To be able to use one's eyes in the worlds of nature, man, and art, to
be able to read good things--these are the two great ends to which home
and school education should direct their course. If the child has these
capacities, he can learn almost everything else himself. I may remark in
passing, that a sound development of the imagination has not only an
æsthetic but an ethical significance. It is really the foundation for
active sympathy all round. Numerous cruelties are committed now by
people who have not sufficient imagination to see how their acts affect
others.
In my dreamed-of school, founded along these lines, there is perfect
freedom in selecting subjects. The school offers the subjects, but it
forces no one to take them. English, German, French, natural science,
mathematics, history, and geography are taught. The mother tongue is
practiced fluently in speaking, reading, and writing. But in this case
grammar is superfluous both for general education and for using a
language; it belongs to scientific study, not to general culture.
Grammar should be applied in the case of foreign languages, only so far
as it is absolutely necessary to appreciate the literature. This is the
sole aim general culture has in view. Those who wish to speak the
languages fluently, and write them correctly, must attain facility by
continual study. Those who have mastered the literature very easily
learn the rest. Those who are familiar with the literature of a foreign
language, write it, even with the mistakes they make, better than the
person who has put together a perfectly correct composition according to
grammatical rules. After the child, in his language study, has made
enough progress to understand a fairly easy book, he ought to work
through one book after another, with the help of a dictionary and
explain in his own language extempore what he reads. In this way is laid
the foundation of a knowledge of literature, not the ready-made opinions
of the histories of literature. Both in their own and in foreign
literatures, the young must be lead to reality, not, as now, to its
copy; to the sea, not to the water pipe. While the teacher is directing
the study of language, he should try at the same time to help the
scholar to a definite choice of books, and his choice should if possible
be brought into relation with other subjects. So he will recommend
literature connected with historical, scientific, or geographical study.
Afterwards he will give a general analysis, and will read a passage
aloud, or will encourage the scholar to read some favorite poem. But all
poetry mongering--such as hacking a poem to pieces by divisions into
strophies and sections--is to be forbidden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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