After watching the educational struggle which
has gone on for ages between truth and error, and
observing that scarcely a century has passed which
has not witnessed a controversy more or less severe
between Christian and papal methods of instruction,
one is prepared to believe that this is a subject
inseparably connected with the history of
nations. This being true, we must expect to find
ourselves in the midst of the controversy to-day.
It needs but a casual glance at current history to
confirm this fact; for minds are troubled because of
existing evils, and hearts are open for educational
truth.
If we are inclined to think that the principles of
Christian education are new and before unheard of,
we have but to catch the thoughts which have
swayed true educators from the time of Christ
to the present day to know that the same spirit
has been at work in all ages to draw the hearts of
men to God.
Christian
education
exemplified
by Christ
The advent of Christ was a wonderful
event. “The Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us.” That man might behold
the workings of God in human
flesh, and see here the manifestation of truth,
Christ was born. His was pre-eminently a work
of education, and His system was Christian education.
By this means, Heaven again reached earth,
and clasped it to her bosom. Men, in their shortsightedness,
were unable to comprehend the spiritual
teachings of the Son of God, and often His
most powerful lessons fell unappreciated on the
ears of the multitudes, and even on the ears of
the apostles.
The Holy
Spirit the
teacher
Much as the life of Christ has done for
the world, there has never been a man,
or a nation of men, who have fully followed
his teachings. Error has ever
been mixed with truth, and the educators of the
world have failed to see the realization of their
hopes because of this partial grasp of truth.
Christ, when rejected by the world, did not
withdraw entirely, and leave man to his fate; but
He sent forth His Spirit, the Spirit of Truth as
an educator, leading minds into truth. This working
of the Spirit is plainly seen, for one man has
been directed to one phase of true education,
while another, perhaps a contemporary worker, or
perhaps a successor, it may be a fellow countryman,
or one at a great distance, has picked up
another thread in the skein, and developed another
thought for the world.
True education
always
represented
The world has never long been left without
some representative of Christian education.
In attempting to define the term
which stands as the subject of this chapter,
attention is called to the partial work
of reform which has been accomplished by men
whom the world recognizes as educators. The
errors of a false education, so prevalent in times
past, and still recognized as a part of the educational
systems now in vogue, stand in strong contrast
to the correct ideas advocated by these men
at various times.
Latin and
word-study
in
papal
schools
The men whose ideas are given in this
chapter lived and wrought after the
Reformation; and in order to reveal the
error against which they worked, it is
necessary to consider the methods of
instruction to be found in papal schools. Similar
thoughts are found on previous pages, but, for the
sake of contrast, they are here repeated.
Painter says: “When a young man had acquired a
thorough mastery of the Latin language for all purposes;
when he was well versed in the theological
and philosophical opinions of his preceptors; when
he was skillful in dispute, and could make a brilliant
display from the resources of a well-stored
memory, he had reached the highest points to
which the Jesuits sought to lead him. Originality
and independence of mind, love of truth for its
own sake, the power of reflecting, and of forming
correct judgments, were not merely neglected, they
were suppressed in the Jesuits’ system.”[171] Karl
Schmidt likewise testifies in the words, “Books,
words, had been the subjects of instruction....
The knowledge of things was wanting. Instead
of things themselves, words about the things were
taught.” “Learning by doing” is the rule in
Christian education. A large amount of Latin
and Greek was, and is still, the rule in the
papal educational system, and these languages
were taught, not for the sake of thought, but
merely for the words.
Reformers
oppose
mere
language
study
The world had for a century been bound
by the study of the classics. This bondage
was broken by the Reformation, but
the world returned thither again. Milton,
the poet of the seventeenth century,
wrote: “Language is but the instrument conveying
to us things useful to be known. Though a
linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues
that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not
studied the solid things in them, as well as the
words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be
esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman
competently wise in his mother dialect only....
We do amiss to spend seven or eight years
in scraping together so much Latin and Greek as
might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully
in one year.”[172]
Things
studied
instead of
language
Ratich, a German educator of the sixteenth
century, said: “We are in bondage
to Latin. The Greeks and Saracens
would never have done so much for posterity
if they had spent their youth in acquiring a
foreign tongue. We must study our own language,
and then the sciences.” “Everything first in the
mother tongue,” and “nothing on mere authority,”
were rules in his schoolroom. Comenius, the
renowned teacher, used to say: “If so much time
is to be spent on the language alone, when is the
boy to know about things,—when will he learn
philosophy, when religion, and so forth? He will
consume his life in preparing for life.”
