Excerpt from School and College, Vol. 1: Devoted to Secondary and Higher Education

In very large classes, or in schools of the lower grade, only relative accuracy and thoroughness are to be attained. We can do there only what we can do. Manual training in the com mon schools is having a Splendid effect in this regard, so far as it goes. If it does not do all that its warmest advocates expect, it will impart exactness of apprehension as nothing else will. Yet, do our best, we cannot train very large classes with the desirable nicety. There is not the time to devote to each pupil. This is why private schools will for a long time be necessary to supplement public.

Another revolution soon to greet the educational world, is to consist in the introduction of certain educational methods and appliances which will greatly save labor and time.

It must be admitted that the average youth of eighteen in France or Germany is at least two years further advanced in quantity and quality of mental stores than his fellow of equal age here who has attended school quite as many months of his life. That this is an immense gain every one will see. It can not be ascribed to extra native brightness in the European boy, or any considerable part of it to inherited aptitude for learning. The reason Of it is that over there they teach better than we have learned to do, partly by introducing each several study at the right time, partly by securing a higher grade of teaching talent, especially for the lower Classes, and partly by more scientific modes of Opening and filling the mind, whatever the grade. We Shall never catch Up with Europe till we pay better salaries and higher honor to teachers, particularly in primary and introductory work, nor until we give more study to the science and art of teaching. When we are duly to awake to these things I do not know, but there are signs of some advance.

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