Formation

“ Such a course of study has a unity, and a completeness, which is of great significance in view of the formation of a type of character. The highest education, however, has features peculiarly its own. ”

“ It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body; ”

“ Each social formation, through each of its material activities, exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and ideals wins also its place and power. ”

“ Moreover, if the school is related as a whole to life as a whole, its various aims and ideals—culture, discipline, information, utility—cease to be variants, for one of which we must select one study and for another another. ”

“ He would guide their education, which would include a minimum of traditional junk, parrotlike mimicry and discipline, and a maximum of real experience, valuable information, and æsthetic appreciation acquired through personal exploring, experimenting, judging, creating, with a discipline that developed self-direction, self-control, and self-reliance. ”

“ Only in education, never in the life of farmer, sailor, merchant, physician, or laboratory experimenter, does knowledge mean primarily a store of information aloof from doing. ”

“ The vocation acts as both magnet to attract and as glue to hold. Such organization of knowledge is vital, because it has reference to needs; it is so expressed and readjusted in action that it never becomes stagnant. No classification, no selection and arrangement of facts, which is consciously worked out for purely abstract ends, can ever compare in solidity or effectiveness with that knit under the stress of an occupation; in comparison the former sort is formal, superficial, and cold.
3. The only adequate training for occupations is training through occupations. ”

“ In these phenomena we have the first developments of individuality and of organization, and I think that the careful student who endeavors with a strong mental grasp to seize the true relations of things will see that we have here to do, not with a new activity from without, but with a new and higher development of a force which is inherent in matter, and thus manifests itself at a certain stage in chemical development. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the most advanced civilization (for it is here that we are to look for the fullest development and best illustration of biological laws) we see in all these organized bodies, three distinct classes operating in as many distinct, spheres, and requiring, for the due performance of their respective duties, different kinds of knowledge, or different orders of natural truth, yet all working together simultaneously, the will and wisdom of each uniting with that of the others in the final result. ”

“ Education as Training of Faculties.—A theory which has had great vogue and which came into existence before the notion of growth had much influence is known as the theory of 'formal discipline.' It has in view a correct ideal; one outcome of education should be the creation of specific powers of accomplishment. ”

“ Those now substituted will, however, answer the purpose nearly as well, and are more directly connected with the subjects of the preceding lectures; so that I hope throughout the volume the student will perceive an insistance upon one main truth, nor lose in any minor direction of inquiry the sense of the responsibility which the acceptance of that truth fastens upon him; responsibility for choice, decisive and conclusive, between two modes of study, which involve ultimately the development, or deadening, of every power he possesses. ”

“ The Ideal school, most precisely representative of the present age—the age of science—is dedicated to a homogeneous system of mental and manual training, to the generation of power, to the development of true manhood. ”

“ No where else is the sense of continual growth so palpable; in no other field of labor is such an enlargement of the bounds of one's horizon likely to be found. Compare it with the profession of teaching. In that, the mind is chained down to a rigorous course of imparting instruction in a narrow and limited field. One must perforce go on rehearsing the same rudiments of learning, grinding over the same Latin gerunds, hearing the same monotonous recitations, month after month, and year after year. ”

“ The common purpose of these different branches of knowledge has already been pointed out; viz. that by their means provision may be made for the uniform but constantly progressive development of all the faculties of man: and hence arises the true vocation of the Scholar; the most widely extended survey of the actual advancement of the human race in general, and the steadfast promotion of that advancement. ”

“ I have commented upon the uses of the several groups of sciences—abstract, abstract-concrete, and concrete—in cultivating different powers of mind; and have argued that while, for complete preparation, the discipline of each group of sciences is indispensable, the discipline of any one group alone, or any two groups, leaves certain defects of judgment. ”

“ As we glance at these classes we quickly detect that what may be called their vocations are extremely different; that each class—with the exception, perhaps, of two, the professional and the commercial, with that part of the indefinite class which is composed of persons of rank and property, and which approach each other—are as widely separated in tastes and habits and inclinations as they are in labors and works. Looking at the education of body and mind in these classes as a whole, there is certainly little enough of symmetry. ”

“ There is yet a Fourth process in the educational system of Nature, which may be termed supplementary, as it is not intended solely, nor even chiefly, for the good of the pupil himself, but for the community.—This process of Nature consists in the training of her pupil to communicate, by language, not only his own wishes and wants, but also, and perhaps chiefly, the knowledge and experience which he himself has attained. ”

“ I am led to the belief in the relative permanency of these types of professional school, not only by a knowledge of the history of their development, but also [Pg 230] by the conviction, formed by a somewhat careful study of the entire problem, that there are fundamental reasons, psychological as well as economical, for the differentiation. In other words, my own somewhat careful study of the entire situation brings me to the same position that the logic of events has brought us all. ”

“ Their idea of education was the special training they took, when half grown up, under experts. Then the eager young minds fairly flung themselves on their chosen subjects, and acquired with an ease, a breadth, a grasp, at which I never ceased to wonder. ”

