Training

“ But notwithstanding all these tendencies, the level of mankind is raised at these fountains of learning, the tone is higher, and the standards are continually advanced. The discipline and the training reaches and acts upon a willing and eager army of young recruits and works its salutary effect, like that upon a man who listened with rapt attention to a discourse from the pulpit and was congratulated upon his devotion, and asked if he was not impressed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have confidence that this humanizing spirit will conquer, and that manual training will ultimately mean in all our schools what it means to-day in a few of them, and is coming to mean in many more—a complete, human, educational process and not simply an artisan 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Adaptation of general training to the presumable needs and wants of the individual, rather than to his social requirements, is the programme of the new education that has already modified the old-school routine through the introduction of the psychological basis, and which now proposes manual training as one more step forward. ”

“ Education is not Greek and Latin and the air-pump. Still, I rate at its full value the training we get in these walls. Though what we actually carry away is little enough, we do get some training of our powers, as the gymnast or the fencer does of his muscles: we go hence also with such general knowledge of what mankind has agreed to consider proved and settled, that we know where to reach for the weapon when we need it. ”

“ The only adequate training for occupations is training through occupations. The principle stated early in this book (see Chapter VI) that the educative process is its own end, and that the only sufficient preparation for later responsibilities comes by making the most of immediately present life, applies in full force to the vocational phases of education. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whenever practicable, training and instruction should, in whole or in part, be imparted on the ground, as this gives the instruction a practical aspect that is most valuable, and enables the soldier [Pg 254] to grasp and apply principles that he would not otherwise understand. Knowledge that a man can not apply has no value. ”

“ The manual training school that does not by its work inspire thought and encourage investigation is poor indeed; the school that assumes its work to be mind training by hand practice is the ideal school, and the school that will succeed.... ”

“ Training—training is everything; training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us. ”

“ Education, or training, has two immediate and continuous effects—the development of innate mental qualities or aptitudes and the formation of character. In an orderly logical system of training the development would be harmonious, and the resulting formation of character symmetrical. ”

“ The instruments of physical training were the exercises of the palaestra. When the youth had become a man, his mental education was tested in public counsel and speech, his physical training in military service for the State. ”

“ In all walks of life, in all kinds of labor, this is the beginning of excellence, and proficiency follows in its wake. We talk so much about thoroughness of training, and so little about singleness of purpose. We give to every girl in our public schools the arithmetical knowledge which enables her to stand behind a counter and cast up her accounts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Each subject or subjects upon a knowledge of which depend the proper understanding and mastering of another, should be studied and mastered before taking up the other subject, and the elementary and simpler aspects of a given subject must be mastered before taking up the higher and more difficult phases of the subject, which means that individual training and instruction must precede, and provide a sound foundation for, collective training and instruction—that is to say, for the higher tactical training and instruction of the company as a unit. ”

“ 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"? ”

“ THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD OF TRAINING EVERY parent of a son should formulate some definite, determinate plan for his training, and this can be done even though original research and the formation of plans deduced therefrom are not always possible to the parent whose life is bulging with other activities necessitated by our hurrying civilization. Any definite plan of training is better than no plan, inasmuch as it will cause us to think and to use our best judgment on this important topic and so tend to a clarification of preformed vague or inchoate opinions. ”

“ Figure 2 is a diagram of an educational program which, starting with preparatory training in the early years of the secondary school, continues through a period of cooperative part-time training which combines education in the school and on the job, until full-time employment assures continued opportunity to study progressively on three training levels of increasing difficulty and responsibility. ”

“ Thus in every department of education the result of the training administered intelligently, and with almost infinite long-sightedness and subtlety during school-days, will be to form character, not by repression of any natural predilection, but by cultivation of mental and moral impulses to good. ”

“ Training is the occasioning of those activities which, by means of directed exercise, result in power and skill.
Training and education are not interchangeable. Training implies an outside authority, while education, which involves inner development, may proceed without supervision. ”

“ Have we even begun to realize that every person should have definite vocational training with such distinctive purpose back of it that it will produce the skill, knowledge, ideals, and general experience that function in distinct callings? ”

“ The present system of training is considered so truly scientific, that one general jealousy is known to prevail amongst its professors of every denomination: the same secresy which pervades one establishment, is, by the spirit of emulation, (or infection,) communicated to every other; and the hour that stimulates one stable lad to action, regulates the rest in every training-stable through the kingdom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The difference between an unbroken colt and the patient draught-horse is purely a difference of training. Training is the only moral difference between the man of to-day and the man of ten thousand years ago. ”

