We have said that this defect of our school system is attracting serious attention, and calling forth sharp criticism, but is this to avail nothing for future relief? We are not driven to this alternative, for the sufficient reason that there are men in the community well prepared to deal intelligently and efficiently with the subject. It is the especial business of medical men to understand the human constitution, and all their knowledge relates to what the school system ignores—the peculiarities of the individual. Diagnosis, critical personal observation, is the basis of all medical practice. Moreover, there is an especial branch of medical study that bears directly and immediately upon the questions here involved. There are physicians who give their lives to the investigation of mental science with reference to its corporeal conditions and its problems of health and disease. They are the students of insanity, and all the causes which tend to undermine mental soundness and produce feeble-mindedness in its innumerable forms. These are the men prepared to judge of the working of a school system upon