Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 1876)
EtUU r'a Chair. 21 broils arc a natural consequence, ami they result in a continual change or teachers. Each successive teacher lias his own hob bies, his own plans of government, often his own text books, always his own char acter. So there U ellcetually no system. The schools are in a state of confu sion. Hut besides this, there isa pointful more tlilllcult to reach. This is to correct the habits of stuily. Do we not know that the universal teiulenoy is towards superfi ciality? That the chilil is also taught lo pnctlcu deception by the very plan of recitation? Because, if lie does not know his lesson, he invariably pretends to know. Thioiighthc stimulus of praise and re wards, he still cultivates Iiis deceit, lie thus very often grows up two-faced and supcrliciai. In this enumerating we have yet left out many grosser defects in the child's education, arising from (lie inca pabilities ot the teacher, from the copying of his character, li is hobbies, etc. If we extend our observations to the graded school, wefiud. that these imperfections are only multiplied. The desire for tlie pupil to advance, both on the purl of pa rent and teacher, beget in him habits of smattering, and shallow understanding of what he goes over. Hit mind thus grow.-, weaker riwher than stronger. So we bee that there is not oulv room for emir, but that great error exists in our schools. Children grow up through them and do not acquire more than half the real strength of mind that they should acquire, yot possess themselves of evil habits, both of thought and action, that they never cut shake 'oil'. lint let us carry our research still far titer. Let us glance f.tra moment into the college life. This comes nearer home. It i true wc come to the place where good and learned men have jurisdiction, but we do not exalt the facts when we say that here we find still more startling wrong. And why? Plainly because we are Juithcr down u stream which, in very small rills, once barely llowed on this side of a summit that is pun and high, but it descended more and more rapidly as it bore farther and farther away, and it 1ms arrived at the precipice where it pours ov er forever. The meanness of college life is prover bial. Students have access to every kind ol vice. They generally improve their opportunities to such a degree that we scarcely know where to find more scala wags and miserable scamps, as well as chuckleheads and jobbernowls. Wc ven ture to say that there exists as much real dowiirigh' ignorance among college stu dents, as amongstany other class. A few come through college with strengthened minds, and arc men, but for one of these there are perhaps a hundred who enter but haven't the strength to go beyond the Sophomore year. Habits always grow, unless they are manfully corrected. Students in college are only embodiments of habits stored up at home, at the common or graded schools. So, we find a small minority who have be come, in some degree, masters of them selves. The gi enter number are simpry "horned cattle " At college, if anywhere we llnd examples ot the fruit which has grown both from the seed that "fell by the wayside" and that "which fell on good ground;" the great extremes of human life. Then what do we conclude? Plain ly this, dial the great majority of college graduates, as well as students, have no real physical or mental energy. This we find verified at every commencement. Hence colleges entirely miss their aim. Their graduates, as a class, are decidcly thin and weak. Their minds are not as strong as they were at ten years of age. Many bright boys have gone over the cur riculum, and by the process of cramming have become duller and more supeiticial from the very day 11103- filtered college. Hundreds complete their college course every year, let it be said in a whisper, but would that it were whispered throughout the land, who cannot actually pass an ex animation through common fractions, in Arithmclit , or who cannot, witli safely to En&gsami
