Henry Wyman Holmes

“ Theirs was an age of reorganization in religion, in political life, and in philosophy and science. The Thirty Years' War and the Civil War in England were conflicts in which the basis of modern religious toleration was laid in suffering and desolation. In America the Colonies were begun. In England the continued struggle with the House of Stuart resulted in the assurance of political liberty, to be secured at length by an evolution without the price of blood which the Continent, and especially France, had later on to pay. ”

“ There is wisdom in Locke's words. Even under more modern conceptions of child nature, parents can hardly find general principles better than those he gives for guidance in the concrete exigencies of moral training in the home. ”

“ On the Continent itself, despotisms, big and little, were strengthened, often to the direct detriment of education. Meanwhile modern science had its birth in the work of many a courageous intellectual adventurer, from Kepler and Galileo, astronomers, to Harvey, physiologist. ”

“ With the writings of Descartes and his contemporaries began modern philosophy. In a century of such spiritual and material disturbance, what wonder that there should have been much inspiration to educational effort, with but little fixed accomplishment? ”

“ Abstractions and technicalities of form so easily encumber teaching that we may hardly expect ever to outgrow the warning not to give our pupils "ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge." ”

“ He would have them learn "to love what they ought to love and hate what they ought to hate" as a matter first of habit, to be approved by reason only as they mature: but from the beginning he would have children act not in mere conformity to external requirements, but with a willing adoption of standards always clearly revealed and, as time goes on, properly explained. ”

“ Since Locke's time schools have so improved that he might now revise his opinion on this point, as he might on others; for it must be confessed that Locke was not in the modern sense a student of child psychology, nor of mental and physical development in general. Thus his advice on the feeding of children, the general tenor of which is good, could hardly be followed with safety in detail. But for us the chief interest of Locke's essay is in his conception of the moral discipline of children by their parents and teachers ”

“ He would also combine with literary study a training in handicraft, which parallels Milton's scheme of learning from workers in the various fields of practical activity. But the contrast between Locke's point of view, which is individualistic, and Milton's, which is national, is brought out by the fact that Milton would have practical men teach his young academicians with a view to the serious use of their knowledge and skill in public affairs, whereas Locke looks upon a handicraft chiefly as a good gentlemanly avocation. ”

“ To dream, therefore, in that time, of an educational system, state-administered, state-supported, compulsory, and hence democratic; a system serving the varying need of all individuals, yet aiming in the education of each at a socially valuable result ”