ooling is short, and,
contrasted with it, life is long; but what mischiefs may not the latter
experience from the former! Let us clearly conceive, once, the aversion
many of our boys and girls persistently feel toward the school, and of
their leaving it, at the last, with rejoicing! Are we astonished that
when they have fairly escaped, frivolity is, with the young woman, too
apt to replace mental culture, and with the young man, vulgarity or
exclusive living for 'the main chance?' That the men and women so
educated are too receptive, credulous, pliant and unstable; that in too
large a degree they lack discrimination, judgment, and the good sense
and executive talent which plan understandingly, and work without
sacrifice of honor, manhood, or spiritual culture, to a true success?
But, if our instructors could find out, or if some other could find out
for them, _just how_ and _by what steps_ it is that the young mind
engages with nature and harvests knowledge, and if they should see,
therefore, how to strike in better with the current of the young,
knowing and thinking, to move with it, enlarge, direct and form it
aright, properly insuring that the mind under their charge shall do its
own work, and hence advance by consecutive and comprehended steps, we
ask with confidence whether much of the notorious short-comings now
manifest in the results of our patient efforts might not be replaced by
an approach toward an intellectual activity, furnishing, completeness,
and bent, more worthy of the name and the idea of education? We are not
alone in questioning the tendencies of existing methods. Other pens have
raised the note of alarm. Speaking on the character of the _product_ of
the English schools, Faraday says, 'The whole evidence appears to show
that the _reasoning faculties_ [mark, it is here the failure occurs, and
here that it shows itself], in all classes of the community, are very
imperfectly and insufficiently developed--_imperfectly, as compared with
the natural abilities, insufficiently, when considered with reference to
the extent and variety of information with which they are called upon to
deal_.' Does not this strong language find equally strong warrant in
current facts of individual conduct and of our social life?

That there is yet no recognized complete method in, and no ascertained
science of education, the latest writings on the subject abundantly
reiterate and confirm. The best of our annual School Reports,