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gärtnerin, is great; yet their love to their parents does not seem to diminish. It is found that at home they are much more quiet, because they soon find a quiet amusement, and eagerly engage in it. The genial occupation of their brain, combined with the bodily exercises, and the happy humor in which they seem to be for hours when in the kindergarten, cannot but favor an increase of their natural faculties. There has been a complaint, that when children from the kindergarten are sent to schools, they become restless and inattentive, particularly in large classes. The fault may in this case be with the school, not with the kindergarten. A most loyal Englishman, transplanted across the Channel, may not only be found most troublesome, but have to suffer in prison as a rebellious subject. Children learn order in the kindergarten, even military order in their occupations; but they do not learn to sit idle, to do what they do not understand, to listen to what cannot interest them, what gives them nothing to do, merely something to suffer. A generation that has passed through the developing system which begins in the kindergärten will have learned self-command or virtue, will be possessed of pure and genuine taste, and will be independent in thought and action. As a striking testimony to this effect, we may take the proceedings of the Prussian Government against that system since 1850. Fichte, in his Reden an die Deutsche Nation, had recommended national education on the developing system; Jahn applied it to physical education by his Turnwesen, or gymnastics, which quickly spread over Germany, and was as quickly put down as politically dangerous. Fröbel tried to apply it to general education; but the German governments, particularly Austria and Prussia, were frightened at the spirit of independence from which the system proceeded, and which it fostered. Prussia, receding more and more from her glorious efforts of 1813, has now almost eradicated the developing principle from her national education, once so renowned. But a better spirit is alive again in Germany. Turnen is again flourishing, and national education on the developing principle again appears as one of the great objects of the interest of the German nation.

* Addresses to the German Nation.

The consequences of the kindergärten system on the female portion of the population will proceed from two sources at once,— from the better training of the children, and from the more complete education of those who are to train them. The advantages of a system which places infant training in the hands of educated females can, perhaps, not be too highly estimated. In Germany the success of the system is, by the opinion of a large party, identified with the realization of "the true mission of women."

KARL FRÖBEL.

THE DRILL-MASTER, THE TEACHER, — THE

EDUCATOR.

THE distinction suggested by these words is more or less familiar to every one who has given any attention to the subject of education. In a general sense, indeed, all who are engaged in the work of instruction are called teachers; but it is well understood, not only that they differ from each other as good or bad teachers, but that there are certain radical differences which separate them into classes, and which entitle some to be called Educators, others in a more restricted sense Teachers, and others still mere Drillmasters. It is of these fundamental class distinctions that we wish briefly to speak.

1. The Drill-master is distinguished by his dependence on memory and rule in his instructions. He treats the mind of the pupil as a vessel, whose only office is to receive what is poured into it; or, at the best, a mere machine, worked not from any force within itself, but wholly by outward appliances. In either aspect it is surpassed by the Oxford Tables, or a good encyclopædia, or Babbage's Calculator. In his esteem, the best text-book is that which demands the least thought from him or his pupil; the catechism is the ideal form.- stereotyped question and answer admirably superseding the necessity of reflection and research. With him, he is the medal scholar-for it is this class of instructors who are the most obstinate sticklers for prizes, medals and flog

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THE DRILL-MASTER,

-THE TEACHER,· -THE EDUCATOR.

gings who can rattle off most glibly pages of history, long strings of meaningless dates and names, and innumerable formulæ, tables, rules, with those formidable lists of exceptions, which are found to form such juicy and nourishing food for the young mind. To him all teaching is comprised in the one word, drill, drill, drill, the beginning, middle and end of his lifeless work. He regards the memory as the leading faculty of the mind, that which more than any other is essential to high scholarship and distinction, which especially placed Everett above all others of his time as a peerless scholar. A description this, which might seem an absurd caricature, were we not almost literally quoting the recent language to ourselves of the principal of a popular and much-lauded school. Of this mechanical, memoriter style of teaching there are indeed, even yet, far too many examples, both in text-books, instructors, and schools. It is deliberately asserted, for instance, that any attempt to interest the pupil in his studies, or lead him to an intelligent appreciation and enjoyment of the Greek and Latin authors, is utterly absurd, a mere waste of time; that the translation of Cicero and Virgil and Homer and Xenophon is simply a matter of grammar, syntax and the lexicon, with which the memory alone is concerned. If the mind is to be so treated in one department, then as well in every other; and one who so treats it has surely not risen above the grade of a petty drill-master.

