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Show SCHOOLS OF TO-DAY. j The Change Which has Come Over our Methods. j INTRODUCTION OF OBJECT LESSONS. How the "Whole Tone of School Life has been Elevated. It is a curious thing that, side by side with the modem amenities m schooling, tliere eomeLinies comes in a reaction against everything every-thing that can make learning attractive. It is like tin) theory which used to exist, that no drug could U- really ur--ful unless it gave out the full terrors of its natural taste and odor. Sometimes even now, in out of the wuy places, one liniLs an old la.-lnoiu-il drug bhop t-riiapb opening out of the very parlor of an old fashioned doctor), w here the mere atmoaphei e is as barbarous and forbidding as the strange foreign uaiiin of the articles sold there coloquiutida, perhaps, or ipecacuanha. ipecac-uanha. But Lhe modern dni;4 shop is called a pharmacy, anil it nuns to repkiey tho.ni vigorous old odors with others suggestive of Ai-ahy the Blest. A similar change has come over our school inethiKls. I can recall when haltered del;s and chopped Ijeuehes were regiuiled as an essential tart, of even the private school system. sys-tem. Why contend against it! it was asked; boys were natural barbarians and would boo ii inahc the new look us badly us the old. : Yet about that time the discovery was made that the way to secure respect lor school l'ur-, l'ur-, nituro was to make it reseetabc, and the ! boyish jaekknife found other objects. So 1 can remember when the introduction of singing, and later of drawing, into our puh- lie schools was regarded as a finical whim, suitable for girls' bebool only. Kmollit mores; each of these practices is found to , help school discipline ami refine the taste, so 1 that the whole tone of school life is elevated, j 1 was fitted for college by a teacher who never let ms rattan go out oi ins uuim except to lay it on his desk close hy him. A public school principal who should now pursue this course would lose his place, and rightly; the very regulations of some communities require re-quire that the rod, it if exists, should be kept in the desk, out of sight, and that every blow should bo afterward reported to the projier authorities. One of tho most curious forms of this Grad-grind Grad-grind severity is the crusade occasionally undertaken against all illustrations of school boults. The most thoughtful and carefully designed work, in geography, in history, even in arithmetic, is supposed to bo Kuflleieutly condemned when it is culled a picture book. Yet it is a period when all works for older persons dictionaries, encyclopaedias, histories, histo-ries, magazines have brought tho art of pictorial illustrations to its highest point. Webster and Worcester have alike adopted it. Justin Winsor's monumental "Nnrrative and Critical History of America" is crowded with portraits, autographs,, fac-similes, and reproductions of historic pictures. Tho later editions of Gray's ".Botany of the Northern United States'' have careful delineations of every historical genus. Tho American magazines maga-zines have won the admiration of the world hy their illustrations of all geographical and historical papers. Mr. Edward Atkinson carried tho art of pictorial exhibition even into political economy, econ-omy, and is never quite happy till he can get his proposition embodied for tho eye in parallel linos. The United States census report re-port resorts to charts and curves and colored diagrams when it wishes fully to elucidate any important general result. All this is done for grown people for tho gravest, the maturest, the most educated. They, if any, are tho persons who might fairly he asked to flx their minds clearly and austerely upon words aud numerals, without stooping to the alleged frivolity of picture books. If they j do not accomplish this, if tho very people j who make the criticism aro only too glad to i eko out their own imperfect knowledge by an I illustrated magazine or an illustrated dic-; dic-; tionary, ia it not a little absurd in them to ' enforco such a grim abstinence upon school I children) In an admirablo article by tho eminent French writer Professor Th. Ribot on "The Mechanism of Attention" ho maintains a j different theory. Tho infant child, he says, Bustenance giving objects. By degrees it ob-i ob-i serves things less selfishly interesting, begin-i begin-i ning at about the third month. The path is from tho most intense, most impressive sensations, sensa-tions, to tho finer aud more delicate ones. To fix and hold oue sensation is an art that must bo learned. "A child, for example, refuses to learn to read, but is vastly interested inter-ested in the pictures in the book. Tho father j says that reading will show the meaning of I tho pictures. This acts us an artificial iu-' iu-' ducement, and tho child goes to work, sub-j sub-j st i tut in g an artificial attention to arbitrary ! signs for the natural attractiveness of pict-' pict-' ures." After a whilo "art has done its work, and attention ha3 become second nature." na-ture." All this Is long since recognized in our schools in the introduction of object lessons. les-sons. Formerly pupils learned a definition of a bird; thon they were taught something about a bird's structure; after that, if they ; were fortunate, thoy were taken to see some ; stuffed birds iu a museum. Now tho stuffed bird, or better still, a living one, is a part of tho school properties; that is shown first, and i when curiosity is aroused the children readily learn about it. But as no school can havo annexed to it a complete musouin of natural history, geography and tho history of tho human raco, the pictorial art comes in by way of substitute or preliminary. No child can understand from words alone that thero is any part of tho world which is cssoutially different from his native town, but his first picture of a glccier or a geyser, a castle or a cathedral, the sphinx of Egypt or tho Esquimau in his kayak, opens his eyes to tho rest of tho globe; ho begins to bo a man. It is even more true of history ; tho most skillful combination of words can never bring a child so near tho mound builders or tho Puoblo Indians, to the puritans or the cavaliers, to tho revolutionary soldiers and tho founders of our government, as ho is brought by tho first good picture he sees. "T. W, U," in Harper's Bazar. |