Essays on Education, Volume 1

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Page 8 - And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind is our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities; partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment and the final work of a head filled by long reading and observing with elegant maxims and copious invention.
Page 313 - Tis a lesson you should heed — Try, try again. If at first you don't succeed, Try, try again ; Then your courage should appear, For, if you will persevere, You will conquer, never fear : Try, try again...
Page 66 - I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation, is incomparably the best ; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew ; it tends to set the reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the author has made his own discoveries, if he should be so happy as to have made any that are valuable.
Page 296 - On a perch, forming a triangle with a corner of the room, sat a cock and two hens ; under a stump bed immediately beneath, was a dog-kennel, in the occupation of three black terriers, whose barking, added to the noise of the children and the cackling of the fowls on the approach of a stranger, was almost deafening.
Page 74 - In doing this, he appeared to be chiefly influenced by the impressions communicated to him by his sense of smell. When a stranger approached him, he eagerly began to touch some part of his body, commonly taking hold of...
Page 312 - May just and righteous laws Uphold the public cause, And bless our isle ! Home of the brave and free, The land of liberty, We pray that still on thee Kind Heaven may smile ! 4 And not this land alone, But be Thy mercies known From- shore to shore.
Page 249 - Sounds which address the ear are lost and die In one short hour ; but that which strikes the eye Lives long upon the mind; the faithful sight Engraves the knowledge with a beam of light.
Page 295 - In the great majority of these schools there seems to be a complete want of order and system.
Page 12 - ... work by being spoken to, or by a little chastisement, to make them jump up. I was sometimes obliged to chastise them when they were almost fainting, and it hurt my feelings; then they would spring up and work pretty well for another hour; but the last two or three hours were my hardest work, for they then got so exhausted.
Page 75 - The knowledge which he has derived from the senses of touch, taste, and smell, seems fully as extensive as what any person of the most perfect faculties might be supposed to acquire, if he could by any contrivance be prevented from using his eyes and ears for the same period of time, from the moment of birth, and in the same retired situation of country.

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