Mechanical
teaching
is
papal
How exactly this applies to the word-study
of our boys and girls to-day! It
matters not whether it be Latin or English
grammar; indeed, it may be that
other mode of expression,—some form of mathematics,—where
time and energy are devoted to
the process merely. A failure to make the development
of thought—independent thinking, in
fact—the main object in instruction, stamps any
method of teaching as papal, no matter by what
name it is known, or by whom the subjects are
taught. It was the life work of Comenius to counteract
this tendency, as the following principles
show. He insisted that “nothing should be taught
that is not of solid utility.” “Nothing is to be
learned by heart that is not first thoroughly
understood.” “Theologians and physicians should
study Greek.” “Doing can be learned only by
doing.” That educational reformers of to-day are
advocating these same principles will be seen later.
This is a part of Christian education.
Character-building
the aim
in true
education
John Locke, an English educator of the
seventeenth century, had truth on the
subject of education. Of the languages,
he says: “When I consider what ado is
made about a little Latin and Greek,
how many years are spent in it, and what a noise
and business it makes to no purpose, I can hardly
forbear thinking that parents of children still live
in fear of the schoolmaster’s rod, which they look
on as the only instrument of education; as if a
language or two were its whole business.”
Character was valued by this man, and his statement
as to the relative importance of study is
valuable to parents and teachers. “Reading
and writing and learning I allow to be necessary,
but yet not the chief business. I imagine you think
him a very foolish fellow that should not value a
virtuous or a wise man infinitely before a scholar.
Not but that I think learning a great help to both,
in well-disposed minds; but yet it must be confessed
also that in others not so disposed, it helps
them only to be the more foolish or worse men.
How Locke
would
choose a
teacher
“I say this, that when you consider
the breeding of your son, and are looking
out for a schoolmaster, or a tutor, you
would not have, as is usual, Latin and
logic only in your thoughts. Learning must be
had, but in the second place, as subservient only to
greater qualities. Seek out somebody that may
know how discreetly to frame his manners: place
him in hands where you may, as much as possible,
secure his innocence, cherish and nurse up the
good, and gently correct and weed out any bad
inclinations, and settle in him good habits. This
is the main point; and this being provided for,
learning may be had into the bargain.”
To how great an extent are Protestants following
this excellent advice? In what schools for Protestant
boys and girls is innocence cherished? where
is the good nourished? where are bad inclinations
gently weeded out, and good habits settled? where
do these things take a position ahead of book
learning?
“Virtue,” continues Locke, “as the first and
most necessary of those endowments that belong
to a man or gentleman, was based on religion. As
the foundation of this, there ought very early to be
imprinted on his mind a true notion of God.”
Here one finds a clear conception of Christian
education, which parents of to-day would do well
to study.
Cramming
a papal
method
The study of the classics, together with
the memory work which was the chief
characteristic of these studies, was not
the only defect in papal education; hence
it is not the only error from which educators, led,
as one must believe, by the spirit of truth, have
from time to time broken away. The cramming
system, so justly denounced by thinking minds as
one of the most far-reaching defects of the present
school system, is a mark of papal education wherever
it may be found. And probably no generation
has passed which has not heard some voice lifted
against this pernicious practice of the schoolroom.
The God of heaven recognizes that the human
mind contains the highest possibilities of earth;
the child is a part of himself; and when wrong
methods of education are used in dealing with
developing minds, He, the head of the body, of
which we are members, feels the hurt; so it is
that Christian education is an emanation from
the mind of God.
Montaigne, speaking of education in the sixteenth
century, said: “It is the custom of schoolmasters
to be eternally thundering in their pupils’
ears, as if they were pouring into a funnel, while
the pupils’ business is only to repeat what their
masters have said.” He is taught that “a tutor
... should, according to the capacity he has to
deal with, put it [the child’s mind] to the test, permitting
his pupil himself to taste and relish things,
and of himself to choose and discern them....
Too much learning stifles the soul, just as plants
are stifled by too much moisture, and lamps by too
much oil. Our pedants plunder knowledge from
books, and carry it on the tips of their lips, just as
birds carry seeds to feed their young.... We
toil and labor only to stuff the memory, but leave
the conscience and understanding unfurnished and
void.”
Twentieth
century
schools
cram
As late as January, 1900, Edward Bok,
editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal,
wrote concerning the cramming process
of the popular schools: “Do American
men and women realize that in five cities of our
country alone there were, during the last school
term, over sixteen thousand children between the
ages of eight and fourteen taken out of the public
schools because their nervous systems were
wrecked, and their minds were incapable of going
on any further in the infernal cramming system
which exists to-day in our schools?... Conservative
medical men who have given their lives to the
study of children place the number whose health is
shattered by overstudy at more than 50,000 each
year.... It is cramming, cramming, cramming.
A certain amount of ‘ground must be gone over,’ as
it is usually called. Whether the child is physically
able to work the ‘ground’ does not enter into the
question.”
The writer dwells upon the evils of night study,
and continues: “True reform always begins at
the root of all evils, and the root of the evil
of home study lies in the cramming system.”
