Book: Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862

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Under the recall of the minds of educators among us to fundamental
principles of methods and tendencies in teaching, which we have pointed
out, it was but natural to expect attempts to be made toward remedying
the defects and supplying the needs that could not fail to be detected
in our teaching processes. Naturally, too, such attempts would result in
the bringing forward, sooner or later, of novelties in the topics and
form of the school-books. What the pen--which, in the outset, proposed
the necessity of molding the school-work into a course of re-discoveries
of the scientific truths--should reasonably be expected to do toward
supplying the want it had indicated; or what it may, in the interim,
have actually accomplished toward furnishing the working implements
requisite to realizing in practice the possible results foreshadowed by
the best educational theories, it may be neither in place nor needful
that we should here intimate. Sometimes, indeed, there is in our social
movements evidence of a singular sort of intellectual _catalysis;_ and a
mute fact, so it _be_ a fact, and even under enforced continuance of
muteness, through influence of temporary and extraneous circumstances,
may yet, like the innocent _platinum_ in a mixture of certain gases, or
the equally innocent _yeast-plant_ vegetating in the 'lump' of dough,
take effect in a variety of ways, as if by mere presence.

We shall remember how even Virgil had to write:

'Hos ego versiculos scripsi: tulit alter honores!'

And the veriest bumpkin knows the force of the adage about one's shaking
the tree, for another to gather up the fruit. But Virgil was patient,
and did well at the last; though the chronicles do not tell us how many
pears ever came to the teeth of him that did the tree-shaking. At all
events, it is satisfying to know that time spins a long yarn, and comes
to the end of it leisurely and at his own wise motion!

The English object-lesson system being now fairly and successfully
domesticated among us, and to such an extent as to call for the
invitation and temporary residence among us, in the city of Oswego, of a
distinguished lady-teacher from the English Training Schools, it is
again but natural that the system should call forth books adapted to its
purposes; and it was scarcely possible, under the circumstances we have
now shown to exist, that such books should come forth without presenting
a more conscious aim toward embodying something of the principle and
order of _discovery_ than has marked even their English prototypes.
These anticipations we find exactly realized in the first book of the
new pattern that has yet made its appearance--the 'Primary
Object-Lessons' of Mr. Calkins. Of this book, issued June, 1861, the
author thus states the motive: 'With an earnest desire to contribute
something toward a general radical change in the system of primary
education in this country--a change from the plan of exercising the
memory chiefly to that of developing the observing powers--a change from
an artificial to a natural plan, one in accordance with the philosophy
of mind and its laws of development, the author commenced the following
pages.'

Acknowledging his indebtedness to the manuals of Wilderspin, Stow,
Currie, the Home and Colonial School Society, and other sources, the
author tells us that the plan of developing the lessons 'corresponds
more nearly to that given in Miss Mayo's works than to either of the
other systems;' and we understand him to claim (and the feature is a
valuable one) that in this book, which is not a text-book, but one of
suggestive or pattern lessons for teachers, he directs the teacher to
proceed less by telling the child what is before it and to be seen, and
more by requiring the child to find for itself what is present. Again,
an important circumstance, the purpose of the book does not terminate in
describing right processes of teaching, but on the contrary, _'in
telling what ought to be done, it proceeds to show how to do it by
illustrative examples,' (sic.)_ Now, spite of some liberties with the
President's English, which may properly be screened by the author's
proviso that he does not seek 'to produce a faultless composition,' so
much as to afford simple and clear examples for the teacher's use, we
are compelled to inquire, especially as this is matter addressed to
mature and not to immature minds, which it is the author really meant us
to understand; that is, whether, in fact, the book 'proceeds to show
_how to do it by_ illustrative examples;' or whether, in reality, it
does not aim _to show by illustrative examples how to do it_--that,
namely, which ought to be done. If we still find Mr. Calkins's
philosophy somewhat more faultless than his practice, perhaps that is
but one of the necessary incidents of all human effort; and we can say
with sincerity that, in some of its features, we believe this a book
better adapted to its intended uses--the age it is designed to meet
being that of the lowest classes in the primary schools, or say from
four to seven or eight years--than any of its predecessors. It will not,
we hope, therefore, be understood as in a captious spirit, that we take
exception to certain details.

