the teacher that represses or criticizes this first point of genius, or who can not
pardon the grave faults of technique inevitable at this age when ambition ought
to be too great for power, is not an educator but a repressor, a pedagogic
Philistine committing, like so many of his calling in other fields, the
unpardonable sin against budding promise, always at this age so easily blighted.
Just as the child of six or seven should be encouraged in his strong instinct to
draw the most complex scenes of his daily life, so now the inner life should find
graphic utterance in all its intricacy up to the full limit of unrepressed courage.
For the great majority, on the other hand, who only appreciate and will never
create, the mind, if it have its rights, will be stored with the best images and
sentiments of art; for at this time they are best remembered and sink deepest into
heart and life. Now, although the hand may refuse, the fancy paints the world in
brightest hues and fairest forms; and such an opportunity for infecting the soul
with vaccine of ideality, hope, optimism, and courage in adversity, will never
come again. I believe that in few departments are current educational theories
and practises so hard on youth of superior gifts, just at the age when all become
geniuses for a season, very brief for most, prolonged for some, and permanent
for the best. We do not know how to teach to, see, hear, and feel when the sense
centers are most indelibly impressible, and to give relative rest to the hand
during the years when its power of accuracy is abated and when all that is good
is idealized furthest, and confidence in ability to produce is at its lowest ebb.
Finally, our divorce between industrial and manual training is abnormal, and
higher technical education is the chief sufferer. Professor Thurston, of Cornell,
who has lately returned from a tour of inspection abroad, reported that to equal
Germany we now need: "1. Twenty technical universities, having in their
schools of engineering 50 instructors and 500 students each. 2. Two thousand
technical high schools or manual-training schools, each having not less than 200
students and 10 instructors." If we have elementary trade-schools, this would
mean technical high schools enough to accommodate 700,000 students, served
by 20,000 teachers. With the strong economic arguments in this direction we are
not here concerned; but that there are tendencies to unfit youth for life by
educational method and matter shown in strong relief from this standpoint, we
shall point out in a later chapter.
[Footnote 1: This I have elsewhere tried to show in detail. Criticisms of High
School Physics and Manual Training and Mechanic Arts in High Schools.
Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 193-204.]