Mrs. Lew
Wallace
on cramming
Mrs. Lew Wallace says: “Go into any
public school, and you will see girls
pallid as day lilies and boys with flat
chests and the waxen skin that has been
named the school complexion. Every incentive
and stimulus is held out; dread of blame, love
of praise, prizes, medals, badges, the coveted
flourish in the newspapers—the strain never
slackens.... The burden is books. The tasks
imposed on the young are fearful. The effort
seems to be to make text-books as difficult and
complicated as possible instead of smoothing the
hill so high and hard to climb.”
In her characteristic style, Mrs. Wallace condemns
the usual methods of teaching arithmetic
and language:—
“Said a mother, ‘Two and two are what?’”
“The boy hesitated.
“‘Surely you know that two and two make
four.’
“‘Yes, mama; but I am trying to remember
the process.’
“Process, indeed!...
“One day Mary was bending over a tablet
writing words on both sides of a straight line,
like multiplied numerators and denominators.
“‘What are you at now?’ asked grandma.
“Mary answered with pride, ‘I am diagraming.’
“‘In the name of sense, what’s diagraming?’
“‘It’s mental discipline. Miss Cram says I
have a fine mind that needs developing. Look
here, grandma, now this is the correct placing of
elements. Fourscore and seven are joined by the
word and, a subordinate connective copulative
conjunction. It modifies years, the attribute of
the preposition. Ago is a modal verb of past
time. The root of the first clause is—.
“‘Why, that’s Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg.
I keep it in my work-basket and know it by heart.’
“‘Indeed! Well, ours is a simple personal—.’
“‘That’s enough. If President Lincoln had
been brought up on such stuff, that speech
would never have been written. He called a
noun a noun, and was done with it.’”[173]
Montaigne could scarcely have given a more
vivid description had he seen the grind of modern
education, where grades are strictly kept, and
all children, the strong and the tender alike, are
forced through the same process. There is no
relief save in dropping by the wayside when
disease fastens its tendrils on the human frame.
Against this system all educational reformers
have striven, but it remains with us still. Christian
parents, could they see the relative value
of soul and mental culture, would demand the
establishment of a new order of things. Christian
education alone can effect a cure.
Nature-study
to
prevent
cramming
Comenius strove to correct this error
by the introduction of nature-study.
He says: “The right instruction of
youth does not consist in cramming
them with a mass of words, phrases, sentences,
and opinions collected from authors, but in unfolding
the understanding, that many little streams
may flow therefrom as from a living fountain....
Why shall we not, instead of dead books,
open the living book of nature? Not the shadows
of things, but the things themselves, which
make an impression on the senses and the
imagination, are to be brought before youth.
By actual observation, not by a verbal description
of things, must instruction begin....
Men must be led as far as possible to draw
their wisdom, not from books, but from a consideration
of heaven and earth, oaks and beeches;
that is, they must know and examine things
themselves, and not simply be contented with the
observations and testimony of others.”
His fundamental principles were, “Education is
a development of the whole man,” and “Many
studies are to be avoided as dissipating the mental
strength.”
Modern
science
study and
doubt
A long stride was taken by Comenius
toward breaking the mechanical teaching
of the papacy. The error into which
his followers fall is in making nature
the all in all, failing to recognize the Word of
God as the only guide and interpreter of natural
phenomena. This mistake has led modern schools
to take the position in science studies which is
described in the following words by Frank S. Hoffman,
professor of philosophy in one of America’s
leading theological schools: “Every man, because
he is a man, is endowed with powers for
forming judgments, and he is placed in this world
to develop and apply those powers to all the
objects with which he comes in contact.”[174] In
such words does he plainly state that human reason
is the means by which man is to obtain his wisdom.
Then follows his explanation of the method
of procedure when reason has been thus exalted.
These are his words: “In every sphere of investigation
he [man] should begin with doubt, and
the student will make the most rapid progress who
has acquired the art of doubting well.”
Suppose, now, that the subject under consideration
is some newly discovered natural phenomenon,
and the student of nature wishes to
investigate. According to Professor Hoffman, a
modern theologian, and hence a teacher, he must
“begin with doubt, and the student will make the
most rapid progress who has acquired the art of
doubting well.” Christian education, in contrast
with this method, says, “Through faith we
understand.”
Methods in
Sciences
and
theology
That this method of study—to begin
with doubt—is not only applicable to
the natural sciences, but to the study
of spiritual truths also, Professor Hoffman
continues: “We ask that every student of
theology take up the subject precisely as he would
any other science: that he begin with doubt, and
carefully weigh the arguments for every doctrine,
accepting or rejecting each assertion according as
the balance of probabilities is for or against it....
