One of the best points of such a system of literary composition is
that even if slower boys cannot effect much, it gives a most wholesome
opening to the creative faculties of boys, whose minds, if stifled and
compressed, are most likely to work in unwholesome and tormenting
directions.
My suggestion then becomes part of a larger plea, the plea for more
direct cultivation of enjoyment in education. Some of our worst
mistakes in education arise from our not basing it upon the actual
needs and faculties of human nature, but upon the supposed
constitution of a child constructed by the starved imagination of
pedants and moralists and practical men.
One of the first requisites in cultivating intellectual and artistic
pleasure is to build up taste out of the actual perceptions of the
child. That is a factor which has been most stubbornly and
unintelligently disregarded in education. Developments in character
are of the nature of living things; they cannot be superimposed they
must be rooted in the temperament and they must draw nurture and
sustenance out of the spirit, as the seed imbibes its substance from
the unseen soil and the hidden waters. But what has been constantly
done is to introduce the broadest effects and the simplest romance,
directly and suddenly to the biggest masterpieces. The absence of all
gradation and reconciliation has been characteristic of our literary
education.
Pages:
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71