Coursing

“ At the present day the question “What should be the course of study in an educational institution of the rank of a gymnasium?” is being much discussed. This I shall return to later. But the question what the course of study should be seems to me by no means the only important, nor even the most important, one. ”

“ My training class is just as interesting as it can be. When the girls came to me two years ago they were in the Third Reader. With two exceptions, I have given them everything that was included in my own course at home, and taught them English besides. They are very ambitious, and what do you suppose is their chief aim in life? To study until they know as much as I do! Oh! Mate, it makes me want to hide my head in shame, when I think of all the opportunities I wasted. ”

“ And this result is one which we may reasonably look for when parallel courses of study are offered to the choice of the student during the later years of the academic course, whatever might be true if the offer were made at the beginning. For the effect of the early years of training is to bring out the character of each individual mind, and to determine what are its native idiosyncrasies, and what it is possible to make of it. ”

“ You have been receiving your tuition. In this academy the study of Household Science begins with the rudiments. Scrubbing is one of the rudiments. As a new scholar you begin with the rudiments, of course. And I must say you are doing very well. You are making excellent progress. Apply yourself earnestly to your lessons and in a short time you will be promoted to another class. ”

“ Most branches of study could muster only one or two pupils in each class: Five to ten minutes a day is all that can be allowed in such cases for a recitation. No thoroughness of instruction on the part of the teacher is possible, nor is there much improvement to be expected in the method of instruction where classes can not be formed. ”

“ I have seen a teacher instruct a class of forty in such a way, as, in the first place, to secure the subordinate end of ascertaining and registering with a sufficient degree of exactness how much each scholar knows of the lesson by his own preparation, and secondly, to secure, during the whole hour, the active exercise and coöperation of each individual mind, under the powerful stimulus of the social instinct, and of a keenly awakened attention. ”

“ And we shall not have a true, honest vocal interpretation of literature until we return to this early honest reading. I say 'return,' for, so far as my knowledge goes, there is a plentiful lack of it, at present, in primary schools—a lack somewhat due, no doubt, to the ever-increasing amount and variety of knowledge which students are compelled to acquire in the schools. There is no time left for education. He would be the ideal teacher [33] who could induce a maximum amount of education on the basis of a minimum amount of acquirement. ”

“ The object of the division into classes is instruction. Whenever it is desirable that several individuals should pursue a particular study, a list of their names is made out, a book selected, a time for recitation assigned, a teacher appointed, and the exercises begin. In this way a large number of classes have been formed, and the wishes of parents or the opinion of the Principal, and in many cases that of the pupil, determines how many and what shall be assigned to each individual. ”

“ Devoted to the traditional studies—the literatures, mathematics, philosophy, history—it is still strangely reminiscent of old musty folkways of the schoolman and theologian. Every professor knows the desire of the average student to finish his college course and grapple with his professional studies. Every professor is aware of the sharp quickening of interest which comes on entrance to the professional schools. ”

“ The simplest lessons in preparatory study are thus justified: they lead to a conscious judgment of one’s attainment. Study means nothing if it does not lead to this judgment. The power once gained, the pupil is his own best teacher, his own strongest helper. Prize, [99] then, all exercises which lead to this judgment. Instead of saying to the untrained pupil, “Read your lesson ten times,” when his present attainment or lack of attainment renders such repetition worse than useless, you will say, “Read the lesson and copy all the words whose meaning you do not know.” ”

“ It is not strange, therefore, that many of the professors pursued reputable occupations during their odd hours or that they took students to board. We hear to-day of frequent illustrations of the pursuit of knowledge under difficulty, but certainly during the ages to which I have referred the ardent student, were he undergraduate or professor, put up with an amount of hardship, meagre fare, and trouble of all kinds which would stagger most of the young men of to-day. ”

“ The varying lengths of recitation periods in different schools, and the adaptation of the course to individual instruction as well as to class work, also made a division into lessons impracticable. Each teacher will soon discover about how much matter her class, if she uses the class method, can take each day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every pupil must know the ends to be attained in the course he is taking, and as work progresses he must experience a growing realization that the class is moving toward these ends. The subject matter of the course, the method of instruction, the assigned task, now glow with interest which springs from work clearly motivated. The average student plods through his semester from a sense of duty or obedience rather than from a conviction of the worth of both subject matter and method. ”

“ One little trifle had been omitted in the curriculum of a man’s education, but such a small item that it was hardly worth mentioning—for everyone agreed that to make a gentleman of a man was the great desideratum of college training—well, this little item neglected in all educations was: the training of life. ”

“ In my imaginary College, the various teachers are in the habit of attending each other's classes whenever they wish to do so; a practice which actually does prevail to a certain extent in some schools, and with the happiest results; for the teacher who takes his place among the pupils of a colleague, can, if he will, set the class an excellent example of courteous and intelligent questioning. ”

“ Training for Vocation. It is obvious that the child must be trained for his vocation. But it is far from obvious whether it is any part of the work of the school to train the child for his vocation. Is education to be "vocational" or "general"? ”

“ We hear and read ad nauseam that the word 'education' means 'a drawing out.' This one etymology everybody knows, if he doesn't know any other. Lecturers and writers on education, and school circulars, keep reiterating it. There are certain truths so ding- [40] donged in our ears that they lose all their vitality. One of these certainly is, that the word 'education' means 'a drawing out.' Sometimes a teacher at a school institute, after presenting this etymology, proceeds to present what he considers the best methods of ramming in! ”