The author is clearly right in his principle that 'The chief object of
primary education is the development of the faculties;' though doubtless
it would have been better to say, _to begin_ the development of the
faculties; but then, he recognizes, as the faculties specially active in
children, those of 'sensation, perception, observation, and simple
memory,' adding, for mature years, those of 'abstraction, the higher
powers of reason, imagination, philosophical memory, generalization,'
etc. But that any one of all these is in the true psychological sense, a
_faculty_--save, it may be, in the single instance of imagination--we
shall decidedly question; and Mr. Calkins will see by the intent of his
very lessons, that he does not contemplate any such thing as 'sensation'
or 'observation,' as being a faculty: but, on the other hand, that he is
so regarding certain individual powers of mind, by which we know in
nature Color and Form and Number and Change and so on.

We must question whether 'in the natural order of the development of the
human faculties, the mind of the child takes cognizance first of the
_forms_ of objects.' Form is a result of particular _extensions:_
evidently, extension must be known before form can be. But again,
visibly, form is revealed through kinds and degrees of light and shade;
in one word, through _color_. Evidently, then, color also must be
appreciated before visible form can be. But this 'natural order of the
development of the human faculties,' is a seductive thing. In phrase, it
is mellifluous; in idea, impressively philosophical. It would be well if
this book, while cautiously applying developing processes to the little
learner, were to _dogmatise_ less to the teacher. But when the
development-idea is carried into the titles of the sections, it becomes,
we think, yet more questionable. Thus, a section is headed, 'To develop
the idea of straight lines.' First, would not the idea of _a straight
line_ come nearer to the thing actually had in view? Again, 'To develop
the idea of right, acute, and obtuse angles.' 'The idea,' taking in all
these things, must be most mixed and multifarious; it could not be
_clear_, though that is a quality mainly to be sought. Is not the
intention rather, to develop _ideas_ of _the right, the acute,_ and _the
obtuse angle?_ Instances of this sort, which we can not understand
otherwise than as showing a loose way of thinking, are numerous. But
then, again, it is assumed that the lessons _develop_ all the ideas
successively discoursed about. Far otherwise, in fact. In many
instances, of course, a sharper, better idea of the object or quality
discussed will be elicited in the course of the lesson. This is, at
best, only a sort of quasi-development, individualizing an idea by
turning it on all sides, comparing with others, and sweeping away the
rubbish that partly obscured it. In others of the topics, the learner
has the ideas before we begin our developing operations. But the great
misfortune of the usage of the term here is, that _develop_ properly
implies to _unroll, uncover, or disclose_ something that is infolded,
complicate, or hidden away; but mark, something that is always THERE
before the developing begins, and that by it is only brought into light,
freedom, or activity! Thus, we may develop faculties, for they were
there before we began; but we simply can not develop _objective ideas_,
such as this book deals with, but must impart them, or rather, give the
mind the opportunity to get them. First, then, this term thus employed
is needlessly pretentious; secondly, it is totally misapplied. Would it
not help both teacher and pupil, then, if we were to leave this stilted
form of expression, and set forth the actual thing the lessons
undertake, by using such caption as for for example, _To give the idea,
of a triangle,_ or to insure, or _to furnish the idea of a curve?_ We
think the misnomer yet greater and worse, when we come to such captions
as 'To develop the idea of God, as a kind Father;' especially when the
amount of the development is this: 'Now, children, listen very
attentively to what I say, and I will _tell you_ about a Friend that
_you all have_, one who is kind to all of you, one who _loves you
better_ than your father or your mother does,' and so on. All this, and
what precedes and follows, is 'telling,' as the author acknowledges; of
course, then, it is not developing. How is the child here made to _find_
and _know_ that it has such a Friend?--that this Friend _is_ kind to
all?--that this Friend loves it better than do parents, or, in fact, at
all? This is the way the nursery develops this and kindred ideas, and if
the child be yet too young for its own comprehension of the most obvious
truths of Natural Theology, then better defer the subject, or at least
cease to call the nursery method by too swelling a name!