We believe that even the teachings of Jesus
should be viewed from this standpoint, and should
be accepted or rejected on the ground of their
inherent reasonableness.”
Thus the spirit of doubt with which the child
is taught to study nature, goes with him through
all his school years; it grows with his growth;
and if he enters a theological school to prepare
for the ministry, he is confronted by the same
method in the investigation of the teachings of
Christ. What wonder that the results of modern
education are a class of infidels and skeptics?
The words of President Harper, of Chicago
University, are worth repeating: “It is difficult
to prophesy what the results of our present
method of educating the youth will be in fifty
years. We are training the mind in the public
schools, but the moral side in the child’s nature is
almost entirely neglected.” Not only is it neglected,
but faith is trampled to the ground, and human
reason exalted above its prostrate form. “When
the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the
earth?” A pertinent question, indeed, for educators
to answer.
The
method of
“doubt”
is Socratic
This method of doubting is papal, and
can be traced directly to Socrates, the
Greek. Of him, we read: “Socrates
was not a ‘philosopher,’ nor yet a
‘teacher,’ but rather an ‘educator,’ having for his
function ‘to rouse, persuade, and rebuke’....
Socrates’ theory of education had for its basis a
profound and consistent conception.”[175]
In dealing with his students, the same authority
thus states his method of procedure: “Taking his
departure from some apparently remote principle
or proposition to which the respondent yielded a
ready assent, Socrates would draw from it an
unexpected but undeniable consequence which was
plainly inconsistent with the opinion impugned.
In this way he brought his interlocutor to pass
judgment upon himself, and reduced him to a state
of doubt or perplexity. ‘Before I ever met you,’
says Meno, in a dialogue which Plato called by his
name, ‘I was told that you spent your time in
doubting and leading others to doubt: and it is
a fact that your witcheries and spells have brought
me to that condition; you are like the torpedo;
as it benumbs anyone who approaches and touches
it, so do you.’”
We can readily trace the connection between
the Socratic method of doubting and the same
method as advocated by the professor of the
theological school, for “his [Socrates’s] practice
led to the Platonic revival,” and the Platonic
system of education and its introduction in modern
schools has been too thoroughly discussed in previous
pages to need repetition here.
“Doubt”
taught in
modern
schools
The Socratic method of teaching—the
development of doubt—seems to characterize
much of the teaching of to-day,
if we can judge from an article which
appeared in the Outlook, written by the editor,
Lyman Abbott. The educational work is thus
described:—
“The educational processes of our time—possibly
of all time—are largely analytical and
critical. They consist chiefly in analyzing the
subjects brought to the student for examination,
separating them into their constituent parts, considering
how they have been put together, and
sitting in judgment on the finished fabric or on
the process by which it has been constructed.
“Thus all, or nearly all, study is analytical,
critical,—a process of inquiry and investigation.
The process presupposes an inquiring if not a
skeptical mood. Doubt is the pedagogue which
leads the pupil to knowledge.
“Does he study the human body?—Dissection
and anatomy are the foundations of his study.
Chemistry?—The laboratory furnishes him the
means of analysis and inquiry into physical substances.
History?—He questions the statements
which have been unquestioned heretofore, ransacks
libraries for authorities in ancient volumes
and more ancient documents. Literature?—The
poem which he read only to enjoy he now subjects
to the scalpel, inquires whether it really is
beautiful, why it is beautiful, how its meter should
be classified, how its figures have been constructed.
Philosophy?—He subjects his own consciousness
to a process of vivisection in an endeavor to ascertain
the physiology and anatomy of the human
spirit; brings his soul into the laboratory that he
may learn its chemical constituents.
“Meanwhile the constructive and synthetic process
is relegated to a second place, or lost sight
of altogether. Does he study medicine?—He
gives more attention to diagnosis than to therapeutics;
to the analysis of disease than to the
problem how to overcome it. Law?—He spends
more time in analyzing cases than in developing
power to grasp great principles and apply them
in the administration of justice to varying conditions.
The classics?—It is strange if he has not
at graduation spent more weeks in the syntax
and grammar of the language than he has spent
hours in acquiring and appreciating the thought
and the spirit of the great classic authors. It
has been well and truly said of the modern student
that he does not study grammar to understand
Homer, he reads Homer to get the Greek
grammar. His historical study has given him
dates, events, a mental historical chart; perhaps,
too, it has given him a scholar’s power to discriminate
between the true and the false, the
historical and the mythical in ancient legends:
but not to many has it given an understanding
of the significance of events, a comprehension of,
or even new light upon, the real meaning of the
life of man on the earth. Has he been studying
philosophy?—Happy he is if, as a result of his
analysis of self-consciousness, he has not become
morbid respecting his own inner life, or cynically
skeptical concerning the inner life of others.
