CONTENTS. LANGUAGE THE SUPREME INSTRUMENT IN EDUCATION. Education is through the experiences of life. The most potent of experiences is the distinctive national life in all its forms. Function of the school to focus these national influences. There is however a universal as well as a national, element present in the education of a human being. Excellence of the individual. Formal discipline of Reason would seem sufficient for this. This too abstract to be available in the education of the young. A concrete subject must be found which contains the abstract in its purest form and at the same time gives substance of in- struction. This subject also must be universal in its character if it is to be effective for its end in the fullest sense. That subject is Language, (1) As a formal discipline. (2) As a concrete or real study. (3) As an aesthetic or Art study. By Language is Discipline and Training. Language as substance both feeds and METHOD AS APPLIED TO LANGUAGES. SUBSTANCE-CONTINUED. 17-34 1. Word-building, synonyms and ambiguities. 2. History of Words. 3. Sentences and Paragraphs. 4. Paraphrasing. 5. Reading and Elocution. Expression of pupil's own thought. 1. Oral Composition. 2. Transcription. 3. Elementary written Compo- sition. 4. Abridgments and narrations. 5. Translation. 6. Imi- LANGUAGE AS A FORMAL DISCIPLINE. GRAMMAR. Relation of abstract study to Discipline as opposed to Training. Grammar a system of Abstractions. Method. 1. The When: GRAMMAR OF THE VERNACULAR TONGUE. PURPOSE. Method continued. First Stage: successive steps. Second Stage: successive steps. Psychological process in parsing. Historical Relation of literature to moral, aesthetic, and religious training. Must be begun early. Method: little to be said of a formal kind. Literary criticism. Importance of Literature in the education of LECTURE I. LANGUAGE THE SUPREME INSTRUMENT OF EDUCATION. EVERY human being is educated by the experiences of life. At the same time there can be little doubt that no two human beings are precisely alike in respect of their native capacity to receive these experiences and to utilize them for the building up of their characters. The experiences begin very early. The babe at its mother's breast is receiving impressions for good or for evil as certainly as a seed, which has just begun to sprout, is already receiving from the soil those influences which are to make it or mar it as a vigorous plant of its kind. As next the child walks non aequis passibus at his mother's side, the whole world of nature is seeking to form him. Earth and sky, the events of his little life, the words and acts, and even the gestures, of those about him are all busy in the work of his education. Unconsciously at first, and thereafter consciously, he is organising into himself the vast and infinite material of impression and feeling. Every human being is undergoing this process of education; and it is not at all a L. L. 1 question whether he is to be educated or not, but simply how and to what end he is to be educated. Neither the unconscious education of environment, nor the conscious education of the school, however, is independent of native predisposition and inheritance. There is much, very much, a much that is almost incalculable, in the instincts and aptitudes of race. It is impossible to compare the Chinese child, the Persian, the Hindoo the Hellenic, the Roman, the British, as we find them in history, and not be convinced of this. Next to the instincts and aptitudes of race in determining our education, is the spirit of the race as expressed in its national religion, in its more or less conscious aims as a political society, in its public life and its national acts, past and contemporary, and in the literary expression of its way of looking at the world. These alone without the help of schools will, under favourable conditions, make a people and a great people; and, whatever may be done of set purpose by schools and teachers, national life in its various forms will always be, as it ought always to be, the dominant factor in the education of the young. It is through the family that all these educative influences are best conveyed; and no State is in a healthy condition where the family life is not always the most potent, as it is the nearest, of educative influences. But as the pressure of life becomes heavier and social conditions more complex, it becomes necessary to appoint a substitute for the parent, but not on this account to supersede the domestic school. What is the function of the school in view of these facts? I have said that it is the individual experiences, |