Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/385

Rh York law: "We find that all who are in any way engaged with the practical work of education have a protest constantly against the multitude of subjects which would-be 'reformers,' 'cranks,' and 'faddists' would require our boys and girls to study in the schools. If they get their way, the mental energy of our children would be dissipated and education become a sheer impossibility. The most fundamental of all reforms at the present time is the limitation of the number of subjects taught to any one student, with distinction between what is fundamental and what is subsidiary, in order that the short time which the young people of the country can devote to study can be put upon the most important and fruitful subjects. You hear people say every day, 'Is it not a shame that children should grow up in ignorance of this, that, and the other subject!' whereas the truth of the matter is, that it is in most cases an advantage that pupils have heard nothing of the matter.

"When I pass from the general principle of this law to scrutinize its details, it shows itself absurd on the very face of it. If there is any one thing which scientific teachers require at the present time, it is that students of science shall not be taught from text-books. In the programme of many of our best schools (I do not mean colleges or universities) the use of the text-book in science is absolutely forbidden. The 'reformers' who desire the legislation under consideration prescribe a text-book; and not only so, they tell the teachers how many pages are to be studied in order that students may understand 'the nature and effects of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics.' It would be a great reflection on the educational wisdom of those who are responsible for making our laws if a conception of scientific teaching so wooden, so utterly mechanical, were ever to find a place in our statute books. The scientific teachers of the country, whether in the public schools or in the colleges and universities, would justly hold us up to ridicule."

In the same vein Dr. William R. Huntington, rector of Grace Church, says: "As a member of the Committee of Sixty, charged with the investigation, from a scientific and impartial standpoint, of the whole question of the relation of alcoholic stimulants to the animal economy, I have been in the way of hearing the educational phase of the subject very fully discussed, and I am convinced that the attempt to indoctrinate the minds of the youth of the country in the premises, though well meant, has been overdone. Let the children be taught the perils of drinking and the horrors of drunkenness as emphatically as you please, but let us not palm off on their innocent minds pseudo-chemistry and inaccurate physiology as necessary truth."

Every institution tends to magnify itself, and the need of a