Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/120

110 suited to the age and capacity of the child. (2) Book-learning must be given up in the case of any child to whom it can not he made pleasurable. (3) Prizes must not be given for success in school-work, nor punishment for failure. (4) The natural love that children have for games must be taken advantage of, so as to cause a healthy development of the moral nature, the physical powers, the imagination, etc. (5) The energies of the child must be fully as well as harmoniously developed, and the child's growth must not be stunted by too easy work. (6) A love of nature and of all forms of beauty must be stimulated and encouraged.

The difficulty of establishing a natural system of education is much increased by the anxiety on the part of parents to see at every point evidence of their children's progress. This natural but inconvenient wish has prevented the Kindergarten system from coming more generally into use, and unless parents can be induced to place more confidence in the capacity and judgment of teachers, it is to be feared that it will also prevent the introduction of improved systems of training for older children. In inspecting schools for young children an examiner should make it his business to find out whether they are being taught in the right way, not whether they have reached a high standard of book-knowledge. The latter is of little or no importance, the former is all-important. We should not hear so many protests against examinations if examiners knew how to do their work rightly. At present examiners think it is their business to find out what the children know, and so long as that is the case examinations will not be satisfactory. Are the children's minds in a healthy state and are their faculties being drawn out in the right way? These are the questions that need attention. An examination should be so conducted as to avoid developing self-consciousness and other morbid tendencies. "We want to teach the children to be, not to seem. More freedom is needed both for teachers and children. Perhaps it may not be thought safe to grant the freedom; that has often been the case in history, and yet the grant of freedom has been generally justified by its results.

Frequent examinations prevent natural growth. We do not expect our gardeners to show us the roots of their growing plants. A child's attention should be fixed if possible more on the subject of study itself than on his own progress in it, and examinations as they are now conducted are apt to prevent this. They are less injurious to older children when an interest in the subjects themselves has been firmly established. But all examinations tend to encourage the performance of work in order to show what one can do, which is not a good motive for human conduct. It is wholesome to work from interest in a subject, or in order to help others, but not in order to show that we can do well, still less