Scholastica

“ If a conscientious course of study at a University secured no other advantage than that of presenting to youth a picture of the dignified calling of the Scholar as a model for life, and of repelling from this sphere those who are not endowed with the requisite power, such a course would, on account of this advantage alone, be of the utmost importance to the Student. ”

“ Hear what one teacher, both sane and experienced, has to say concerning the riot of facts and theories, of art and nature, of science and sentiment, which the school is expected to reduce into an orderly, consistent, and practical system of education. ”

“ He who prosecutes his studies conscientiously, and so acquires a conviction of the importance of the vocation of the Scholar, but yet does not feel within himself a clear consciousness of the capacity to fulfil it, shows that he recognises its sacred character by not undertaking it;—he who does undertake it, manifests the same conviction by exercising it worthily. In the next lecture we shall speak of the true Author; to-day we shall discourse of the upright Teacher of future Scholars. ”

“ In every word uttered by the Academic Teacher in the exercise of his calling, let it be Knowledge that speaks,—let it be his longings to extend her dominion,—let it be his deep love for his hearers, not as his hearers, but as the future ministers of Knowledge:—Knowledge, and these living desires to extend her dominion, let these speak, not the Teacher. ”

“ Every school has a character of its own, a spirit of its own; not that each boy in the school is just modelled on that type, but to a large extent each individual pupil is affected by the spirit of the school. ”

“ Each scholar in the school learns his own particular page or lesson independently of the others, and the many voices blend into one, rising and falling from time to time in a not unmusical hum, sometimes loud and full, when the master is vigilant and the scholars are energetic; often soft and feeble, when the master is dreaming on the floor or lounging in the sun, and his pupils are getting weary of their monotonous task. ”

“ Above all, he must possess that which we have already described as the creative or artist-talent of the Scholar; namely, a perfect readiness and capacity to recognise, under any circumstances, the first germ of the Idea as it begins to unfold itself; in each individual case to discover the most suitable means of aiding it to the attainment of perfect life, and in every case to associate it with an appropriate form. ”

“ So far as schools still teach from textbooks and rely upon the principle of authority and acquisition rather than upon that of discovery and inquiry, their methods are Scholastic—minus the logical accuracy and system of Scholasticism at its best. ”

“ They are distinguished by fervid and impressive eloquence, and set forth the dignity and duties of the Scholar, as deduced from the idea of his vocation, with clear, but sublime and spirit-stirring earnestness. He leaves no place for low motives or degrading propensities, but fills up his picture of the Scholar-life with the purest and most disinterested virtues of our nature. These lectures, and his own personal influence among the students, were attended with the happiest effects. ”

“ O blessed school, where Christ teaches our hearts with the words of his virtue, where without study and lecture we learn how we should live happily to eternity! There no book is bought, no teacher of things written is hired, there is no circumventing in debate, no intricacy of sophisms, [but] a plain settlement of all questions, a full apprehension of universal reasons and arguments. There life avails more than lecture ”

“ We look, therefore, to entirely different schools for the two kinds of preparation for the university which modern society demands—schools, which for the want of better distinctive names, we may call classical and scientific schools. In the classical school the aim should be, as it has always been, literary culture, and the end should be that power of clothing thought in words which awakens thought. Of course, the results of natural science must to a certain extent be taught; for even literary men can not afford to be wholly ignorant of the great powers that move the world. ”

“ For this reason, the Teacher in these lower Schools should be a partaker of the Idea, because it is his task imperceptibly to familiarize the youth with the high and noble before he is able for himself to distinguish these from the vulgar, to accustom him to these, and to estrange him from the low and ignoble. Thus guarded in his early years, and thus prepared for higher progress, the youth enters the University. ”

“ But while he was putting in a perfunctory attendance at lectures, his education was proceeding in another school—the school which, as in his after years he so insistently testified, affords the only real discipline for life—the world of real men and women. ”

“ He in whom Learned Culture has actually accomplished its end,—the attainment and possession of the Idea,—shows, by the manner in which he regards and practises the calling of the Scholar, that his vocation is to him, before all other things, honourable and holy. ”

“ But in every case, and unconditionally, he must fill the Student with respect and veneration for the proper calling of the Scholar. The first object of all study,—to lay hold of the Idea from a new and peculiar point of view, is by no means to be given up either by the Student himself, or by the Teacher on his behalf ”

“ The Academic Teacher, of whom chiefly we have to speak, ought to train the Student who has been made acquainted with the nature and dignity of his calling, to the capacity of receiving the Idea, and to the power of developing it anew, and giving it a form peculiar to himself:—he should do all this if he can. ”

“ As Aim, an education, scholasticism aimed also at furnishing a training in dialectic and intellectual discipline that should make the student both keen and learned in the knowledge of the times. The scholastic course of study, which was given at first in the monastic and episcopal schools and later in the universities, consisted in the content, beliefs of the Church and the limited learning of the times arranged in a systematized form largely on the deductive basis of the Aristotelian logic. ”

“ School and academy and university graduates, who after years of active and it may be eminent professional life look over the examination-papers of alma mater and the catechisms of their childhood, find invariably that outside of the special lines of their lives they are unable to answer correctly and with certainty the simplest questions, and must conclude that all the wisdom of the world is with sophomores and school-children. ”

