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Towards A Philosophy Of
Education
By Charlotte Mason
 Start Publishing LLC

Copyright © 2012 by Start Publishing LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or

portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

First Start Publishing eBook edition October 2012

Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-62793-288-2
 Table of Contents
Preface

A Short Synopsis

Book I

Introduction

Chapter 1: Self-Education

Chapter 2: Children Are Born Persons

Chapter 3: The Good And Evil Nature Of A Child

Chapter 4: Authority And Docility

Chapter 5: The Sacredness Of Personality

Chapter 6: Three Instruments Of Education

Chapter 7: How We Make Use Of Mind

Chapter 8: The Way Of The Will

Chapter 9: The Way Of The Reason

Chapter 10: The Curriculum

Section I:

The Knowledge Of God

Section II:
 The Knowledge Of Man; History

The Knowledge Of Man; Literature

The Knowledge Of Man; Morals and Economics

The Knowledge Of Man; Composition

The Knowledge Of Man; Languages

The Knowledge Of Man; Art

Section III:

The Knowledge Of The Universe; Science and Geography

The Knowledge Of The Universe; Mathematics

The Knowledge Of The Universe; Physical Development and

Handicrafts

Book II Theory Applied

Chapter 1: A Liberal Education In Elementary Schools

Chapter 2: A Liberal Education In Secondary Schools

Chapter 3: Scope Of Continuation Schools

Chapter 4: The Basis Of National Strength

Supplementary; Too Wide a Mesh

 Author’s Preface
It would seem a far cry from Undine to a ‘liberal education’ but
there is a point of contact between the two; a soul awoke within a
water-sprite at the touch of love; so, I have to tell of the awakening
of a ‘general soul’ at the touch of knowledge. Eight years ago the
‘soul’ of a class of children in a mining village school awoke
simultaneously at this magic touch and has remained awake. We
know that religion can awaken souls, that love makes a new man,
that the call of a vocation may do it, and in the age of the
Renaissance, men’s souls, the general soul, awoke to knowledge:
but this appeal rarely reaches the modern soul; and, notwithstanding
the pleasantness attending lessons and marks in all our schools, I
believe the ardour for knowledge in the children of this mining
village is a phenomenon that indicates new possibilities. Already
many thousands of the children of the Empire had experienced this
intellectual conversion, but they were the children of educated
persons. To find that the children of a mining population were
equally responsive seemed to open a new hope for the world. It may
be that the souls of all children are waiting for the call of knowledge
to awaken them to delightful living.

This is how the late Mrs. Francis Steinthal, who was the happy
instigator of the movement in Council Schools, wrote,––“Think of the
meaning of this in the lives of the children,––disciplined lives, and no
lawless strikes, justice, an end to class warfare, developed intellects,
and no market for trashy and corrupt literature! We shall, or rather
they will, live in a redeemed world.” This was written in a moment of
enthusiasm on hearing that a certain County Council had accepted a
scheme of work for this pioneer school; enthusiasm sees in advance
the fields white to the harvest, but indeed the event is likely to
justify high expectations. Though less than nine years have passed
since that pioneer school made the bold attempt, already many
thousands of children working under numerous County Councils are
finding that “Studies serve for delight.”

No doubt children are well taught and happy in their lessons as

things are, and this was specially true of the school in question; yet
both teachers and children find an immeasurable difference between
the casual interest roused by marks, pleasing oral lessons and other
school devices, and the sort of steady avidity for knowledge that
comes with the awakened soul. The children have converted the
school inspectors: “And the English!” said one of these in
astonishment as he listened to their long, graphic, dramatic
narrations of what they had heard. During the last thirty years we
(including many fellow workers) have had thousands of children, in
our schoolrooms, home and other, working on the lines of Dean
Colet’s prayer for St Paul’s School,––“Pray for the children to prosper
in good life and good literature;” probably all children so taught
grow up with such principles and pursuits as make for happy and
useful citizenship.

I should like to add that we have no axe to grind. The public good
is our aim; and the methods proposed are applicable in any school.
My object in offering this volume to the public is to urge upon all
who are concerned with education a few salient principles which are
generally either unknown or disregarded; and a few methods which,
like that bathing in Jordan, are too simple to commend themselves
to the ‘general.’ Yet these principles and methods make education
entirely effectual.

