The New Departure in the Common Schools of Quincy and Other Papers on Educational TopicsEstes and Lauriat, 1879 - 51 pages |
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acquired amusement annual cost arithmetic attempted average become better Boston Public Library bungling cerned child circulating library common schools common-school education common-school system cost of educating course departure dollar doubt experience of Quincy fact fiction field free field geography grammar schools hands Harper's Monthly Harvard College human idea improvement individual instruction Intel intelligent direction interest Judge Hurlbut labor librarian literature lives mass matter method ordinary letter pedagogue popular practical professors Public Library catalogue public schools pupils Quincy catalogue Quincy committee Quincy schools read and write report of 1873 rule scholars school committee school system SCHOOLS OF QUINCY self-education simple spell spirit STANFORD UNIVERSITY Stephen Burroughs suggest superintendent sustained effort taste taught teach teachers theory thing tion trustees whipping-post whole wholly Woolworth write an ordinary
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Page 5 - Arithmetic, grammar, spelling, geography, and history were taught, as if to be able to answer the questions in the text-books was the great end of all education. It was instruction through a perpetual system of conundrums.
Page 23 - I been impressed by this, that, studying the subject objectively and from the educational point of view, — seeking to provide that which, taken altogether, will be of the most service to the largest number, — I long ago concluded that, if I could have but one work for a Public Library, I would select a complete set of Harper's Monthly.
Page 33 - The fact was that the examinations had shown that in far too many cases they could neither read nor write it at all. To the majority of the committee the reason of this state of things was apparent. The school system had fallen into a rut. A great multiplicity of studies had in one way and another been introduced, and each was taught by itself. The ever-present object in the teacher's mind was to pass a creditable examination; and, to insure this, he unconsciously turned his scholars into parrots,...
Page 37 - ... dismissed. In place of it the tentative principle was adopted. Experiments were to be cautiously tried and results from time to time noted. The revolution, however, was all-pervading. Nothing escaped its influence ; it began with the alphabet and extended into the last effort of the grammar school course. The most noticeable change, however, and that which has excited the most general interest was at the very beginning, — in the primaries. The old " dame school
Page 47 - ... are far inferior to many elsewhere. They do not promise a surplus of rapid reckoners or first-class accountants. With all the acknowledged progress there made, the people of the Bay State are not likely to admit with Mr. Adams, that " the statistics of the Board of Education show clearly enough that an annual waste of some two millions a year is now regularly going on in Massachusetts from the lack of a pervading and intelligent direction of expenditures for solid purposes.
Page 37 - ... system of Massachusetts has of late years furnished a more interesting or instructive study. The essence of the new system was that there was no System about it; — it was marked throughout by intense individuality. The programme found no place anywhere in it...
Page 6 - ... was the great end of all education. It was instruction through a perpetual system of conundrums. The child was made to learn some queer definition in words, or some disagreeable puzzle in figures, as if it were in itself an acquisition of value — something to be kept and hoarded like silver dollars, as being a handy thing to have in the house. The result was that the scholars acquired with immense difficulty something which they forgot with equal ease ; and when they left...
Page 37 - ... of this timehonored machine-process, young women, full of life and nervous energy, found themselves surrounded at the blackboard with groups of little ones who were learning how to read almost without knowing it; — learning how to read, in a word, exactly as they had before learned how to speak, not by rule and rote and by piecemeal, but altogether and by practice. The hours of school were kept diversified ; the fact was recognized that little children were, after all, little children still,...
Page 8 - I think this is all wrong. Our educational system stops just where its assistance might be made invaluable, — just where it passes out of the mechanical and touches the individual, — just where instruction ceases to be drudgery and becomes a source of pleasure.
Page 39 - In place of it, an arbitrary system of names and sounds, having no significance in themselves, was adopted ; and with these generation after generation of children have been tortured. Only now do we deign, in imparting knowledge, to give any attention to natural processes which have forever been going on before our eyes and in our families, and yet we profess to think that there is no science in primary education, and that all there is to it can be learned in a few hours. The simple fact is, however,...