“ When, after the lapse of many years, we dryly say or write the words, "they formed a school," we seldom take the trouble to conjure up any adequately vivid impression of what the formation of a school of literature and art signifies. ”

“ Now seeing this difference, how much education is there in school or college? In the classrooms there is none. All that is given in classes is instruction, which may be useful or detrimental inasmuch as it helps personality or not. ”

“ The more special distinction of the school, as compared with relations of authority in general, is resolvable into its main object—instruction, for which the condition that needs to be imposed is attention and application of mind, with a view to permanent intellectual and other impressions. To evoke, charm, cajole, compel this attitude, is the first aim in all teaching. ”

“ The Teachers and Educators of those who devote themselves to the occupation of the Scholar may be divided into two classes:—they are Teachers either in the lower Schools of learning, or in the higher or Universities. ”

“ It deals in a bright and vigorous style with the kaleidoscopic, throbbing life of a great public school—that world in miniature which, in its daily opportunities and temptations, ambitions and failures, has so often afforded superabundant material for narratives powerful to enchain the attention and sway the emotions, whether to smiles or tears. ”

“ Here is the whole body of accumulated thought and experience of all the ages, which indeed forms our present life and explains it, existing partly in tradition and training, but more largely in books; and most teachers think, and most pupils are led to believe, that this most important former of the mind, maker of character, and guide to action can be acquired in a certain number of lessons out of a textbook! Because this is so, young men and young women come up to college almost absolutely ignorant of the history of their race and of the ideas that have made our civilization. ”

“ Let us think for a few moments of the whole reading public as a College, which Truth, as Head-Master, is endeavouring to instruct and educate; and of men of Genius, discoverers, reformers, as assistant-masters, to each of whom is committed the task of teaching the subject of which he knows most. ”

“ We believe that a critical examination of rational courses of study in the schools would show that little of the work could well be omitted; that nearly all contributes toward the end of a well-rounded education, indeed is necessary to that end; and that the training of faculty is only well begun at the end of the high-school course. Even the study of the classics, besides other incidental advantages, trains the critical powers, refines the taste, and is in an important sense a subjective study. ”

“ In the same place we have said that this life may manifest itself in two forms;—either in actual external Being and Action, or only in Idea; which two distinct modes of manifestation together constitute the peculiar vocation of the Scholar. The first class comprehends all those who are called to lead on human affairs, through their own strength and according to their own idea, to new and progressive harmony with each succeeding age ”

“ Now, it is precisely here that we should expect the public schools to be most helpful, for it is through literature that the faculty is most obviously cultivated, and they all profess to give something of a literary training. ”

“ A boy of eight in an Elementary school may shew more intelligence and wider knowledge than a boy of fourteen in a Preparatory school, that is, if he have been taught on the principles I have in view, while the other boy has been instructed with a view to a given standard of scholarship. The Preparatory school boy does, however, reach that standard in Latin, if not in Greek also, and in Mathematics. ”

“ Henceforward, throughout the whole course of these Lectures, he only will be esteemed a Scholar who, through the Learned Culture of his age, has actually attained a knowledge of the Idea, or at least strives with life and strength to attain it. ”

“ I presume that in the vanity of your calculations, you mean to open a school; you will make the one take His seat in the teacher’s place, and the other stand by in a scholar’s ignorance, gradually learning wisdom and advancing to perfection, by lessons given Him bit by bit. ”

“ A great many teachers feel a much stronger interest in the one or two scholars they may have, in Surveying, or in Latin, than they do in the large classes, in the elementary branches, which fill the school. But a moment's reflection will show, that such a preference is founded on a very mistaken view. Leading forward one or two minds, from step to step, in an advanced study, is certainly far inferior, in real dignity and importance, to opening all the stores of written knowledge, to fifty or a hundred. ”

“ A school of literature holding principles contrary to the romantic school. They contend that nature must be followed in all cases and things represented exactly as they are. Many of our first writers have followed these principles, though many have treated life as though the only real part were the vice and misery. The realistic school claims strength as its chief characteristic, that is, a direct expression of facts and passions unchanged by fancies or culture. ”

“ Hence it happens that, while the contributions of American college teachers to the exact sciences, to theology and philology, metaphysics, political philosophy, and the severer branches of learning have been honorable and important, they have as a class made little mark upon the general literature of the country. ”

“ The school, for its intellectual function, causes the pupil to learn certain arts, such as reading and writing, which make possible communication with one's fellow-men, and impart certain rudimentary insights or general elementary ideas with which practical thinking may be done, and the pupil be set on the way to comprehend his environment of nature, and of humanity and history. ”

“ Either their immediate object is, by direct and free personal communication of their ideal conceptions, to cultivate in future Scholars a capacity for the reception of the Idea, so that their pupils may afterwards lay hold of it and comprehend it for themselves: and then they are educators of Scholars, Teachers in the higher or lower schools ”

“ Then they address the imagination: only poetry inspires poetry. They become the organic culture of the time. College education is the reading of certain books which the common sense of all scholars agrees will represent the science already accumulated. ”

“ The only question worth raising in this connection is how far school-teachers and school-rules are taken to heart by the average boy or girl—how far they are made to apply to their notions and motives, when school is left behind. School-books, school-teachers and school-discipline are so apt to be bunched together and relegated to a special corner of the mind.
Our second group—the influence of example and imitation—has probably always been a more important factor in shaping conduct and character. ”