I should like to add that no statement that I have advanced in the

following volume rests upon opinion only. Every point has been
proved in thousands of instances, and the method may be seen at
work in many schools, large and small, Elementary and Secondary.

I have to beg the patience of the reader who is asked to approach

the one terminus by various avenues, and I cannot do so better than
in the words of old Fuller:––“Good reader. I suspect I may have
written some things twice; if not in the same words yet in sense,
which I desire you to pass by favourably, forasmuch as you may well
think, it was difficult and a dull thing for me in so great a number of
independent sentences to find out the repetitions . . . Besides the
pains, such a search would cost me more time than I can afford it;
for my glass of life running now low, I must not suffer one sand to
fall in waste nor suffer one minute in picking of straws . . . But to
conclude this, since in matters of advice, Precept must be upon
Precept, Line upon Line, I apologise in the words of St. Paul, ‘To
write the same things to you to me indeed is not grievous, but for
you it is safe.’”

I am unwilling to close what is probably the last preface I shall be

called upon to write without a very grateful recognition of the co-
operation of those friends who are working with me in what seems
to us a great cause. The Parents’ National Educational Union has
fulfilled its mission, as declared in its first prospectus, nobly and
generously. “The Union exists for the benefit of parents and teachers
of all classes;” and; for the last eight years it has undertaken the
labour and expense of an energetic propaganda on behalf of
Elementary Schools, of which about 150 are now working on the
programmes of the Parents’ Union School. During the last year a
pleasing and hopeful development has taken place under the
auspices of the Hon. Mrs. Franklin. It was suggested to the Head of
a London County Council School to form an association of the
parents of the children in that school, offering them certain
advantages and requiring a small payment to cover expenses. At the
first meeting one of the fathers present got up and said that he was
greatly disappointed. He had expected to see some three hundred
parents and there were only about sixty present! The promoters of
the meeting were, however, well pleased to see the sixty, most of
whom became members of the Parents’ Association, and the work
goes on with spirit.

We are deeply indebted to many fellow-workers, but not even that

very courteous gentleman who once wrote a letter to the Romans
could make suitable acknowledgments to all of those to whom we
owe the success of a movement the rational of which I attempt to
make clear in the following pages.

Charlotte M. Mason,

House of Education Ambleside. 1922

 A Short Synopsis
Of the Educational Philosophy Advanced in this Volume

“No sooner doth the truth ... . .come into the soul’s sight, but the
soul knows her to be her first and old acquaintance.”

“The consequence of truth is great; therefore the judgment of it

must not be negligent.” (Whichcote).

1. Children are born persons.

2. They are not born either good or bad, but with possibilities for
good and for evil.

3. The principles of authority on the one hand, and of obedience

on the other, are natural, necessary and fundamental; but––

4. These principles are limited by the respect due to the

personality of children, which must not be encroached upon whether
by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by
undue play upon any one natural desire.

5. Therefore, we are limited to three educational instruments––the

atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the
presentation of living ideas. The P.N.E.U. Motto is: “Education is an
atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.”

6. When we say that “education is an atmosphere,” we do not

mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child-
environment’ especially adapted and prepared, but that we should
take into account the educational value of his natural home
atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let him
live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring
down his world to the child’s’ level.
 7. By “education is a discipline,” we mean the discipline of habits,
formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of mind or body.
Physiologists tell us of the adaptation of brain structures to habitual
lines of thought, i.e., to our habits.

8. In saying that “education is a life,” the need of intellectual and

moral as well as of physical sustenance is implied. The mind feeds
on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous curriculum.

9. We hold that the child’s mind is no mere sac to hold ideas; but
is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a spiritual organism, with an
appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet, with which it is
prepared to deal; and which it can digest and assimilate as the body
does foodstuffs.

10. Such a doctrine as e.g. the Herbartian, that the mind is a

receptacle, lays the stress of education (the preparation of
knowledge in enticing morsels duly ordered) upon the teacher.
Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving much
teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher’s axiom is,’ what a
child learns matters less than how he learns it.”

11. But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind
which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a
full and generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge
offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their
informing ideas. Out of this conception comes our principle that,––

12. “Education is the Science of Relations”; that is, that a child has
natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we
train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science
and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business
is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid
as many as may be of––

“Those first-born affinities

 “That fit our new existence to existing things.”

13. In devising a syllabus for a normal child, of whatever social

class, three points must be considered:

(a) He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient

food as much as does the body.

