Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/547

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THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND EDUCATION.
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been presented to it in such a manner as to interest it. In all cases where the matter is brought under the child's notice in such a way that it clearly understands it, there will not likely be much ground for complaint on the score of lack of interest. But a still further reason for lack of interest in study is that too often the teaching seems to the child to have no connection whatever with its outside life. Children soon learn to make inductions from their experience. If they can see no connection between what they are being taught and their experiences in life, there will certainly be a want of interest in their studies. It is a matter for congratulation that so much has been done in this direction. The natural method of teaching has made great progress, but much remains yet to be done. The most primitive schoolhouse in the land affords abundant facilities for the education of the child's senses, and, through them, its powers of observation. It is all contained in the simple question, Does the teacher understand the rational method of appealing to the child's intellect through its senses?

The teacher ought to be a close student of Nature. There is placed under his control a large number of young persons of the most varied possibilities. In the schoolroom we have a collection of members of the highest order of animal life. Every member of the class should be made to realize that there is the possibility of a great future in store for him. The imagination and ambition should be enlarged in wise directions. It is quite true these ambitions may never be realized; but the mental stimulus they give the growing youth is of a most valuable character. A high code of ethics should be found in every school; but this must have its fountain head with the teacher. I am not confounding ethics with religion. There was a high ideal of ethics in Plato and Aristides, though pagans; there was a high code of ethics revealed in the life of Darwin, though an agnostic; and there was a high code of ethics running through the life and writings of F. D. Maurice, who was a beautiful type of Christian character. Schiller, the German poet, has truly said: "It is an admirable proof of infinite wisdom that what is noble and benevolent beautifies the human countenance; what is base and hateful imprints upon it a revolting expression." Through the child's senses, feelings, and affections you must reach its soul, whatever this may be regarded to mean by different schools of thought, avoid inflicting scars upon it, and endeavor to erase those that may unfortunately have been made by former bad environments. Such a work as Mantegazza's Expression and Physiognomy should be in the hands of every teacher.

But the teacher must carry his studies in this direction further than that of mere expression and physiognomy. He ought