Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/539

Rh the work because they believed in it; and now every first and second grade teacher in the district—thirty-five in number—are in hearty sympathy, as are almost all of the third and fourth grade teachers, about sixty in all. Not all, however, are at work. "There has been no systematic arrangement of material, only so far as individual teachers have made it in a small way. Our aim has been to demonstrate the feasibility of doing the work with large classes, and to prove the growth of children under the training possible. These two things we have done; and we are now at work upon a related plan for the several grades. The scheme must be a flexible one, and it can be so arranged; but the second grade work must grow out of and be an advance upon the first, and so on. We have discussed motive first for several weeks. Now we are on material; then will come method. These I can not write about now. We hope to see the subject in some kind of shape before the end of the school year."

Do not the results of the trials at Boston and Englewood virtually constitute a plea to parents and teachers to investigate this matter—not necessarily to follow, but possibly to get suggestions about a better way; for the contemplation of a new thing sincerely conceived sometimes leads to the inspiration of a better?

Pupils in all sorts of schools seem, for the most part, unable to distinguish between opinion and fact; their reasoning processes are easily overturned, imperfect, slovenly; their power to discriminate values is slight; and the whole working of their minds lacks cohesion, totality, and gradation. Is not the human mind naturally capable of trustworthy action, and is not the lack of such action in the average adult due to faulty education? To see clearly, judge fairly, and will strongly—are not these the great ends of education? Should not a man have as great a consciousness of mind and of power to think as he has of hands and feet and power to use them; and should he not be as unerring in the right use of the one as of the others? Should not the schools give this consciousness and power and mental skill; and also fill the mind with ideas worth the effort of getting and retaining?

The maxim, "Ideas before words," adopted by teachers like Prof. Louis Agassiz, has produced great results in changing the methods of study in the natural and physical sciences. This influence has extended to other departments in the older centers of learning, but the majority of our higher schools are yet scarcely touched by it. In these, study results in little more than filling the mind with words; and from them students pass into life without the taste or ability to examine and estimate facts, and to form independent judgments and volitions.

In primary education the maxim "Ideas before words" is