< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu
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446

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

adjustment and regulation of the educational life and progress of the young in securing that correct perspective and that direct course from haven to haven which, only, can give the highest possible result in training, in education, and, finally, in professional life. The best disposition of time, the best choice of subjects of study, the best adjustment of hours and the most satisfactory appropriation of time to work, to play, to gymnastics, and to practically fruitful exercises of mind and body, can only be determined by wise and experienced advisers.

Referring to industrial and professional training, Dr. Lyman Abbott says:

Industrial education, in the broad sense of the term, is a function of the state; not because it is the duty of the state to give to every, or to any, man a training in his profession, but because it is the function of the state to prepare man for self-support. One difficulty with our system of education thus far seems to me to be that we have paid too much attention to the higher education and too little to the broader education. We need to broaden it at the base even if we have to trim a little at the top.[1]

The importance of the provision of every citizen, of either sex, with systematic and scientific preparation for the duties of life is thus a most essential provision for the future of the State. Even were we not compelled, in providing for the individual, to make provision for systematic education and training in subjects that relate to the useful arts and the duties of every-day life, it would be none the less imperative, as being vital in the maintenance of the highest interests of the people as a whole. We can not escape this duty, either individually or as a nation, and it is supremely important that we go about our work in a systematic and intelligent manner.

Regarding methods: It is interesting to observe how completely educational processes have changed, in the last generation, in every department and in every division. The old methods, which reminded one of the stuffing of the Strasbourg goose, have largely disappeared and, while it must be admitted that work under high pressure is now too generally the rule, it may be claimed that a very great gain has been effected in finding reasonable ways of teaching, and especially of importing into the study of serious, and perhaps intrinsically difficult and uninteresting, subjects methods of treatment which render the task far more attractive than formerly.

The system of instruction by didactic methods still exists in places, but only because the machinery for carrying on the work on more rational principles has not been obtained. Wherever the object is education, the methods of research have been introduced and it is recognized that real scientific knowledge can only be gained by individual experience.[2]

This is as true of other subjects than those which, like physics and

  1. ↑ Lyman Abbott, 'The Rights of Man,' p. 161.
  2. ↑ Sir John Gorst at the Glasgow meeting of British Association, 1901.
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