2. The Teacher is on an altogether higher plane. He deals with ideas rather than words; principles rather than rules; the spirit more than the letter. The mind to him is a living organism, moved by internal forces; to be fed, nourished, developed, by its own active thought. He kindles interest and enthusiasm by taking the pupil away from the dry page, and imparting personality to the subject by his living voice. The text-book he likes best to use is one which does not give the dead rule, showing what crank to turn in order to grind out the required result, or merely seek to cram the mind with rote-learning; but which does the most to excite individual thought, call into exercise the ingenuity of the pupil, and lead his mind to perceive the underlying principles from which he can deduce his own processes, and reach an intelligent result without the conscious use of any set rule. Thomas Hill's Second Book

in Geometry, and Chase's and Dana P. Colburn's Arithmetics, are admirable examples of the kind of book we mean. They are the abomination of the drill-master. The average teacher does not like them. There is no refuge or comfort in them for the lazy, indolent or ignorant, whether instructor or scholar. But the genuine teacher gives them hearty welcome, as efficient helps in his great work. For in his school-room is found no "grindstone," so pithily denounced by D'Arcy Thompson,* - only such agencies as are fitted to influence the living mind, not dead matter. The mere correctness of the result is to him of less moment than a thorough understanding of the process. All his means and appliances are mental, not mechanical. . The best scholar, in his eye, is he whose mind is roused to independent thought; who is ingenious in suggesting original proofs and methods; who seeks rather to master the fundamental thought and essential principle than to reach a certain dead result; who is excited to an intelligent appreciation and enjoyment of his work, whether it be the analysis of an English sentence or of a wild-flower, the reading of Shakespeare or Cicero or Homer or Molière, the construction of the pons asinorum or of the locus of the hyperbola, the study of history or of mineralogy, the drawing of maps or the solution of a problem in algebra. Such is the teacher, as much superior to the drill-master as mind is nobler than matter. "Rule-teaching," says Herbert Spencer, "is now condemned as imparting a merely empirical knowledge; as producing an appearance of understanding, without the reality. To give the net product of inquiry, without the inquiry that leads to it, is found to be both enervating and inefficient. . . While rules, lying isolated in the mind, not joined to its other contents as outgrowths from them, are continually forgotten, the principles which those rules express piecemeal, become, when once reached by the understanding, enduring possessions. Betweeen a mind of rules and a mind of principles, there exists a difference such as that between a confused heap of materials, and the same materials organized into a complete whole, with all its parts bound together." Of such teachers

Day-Dreams of a Schoolmaster.

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as we have described, we are glad to believe that we have very many in our public and private schools; and it is the peculiar glory of our Normal Schools that so large a proportion of their graduates stand high upon the list.

3. But the educator takes a higher rank yet. His prime distinction is, that he looks upon his work as a science, as much as an art; a profession, rather than a trade. It is not a mere occupation, which he takes up to earn his daily bread; but a work, which calls for his best thought, and is fit to engage his noblest powers. The educator, in the true sense, is not always a practical teacher,— nay, even if he attempt the work of instruction, he may be far from successful; for that requires a tact, skill, and patience in details, which he may lack. But every teacher rises so far into the rank of an educator, who takes up his work as a profession, labors in it con amore, and gives to it all the energies of a philosophic and well-disciplined mind. The educator, again, has made a study of the mind, the laws and process of its development, what faculties first become active, and what are the normal conditions of its growth. And, as closely connected with this, he has carefully determined for himself in what order the various branches of study should be presented to the pupil; the relative importance of different studies for mental development or practical use; at what stage of the pupil's progress, dependent on both the laws of the mind and the logical sequence of ideas, any branch can be most profitably pursued.

Such is the educator, a broad, philosophical thinker, who dignifies and ennobles his work, and to whom there is nothing petty or mean in the profession, because of the large view and generous thought which give something of grandeur even to its wearisome details.

T. P. A.

GLEANINGS.

PUBLIC EDUCATION. A good practical system of public education ought, in my opinion, to be more real than formal; I mean, should convey much of the positive knowledge, with as little atten

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