“It is doubtless in the realm of ethics and
religion that the disastrous results of a too exclusive
analytical process and a too exclusive critical
spirit are seen. Carrying the same spirit,
applying the same methods, to the investigation
of religion, the Bible becomes to him simply a
collection of ancient literature, whose sources,
structure, and forms he studies, whose spirit, he,
at least for the time, forgets; worship is a ritual
whose origin, rise, and development he investigates;
whose real significance as an expression
of penitence, gratitude, and consecration he loses
sight of altogether. Faith is a series of tenets
whose biological development he traces; or a
form of consciousness whose relation to brain
action he inquires into; or whose growth by evolutionary
processes out of earlier states he endeavors
to retrace.
“Vivisection is almost sure sooner or later to
become a post-mortem; and the subject of it,
whether it be a flower, a body, an author, or an
experience, generally dies under the scalpel. It
is for this reason that so many students in school,
academy, and college lose not merely their theology,
which is perhaps no great loss, but their
religion, which is an irreparable loss, while they
are acquiring an education.”[176]
Ministers
accept
Socratic
reasoning
This spirit of doubt characterizes the
teachings of modern higher critics. The
critical study of the Bible, Dr. Newton
tells us, “has disposed forever of the
claim that it is such an oracle of God as we can
submit our intellects to unquestioningly.” “Dr.
Briggs says that there are three co-ordinate
authorities—the church, the Bible, and reason.
‘But when they disagree, which is to be the final
court of appeal?’ asks Dr. Newton. ‘They do
disagree widely to-day.’ Dr. Newton believes
that the ultimate court of appeal is reason,—not
the reason of Thomas Paine and the present-day
realistic rationalists, but rather the ‘Divine Reason’
of Socrates and of Plato.... Reason in this
sense means not merely or chiefly the rationalizing
faculty, but the moral nature—the whole spiritual
being of man. ‘It is what conscience teaches, as
well as what intellect affirms, that, together with
the voice of the heart, forms the trinity of true
authority—of reason.’”[177]
Secular
methods
and religious
truths
This is indeed the exaltation of reason. There
is, in such a system, no room whatever for faith.
W. T. Harris, United States Commissioner
of Education, writing of Sunday-schools,
attributes their decline to the
adoption, by Sunday-school teachers, of
the methods employed in the secular
schools. A few words from him will suffice. He
says: “With the spectacle of the systematic organization
of the secular schools and the improvement
of methods of teaching before them, the leaders in
the church have endeavored to perfect the methods
of the religious instruction of youth. They have
met the following dangers which lay in their path;
namely, first, the danger of adopting methods of instruction
in religion which were fit and proper only
for secular instruction; second, the selection of religious
matter for the course of study which did not
lead in a most direct manner toward vital religion,
although it would readily take on a pedagogic
form.”[178]
In order to show the reason why methods which
are perfectly proper in giving secular education
are not adapted to religious instruction, Mr. Harris
explains: “The secular school gives positive
instruction. It teaches mathematics, natural science,
history, and language. Knowledge of the
facts can be precise and accurate, and a similar
knowledge of the principles can be arrived at.
The self-activity of the pupil is ... demanded
by the teacher of the secular school. The pupil
must not take things on authority, but must test
and verify.... He must trace out the mathematical
demonstrations.... He must learn the
method of investigating facts.... The spirit of
the secular school therefore comes to be an enlightening
one, although not of the highest order.”
The whole tendency of secular education, according
to Mr. Harris, is to develop a spirit of
investigation and proof. This, he says, is a means
of enlightening, but not of the highest order. The
highest means of enlightening the mind is by faith.
That is God’s method. Christian schools must
avoid the secular methods of instruction, adopting
in their stead that highest form of enlightening,—faith.
That separates Christian schools from secular
schools in methods as well as in the subject
matter taught.
Secular
methods
require
material
proof
This secular method of investigation
saps the spiritual life, and is responsible
for the decline in modern Protestantism.
Mr. Harris continues: “Religious education,
it is obvious in giving the highest
results of thought and life to the young, must cling
to the form of authority, and not attempt to borrow
the methods of mathematics, science, and
history from the secular school. Such borrowing
will result only in giving the young people an overweening
confidence in the finality of their own
immature judgments. They will become conceited
and shallow-minded.... Against this danger of
sapping or undermining all authority in religion by
the introduction of the methods of the secular
school which lay stress on the self-activity of the
child, the Sunday-school has not been sufficiently
protected in the more recent years of its history.”
If the adoption of secular methods of teaching in
the Sunday-school, where children are instructed
one day only in the week, has so weakened Protestantism,
what must be the result when children
are daily taught in the public schools by methods
which tend always to exalt human reason above
faith. It is little wonder that five days’ instruction
can not be counteracted by the very best
Sabbath instruction even in those schools which
have not adopted secular methods in teaching
the Bible.
