Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 5

Principles of Education

Principles of Education.

A writer in the Golden Gate, fully recognising our principles of culture, says: "Children are always true to Nature; and the demands of Nature must be met, or there will be a revolt; hence they are always most attracted to that teacher, whose enlightened and liberal philosophy, by entering into their sports, as well as their studies, recognises them as genuine human beings.

"It is a great law of Nature that the proper exorcise of any faculty or set of faculties always gives pleasure, while the undue or disproportionate exercse of any, inflicts pain. Thus, if the whole development is harmonious, the whole process of education would page 17 induce only pleasurable emotions and delightful associations. Study, then, as well as physical labour, would be only another form of play; for the same law of Nature which demands exercise for one faculty, demands it also for another and for all; and where there is no disproportion, there can be no deformity.

"But there are few teachers whose own development is so harmoniously attuned to the laws of Nature that they can perceive the true relations between Material and Spiritual; and even they are hardly understood and appreciated. Were there such, they would wield a power as yet undreamed of. Coercion would be dispensed with, in almost all cases; for the tendency to harmonious development would be governed by as fixed and determined a law as that by which the plant puts itself into leaf, stem, bud, and flower. In short, education would simply respond to the necessity of our nature, which requires that the human being should live and grow, and aspire toward all perfection. A teacher who under stood this would attract his pupils, and attach them to himself, so that by love alone he could control and guide them. He would always keep the balance even, by stimulating them to action, hardening the morbidly sensitive, and restraining' the wayward. We must have a system of Education based on philosophical principles. This the preservation of the race and the spirit of the age alike demand."