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Exercises in transposition, from poetry to prose, will also be found most helpful in many ways. It is, perhaps, the most easily managed of any exercise in composition. It is clear, definite work, fairly adapted to almost every kind of ability, so easy that it may be accomplished by the dullest scholar, and yet affording full scope for the keenest thought and most skillful effort of any one. Before the scholar can transpose a piece he must thoroughly understand it; and so by this exercise, the teacher may easily get a reliable report of the ideas which the scholar has gained from his reading.

The kind of transposition may be varied, but perhaps the best results will usually be obtained by directing the scholar to eliminate the rhyme and the meter, and put synonyms in place of words which can be changed without losing the idea which the author intended to convey, thus making it good prose. Original ideas may be added as the time and ability of the scholar permits.

In these ways a great end is attained by no spasmodic effort, no violent straining, but by daily persistent exercise, so slight as to be felt as no burden by either teacher or scholar. And surely it is a great and important thing that our children know how to use this mighty instrument of their mother tongue so as to convey their thoughts most clearly and forcibly. A. R. SPRAGUE.

Evansville.

SELECTED.

EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE.

Now, for the success of the school-master's work, the first and central fact is the plastic property of the mind itself. On this depends the acquisition not simply of knowledge, but of everything that can be called an acquisition. The most patent display of the property consists in memory for knowledge imparted. In this view the leading inquiry in the art of Education is how to strengthen memory. We are therefore led to take account of the several mental aptitudes that either directly or indirectly enter into the retentive function. In other words, we must draw upon the science of the human mind for whatever that science contains respecting the conditions of memory. Although memory, acquisition, retentiveness, depends mainly on one unique quality of the intellect, which accordingly demands to be

scrutinized with the utmost care, there are various other properties, intellectual and emotional, which aid in the general result, and to each of these regard must be had, in a Science of Education.

I thus propose to remove from the Science of Education matters belonging to much wider departments of human conduct, and to concentrate the view upon what exclusively pertains to Education-the means of building up of human beings. The communication of knowledge is the ready type of the process, but the training operation enters into parts of the mind not intellectual - the activities and the emotions; the same forces, however, being at work.

Mind starts from Discrimination. The consciousness of difference is the begining of intellectual exercise. To encounter a new impression is be aware of change; if the heat of a room increases ten degrees, we are awakened to the circumstance by a change of feeling; if we have no change of feeling, no altered consciousness, the outward fact is lost upon us; we take no notice of it, we are said not to know it.

Our intelligence is, therefore, absolutely limited by our power of discrimination. The other functions of intellect, rententive power for example, are not called into play, until we have first discriminated a number of things. If we did not originally feel the difference between light and dark, black and white, red and yellow, there would be no visible scenes for us to remember; with the amplest endowment of retentiveness, the outer world could not enter into our recollection; the blank of sensation is a blank of memory.

Yet further. The minuteness or delicacy of the feeling of difference is the measure of the variety and multitude of our primary impres sions, and, therefore, of our stored up recollections. He that hears only twelve discriminated notes on the musical scale, has his remem brance of sounds bounded by these; he that feels a hundred sensible differences, has his ideas or recollections of sounds multiplied in the same proportion. The retentive power works us to the height of the discriminative power; it can do no more.

This (the retentive faculty), is the faculty that most of all concerns us in the work of Education. On it rests the possibilty of mental growths; in other words, capabilities not given by nature.

Every impression made upon us, if sufficient to awaken consciousness at the time, has a certain permanence; it can persist if the original cerses to work; and it can be restored rfterwards as an idea or remembered impression. The bursting out of a flame arouses our at

tention, gives a strong visible impression, and becomes an idea or deposit of memory. The flame is thought of afterwards without actually seen.

It is not often thas one single occurence leaves a permanent and recoverable idea; usually, we need several repetitions for the purpose. The process of fixing the impression occupies a certain length of time; either we must prolong the first shock, or renew it on several successive occasions. This is the first law of Memory, Retention, or Acquisition: "Practice makes perfection;" "Exercise is the means of strengthening a faculty;" and so forth The good old rule of the schoolmaster is simply to make the pupil repeat, rehearse, or persist at, a lesson until it is learnt.

All improvement in the art of teaching depends on the attention that we give to the various circumstances that facilitate acquirement, or lessen the number of repetitions for a given effect. Much is possible in the way of economizing the plastic power of the human system; and when we have pushed this economy to the utmost, we have made perfect the Art of Education in one leading department. It is thus necessary that the consideration of all the known conditions that favor or impede the plastic growth of the system should be searching and minute.

Although some philosophers have taught that all minds are nearly equal in regard to facility of acquirement, a schoolmaster that would say so must be the very rudest type. The inequality of different minds in imbibing lessons, under the very same circumstances, is a glaring fact, and is one of the obstacles encountered in teach numbers together, that is, classes. It is a difficulty that needs a great deal of practical tact or management, and is not met by any educational theory.

