Latin and Greek in American Education

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE VALUE OF LATIN AND GREEK AS EDUCATIONAL INSTRUMENTS The criteria by which the educational value of a study may be estimated are not the same for the different periods of student life, nor for the different classes of subjects. In advanced professional courses, as those of law and...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE VALUE OF LATIN AND GREEK AS EDUCATIONAL INSTRUMENTS The criteria by which the educational value of a study may be estimated are not the same for the different periods of student life, nor for the different classes of subjects. In advanced professional courses, as those of law and engineering, the first place is given to the subjects which contribute most to the knowledge of the working methods and of the data that will be useful in the practice of a profession; utility is the paramount consideration. As we descend from technical training to the primary grades, a consideration of the usefulness of a particular study in immediate preparation for bread- winning becomes of less and less weight; in elementary education those subjects have the largest value as edu-. cational instruments which open the mind to the world, f bring it into touch with human experience, and culti-' vate mental alertness and nimbleness; which increase the power of concentration, mold the imagination without deadening it, stimulate initiative in thought and action, and develop power of expression. The goal of education is ultimately the general good, the service of society; but its immediate purpose concerns only the good of the individual, whom educational processes aim to bring to self-discovery, self-mastery, and self-direction. The acquisition of knowledge as a. concomitant of the educational process becomes increasingly. important as we ascend from lower to higher grades of instruction; but of greater value than the knowledge acquired, in theperiod of adolescence as of childhood, are first, the devel- ( opment of the power to absorb, digest, and fructify knowledge through observation, comparison or co-ordination, and generalization, and secondly, the strength- i- ening of the moral ...