Introduction Photo Gallery Documents Acknowledgments
METHODS OF TEACHING Source: Department of Education. City of New York. Second Annual Report of the City Superintendent of Schools to the Board of Education for the Year Ending July 31, 1900 (New York, 1900), p. 80-81. NYC Board of Education Archives, Milbank Memorial Library, Teachers College, Columbia University. There has been a very decided improvement in methods of teaching during the past few years. There has been a constant tendency away from "rote work" and getting by heart" things that ought not to be learned in that manner, and toward more intelligent ways of learning on the part of the pupil and of teaching on the part of the teacher. Such a result followed naturally from the raising of standards for teachers' licenses, from the praiseworthy efforts of the teachers to take advantage of every suitable opportunity for intellectual improvement, and from the close supervision (when it has not been too close) of superintendents and principals. We are gradually coming to see that training of the physical, intellectual and moral powers—above all, the formation of worthy character—is the great object of the school; that the amount of knowledge acquired is not the highest criterion ; that the final test is the kind of habits formed. We are gradually realizing that our duty is to train good citizens and that the training of the citizen involves two things: First, a knowledge of the accumulated achievements, inventions and improvements of preceding generations, and of the social and industrial machinery that has made these accumulations possible; and, second, through exercising the mind on this knowledge, the development of the moral qualities of "great mental energy, reverence, resolution, enterprise, power of prolonged and concentrated application, and simple-minded devotion to conceptions of duty." In the words of Professor Laurie, the main purpose of the school is "to focus, so to speak, the life of the nation and bring its best elements—its language, religion, ethics, art, literature, history—to bear on the young." The complete realization of this ideal is still in the far distance. Toward it we may truthfully say we are making progress. In view of this general progress, it is with great reluctance that I speak of some obvious exceptions to the general rule. These exceptions, however, seem to me so important that I feel constrained to call the attention of the borough authorities, particularly of Manhattan and The Bronx, to them. They are to be found chiefly in the teaching of English and in manual training.
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