The greater the scholar or teacher, the greater is his contempt for text-books of grammar. Old Roger Ascham, tutor to Queen Elizabeth of England, delights in saying that his distinguished pupil “never yet tooke Greek or Latin Grammer in her hande after the first declininge of a Noun and a Verb.” A more celebrated teacher, John Locke, complained that “Our children are forced to stick unreasonably in grammatical flats and shallows.” Dr. Parkhurst said recently: “The way for a boy to talk correctly is to talk subject to correction--not to apply himself to linguistic anatomy, surgery and dissection. I studied grammar in the ordinary way about three weeks--just long enough to find out what a genius some people can show for putting asunder what God hath joined together. It is a splendid device for using up a boy’s time and souring his disposition.”
Well, all this routine is being imposed upon the children, and the little wretches are losing spirit and impulse through the delay to which the cleverer ones are subjected and the lack of clearness which causes the stupider ones to despair. Nothing whatever is done toward training the senses and physical intelligence of the child. They do this sort of thing abroad, but for some reason Americans are not allowed to follow the foreigners’ example. Apparently our children have a divine call to whatever handiwork may fall to their lot thereafter in the world, for certainly they get as little training in it as the twelve apostles had in theology before they were called to preach and teach. The French or German, the Swedish child, and even many a Russian child, is taught to use his hands and his eyes and all his senses that can be applied to practical affairs, but the American child gets no opportunity of that sort, except in the few schools which conform more or less to the kindergarten system. We have a few technical schools in large cities, but they are regarded as means to finish a course of education instead of part of the ordinary elementary instruction.
When technical education, which means simply the use of the hands and eyes, is spoken of to members of Boards of Education and Superintendents of common school systems in large cities, the result is generally an impatient gesture or word. There is no room for that sort of thing, we are told; beside, it is a mere notion of theorists. The general run of children are not equal to it and would be more troubled than benefited by it.