PROFESSOR BLACK ON EDUCATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9130, 11 August 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

PROFESSOR BLACK ON EDUCATION.

LKCT"r.r:;<s in Nicholson-street United Presbyterian .Edinburgh, on "The Philosophy of Education," Professor Black said that the usual idea of education implied that children were empty and wanted filling, but they were no more empty than the seed that was put into the ground. Education did not consist in giving knowledge, but in drawing out the full and complete man. The education process might lie divided under .six heads: First, man physical; second, man moral; third, man cognitive; fourth, man a.'sthetieal ; fifth, man volitional ; and sixth, man practical. That sixfold condition of man might lie put over against the "fourfold" condition which Boston wrote about. The first tiling they had to do in educating children was to let them observe, and not put their books and miserable grammars before them. In the present age books had taken the place of men. If in education they did not make better men, and more harmonious men, they missed the mark. Without that the more knowing and cleverer they were, tho more they were like the devil. Religion was the breath of daily life. Christianity was not a religion founded on fancies, but on the history of the human race for 4000 years ; and it belonged to man's education to know the record of Cod's dealings with the human race. Bible history and geography ought, therefore, to belong to all well-conducted schools, independent of all churches. After quoting and endorsing what (Seethe said of moral culture, Professor Blackie contended that there should be in. every school a biography of great men belonging to the country. Another great feature of moral culture was song. It was a great mistake to look upon music as an amusement or recreation. Songs stirred tho whole man ; they did not merely thrill the brain, but they made the blood warm. They could cherish no bad passion when under the influence of song. Jealousy, spite, envy, grumbling, all disappeared when a man sang a good song. The icsthctic in man's natni") .should be cultivated, and the schoolroom walls ought to be covered with very beautiful forms. They should put beautiful things before the children and let them look at and feed upon them.