August 20, 2019 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
The 1869 Article in 'The Atlantic Monthly'
It was believed that only the former
graduates of the Harvard would be capable of understanding and bridging the
mismatch between the needs of the society and the type of education that the
college was providing.
This was the key step in ushering and
bringing about the complete overhaul and extreme reforms needed at Harvard in
particular which hopefully would become the template for all colleges of the
United States.
In 1869 Eliot published a two-part article
in the American magazine ‘The Atlantic Monthly’ – a literary and cultural
commentary that was founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1857.
The title of the article was “The New
Education” in which he wrote “We are fighting a wilderness, physical and moral
and for this fight we must be trained and armed.”
His writing was powerful and when this writing
came to meet the eyes of the powerful businessmen who controlled the Harvard
Corporation there was all of a sudden a confluence of two streams – one seeking
change and the other providing the much sought after change.
It was like a wealthy but a thirsty and
parched man meeting the potable water provider in an arid desert and their
union being a perfectly timed coincidence saving a slow but certain death.
So impressed were the corporate men with
the ideas of Eliot that they readily forewent his age and elected him the
President of the Harvard in 1869 at a still youthful age of 35.
Now Eliot had the complete powers bestowed
upon him to transform the education at Harvard as he desired and then set it as
an example for the other colleges.
He believed that every individual brain had
“its own peculiar constitution” and the only way to develop each brain would be
expose it to a wide range of subjects.
Doing this would enable “to reveal to him,
or at least to his teachers and parents, his capacities and tastes”.
Once his taste would be known he would be
groomed and made to specialize in that subject making him a specialist and that
expertise of his would be used to benefit the public.
When a person comes to know through his
education what his love most then “he knows his way to happy, enthusiastic
work, and, God willing, to usefulness and success.”
Eliot further wrote on this favorite
subject of his:
“The civilization of a people may be
inferred from the variety of its tools.
There are thousands of years between the
stone hatchet and the machine-shop.
As tools multiply, each is more ingeniously
adapted to its own exclusive purpose.
So with the men that make the State.
For the individual, the concentration, and
the highest development of his own peculiar faculty, is the only prudence.
But for the State, it is variety, not
uniformity, of intellectual product, which is needful.”
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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