5. Perhaps, however, your plan is not the establishment of some new
institution, but the introduction of some new study or pursuit into the
one with which you are connected. Before, however, you interrupt the
regular arrangements of your school to make such a change, consider
carefully what is the real and appropriate object of your institution.
Every thing is not to be done in school. The principles of division of
labor apply with peculiar force to this employment; so that you must not
only consider whether the branch which you are now disposed to introduce
is important, but whether it is really such an one as it is on the whole
best to include among the objects to be pursued in such an institution.
Many teachers seem to imagine that if any thing is in itself important,
and especially if it is an important branch of education, the question
is settled of its being a proper object of attention in school. But this
is very far from being the case. The whole work of education can never
be intrusted to the teacher. Much must of course remain in the hands of
the parent; it ought so to remain. The object of a school is not to take
children out of the parental hands, substituting the watch and
guardianship of a stranger for the natural care of father and mother.
Far from it. It is only the association of the children for those
purposes which can be more successfully accomplished by association. It
is a union for few, specific, and limited objects, for the
accomplishment of that part (and it is comparatively a small part of
the general objects of education) which can be most successfully
effected by public institutions and in assemblies of the young.
Pages:
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327