Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/416

402 boards make continually increasing demands upon the property of the rich, and, in the true spirit of all Liberal legislation, tyrannically encroach upon the liberties of the poor. Cramming and competition, standards and examinations, are being multiplied to such an extent that they occupy a large portion of human life, which is becoming a scene of probation indeed, in a sense in which the phrase was never before used. At this rate of progress we seem likely soon to arrive at the educational absurdity which prevails in the Chinese Empire, where an official in his ninetieth year has recently passed his "final examination," which places him on the pinnacle of Chinese wisdom and enrolls him in the most exalted rank of mandarins, a sublime elevation which the lengthened period of study it has taken to acquire it has left him little time to enjoy.

But, in spite of all this clamor, it is open to question whether the present rising generation are well educated, or even educated, in the original and natural sense of the word, at all. The Latin word educo, from which our English word is derived, means simply to draw out or train. To strengthen the faculties, to sharpen the intelligence, and to form the character—are any of these objects attained, or even aimed at, in modern education? Practically only one faculty—memory—is cultivated at the expense of all the rest, and that is overburdened. The impossible is attempted, and the young mind strained and exhausted, rather than strengthened, in the desperate effort to acquire a superficial acquaintance with almost every form of human knowledge, in order to answer the catch-questions of an examiner, who would be baffled by his own wisdom if he had not the resource of referring, when his memory fails him, to his notes or his books. A boy has now no time to digest and assimilate what he acquires, nor has he any encouragement to do so. He must "think nothing gained while aught remains," and push on to new conquests until either the dreaded day of examination arrives, or his health breaks down, and renders him unfit to be examined, or perhaps unequal to any occupation at all. The simple course of education of the ancient Persians, to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth, had its advantages as compared with the modern system. Of course, in these days it is not possible to be satisfied with so limited a curriculum, though the native virtue of speaking the truth might with advantage be cultivated much more diligently than it is, more especially by some of our public men, who, by-the-way, are the real teachers, for they it is who complete the education of men who in their turn teach the youth. But some approach might be made to the simplicity of the Greek system, which, based upon the truism that it is impossible to overstrain the mind in a healthy body, in full exercise, seems to have been directed chiefly to strengthening the frame and the mental powers without exhausting either, cultivating a taste for study, and to acquiring the arts of rhetoric and elocution. For most men at the present day this is