Part 6 (1/2)
8 How remove unnatural stilted words and expressions from the oral and written expressions of pupils?
CHAPTER XI
COMPLETE LIVING
=The question raised=--That education is a preparation for co has been quoted by every teacher who lays any sort of clailibly has the quotation been ether trite
But we still await any clear explanation of what is , with no prophetic voice to tell us the way By implication we have had hints, and ative side, but the positive side still lies fallow When asked for an explanation, those who give the quotation resort to circuive another definition of education, apparently conscious of the s that are equal to the sa are equal to each other So we continue to travel in a circle, with but feeble attempts to deviate from the course
=The vitalized school an exemplification=--Nor will this chapter attempt to resolve the difficult situation in which we are placed It is not easy to define living,All that is hoped for here is to bring the matter to the attention of all teachers and to cause them to realize that the quest for a definition of co will be for the experience The vitalized school will belie its name if it does not strive toward a solution of the difficulty, and any school that approximates a satisfactory definition will be proclaimed a public benefactor In fact, the school cannot lay clai vitalized if it fails to exeree, and if it fails to groove this sort of living into a habit that will persist throughout the years This is the big task that the school must essay if it would emancipate itself froer, better way Co must become the ideal of the school if it would realize the conception of education of which it is a professed exponent
=Inco=--The man alks with a crutch; the man who is afflicted with a felon; the er,--cannot experience coh the power of adaptation the man with a crutch may cos will attempt, but he cannot realize all the possibilities of life that a sound body would vouchsafe to him The man without hands may learn to write with his toes, but he is not employed as a teacher of penmanshi+p His life is a restricted one and, therefore, less than complete We marvel at the exhibitions of skill displayed by the maimed, but we feel no envy We may not be able to duplicate their achievements, but we feel that we have ample compensation in the normal use of our members We know instinctively that, in the solitude of their rets that they are not as other people, and that they h life under a handicap
=The sound body=--It is evident, therefore, that soundness of body is a condition precedent to coanism by means of which the mind and the spirit function in teranis will prove less than coanize all its activities that the physical powers of the pupils shall be fully conserved The president of a large university says that during his incu woh the tests have been applied to thousands College students, it will be readily conceded, are a selected group; and yet even in such a group not a physically perfect youngover seventeen years If a like condition should be discovered in the scoring of live stock at our fairs, there would ensue a careful investigation of causes in the hope of finding a remedy
=Personal efficiency=--We shall not achieve national efficiency until every citizen has achieved personal efficiency, and physical fitness is one of the fundamental conditions precedent to personal efficiency Here we have the blue print for the guidance of society and the school If we are ever to achieve national efficiency, we irl, has a strong, healthy body that is fully able to execute the behests of mind and spirit This e licenses, including physical exaent laws on our statute books; it es in our ; and it may require the state to assume some of the functions of the honess to cope with the situation Heroic treatment e to apply the renosis shows to be necessary, we shall look in vain for i that it is so difficult to find aour people who has attained physical perfection, it behooves society and the schools to take a critical inventory of their er accoe in our procedure We see to athletics and pugilism, with but scant concern for our people as a whole If pink-tea calisthenics as practiced mildly in our schools has failed to produce robust bodies, then it is incuime of beefsteak What the traditional school has failed to do the vitalized schoolits colors There is no middle course; it must either win a victory or admit defeat in coh, of course, but every standard of the vitalized school is and ought to be high
=Cigarettes=--If the use of cigarettes is devitalizing our boys, and this can be determined, then the islative bodies would plead guilty to the charge of impotence But we are told that public sentiment conditions the enactment of laws If such be the case, then the school and its auxiliaries should feel it a duty to generate public sentiarettes are harmful, then they should be banished, and the task is not an iarettes, as distinguished an authority as Thoent in cigarettes co paper wrapper The substance thereby formed is called 'acrolein' It has a violent action on the nerve centers, producing degeneration of the cells of the brain, which is quite rapid aeneration is perarettes”
We have elierous explosives from our Fourth of July celebrations, and the ban can as easily be placed upon any other dangerous product Just here we inevitably meet the cry of paternalism, but we shall always be confronted by the question to what extent the government should stand aside and see its citizens follow the bent of their appetites and passions over the brink of destruction It is the inherent right of governrity, and this it can do only through the conservation of the powers of its citizens If paternalisovernmental virtue Better, by far, sos
