Brooklyn Schools—Are They Doing As Well As Could Be Expected?

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BROOKLYN SCHOOLS—ARE THEY DOING AS WELL AS COULD BE EXPECTED?

From our own observation, as well as other means of knowing, we are confident that the Public Schools in all parts of Consolidated Brooklyn, are fully up to the average standard of educational talent, &c., generally required, and perhaps somewhat ahead of the average. The teachers as a body will compare favorably, we dare say, with those of any other city, and the supreme management of the schools is now, as it has always been, under the charge of a Board of Education animated by a zealous desire to do their best duty, according to the light that is in them.

Still we think a few hints may not come amiss, on so all-important a subject as education. If rightly understood, from the beginning, and entered upon by parents and teachers with conscientiousness and zeal, we should soon see a different and vastly improved race of men—and of women to.

For it is not at school only that the youthful education, in its proper sense , is going on—or not going on. It is at home, with the mother and the father—with companions—every where—in the streets, at amusements, and every day and night.

Probably in our Brooklyn Schools, as in all schools, there is a little too much regard for the show of learning, and too little for learning itself. A good deal of what is passed over to the pupil, and recited with great cleverness, is but a string of empty names, the substantial meaning attached to which is hardly attempted, and never arrived at. The learning is by rote—the theme is skimmed over, a few characteristic terms are fixed in the memory, and, in answer to questions, are uttered by the tongue—and this, the mere shell, often passes for very profound accomplishment!

Far too much reliance is placed upon books, the ordinary class-books. Only go into one of the schools, and see the way in which any “branch” is taught. A certain part of a page, or of several pages, is designated, and the class is informed that they are to come ready prepared, next day, upon that. Accordingly, next day sees the teacher, or some assistant, duly putting the stereotyped questions, and the pupils giving the stereotyped answers,—all after that regular cast-in-the-mold fashion which must be so familiar to visitors at schools.

And this upon any and every branch of knowledge—some of them full of inherent interest to young people, but the interest never brought out to them. Think of History, Geography, and Natural History, for instance—what might be made of them for a class of intelligent boys and girls—and what, in our schools, is made of them.

Surely all this ought to be, and could be, reformed. Surely some original life ought to be expected in teachers—and not that perpetual dependence on books—on the stereotyped questions and answers, by rote.

The schools too are altogether too formal This is, in our opinion, the great and besetting sin of teachers—worse, perhaps years ago, but still bad enough. All those bounding and generous young hearts, (we know what the cynic will say, but we know,)—all those rich and affectionate young natures, repressed, pushed back, cramped in, in the iron cramps of a great lot of irksome rules! The school not a sunny and joyous place, to be sought for with avidity—to be remembered with love—but a cheerless and cold prison!

We speak thus emphatically because we believe that, for the true men and women required in the United States, nothing will answer, in our schools, but proceeding on the theory of “faith and trust,” and in developing self-respect, from the jump. We would recommend teachers to toss most of their “rules” out of the windows, and preserve only the few simple ones that the daily working of the little community requires, and, of itself, would spontaneously form;─and they are such as hardly deserve the name of rules.

We would have our places of education, if possible, (and we think it not only possible but easy,) transformed nearer to the model of good and wise homes—large training rooms, where the collected youth are led forward in their development, not by tyrants and martinets, but by elder brothers and sisters; where they are practically shown, what is after all the greatest end of the best education, the way to be rules unto themselves.

We are—shall we say it?—deeply anxious that this city should have something more to show for the persevering care and anxiety, and the immense funds of money, which are expended upon the schools, than has been thus far shown. We think, not that our seminaries of popular education have not done well—but that they can do so very much better. We want more for our own money. All hands, trustees, teachers, perhaps the public included, have been jogging along in two or three old well-travelled ruts—and call it education. We would remind them that much that answered fifty, or even twenty years ago, will not answer now. We are not living now, be it remembered in the days of turnpikes, of slow mail-carrying; we are in the days of locomotives and Atlantic telegraphs.

Of course, we do not mean to say that our one or two off hand suggestions, in the preceding remarks include all that may be worth taking into consideration, as matters of improvement for pupils and teachers of the Public Schools, but only as specimens of that improvement.

Why should there be such a tenacious adherence to the old theory of conducting a school? As if there had been revolution in almost every other department of the only real school, that of the every day world—in science, in human intercourse, in social philosophy, in political rights,—all, by comparison, now making our prevalent school-modes look fearfully antique and old-fogyish.