The different kinds of acquirements vary in minor circumstances, which call for notice after we have exhausted the general or pervading conditions. The greatest contrast is between what belongs to the Feelings and the Will. The more strictly Intellectual department comprises Mechanical Art, Language, the Sensible World, the Sciences, Fine Art; each having its specialities.

The one circumstance that sums up all of the mental aids to plasticity is Concentration. A certain expenditure of nervous power is involved in every adhesion, every act of impressing the memory, every communicated bias; and the more the better. This supposes, however, that we should withdraw the forces, for the time, from every

other competing exercise; and especially, that we should redeem all wasting expenditure for the purpose in view.

Coming now to the influences of concentration, we assign the first place to intrinsic charm, or pleasure in the act itself. The law of the Will, on its side of greatest potency, is that pleasure sustains the movement that brings it. The whole force of the mind at the moment goes with the pleasure giving exercise. The harvest of immediate pleasure stimulates our most intense exertions, if exertion serves to prolong the blessing. So it is with the deepening of an impression, the confirming of a bent or bias, the associating of a couple or sequence of acts; a coinciding burst of joy awakens the attention, and thus leads to an enduring stamp on the mental framework.

The engraining efficiency and pleasurable motive requires not only that we should not be carried off into an accustomed routine of voluntary activities, such as to give to the forces another direction, as when we pace to and fro in a flower garden; but also that the pleasure should not be intense and tumultuous. The law of the mutual exclusion of great pleasure and great intellectual exertion forbids the employment of too much excitement of any kind, when we aim at the most exacting of all mental results- the forming of new adhesive growths. A gentle pleasure that for the time contents us, there being no great temptation at hand, is the best foster mother of our efforts at learning. Still better, if it be a growing pleasure; a small beginning, with steady increase, never too absorbing, is the best of all stimulants to mental power. In order to have a yet wider compass of stimulation, without objectionable extremes, we might begin on the negative side, that is, in pain or privation, to be gradually remitted in the course of the studious exercise giving place at last to the exhilaration of a waxing pleasure. All the great teachers, from Socrates downwards, seem to recognize the necessity of putting the learner into a state of pain to begin with; a fact that we are by no means to exult over, although we may have to admit the truth that is in it. The influence of pain, however, takes a wider range than is here supposed, as will be seen under our next head.

A moderate exhilaration and cheerfulness growing out of the act of learning itself is certainly the most genial, the most effectual means of cementing the unions that we desire to form in the mind. This is meant when we speak of the learner having a taste for his pursuit, having the heart in it, learning con amore. The fact is perfectly well known; the error, in connection with it, lies in dictating or enjoining

this state of mind on everybody in every situation, as if it could be commanded by a wish, or as if it were not itself an expensive endowment. The brain cannot yield an exceptional pleasure without charging for it.

Next to pleasure in the actual, as a concentrating motive, is pleasure in prospect, the learning of what is to bring us some future gratification. The stimulus has the inferiority attaching to the idea of pleasure as compared with the reality. Still it may be of various degrees, and may rise to a considerable pitch of force. Parents often reward their children with coins for success in their lessons; the conception of the pleasure in this case is nearly equal to a present tremor of sense-delight. On the other hand, the promises of fortune and distinction, after a long interval of years, have seldom much influence in concentrating the mind towards a particular study.

Let us now view the operation of Pain. By the law of the will, pain makes us recoil from the thing that causes it. A painful study repels us, just as an agreeable one attracts and detains us. The only way that pain can operate is when it is attached to neglect, or to departure from the prescribed subject; we then find pleasure, by comparison, in sticking to our task. This is the theory of punishing the want of application. It is in every way inferior to the other motives; and this inferiority should be always kept in view in employing it, as indeed every teacher must often do with the generality of scholars. Pain is a waste of brain-power; while the work of the learner needs the very highest form of this power. Punishment works at a heavy percentage of deduction, which is still greater as it passes into the well-defined form of terror. Everyone has experienced cases where severity has rendered a pupil utterly incapable of the work prescribed. We are to place the pupil as nearly as may be in the track of the first discoverer, and thus impart the stimulus of invention, with the accompanying outburst of self-gratulation and triumph. This bold fiction is sometimes put forward as one of the regular arts of the teacher; but I should prefer to consider it as an extraordinary device, admissible only on special occasions.

It is an obvious defect in teaching to keep continually lecturing pupils, without asking them in turn to reproduce and apply what is said. This is no doubt a sin against the pupil's self-activity, but rather in the manner in the fact. Listening and imbibing constitutes a mode of activity; only it may be overdone in being out of proportion to the other exercises requisite for fixing our knowledge. When

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