It is not difficult to understand why the numerous body of teachers,
who easily drift into mechanical methods, has a preference for formal
studies. They are comparatively easy and humdrum and keep pupils busy.
Real studies, if taught with any sort of fitness, require energy,
interest, and versatility, besides much outside work in preparing
materials.
The second article of faith is a still stronger one. The better class
of energetic teachers would never have been won over to formal studies
on purely utilitarian grounds. A second conviction weighs heavily in
their minds. "_The discipline of the mental faculties_" is a talisman
of unusual potency with them. They prize arithmetic and grammar more
for this than for any direct practical value. The idea of mental
discipline, of training the faculties, is so ingrained into all our
educational thinking that it crops out in a hundred ways and holds our
courses of study in the beaten track of formal training with a
steadiness that is astonishing. These friends believe that we are
taking the back-bone out of education by making it interesting. The
culmination of this educational doctrine is reached when it is said
that the most valuable thing learned in school or out of it is to do
and do vigorously that which is most disagreeable.
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