=Military training=--Wein the schools, just as we shrink fro both these types of training in our efforts to develop so people physically fit We need so shoulders, weak chests, sha The boys and girls need to be, first of all, healthy aniraceful, and in general well set up These conditions constitute the foundation for the superstructure of education The placid, anaemic, fiberless child is ill prepared in physique to attain to that mastery of the mental and spiritual world that
=Examples cited=--If one will but make a mental appraisement of the first one hundred people hethe nuor They droop and slouch along and see propelled through space by their bodies They can neither stand nor walk as a huht to stand and walk, and their entire enseether unbeautiful We feel instinctively that, being fashi+oned in the ih estate Their bodily attitude see to invoke the aid of so to rescue thee They are weak, apparently ill-nourished, scrawny, ill-grooorous reat spirit would choose that type of body as its habitation
=The body subject to the orous, symmetrical body that performs all its functions like a well-articulated, well-adjustedNext comes a ive to the body and how to give the body enters the door of a saloon because the mind is not sufficiently trained to issue wise orders The mind was befuddled before the body became so, and the body becomes so only because the mind commands Intoxication, primarily, is a mental apostasy, and the body cannot do otherwise than obey If thea book at the library, the body would not have seen the door of the saloon, but would have been urgent to reach the library
There is neither fiction nor facetiousness in the adage, ”An idle brain is the devil's workshop” On the contrary, the saying is crahtful observer Hence, e are training thedestruction upon this workshop
=Freedo is impossible outside the domain of freedo Butas thralldo the things of life in freedonorance is slavery The mind that is unable to read the inscription on a monument stands baffled and helpless, and no form of slavery can be more abject The man who cannot read the bill of fare of life is in no position to revel in the good things that life offers The ropes and flounders about in the byways and so misses the charms If he knows the way, he has freedom; otherwise he is in thralldom The man who cannot interpret life as it shows itself in hill, in valley, in streaed eyes, and that condition affords no freedoh Europe for several weeks, and had finally reached London, wrote enthusiastically of his pleasure at being able to read the street signs All summer he had felt restricted and hans were intelligible, he gained his freedom Had he been as falish, life would have been for hi that sureeable and fertile There is noexperience than to be able to read the street signs along the highway of life, and this ability is one of the great objectives of every vitalized school
=Trained minds=--Nature reveals her inmost secrets only to the trained mind No power can force her, no wealth can bribe her, to disclose these secrets to others Only the ain adlories John Burroughs lives in a world that the ignorant man cannot know The trained alleries, the treasure houses of science, language, history, and art The untrained minds must stand outside and hat comfort they can from their wealth, their social status, or whatever else they would fain substitute for the training that would ads are parts of life, and those who cannot gain ade cannot know life in its completeness
=Achievee, the mind must be able to leap from the multiplication table to the stars; lacier, and the planets;fountain and the eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must be able to see the processions of history from the cradle of the race to the latest proclamation; and must sit in the councils of the poets, the statesmen, the orators, the artists, the scientists, and the historians of all time A mind thus trained can enter into the very heart of life and know it by experience
=Things of the spirit=--But education is a spiritual process, as we have been told; and, therefore, education is without value unless it touches the spirit Indeed, it is only by the spirit that we may test the quality of education It is spirit that sets s of life A man may live in the back alley of life or on the boulevard, according to the dictates of the spirit If his spirit cannot react to the finer things, his ill lie alory that is revealed upon the ravitate to the lower levels If his spirit is not attuned to majestic harmonies, he will drift down to association with his own kind If he cannot thrill with pleasure at the beauty and fragrance of the lily of the valley, he will seek out the gaudy sunflower If his spirit cannot rise to the plane of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, he will roahtly attuned lifts hilorified; away fros that are fine and beautiful; and away fro, the true, the noble, and the good And so with body,their perfect work, he can, at least, look over into the pro
=Altruisht shi+ne, and this co one Aas has been depicted approxiht shi+ne priht, and in the next place because his training has reatest joy coht so shi+ne that others
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES