The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on EducationPalmer, Alice Freeman
Philosophy
The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on Education
Palmer, Alice Freeman
Education; Education, Higher; Women -- Education
between the marvellous unbroken line of English song and the passionate
love of the Englishman for a home in the midst of birds, trees, and
green fields.
The world is so full of a number of things,
That I think we should all be as happy as kings,
is the opinion of everybody who knows nature as did Robert Louis
Stevenson. And so our college student may begin to know it. Let her
enter the laboratories and investigate for herself. Let her make her
delicate experiments with the blowpipe or the balance; let her track
mysterious life from one hiding-place to another; let her "name all the
birds without a gun," and make intimates of flower and fish and
butterfly--and she is dull indeed if breezy tastes do not follow her
through life, and forbid any of her days to be empty of intelligent
enjoyment. "Keep your years beautiful; make your own atmosphere,"
was the parting advice of my college president, himself a living
illustration of what he said.
But it is a short step from the love of the complex and engaging world
in which we live to the love of our comrades in it. Accordingly the
third precious interest to be cultivated by the college student is an
interest in people. The scholar to-day is not a being who dwells apart
in his cloister, the monk's successor; he is a leader of the thoughts
and conduct of men. So the new subjects which stand beside the classics
and mathematics of mediæval culture are history, economics, ethics, and
sociology. Although these subjects are as yet merely in the making,
thousands of students are flocking to their investigation, and are going
out to try their tentative knowledge in College Settlements and City
Missions and Children's Aid Societies. The best instincts of generous
youth are becoming enlisted in these living themes. And why should our
daughters remain aloof from the most absorbing work of modern city life,
work quite as fascinating to young women as to young men? During many
years of listening to college sermons and public lectures in Wellesley,
I always noticed a quickened attention in the audience whenever the
discussion touched politics or theology. These are, after all, the
permanent and peremptory interests, and they should be given their full
place in a healthy and vigorous life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account