(b) The knowledge should be various, for sameness in mental diet

does not create appetite (i.e., curiosity)

(c) Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language,

because his attention responds naturally to what is conveyed in
literary form.

14. As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children

should ‘tell back’ after a single reading or hearing: or should write on
some part of what they have read.

15. A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally

great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-
reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising. and the
like.

Acting upon these and some other points in the behaviour of

mind, we find that the educability of children is enormously greater
than has hitherto been supposed, and is but little dependent on such
circumstances as heredity and environment.

Nor is the accuracy of this statement limited to clever children or

to children of the educated classes: thousands of children in
Elementary Schools respond freely to this method, which is based on
the behaviour of mind.

16. There are two guides to moral and intellectual self-

management to offer to children, which we may call ‘the way of the
will’ and ‘the way of the reason.’
 17. The way of the will: Children should be taught, (a) to
distinguish between ‘I want’ and ‘I will.’ (b) That the way to will
effectively is to turn our thoughts from that which we desire but do
not will. (c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of or
do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting. (d) That
after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with new
vigour. (This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose
office it is to ease us for a time from will effort, that we may ‘will’
again with added power. The use of suggestion as an aid to the will
is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character,
It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development, and
that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of
success.)

18. The way of reason: We teach children, too, not to ‘lean (too
confidently) to their own understanding’; because the function of
reason is to give logical demonstration (a) of mathematical truth, (b)
of an initial idea, accepted by the will. In the former case, reason is,
practically, an infallible guide, but in the latter, it is not always a safe
one; for, whether that idea be right or wrong, reason will confirm it
by irrefragable proofs.

19. Therefore, children should be taught, as they become mature

enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility
which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of
ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of
conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them. These
principles should save children from some of the loose thinking and
heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level than
we need.

20. We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual

and ‘spiritual’ life of children, but teach them that the Divine Spirit
has constant access to their spirits, and is their Continual Helper in
all the interests, duties and joys of life.
Book I
 Introduction
These are anxious days for all who are engaged in education. We
rejoiced in the fortitude, valour and devotion shown by our men in
the War and recognize that these things are due to the Schools as
well as to the fact that England still breeds “very valiant creatures.”
It is good to know that “the whole army was illustrious.” The
heroism of our officers derives an added impulse from that tincture
of ‘letters’ that every Public schoolboy gets, and those “playing
fields” where boys acquire habits of obedience and command. But
what about the abysmal ignorance shown in the wrong thinking of
many of the men who stayed at home? Are we to blame? I suppose
most of us feel that we are: for these men are educated as we
choose to understand education, that is, they can read and write,
think perversely, and follow an argument, though they are unable to
detect a fallacy. If we ask in perplexity, why do so many men and
women seem incapable of generous impulse, of reasoned patriotism,
of seeing beyond the circle of their own interests, is not the answer,
that men are enabled for such things by education? These are the
marks of educated persons; and when millions of men who should
be the backbone of the country seem to be dead to public claims,
we have to ask,––Why then are not these persons educated, and
what have we given them in lieu of education?

Our errors in education, so far as we have erred, turn upon the

conception we form of ‘mind,’ and the theory which has filtered
through to most teachers implies the out-of-date notion of the
development of ‘faculties,’ a notion which itself rests on the axiom
that thought is no more than a function of the brain. Here we find
the sole justification of the scanty curricula provided in most of our
schools, for the tortuous processes of our teaching, for the
mischievous assertion that “it does not matter what a child learns
but only how he learns it.” If we teach much and children learn little
we comfort ourselves with the idea that we are ‘developing’ this or
the other ‘faculty.’ A great future lies before the nation which shall
perceive that knowledge is the sole concern of education proper, as
distinguished from training, and that knowledge is the necessary
daily food of the mind.

