The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, June, 1862

Among the decisive and important steps marking the revival of educational interest among us, is that looking to the introduction into our primary schools of the simple lessons for what is called the 'education of the senses,' and what is in fact the solicitation of the perceptive faculties, and the storing of them, with their proper ideas, through the avenues of sense. When employed about observing or finding and naming the parts or qualities and uses of objects, as glass, leather, milk, wood, a tree, the human body, etc., this sort of teaching takes the name of 'Object Lessons;' when it rises to philosophizing in the more obvious and easy stages about natural phenomena, as rain, snow, etc., or about parts of the system of nature, as oceans, mountains, stars, etc., it is sometimes termed 'Lessons in Common Things.' In the year 1860, Mr. E.A. Sheldon, the enterprising superintendent of the schools of that city, first introduced with some degree of completeness and system, this sort of teaching into the primary schools of Oswego. In March, 1861, under the leadership also, as we infer, of their superintendent, Mr. William H. Wells, the Educational Board of the city of Chicago adopted a still more minutely systematized and more extensive course of instruction of this sort, arranged in ten successive grades, and intended to advance from the simple study of objects, forms, colors, etc., gradually to the prosecution of the regular and higher studies. The greater naturalness, life-likeness, and interest of this kind of mental occupation for young learners, over the old plan of restricting them mainly to the bare alphabet, with barren spelling, reading, definitions, and so on, is at once obvious in principle and confirmed by the facts; and for the younger classes—a stage of the utmost delicacy and importance to the future habits of the learner—the fruits must appear in increased readiness of thought and fullness of ideas, and in a preparation for more true and enlarged subsequent comprehension of the proper branches of study; provided, we must add, that these also, when reached, be taught by a method best suited to their subject-matter and to the higher range of mental activity required to deal with it. Whether, now, the object-lesson system and plan is the one competent to carry on the learner through those later studies, is another and larger question, and one to which we shall presently recur.

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: