Authors at home: Personal and biographical sketches of well-known American writers
General
Authors at home: Personal and biographical sketches of well-known American writers
Authors, American -- Homes and haunts -- United States; Literary landmarks -- United States; United States -- Intellectual life
with grotesquely decorated placques and strange musical instruments,
from a lute of Mr. Leland’s own fashioning to a Chinese mandolin,
its mantel-shelf and low book-cases crowded with Chinese and Hindu
deities, Venetian glass, Etruscan vases, Indian birch-bark boxes, and
Philadelphia pottery of striking form and ornament. It had been but an
ordinary though large parlor when Mr. Leland first moved into it, but
he soon gave it a character all its own, surrounding himself with a
few of his pet household gods, the others with his books being packed
away in London and Philadelphia warehouses waiting the day when he will
collect them together and set them up in a permanent home.
The reason Mr. Leland remained so long in the Broad Street house was
because he was interested in a good work which detained him year
after year in Philadelphia. While abroad he had seen and studied many
things besides gypsies, and he had come home with new ideas on the
subject of education, to which he immediately endeavored to give active
expression. His theory was that industrial pursuits could be made a
part of every child’s education, and that they must be comparatively
easy. The necessity of introducing some sort of hand-work into public
school education had long been felt by the Philadelphia School Board,
and indeed by many others throughout the country. It had been proved
that to teach trades was an impossibility. It remained for Mr. Leland
to suggest that the principles of industrial or decorative art could
be readily learned by even very young children at the same time that
they pursued their regular studies. He laid his scheme before the
school directors, and they, be it said to their credit, furnished him
with ample means for the necessary experiment. This was so successful,
that before the end of the first year the number of children sent to
him increased from a mere handful to one hundred and fifty. Before he
left America there were more than three hundred attending his classes.
It is true that Pestalozzi and Fröbel had already arrived at the same
theory of education. But, as Carl Werner has said, Mr. Leland was the
first person in Europe or America who seriously demonstrated and proved
it by practical experiment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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