“ It clearly points out two well-marked natural divisions of such education—education or training in the movements to be made, and education in a knowledge of the consequences of such movements—i.e. in a knowledge of the forces of Nature which actually do the work when man has suitably arranged the materials. ”

“ First come easy lessons and a familiarity, slowly attained by practice, with the groundwork of the subject; then the student may make proof, in the business of life, of the training which he has received. ”

“ But as this theory of "training" is for the moment so generally adopted, and as so much depends upon it, it is necessary that we should examine it very closely. The "technique," say the Minority, is not yet developed. ”

“ Let the basis of training be modern and scientific, instead of ancient and classical, and, the new standpoint being taken, let the courses of study be widened, so as to include moral, literary, and aesthetic agencies of training. ”

“ We must take these successive classes as we find them: we see each class in itself, developing into higher and better types; then, some maintain this improved development, some dwindle away and disappear. ”

“ The basis of knowledge upon which they started, and which they had acquired as naturally as the breath of life, would in any fair system of education be kept as a basis, and their education would be built up upon it. ”

“ While training for the profession of learning is regarded as the type of culture, as a liberal education, that of a mechanic, a musician, a lawyer, a doctor, a farmer, a merchant, or a railroad manager is regarded as purely technical and professional. ”

“ It would be difficult to find a better exemplification of scientific education than a course of training which exercises simultaneously the powers of both body and mind, a course which with every fresh burden put upon the mind puts new vitality into the body. ”

“ All the differences between peoples and between classes and persons among the same people were said to be due to differences of training, of exercise, and practice. Originally, mind, reason, understanding is, for all practical purposes, the same in all. ”

“ The motto of the schools—"We learn by doing; the working hand makes strong the working brain"—shows manual training to be the basis of the scheme of development, varied for each grade to suit the intelligence. ”

“ Those other Faculties, of which I shall speak by and by, and which seem proper to man onely, are acquired, and encreased by study and industry; and of most men learned by instruction, and discipline; and proceed all from the invention of Words, and Speech. ”

“ Here, surely, are the elements of a training which, mixed with active exercise in what is acquired, goes to form a real education, one in which high faculties are trained to high perfection, and the heart is enriched as well as the head. But literature is more than this. ”

“ In considering the training of children under the convenient divisions of physical, mental, moral, and religious, I have not thought it necessary to enlarge upon matters of common knowledge and general acceptance, but have dwelt upon aspects of training under each heading which are likely to be overlooked. ”

“ I cannot refrain from adding that I am fully aware of the one-sided nature of the training acquired in the profession of teaching. Civilization, implying, as it does, division of labor, necessarily renders all persons more or less one-sided. ”

“ It is possible, and quite probable, that the typical movements in instruction—development, drill, examination, practice, and review—may occur within a single class-period, following fast upon the heels of each other as the situation may demand. ”

“ We bring them up with absolutely equal treatment—the finest of everything. At the age of five we divide them arbitrarily into classes and begin training them for occupations. Some we educate as scholars, some laborers, some professional men. ”

“ Does not that sound hopeful for our development, and by example, are there not more people in other fields who can give their time, knowledge and experience to the development of something which when it is completed as an institution will belong to you? ”

“ Institutions—family, society, state, church—all are instrumentalities by which the humble individual may avail himself of the help of the race, and live over in himself its life. The highest stage of thinking is the stage of insight. It sees the world as explained by the principle of Absolute Person. It finds the world of institutions a world in harmony with such a principle.
1 The parallelism between these two sciences, Medicine and Education, is an obvious point, which every student will do well to consider. ”

“ Time will not suffice me to touch upon a variety of subjects of deep and vital import, but I should like you to understand that your educational training, ending with the ceremonial of to-day, has been conducted with the view of making you better and stronger men, physically, morally, and Self-denial the law of being intellectually. ”

“ It demands that training be as wide as life itself. It looks to human activities of every type: religious activities; civic activities; the duties of one's calling; one's family duties; one's recreations; one's reading and meditation; and the rest of the things that are done by the complete man or woman. ”

“ And just as Biology discovers certain general traits of development, structure, and function, holding throughout all organisms, others holding throughout certain great groups, others throughout certain sub-groups these contain; so Sociology has to recognize truths of social development, structure, and function, that are some of them universal, some of them general, some of them special. ”

“ Now I am not quite sure that our way of studying the special subject is exactly the best method of beginning work on original authorities, but it may very well be the best that we can incorporate in a plan of gaining, in a year and a half's reading, a mental training, or the beginning of a mental training that may serve a lifetime. ”

“ The other division is in arranging a properly graduated series of exercises which will best develop each mind; the common faculties we all have, and most carefully, the especial faculties some of us have. ”

“ Here we have a rule of selection by which the different parts of learning may be classed for our purpose. Those which belong to the province of the judgment [pg 175] are religion (in its evidences and interpretation) , ethics, history, eloquence, poetry, theories of general speculation, the fine arts, and works of wit. Great as the variety of these large divisions of learning may appear, they are all held in union by two capital principles of connexion. First, they are all quarried out of one and the same great subject of man's moral, social, and feeling nature. ”