Education defined.-Limitations.

cation is the typical education in only one respect: an upward tendency in the line of growth. Education in the absolute sense above illustrated, has been thus defined: "The harmonious and equable evolution of the human powers.'

This conception of education is subject to the following limitations in practice:

1. It comprehends the whole period of life, from the cradle to the grave, while in practice, the period of education is limited to a few years.

2. It involves physical, mental, moral, and religious training, while the efforts of the actual educator can scarcely extend beyond the training of the intellect.

3. It aims at the perfection of the human being as a whole, while the exigencies of life require men to be trained for specific duties.

Under these limitations, education becomes nearly synonymous with instruction, and may be defined as a process having three purposes:

1. To develop the intellectual faculties, so as to produce robustness of mind and habits of ready and accurate thinking.

use.

2. To furnish the mind with knowledge for

3. To impart skill in the use of instrumental knowledge.

The difference between education in its absolute sense, and education under its practical limitations, may be illustrated as follows:

If a tree or a shrub is needed for a special

Special training, and its results.

use, as for a hedge, the cultivator abandons the typical form and determines the growth into a modified form. Whenever one part of a vegetable, as the root, the flower, or the seed, becomes especially valuable, the idea of symmetrical growth is abandoned, and this part is given an abnormal (unnatural) growth.

In training a horse, instead of aiming at the most perfect specimen of his kind, the horseman may train him for the race-course, or the plow, or the saddle. A modified form is found more useful, and so the typical form is abandoned.

There is an antagonism between man as an ideal of his kind, and man as an instrument of service; and education is forced to depart from her ideal in order to fit man for the limitations under which he lives. To make a lawyer, or a carpenter, there must be some departure from the course of training that would lead up to the typical man.

By reason of the limitations of time, education, as a practical art, must abandon formal physical and moral training. Physical soundness must be a postulate, and direct moral and religious training must be relegated to the family and the church.

A liberal education aims at the ideal perfection of the mind. Its purpose is to give it all possible perfection as the instrument of thought, to furnish it with knowledge the most fit for

A professional education.

the man, and to train it to a dexterous use of all its energies.

It

A professional or technical education either supplants or supplements a liberal education. is either the instrument alone, or the man first and then the instrument.*

"The end desired must be known before the way. All means or arts of education will be, in the first instance, determined by the ideal we entertain of it."-RICHTER, Levana, p. 29.

CHAPTER VII.

RIGHT MODES OF TEACHING.

ROM what has been said of Education, it is

FR

very obvious that it is no small thing to be a successful teacher. It is admitted by all that the teacher should be APT TO TEACH. He can not be useful without this. He may have an unimpeachable character; he may have the most liberal and thorough literary acquirements; he may deeply feel his responsibility, and yet after all he may fail to teach successfully.

Aptness to teach has been said to be a native endowment, a sort of instinct, and therefore incapable of being improved by experience or instruction,—an instinct such as that which guides the robin, though hatched in an oven, to build a perfect nest like that of its parent, without ever having seen one. I am of opinion that such instincts in men are rare; but that aptness to teach, like aptness to do any thing else, is usually an acquired power, based upon a correct knowledge of what is to be done, and some accurate estimate of the fitness of the means used for the end. If there are exceptions to this, they are very uncommon; and the safer way, therefore, for the majority of teachers, is, to study carefully the

A mistake.-The way literary nurselings are made.

rationale of their processes, and to rely rather upon sound and philosophical principles in their teaching, than upon a very doubtful intuition.

One of the most common errors into which young teachers fall (and some old ones too), is that of misjudging of the degree of assistance which the young scholar needs in the pursuit of learning. There are a few who forget the difficulties which impeded their own perception of new truths when learners, and therefore have no sympathy with the perplexities which surround the children under their charge, when they encounter like difficulties. They refuse to lend a helping hand, even where it is needed, and by making light of the child's doubts, perhaps sneering at his unsuccessful struggles, they dishearten him so far that imaginary obstacles become insurmountable, and he gives up in despair. But a far more numerous class tend toward the other extreme. From a mistaken kindness, or a mistaken estimate of the child's ability, or both, they are disposed to do quite too much for him, and thus they diminish his power to help himself. The child that is constantly dandled upon the lap of its nurse and borne in her arms to whatever point it may desire to go, does not soon learn to walk; and when it at length makes the attempt, it moves not with the firm tread of him who was early taught to use his own limbs. There is a great deal of literary dandling practiced in our schools; and as a consequence, a