Protestants should learn from this that in starting
Christian schools the methods followed in the
secular schools can not be adopted. Here is the
stumbling-block over which many are apt to fall.
Religious instruction demands methods of teaching
which will develop faith.
Religion in
schools of
Comenius
I can not refrain from recurring to the
teachings of Comenius, since they so
strongly opposed the methods of education
followed by those who, to-day, claim
to be his disciples. James H. Blodgett says:
“Comenius, anticipating more modern leaders
in the philosophy and the art of education, prepared
an outline of the Pansophic School about
1650, in which the work of a complete education
was divided for seven classes. The general school
was to spend the first hour of the morning in
hymns, Bible reading, and prayers.”[179] “Class
III, the Atrial,” we are told by the same writer,
“was to have the inscription, ‘Let no one enter who
can not speak.’ In this class the boys should
begin to read the Bible.... The history of this
class is the famous deeds of the Biblical narrative.”
Of Class IV we read: “A special collection of
hymns and psalms must be arranged for this class;
also an epitome of the New Testament, which
should comprise a continuous life of Christ and His
apostles, compiled from the four Gospels....
The accessory study is Greek.... It is comparatively
easy to learn to read the New Testament
[in Greek], and this is the chief utility of the
study.” Bible study formed an important feature
of the work of Class V, for concerning its work we
read: “A Bible Manual, also, called the Gate of
the Sanctuary, is to be placed in the pupils’ hands.
This is to contain the whole of Scripture history in
the words of the Bible, but so digested that it may
be read in one year.”
Class VII was theological; and the reader will
readily note the difference between the course of
instruction marked out for it by Comenius, and
that suggested by Professor Hoffman for theological
students in the twentieth century. “Inscription
over the door: ‘Let no one enter who is
irreligious.’ ... The class book should be a work
dealing with the last stage of wisdom on earth,
that is to say, the communion of souls with God.
Universal history should be studied, and in particular
the history of the church for whose sake the
world exists.... The future minister must learn
how to address a congregation, and should be
taught the laws of sacred oratory.”
Let it be remembered that Comenius was a
bishop of the Moravian Brethren, a denomination
noted for its extensive missionary work, its missions
dotting the earth. Their activity in church work
can readily be accounted for by their system of
education. Any Protestant church which wishes
to survive, and desires the spread of its principles,
must see that its children are educated spiritually
as well as mentally and physically.
Christian
education
emphasizes
practical
We are now brought to consider another
very important phase of education,—the
relation of mental to physical training.
False systems have ever exalted
the former to the neglect of the latter. Christ
combined the two, and educators from the seventeenth
century on have presented correct views on
the subject.
Locke begins his “Thoughts on Education” with
these words: “A sound mind in a sound body is a
short but full description of a happy state in this
world.” “The attainment of this happy condition,”
observes Painter, “is the end of education....
In his [Locke’s] mind, the function of education
was to form noble men well equipped for the
duties of practical life.”[180]
A pure soul in a sound body should precede
study of mere facts. Locke’s ideas of education
are thus described by Quick: “His aim
was to give a boy a robust mind in a robust body.
His body was to endure hardness, his reason was
to teach him self-denial. But this result was to
be brought about by leading, not driving him. He
was to be trained, not for the university, but
for the world. Good principles, good manners,
and discretion were to be cared for first of all;
intelligence and intellectual activity next; and
actual knowledge last of all.... The prevalent
drill in the grammar of the classical languages
was to be abandoned, and the mother-tongue
was to be carefully studied.... In everything
the part the pupil was to play in life was steadily
to be kept in view.”
And yet to-day, when the editor of one of our
magazines proposed that our university students
discuss the question, “What order of studies is
best suited to fit the average man for his duties
in the world of to-day?” or, “What is the relative
importance of the various branches of education
in fitting a man to secure his own happiness and
rendering him a useful citizen and neighbor?” the
president of Yale University replied: “Some of
the men hesitate to give the official sanction of
the university to a debate on short notice on
questions of which most of the contestants know
very little. Why should not our university students
know and choose the practical studies? If
they do not know them, why not?”[181]
Manual
training
and mathematics
There are educators, however, who are
willing to break away from the conservatism
of the past, and who advocate
a change of methods in the elementary
schools. Such are the thoughts presented by the
superintendent of public instruction in the State
of Michigan, in a manual issued in May, 1900.
There is sound sense in the following paragraphs,
which will appeal to all who consider the needs
of a child’s mind. He says:—
“It is the duty of the schools to produce parallel
growths of all the faculties, leaving the pupil
free to swing out into the realm of choice with no
distorted tastes or shortened powers. The training
of the hand ministers to this parallel development.
