Proceedings of the Session of the American Association for the Advancement of Education (Volume 5)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1856 Excerpt: ... harmony being equally dependent on a healthy heart. And so, again, the understanding and the feelings wait on that brave executor, the will; and nobody can be wise who leaves its scholarship neglected. In a word, in any liberal or Christian acceptance, education is not the training of the mind, but the training of the man. Being the discipline of an organized subject, it is organic in its own nature. No analytical classification can partition off the elements of humanity like the ingredients of a soil. Even of a tree we can not rear a single branch independently of the others, unless we kill the others back by violence. One-sidedness has been the vice of all systems of education hitherto, and every legitimate advance has been an approach to the recognition of the unity and indivisibility of the educated being as a living and infinite soul. Let us proceed, on the ground of this principle, with our proper theme. My main propositions are these three: 1st. That there is an educating power issuing from the teacher, not by voice nor by immediate design, but silent and involuntary, as indispensable to his true function as any element in it. 2d. That this unconscious tuition is yet no product of caprice, nor of accident, but takes its quality from the undermost substance of the teacher's character. And 3d. That as it is an emanation flowing from the very spirit of his own life, so it is also an influence acting insensibly to form the life of the scholar. 1. I remind the teacher of a fact, which L presume may have been some time disclosed to him, in his dealings with almost any truth in its more secret relations, viz., that all true wisdom involves a certain something that is inexpressible. After all you have said about it, you feel that there is something more whic...