“ Unless a pupil himself shows that he perceives shortcomings in what is read, it is on the whole the place of the instructor to keep the attention of the class fixed on merits, while defects are ignored. ”

“ Discipline is systematic and rigorous training, with the idea of subjection to authority and perhaps of punishment. Tuition is the technical term for teaching as the business of an instructor or as in the routine of a school; tuition is narrower than teaching, not, like the latter word, including training. ”

“ When the vocation for which he is naturally best fitted becomes apparent, as it must from the study of the development of the youth and his desires, the school will know, and can give exactly, that training that is necessary for the vocation. ”

“ It did the work of the most thorough class drill, for it arrested the attention, opened the mind, and filled it with love of learning and wisdom. Intellect and humanity seemed to radiate from his countenance like light and heat, and illumined and fascinated all on whom they fell.... Let me recall him as he appeared in the spring of 1854. The eleven-­o'clock bell has rung. All the other classes have gone in to lecture. We, the students of Moral Philosophy, are lingering in the quadrangle, for the Professor, punctual in his unpunctuality, comes in regularly two or three minutes after the hour. ”

“ When we say that our freshman, like other freshmen, "began" this course, we use the verb advisedly; for, like many other freshmen who start with a burst in learning's race, he soon got winded, and fell back among the ruck. But the course of lectures, like the course of true love, will not always run smooth, even to those who undertake it with the same courage as Mr. Verdant Green. ”

“ An arrangement of occasional epideictic lectures, ordinary elementary teaching in class, and informal instruction out of class, is symmetrical enough and useful enough where it can be applied, but it is not of universal application, or suited to Professors of all calibres. ”

“ It is undoubtedly true that training in the proper habits and methods of study should be inculcated by each individual teacher in the course of his work, and exemplified by the occurrences in his class room. ”

“ The same law governs mental and moral growth [117] as it operates in our daily affairs. A young man is in college. How does his intellect grow? By precisely the same process of alternating periods of objective and subjective activity. In the class room the instructor puts a mathematical problem on the blackboard and explains it. With the outward senses of sight and hearing, aided by pencil and notebook, the student gathers the food for mental growth. ”

“ When he said, ‘My own habitual view is to the well being of students or scholars,’ he was careful immediately to explain that he used the word ‘student’ in no restricted sense. ‘The class of scholars or students ... is a class that comprises in some sort all mankind, comprises every man in the best hours of his life.’ He pictures the newsboy entering a train filled with men going to business. ”

“ It came my turn. I stepped to the front and raised my hand for the first word when suddenly the class next above mine yelled, poked up slang signs, and then from the square ventilator hole high above my head darted a sparrow with a trailing streamer of our class ribbon fluttering from its tail. At every sentence, nearly every word, I had to pause on account of the yellings, the banter, and the interruptions caused by flying hats and scudding pieces of pasteboard. After about a half hour of disciplined posing, I finally concluded the “oration” amid the admiring plaudits of my class. ”

“ In the college courses and talks with their instructors they come into an intellectual atmosphere that is so utterly different from what they have been accustomed to that, instead of an intellectual sympathy between instructor and student, there ensues an intellectual struggle that is demoralizing to both. ”

“ Each literary examination is a crisis at which one either becomes a graduate or does not; in either case the result, whether appertaining to the student himself, the pupils whom he has coached, or his own sons, is contemplated purely as a personal and an individual matter. ”

“ One of our teachers took me aside, in the privacy of his empty classroom, for the purpose of assisting me with a back lesson. I had occasion to remark,
“Professor, you aren’t giving yourself a fair chance, here, are you? Some of the students have been saying that you have had more than one opportunity to better yourself.” ”

“ In the second and third years of gymnasial work three courses of study are open, viz., Real, Language-History, and Language-History with Latin. Here pupils get their first experience in electing the line of work wherein their study shall center. This seems a rather fortunate provision, for by this time likes and dislikes for certain subjects of study, special aptitudes along specific lines, and choice of life work are coming into the foreground of consciousness. The pupils' likes and aptitudes working together influence their decisions concerning life's activities. ”

“ I have to speak as a Scholar, before future Scholars, of the Scholar’s vocation. I must examine the subject to its foundation; exhaust it, if I can; hold back nothing in my representation of the truth. And if I discover for the Scholar a vocation most honourable, most lofty, and distinguished above that of all other classes of men, how is it possible for me to lay it before you without exceeding the limits of modest expression, without seeming to undervalue other vocations, without being apparently blinded by self-conceit? ”

“ The University lecture is, of all methods of imparting knowledge, about the least effective. The student sits in a stiff attitude and maintains a pose of strained attention. He endeavours to keep his mind concentrated on the words and meaning of the professor. ”

“ The class with only a few hours of time to devote to classroom drill with an instructor may find it possible to cover the primer only. Students with more time will wish to select such of the subject fields covered in the later lessons as are of most interest to them. Students in intensive courses with at least 300 hours of class and laboratory will be able to cover the entire content of the course. ”

“ So was adopted the plan of beginning most courses with an extended course of lectures upon human physiology, in which to real practice in investigation by the class is added the hearing of a first-rate lecturer. ”