As to arrangement of topics, though the geographical lessons properly
come late, as they stand, the idea of _place_, as well as those of
_weight and size_, all belong earlier than the positions they are found
in; and _number_, later. Such mental anachronisms as talking of _solids_
before the attempt has been made to impart or insure the idea of a
solid, should, where practicable, be avoided; and more notably, such as
bringing a subsequent and complex idea, like that of 'square measure,'
before scarcely any one of the elementary ideas it involves, such as
_measure, standard_, or even _length or size_, is presented. As to the
substance of the teaching, we will indicate a few points that raise a
question on perusal of them. What will the little learner gain, if the
teacher follows the book in this instance? 'Where is the skin of the
apple? _On_ its surface.'' This is in the lesson for 'developing the
idea' of surface. When, by and by, the young mathematician gets the true
idea of a surface, as extension in two dimensions only, hence, without
thickness, then will follow this surprising result, that the whole
thickness of the apple-skin is _on_--outside--the apple's surface, and
hence, is nowhere: a singular converse of the teaching of those smart
gentlemen who waste reams of good paper in establishing, to their own
satisfaction, that even the mathematical surface itself has thickness!
In the lesson on 'perpendicular and horizontal,' the definition of
perpendicular is correct; but all the developing, before and after,
unfortunately confounds the _perpendicular_ with the _vertical_--a bad
way toward future accuracy of thought, or toward making scientific
ideas, as they should be, definite as well as practically useful. If we
judge by the brevity and incompleteness of the lesson on 'Developing
ideas of Drawing'(!), ideas of that particular 'stripe' must be scarce.
The Object Lessons at the close of the book we find generally very good
models of such exercises, clear and to the purpose. Once in a while
there is a _lapsus_, as in this: The criterion of a _liquid_ is
presented as being in the circumstances that it does not '_hold
together_' when poured from a vessel, but 'forms drops.' Now, since it
forms drops, it _has cohesion_, and the criterion is wrongly taken; In
fact, the same thing appears in that the liquid, even in pouring out,
does hold together in a stream, and a stream that experiments with
liquid jets show it really requires considerable force to break up.

Finally, Mr. Calkins's book, in the bands of discerning and skillful
teachers, can be made the instrument of a great deal of right and
valuable discipline for primary classes; but without some guarding and
help from the teacher's own thought, it will not always do the best
work, nor in the best way. It is an approach to a good book for early
mental development; but it is not the consummation to be desired. Many
of its suggestions and patterns of lessons are excellent; but there is
too large a lack of true consecution of topics, of accuracy of
expression, and of really natural method of handling the subjects. We
say this with no unkindly feeling toward the attempt or the author, but
because, though no matter by how fortuitous circumstances, it comes to
us as in this country the _first effort_ toward a certain new style of
books and subjects, and certain more rational teaching; and we hold it,
as being the privilege of teachers whose time may be too much consumed
in applying, to criticise minutely, as no less our right and duty, and
that of every independent man, to recognize and point out wherein this
new venture meets, or fails to meet, the new and positive demand of the
pupils and the teachers in our time. If, in a degree, the working out
shows defects such as we have named, is it not yet a question, whether
we have in the book an illustration 'how this system of training may be
applied to the entire course of common school education'?--to say
nothing now of the question whether, even in its best form, it is a
system that ought to be so applied.