“ For this purpose army training is now designed, not only to cultivate the man's exact obedience to positive orders, but even more to develop his powers of observation and analysis so he may sense conditions; his powers of reason so he may arrive at a logical decision as to what should be done; and his strength of character so he may willingly accept and cheerfully bear the full responsibility of acting on his own initiative. Can anyone find a better formula for training to play one's part in any of life's activities! ”

“ Physical training is a branch of education—a most important branch, and one hitherto shamefully neglected in England—and it must therefore be carried out under discipline: it is a matter of compulsion. ”

“ The basis of the whole system of training is careful individual instruction, and gradual progression from the simple to the more difficult.
During instruction in elementary principles companies should act alone, or against a marked enemy and the company commander should concentrate his attention on the individual instruction of his men; but in many of the advanced exercises an opposing body gives not only increased interest to the practice, but also makes it more instructive. ”

“ For the hand stands for use, for service, and for unyielding integrity; and it may be confidently asserted on the conviction of observation, experience, and a studious consideration of historic facts, that its drill and discipline as enforced in the world’s workshops, and in the best of existing Manual-training schools, results in a far greater degree of mind development than is produced by any exclusively academic course, and hence that Manual Training is the most important of all methods of education. ”

“ Of course, to arrange and systematize these actions, to establish the true relations between all these various faculties and powers, and to regulate the obligations and duties by which the exercise of them should be limited and controlled, is a work of time, and is to be effected, not by the operation of any instinct or early intuition, but by a course of development—effected mainly by the progress of growth and experience, though it is to be aided and guided by assiduous but gentle training and instruction. ”

“ Gentlemen, a serious duty bearing alike on your professional studies and on the pursuits of your leisure moments is the due and progressive training of your intellectual powers. A serious duty. This training, no longer cribb'd. cabin'd and confin'd by the imperious requirements of examination standards, involves not only the discipline of those faculties whose powers have been cultivated, but also, and more especially of those which are weak or which have been overlooked and neglected. ”

“ He was even of opinion that the training of the mechanic,—by the exercise which it gives to his observant faculties, from his daily dealing with things actual and practical, and the close experience of life which he acquires,—better fits him for picking his way along the journey of life, and is more favourable to his growth as a Man, emphatically speaking, than the training afforded by any other condition. ”

“ Never again will there be such susceptibility to drill and discipline, such plasticity to habituation, or such ready adjustment to new conditions. It is the age of external and mechanical training. Reading, writing, drawing, manual training, musical technic, foreign tongues and their pronunciations, the manipulation of numbers and of geometrical elements, and many kinds of skill have now their golden hour; and if it passes unimproved, all these can never be acquired later without a heavy handicap of disadvantage and loss. ”

“ This manual training is intended to give the boys such a knowledge of the tools and materials employed in the chief industrial pursuits of our time as shall place them in more direct and sympathetic relations with the great activities of the business world. The school will make our public education not only more complete and symmetrical in character than it has been heretofore, but it will be at the same time better adapted to enable the pupils to win their way in life. ”

“ Among all the truths which have been established upon this interesting subject, the most important is, that the instructor should himself have received early training, not merely that he may be qualified to conduct the mechanical process of a school, but may have such acquaintance with the tempers and characters of children, and such skill in managing them, as experience alone can confer. ”

“ You give our people education in schools and colleges; but our people demand a practical training also, and if you put them in those higher posts of responsibility and emolument, you give them that practical training and discipline which is so essential to integrity, honesty, and probity, and a successful discharge of high duty. ”

“ If, in a degree, the working out shows defects such as we have named, is it not yet a question, whether we have in the book an illustration 'how this system of training may be applied to the entire course of common school education'?—to say nothing now of the question whether, even in its best form, it is a system that ought to be so applied. ”

“ I often thought how much wiser it would have been to give these girls the same amount of mental training—and I favour any kind of training, whether in the languages or mathematics, that gives strength and culture to the mind—but at the same time to give them the most thorough training in the latest and best methods of laundrying and other kindred occupations. ”

“ Training and instruction in order to be easily understood and readily assimilated—in order to give the greatest results in the shortest time—must be carried on according to a methodical and progressive plan. ”