This monograph will make no attempt to analyze the personality of the ideal teacher. It is assumed that the teacher of history has an adequate preparation to teach his subject, that he is in good health, and that his usefulness is unimpaired by discontent with his work or cynicism about the world. It is presupposed that he understands the wisdom of correlating in his instruction the geography, social progress, and economic development of the people which his class are studying. He is aware that the pupil should experience something more than a kaleidoscopic view of isolated facts. He recognizes the folly of requiring four years of high school English for the purpose of cultivating clear, fluent, and accurate expression, only to relax the effort when the student comes into the history class. He knows that the precision, logic, and habit of definite thinking exacted by the pursuit of the scientific subjects should not be laid aside when the student attempts to trace the rise of nations. Let us go so far as to assume a teacher who is both pedagogical and practical; scholarly without being musty; imbued with a love for his subject and yet familiar with actual human experience.

In undertaking to treat of Aristotle as the expounder of ancient educational ideas, I might, with Kapp’s Aristoteles’ Staatspaedagogik before me, have made my task an easy one. I might simply have presented in an orderly way and with a little commentary, what is to be found on the subject of education in his various works—Politics, Ethics, Rhetoric, Poetics, etc. I had two reasons, however, for not adopting this course: (1) that this work had been done, better than I could do it, in the treatise referred to, and (2) that a mere restatement of what Aristotle says on education would hardly have shown his relation to ancient pedagogy as a whole. I therefore judged it better, by tracing briefly the whole history of Greek education up to Aristotle and down from Aristotle, to show the past which conditioned his theories and the future which was conditioned by them. Only thus, it seemed to me, could his teachings be seen in their proper light. And I have found that this method has many advantages, of which I may mention one. It has enabled me to show the close connection that existed at all times between Greek education and Greek social and political life, and to present the one as the reflection of the other. And this is no small advantage, since it is just from its relation to the whole of life that Greek education derives its chief interest for us. We can never, indeed, return to the purely political education of the Greeks; they themselves had to abandon that, and, since then,

A boundless hope has passed across the earth—

a hope which gives our education a meaning and a scope far wider than any that the State aims at; but in these days, when the State and the institution which embodies that hope are contending for the right to educate, it cannot but aid us in settling their respective claims, to follow the process by which they came to have distinct claims at all, and to see just what these mean. This process, the method which I have followed has, I hope, enabled me, in some degree, to bring into clearness. This, at all events, has been one of my chief aims.

…

THOMAS DAVIDSON

“Glenmore,”

Keene, Essex Co., N.Y.

October, 1891.

That any rational and accountable being should ever have been found to oppose the progress of truth, is truly humiliating; yet every page of history, which records the developement of new principles, exhibits also the outbreakings of prejudice and selfishness. The deductions of Galileo, of Newton, of Harvey, and innumerable others, have been opposed and denounced, each in its turn; while their promoters have been vilified as empyrics or innovators. Nor has this been done by those only whose self love or worldly interests prompted them to exclude the truth, but by good and honourable men, whose prejudices were strong, and whose zeal was not guided by discretion. Such persons have frequently been found to shut their eyes against the plainest truths, to wrestle with their own convictions, and positively refuse even to listen to evidence. The same thing may happen with regard to education;—and this is no pleasing prospect to the lover of peace, who sets himself forward as a reformer in this noble work.—Change is inevitable. Teaching is an art; and it must, like all the other arts, depend for its improvement upon the investigations of science. Now, every one knows, that although the cultivation of chemistry, and other branches of natural science, has, of late years, given an extraordinary stimulus to the arts, yet the science of education, from which the art of teaching can alone derive its power, is one, beyond the threshold of which modern philosophy has scarcely entered. Changes, therefore, both in the theory and practice of teaching, may be anticipated;—and that these changes will be inconvenient and annoying to many, there can be no doubt. That individuals, in these circumstances, should be inclined to deprecate and oppose these innovations and improvements, is nothing more than might be expected; but that the improvements themselves should on that account be either postponed or abandoned, would be highly injurious. An enlightened system of education is peculiarly the property of the public, on which both personal, family, and national happiness in a great measure depends. These interests therefore must not be sacrificed to the wishes or the convenience of private individuals. The prosperity and happiness of mankind are at stake; and the welfare of succeeding generations will, in no small degree, be influenced by the establishment of sound principles in education at the present time. Nothing, therefore, should be allowed to mystify or cripple that science, upon which the spread and the permanence of all useful knowledge mainly rest.