After the author of a book for young learners is sure of the
comprehensibility of his subjects, and the accuracy of his ideas and
expressions of them, the highest need--and one the lack of which is
fatal to true educative value--is that of a natural and true synthesis
and consecution of the successive steps of fact and principle that are
to be presented. We would not be understood that every successive lesson
and every act of voluntary thinking must thus be consecutive: to say
this, would be to confine the mind to one study, and to make us dread
even relaxation, lest it break the precious and fragile chain of
thought. Our growth in knowledge is not after that narrow pattern. We
take food at one time, work at another, and sleep at a third: and so,
the mind too has its variations of employment, and best grows by a like
periodicity in them. This is our point--that it is a peculiarity and law
of mind, growing out of the very nature of mind and of its knowings,
that no truth or knowledge which is in its nature a _consequent_ on some
other truths or knowledge, can by any possibility be in reality attained
by any mind until after that mind has first secured and rightly
appreciated those _antecedent_ truths or knowings. No later or more
complex knowledge is ever comprehensible or acquirable, until after the
elements of knowledge constituting or involved in it have first been
definitely secured. To suppose otherwise, is precisely like supposing a
vigorously nourishing foliage and head of a tree with neither roots nor
stem under it; it is to suppose a majestic river, that had neither
sufficient springs nor tributaries. Now, for the pupil, the text-book
maker, the educator, no truth is more positive or profoundly important
than this. He who fails of it, by just so much as he does so, fails to
educate. Let the pupil, as he must, alternately study and not study--go
even on the same day from one study to a second, though seldom to more
than a third or fourth. By all this he need lose nothing; and he will
tax and rest certain faculties in turn. But then, insist that each
subject shall recur frequently enough to perpetuate a healthy activity
and growth of the faculties it exercises, usually, daily for five days
in a week, or every other day at farthest; that each shall recur at a
stated period, so that a habit of mind running its daily, steady and
productive round with the sun may be formed; and that in and along the
material of every subject pursued, whether it be arithmetic, or grammar,
or chemistry, or an ancient or modern language, the mind shall so be
enabled to advance consecutively, clearly and firmly from step to
step--from observation to law, from law to application, from analysis to
broader generalization, and its application, and so on--that every new
step shall just have been prepared for by the conceptions, the mental
susceptibility and fibre, gotten during the preceding ones, and that
thus, every new step shall be one forward upon new and yet sure ground,
a source of intellectual delight, and a further intellectual gain and
triumph. Need we say, this is the _ideal_? Practice must fall somewhat
short of it; but Practice must first aim at it; and as yet she has
scarcely conceived about the thing, or begun to attempt it. In truth,
Practice is very busy, dashing on without a due amount of consideration,
striving to project in young minds noble rivers of knowledge without
their fountains; and building up therein grand trees of science, of
which either the roots are wanting, or all parts come together too much
in confusion.

First, then, we are not to make the presentation of any topic or lesson,
even to the youngest learner, needlessly inconsecutive; but with the
more advanced learners--with those in the academic and collegiate
courses--we should insist on the display, and in so doing best insure
the increase of the true _robur_ of the intellect, by positive
requirement that all the topics shall be developed logically; that
sufficient facts shall come before all conclusions; and rigid, sharp,
and satisfactory analysis before every generalization or other
synthesis. So, the more advanced mind would learn induction, and logic,
and method, by use of them upon all topics; it would know by experience
their possibilities, requirements, and special advantages; and it would
be able to recognize their principles, when formally studied, as but the
reflex and expression of its own acquired habitudes. Such a mind, we may
safely say, would be _educated_. But secondly, the foregoing
considerations show that we are not unnecessarily to jumble together the
topics and lessons; to vacillate from one line of study to another; to
wander, truant-like, among all sorts of good things--exploiting, now, a
_color_; then _milk_; then in due time _gratitude_ and _the pyramids_;
then _leather_, (for, though 'there's nothing like leather,' it may be
wisest to keep it in its place;) then _sponge_, and _duty to parents,
lying_, the _points of compass_, etc.! And here, for all ages above nine
or ten years, is a real drawback, or at the least, a positive danger, of
the Object-Lesson and Common-Things teaching. Just here is shadowed
forth a real peril that threatens the brains of the men and women of
the--we may say, 'rising' generation, through this fresh accession of
the object-lesson interest in our country. _Objects_, now, are
unquestionably good things; and yet, even objects can be 'run into the
ground.'

We had put the essential thought here insisted on into words, before
object-lessons had acquired the impetus of the last and current year.

'The 'object lessons' of Pestalozzi and his numerous followers, had,
in a good degree, one needed element--they required WORK of the
pupil's own mind, not mere recipiency. But they have [almost]
wholly lacked another element, just as important--that of
CONSECUTION in the steps and results dealt with. In most of the
schools in our country--in a degree, in all of them--these two
fundamental elements of all right education, namely, true work of
the learner's mind, and a natural and true consecution in not only
the processes of each day or lesson, but of one day on another, and
of each term on the preceding, are things quite overlooked, and
undreamed of, or, at the best, imperfectly and fragmentarily
attempted. But these, in so far as, he can secure their benefits,
are just the elements that make the thinker, the scholar, the man
of real learning or intellectual power in any pursuit.--_New-York
Teacher, December,_ 1859.