“We remember when the sciences were taught
wholly from the text. Later, the principles of
Pestalozzi entered the class room, and we stood
open-eyed and open-minded, as the truths of
science were demonstrated with the proper apparatus
in the hands of the teacher. But to-day
Froebel’s idea has taken possession, and the pupil
performs the experiment. It is his hand that
creates the conditions; it is his eye that watches
the changes, his hand that notes them. Science
teaching has thus adopted the manual training
idea; and such are the results that Latin, Greek,
and mathematics are no longer considered as the
only intellective subjects for college training.
“What the manual training idea has done for
science teaching, it will do for mathematics and
other kindred subjects. The dissatisfaction among
professional and business men regarding the teaching
of practical things in our schools is wide-spread.
This is especially true regarding arithmetic,
penmanship, spelling, and language. Anyone
who doubts this needs but to enter the business
places of his own city and make inquiry.
There is a well-grounded feeling that in the mastery
of arithmetic is a discipline closely allied to
that needed in the activities of life; and when a
father discovers that his child of sixteen or seventeen
years has no idea of practical business questions
and little skill in analytical processes, he
justly charges the school with inefficiency. The
difficulty, however, is that the pupil has had no
opportunity to sense arithmetic. To him measurements
and values are indefinite ideas. He commits
facts to memory, and blindly tries to work
out problems. If his memory and imagination
are good, he stands well, and receives a high
mark. But still the work is vague; it does not
touch his life or experience; it has no meaning.
Put that pupil into a manual-training school,—the
boy in the shop, the girl in the kitchen [practical
experience has demonstrated that the girl has a
place in the shop also],—and at once mathematical
facts become distinct ideas.
“Step into the shop of a manual-training
school [or step into the well-ordered kitchen], and
observe the boy with a project before him. What
are the steps through which his mind must bring
him to the final perfection of the work.
“First, he must give the project careful study.
“Second, he must design it and make a drawing
of it. This at once puts mathematics into his
hand as well as his head. He must use square,
compass, try-square, and pencil. Exact measurements
must be made, divisions and subdivisions
calculated, lines carefully drawn.
“Third, he must select material of proper dimensions
and fiber, and then must reflect how to
apply it to the draught made so that there is
no waste.
“Fourth, he must plane and saw to the line,
correct and fit; in short, must create the project
that has had existence in his mind and upon paper
only. Then it is that his arithmetic begins to
throb with life, his judgment to command, and his
ethical sense to unfold.”
This is the testimony of teachers who have
made a practical application of arithmetic and
geometry in the carpenter shop. Children twelve
and fourteen years of age solve problems in proportion,
in square root, in measurements, and in
denominate numbers, which baffle the skill of the
ordinary high-school graduate. This, too, is a
part of Christian education. Doubtless Christ himself
gained most of his mathematical knowledge
at the carpenter’s bench.
“The most practical education,” says Hiram
Corson “(but this, so-considered, pre-eminently
practical age does not seem to know it), is the
education of the spiritual man; for it is this, and
not the education of the intellectual man, which
is, must be (or Christianity has made a great mistake),
the basis of individual character, and to
individual character ... humanity owes its sustainment.”
The proper combination, then, of
religious training and practical hand work in teaching
mathematics or language will develop stability
of character, and this is the end and aim of Christian
education.
Carpentry
not the
only practical
educator
There are, however, in this twentieth
century, various other ways of rendering
education practical; and since these
ways are a factor in the Christian training
of youth, they should receive attention.
God made no mistake when he gave to
Adam the work of tilling the soil. Since the days
of Eden, those men who have shunned the cities,
and chosen instead to dwell in rural districts, have,
as a rule, come closest to the heart of the Creator.
The true way to study the sciences is to come in
touch with Nature.
Christ
chose the
country
For this, also, we have the example of
Christ. “In training His disciples, Jesus
chose to withdraw from the confusion of
the city, to the quiet of the fields and
hills, as more in harmony with the lessons of
self-abnegation He desired to teach them. And
during His ministry He loved to gather the people
about Him under the blue heavens, on some grassy
hillside, or on the beach beside the lake. Here,
surrounded by the works of His own creation, He
could turn the thoughts of His hearers from the
artificial to the natural. In the growth and development
of nature were revealed the principles
of His kingdom. As men should lift up their eyes
to the hills of God, and behold the wonderful
works of His hands, they could learn the precious
lessons of divine truth. Christ’s teaching would
be repeated to them in the things of nature....
The things of nature take up the parables of our
Lord, and repeat His counsels.”
The teacher who has a desire to ennoble the
character of his pupils will seek a place where
Nature in her silent language gives lessons which
no human tongue can utter. Parents who desire
the best good of their sons and daughters, will,
when the light of Christian education dawns upon
their minds, hasten into the country, that the
youthful minds over which they are keeping guard
may be influenced by the natural rather than by
the artificial.
