Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for ProtestantsSutherland, E. A. (Edward Alexander)
Religion
Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for Protestants
Sutherland, E. A. (Edward Alexander)
Church and education; Education -- History; Religious education
Locke begins his “Thoughts on Education” with these words: “A sound mind
in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this
world.” “The attainment of this happy condition,” observes Painter,
“is the end of education.... In his [Locke’s] mind, the function of
education was to form noble men well equipped for the duties of practical
life.”[180]
A PURE SOUL IN A SOUND BODY SHOULD PRECEDE STUDY OF MERE FACTS. Locke’s
ideas of education are thus described by Quick: “His aim was to give
a boy a robust mind in a robust body. His body was to endure hardness,
his reason was to teach him self-denial. But this result was to be
brought about by leading, not driving him. He was to be trained, not
for the university, but for the world. Good principles, good manners,
and discretion were to be cared for first of all; intelligence and
intellectual activity next; and actual knowledge last of all.... The
prevalent drill in the grammar of the classical languages was to be
abandoned, and the mother-tongue was to be carefully studied.... In
everything the part the pupil was to play in life was steadily to be kept
in view.”
And yet to-day, when the editor of one of our magazines proposed that our
university students discuss the question, “What order of studies is best
suited to fit the average man for his duties in the world of to-day?” or,
“What is the relative importance of the various branches of education
in fitting a man to secure his own happiness and rendering him a useful
citizen and neighbor?” the president of Yale University replied: “Some
of the men hesitate to give the official sanction of the university to
a debate on short notice on questions of which most of the contestants
know very little. Why should not our university students know and choose
the practical studies? If they do not know them, why not?”[181]
[Sidenote: Manual training and mathematics]
There are educators, however, who are willing to break away from the
conservatism of the past, and who advocate a change of methods in the
elementary schools. Such are the thoughts presented by the superintendent
of public instruction in the State of Michigan, in a manual issued in
May, 1900. There is sound sense in the following paragraphs, which will
appeal to all who consider the needs of a child’s mind. He says:—
“It is the duty of the schools to produce parallel growths of all the
faculties, leaving the pupil free to swing out into the realm of choice
with no distorted tastes or shortened powers. The training of the hand
ministers to this parallel development.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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