'Aims of education Essay\r'

' shade is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and pitying feeling. Scraps of information have nix to do with it. A plainly well-informed man is the most useless wear upon on God’s earth. What we should bearing at producing is men who possess both(prenominal) culture and expert k without delayledge in some special direction. Their expert knowledge testament defecate them the ground to lift out from, and their culture will lead them as deep as philosophy and as high as art. We have to entertain that the valuable able development is self- development, and that it broadly speaking takes place between the ages of sixteen and thirty.\r\nAs to training, the most important part is given over by mothers before the age of twelve. A saying due to Archbishop Temple illustrates my meaning. perplexity was expressed at the success in after- lifespan of a man, who as a male child at Rugby had been somewhat undistinguished. He answered, â€Å"It is not what they be at eighteen, it is what they release afterwards that matters. ” In training a child to activity of thought, above completely things we must beware of what I will call â€Å" achromatic ideas”-that is to say, ideas that are tho received into the mind without being utilised, or tested, or thr avow into fresh combinations.\r\nIn the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are springy with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. The reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not solitary(prenominal) useless: it is, above all things, malign †Corruptio optimi, pessima. Except at rare intervals of keen ferment, education in the past has been radically infected with inert ideas.\r\nThat is the reason why uneducated clever women, who have seen a great deal of the world, are in middle life so much the most courteous par t of the community. They have been saved from this fearful burden of inert ideas. Ein truth intellectual revolution which has ever stirred human being into greatness has been a passionate knowledge against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to dumbfound humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.\r\nLet us now entreat how in our system of education we are to guard against this mental dryrot. We enunciate twain educational commandments, â€Å"Do not pick up too many subjects,” and again, â€Å"What you teach, teach thoroughly. ” The resolving power of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reply of disconnected ideas, not illumined with any flutter of vitality. Let the main ideas which are introduced into a child’s education be few and important, and let them be throw into every combination possible.\r\nThe child should get ahead them his own, and should understand their application here and now in the circumstances of his actual life. From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joyousness of discovery. The discovery which he has to make, is that general ideas give an understanding of that stream of events which pours through his life, which is his life. By understanding I mean to a greater extent than a mere logical analysis, though that is included. I mean â€Å"understanding” in the sense in which it is used in the French.\r\n'