Value of
the farm in
education
It is not surprising that the best educators
who have opened their minds to
truth have taught that cultivation of the
soil, with the training of the eye and the
hand in the shop, should accompany mental discipline.
Prof. James R. Buchanan, says: “Blessed
is the farmer’s boy.... The industrial feature,
not limited to handicraft, but embracing all forms
of useful exertion, is the essential basis of a true
education; as it insures, if rightly conducted, a
worthy character, a healthy constitution, a solid
intellect, and a capacity for practical success; for it
gives vigor to the entire brain, and a far better
invigorating mental discipline than can ever be
obtained from text-books. The boy who has constructed
a wagon, or a bureau, or raised a small
crop, as instructed, has more independence of mind
and originality than the one who has only studied
text-books. The boys of Lancaster, Ohio, who
gave half their time to useful industry, made better
progress in school studies than the common school
pupils who had their whole time for study, and at
the same time presented a model of conduct in all
respects unequaled in any non-working school in
this country.”[182]
Close adherence to the text-book is the papal
method of teaching, and is a necessary accompaniment
of prescribed courses, while the humanistic
tendency is well developed. Christian schools,
because of the truths they advocate, are forced to
depart from the established order in the educational
world, and their education is rendered practical by
joining the farm and the school.
This method of teaching is already followed in
some places, showing that that system so often
designated Christian education is not a thing of
recent birth, neither is it the product of some
man’s mind. Its principles have been made known
from time to time, and these principles have been
followed more or less carefully in all periods of the
world’s history.
School
Gardens
of Modern
Europe
That the combining of soil-cultivation
and study is a practical thing, and not
a mere theory, is attested by the
words of United States Consul-General
John Karel, who reports as follows concerning
“School Gardens in Russia:” “In a good many
countries of western Europe, especially in Germany,
Austria, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and
partly in Sweden, the public village schools have
sections of land allotted to them, which are either
devoted to the use of the teachers, who take the
profits therefrom, or serve for the establishment
of school gardens. School gardens in western
Europe bear, in a certain measure, a scientific
character. Children are made to carry out in
them practically what they learn theoretically.
School
gardens in
Russia
“In Russia ... it was well known that
the land owners and peasants were in
great need of instruction in farming; consequently
schools of all kinds were established
by the ministry of agriculture throughout the
country.... For the development of the gardening
industry, schools were founded first in Penza,
in Bessarabia, ... and in 1869 a school of gardening
and viticulture was found at Nikitsk. The
work of the Nikitsk school was divided as follows:
During the winter semester there were three hours
of lessons per day and four and one-half hours of
practical study in the garden, vineyard, and in the
cellar. During the summer semester the lessons
in class lasted only one hour, or sometimes two
hours, but the practical studies occupied daily six
or even eight hours.”[183]
Teachers in these schools are enabled to support
themselves at least partially from the sale of fruits,
berries, vegetables, honey, etc., but this was not
the chief inducement in starting school gardens.
The writer last quoted continues: “The desire to
add something to the low salaries of the village
school teachers, and, on the other hand, to acquaint
as much as possible, not only children, but also
grown-up people, with gardening, sericulture, and
apiculture, has caused an increase during the last
ten years, in the number of school gardens, apiaries,
and silkworm hatcheries. In 1892 there
were about two thousand school gardens in Russia.
At the present time [1897] there are 7,521, with
532 apiaries, and 372 silkworm hatcheries.”
Mr. Mescherski, who is chief of one of the
departments of agriculture, and one of the principal
advocates of school gardens in Russia, has
stated the object of school gardens and their significance
as follows: “School gardens ... are of
importance on the following grounds. (1) Hygienic,
as being a place for physical labor in the
open air, so necessary for the teacher and pupils....
(2) Scientific educational, as acquainting
children with the life of useful plants, developing
their minds by the study of nature, and promoting
in the rising generation a regard for labor and a
more moral and æsthetic sentiment concerning
trees. (3) General economical ... and (4) personal
economical,” which refers to the support of
the teacher.
Christians
should
encourage
rural life
If the Russian government, on the liberation
of its serfs and its crown peasants,
found it so greatly to its advantage to
establish school gardens, of what lasting
benefit would they be to Christians! Protestants,
instead of crowding into the cities where the
laboring man is subject to the trades unions,
trusts, and monopolies, should seek for themselves
a few acres of land, and should see that schools
are established for the education of their children
where the mechanical text-book grind is replaced
by the study of God’s will as revealed in His Word
and works. Nature studies thus conducted, instead
of developing doubt, will strengthen the faith of
the pupil, and the students from such schools will
be fitted for citizenship not only in the governments
of earth but in the Kingdom of God. This
also is a part of the system of instruction known as
Christian education.
