Fourth annual report of the Williams Secular School.

  • Williams Secular School
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fourth annual report of the Williams Secular School. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/48 page 13
    <lcnce to the magistrate, for example, he was never called upon to parse or construe his sentences, but that it was most desirable that his evidence should he given in good and unmistakeably clear English. In order to impress this upon him, a very simple exer- cise was given to him to write, in attempting to do which, he made several mistakes, shewing, that although such an adept at gram- matical technicalities, he was unable to write a letter in good English. The teacher had frequent conversations with him on this subject, and offered to revise any number of exercises he could write. The advantages of attending the lessons on Physiology, Social Economy, &c., going on in the school at the time he was able to attend, were pointed out to him, but to no effect. His ambition for self-improvement was so poisoned by the pedantry of liis school education, that he evidently despised useful practical knowledge, and sought only those attainments which he had been taught to regard as the essential accomplishments of scholarship. His or- ganization indicated large perceptive faculties, Conccntrativeness and Firmness, with a general deficiency in the organs of the re- flective faculties, a combination which produces a very teachable character in the first instance, from the readiness to receive, me- chanically, instruction in details, but is not well adapted to make progress in learning the nature and relations of things. In all the teaching at this school, practical usefulness is promi- nently kept in view. In teaching English, derivations are taught where these assist in making the meaning and use of words more easily intelligible, but only and directly for this object, and not for the mere sake of being learned; as much parsing is given as is ne- cessary to enable the pupils to understand the rules of syntax and to apply them, and these rules arc taught chiefly by exercises on ex- amples of their application to practical composition. The result of this is, that a very satisfactory progress is made by the pupils in practically understanding and composing English ; to attain which about one-fourth of the time usually devoted to English Grammar in schools, for the same class of children, is found sufficient. In teaching English, therefore, this school differs from other schools by the absence of pedantry, to an extent which may perhaps lower it in the estimation of the pure scholar, whose ideas of the objects of education arc identical with those of the policeman before re- ferred to. In the scientific department of the teaching, the absence of pe- dantry, and the other tendencies before described, as apprehended by some persons, will be equally obvious, when the nature of the teaching is understood. In the Second Annual lteport, it is ex- plained that “ Every effort is made to train their minds to habits of philosophical investigation, and to carry them practically out of the very common error, that science is a something confined
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