A like view begins to show itself in the writings of some of the English
educationists. The object-teaching is recognized as being, in most
instances, at least, too promiscuous and disorderly for the ends of a
true discipline and development, and certainly, therefore, even for
securing the largest amount of information. It too much excludes the
later, systematic study of the indispensable branches, and supplants the
due exercise of the reasoning powers, by too habitual restriction of the
mind's activities to the channels of sense and perception. Isaac Taylor,
in his _Home Education_, admits the benefits of this teaching for the
mere outset of the pupil's course, but adds: 'For the rest, that is to
say, whatever _reaches its end in the bodily perceptions_, I think we
can go but a very little way without so giving the mind a bent _toward
the lower faculties as must divert it from the exercise of the higher._'
This thought is no mere fancy. It rests on a great law of _derivation_,
true in mind as in the body; that inanition and comparative loss of one
set of powers necessarily follows a too habitual activity of a different
set. Thus it is that, in the body, over-use of the nervous, saps the
muscular energies, and excessive muscular exertion detracts from the
vivacity of the mind. Logically, then, when carried to any excess over
just sufficient to secure the needed clear perceptions and the
corresponding names for material objects and qualities, the
object-lesson system at once becomes the special and fitting education
for the ditcher, the 'hewer of wood,' the mere human machine in any
employment or station in life, where a quick and right taking to the
work at the hand is desirable, and any thing higher is commonly thought
to be in the way; but it is not the complete education for the
independent mind, the clear judgment and good taste, which must grow out
of habits of weighing and appreciating also thousands of _non_-material
considerations; and which are characteristics indispensable in all the
more responsible positions of life, and that in reality may adorn and
help even in the humblest. In a recently published report or address on
a recommendation respecting the teaching of Sciences, made by the
English 'Committee of Council on Education,' in 1859, Mr. Buckmaster
says:

'The object-lessons given in some schools are so vague and
unsystematic, that I doubt very much if they have any educational
or practical value. I have copied the following lessons from the
outline of a large elementary school; Monday, twenty minutes past
nine to ten, Oral Lesson--_The Tower of Babel_; Tuesday, _The
Senses_; Wednesday, _Noah's Ark_; Thursday, _Fire_; Friday, _The
Collect for Sunday_. What can come of this kind of teaching, I am
at a loss to understand. Now, a connected and systematic course of
lessons on any of the natural sciences, or on the specimens
contained in one of Mr. Dexter's cabinets, would have been of far
greater educational value, and more interesting to the children.
_This loose and desultory habit of teaching encourages a loose and
desultory habit of thought_; it is for this reason that I attach
great value to _consecutive courses_ of instruction. I think, it
will not be difficult to show that the study of _almost any branch
of elementary science_ not only has a direct bearing on many of the
practical affairs of every-day life, but also _supplies all the
conditions necessary to stimulate and strengthen the intellectual
faculties in a much greater degree_ than many of the subjects now
taught in our elementary schools.'

All the lines of our investigation, as well as the most competent
testimony, thus converge in showing that the object-lesson and
common-things teaching is but a partial and preliminary resource in the
business of education; that, to avoid working positive harm, it must be
restricted within due limits of age, capacity, and subject; that it is
not, therefore, the real and total present desideratum of our schools;
and that, subsequently to the completion of the more purely sensuous and
percipient phase of the mind, and to the acquirement of the store of
simpler ideas and information, and the degree of capacity, that ought to
be secured during that period--hence, from an age not later than eleven,
or according as circumstances may determine, thirteen years--all the
true and desirable ends of education, whether they be right mental
habits and tastes, discipline and power of the faculties, or a large
information and practical command of the acquisitions made--all these
ends, we say, are thenceforward most certainly secured by the systematic
prosecution, in a proper method, of the usually recognized distinct
branches or departments of scientific knowledge. Let then, 'common
things,' _et id genus omne_, early enough give place to thorough-going
study of the elements of Geometry, of Geography, Arithmetic, Language,
(including Grammar,) of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Botany,
Physiology, and something of their derivations and applications. Thus
shall our schools produce a race not of mere curious _gazers_, but of
conscious and purposive investigators; not a generation of intellectual
truants and vagabonds, but one of definitely skilled cultivators of
definite domains in handicraft, art, or science.

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