The Vitalized School eBook


=Illustration.=—­The girl is not to be condemned because she desires to visit the Selfridge shop rather than the Museum.  The teacher may rhapsodize upon the Museum to the limit of her strength, but the girl is thinking of the beautiful fabrics to be seen at the shop, and, especially, of the delicious American ice cream that can be had nowhere else in London.  It is rather a poor teacher who cannot lead the girl to the British Museum by way of Selfridge’s.  If the teacher finds the task difficult, she would do well to traverse the route a few times in advance.  The ice cream will help rather than hinder when they stand, at length, before the Rosetta Stone or read the original letter to Mrs. Bixby.  The store and the Museum are both in the picture, and the teacher must determine which should come first in the itinerary of this girl.  The native dispositions and desires will point out the way to the teacher.

The old-time schoolmaster was fond of setting as a copy in the old-fashioned copy book “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”; but, later, when he caught Jack playing he gave him a flogging, thus proving himself both inconsistent and deficient in a knowledge of psychology and fair play.  If we are going to Greenwich we shall save time by taking the longer journey by way of Hampton Court.  As we disport ourselves amid the beauties and gayeties of the Court we can prolong our pleasures by anticipating Greenwich, and so make our play the anteroom of our work.

=Variety in excellence.=—­In the vitalized school we shall find each pupil eager in his quest of food for the hunger he feels, and the teacher rejoicing in the development of his individuality.  She would not have all her pupils attain the same level even of excellence.  They are different, and she would have them so.  Nor would she have her school exemplify the kind of order that is to be found in a gallery of statues.  Her school is a place of life, eager, yearning, pulsating life, and not a place of dead and deadening silence.  Her pupils have diversified tastes and desires and, in consequence, diversified activities, but work is the golden cord that binds them in a healthy and healthful unity.  This is sublime chaos, a busy, happy throng, all working at full strength at tasks that are worth while, and all animated by hopes and aspirations that reach out to the very limits of space.


1.  What may the school do to give helpful direction and needed modifications to the instinct of acquisition?

2.  The ultimate ends of education are more efficient production and more intelligent consumption.  How and by what means may the school bring about a more intelligent choice of tangible and intangible things?

3.  What hint may the teacher of geography receive from the brief description of London’s points of interest?

4.  Compare a vitalized school with the panorama of London.

Project Gutenberg
The Vitalized School from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
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