Teachers are looking out for the support of a sound theory, and
such a theory must recognize with conviction the part mind plays in
education and the conditions under which this prime agent acts. We
want a philosophy of education which, admitting that thought alone
appeals to mind, that thought begets thought, shall relegate to their
proper subsidiary places all those sensory and muscular activities
which are supposed to afford intellectual as well as physical training.
The latter is so important in and for itself that it needs not to be
bolstered up by the notion that it includes the whole, or the
practically important part, of education. The same remark holds
good of vocational training. Our journals ask with scorn,––“Is there
no education but what is got out of books at school? Is not the lad
who works in the fields getting education?” and the public lacks the
courage to say definitely, “No, he is not,” because there is no clear
notion current as to what education means, and how it is to be
distinguished from vocational training. But the people themselves
begin to understand and to clamour for an education which shall
qualify their children for life rather than for earning a living. As a
matter of fact, it is the man who has read and thought on many
subjects who is, with the necessary training, the most capable
whether in handling tools, drawing plans, or keeping books. The
more of a person we succeed in making a child, the better will he
both fulfil his own life and serve society.

Much thoughtful care has been spent in ascertaining the causes of

the German break-down in character and conduct; the war scourge
was symptomatic and the symptoms have been duly traced to their
cause in the thoughts the people have been taught to think during
three or four generations. We have heard much about Nietzsche,
Treitschke, Bernhardi and the rest; but Professor Muirhead did us
good service in carrying the investigation further back. Darwin’s
theories of natural selection, the survival of the fittest, the struggle
for existence, struck root in Germany in fitting soil; and the ideas of
the superman, the super state, the right of might to repudiate
treaties, to eliminate feebler powers, to recognize no law but
expediency––all this appears to come as naturally out of Darwinism
as a chicken comes out of an egg. No doubt the same dicta have
struck us in the Commentaries of Frederick the Great; “they shall
take who have the power, and they shall keep who can,” is ages
older than Darwin, but possibly this is what our English philosopher
did for Germany:––There is a tendency in human nature to elect the
obligations of natural law in preference to those of spiritual law; to
take its code of ethics from science, and, following this tendency, the
Germans found in their reading of Darwin sanction for
manifestations of brutality.

Here are a few examples of how German philosophers amplify the

Darwinian text:––“In matter dwell all natural and spiritual potencies.
Matter is the foundation of all being.” “What we call spirit, thought,
the faculty of knowledge, consists of natural though peculiarly
combined forces.” Darwin himself protests against the struggle for
existence being the most potent agency where the higher part of
man’s nature is concerned, and he no more thought of giving a
materialistic tendency to modern education than Locke thought of
teaching principles which should bring about the French Revolution;
but men’s thoughts are more potent than they know, and these two
Englishmen may be credited with influencing powerfully two world-
wide movements. In Germany, “prepared by a quarter of a century
of materialistic thought,” the teaching of Darwin was accepted as
offering emancipation from various moral restraints. Ernst Haeckel,
his distinguished follower, finds in the law of natural selection
sanction for Germany’s lawless action, and also, that pregnant
doctrine of the superman. “This principle of selection is nothing less
than democratic; on the contrary it is aristocratic in the strictest
sense of the word.” We know how Buchner, again, simplified and
popularised these new theories, “All the faculties which we include
under the name of Psychical activities are only functions of the brain
substance. Thought stands in the same relation to the brain as the
gall to the liver.”

What use, or misuse, Germany has made of the teaching of

Darwin would not (save for the War) be of immediate concern to us,
were it not that she has given us back our own in the form of that
“mythology of faculty psychology” which is all we possess in the way
of educational thought. English psychology proper has advanced if
not to firm ground, at any rate to the point of repudiating the
‘faculty’ basis. “However much assailed the concept of a ‘mind’ is,”
we are told, “to be found in all psychological writers.” (quote from
the article on Psychology in the Encyclopadia Britannica as being the
most likely to exhibit the authoritative position.) But there are but
mind and matter, and when we are told again that “psychology rests
on feeling,” where are we? Is there a middle region?

II

We fail to recognize that as the body requires wholesome food and

cannot nourish itself upon any substance so the mind too requires
meat after its kind. If the War taught nothing else it taught us that
men are spirits, that the spirit, mind, of a man is more than his
flesh, that his spirit is the man, that for the thoughts of his heart he
gives the breath of his body. As a consequence of this recognition of
our spiritual nature, the lesson for us at the moment is that the
great thoughts, great events, great considerations, which form the
background of our national thought, shall be the content of the
education we pass on.

The educational thought we hear most about is, as I have said,

based on sundry Darwinian axioms, out of which we get the notion
that nothing matters but physical fitness and vocational training.
However important these are, they are not the chief thing. A century
ago when Prussia was shipwrecked in the Napoleonic wars it was
discovered that not Napoleon but Ignorance was the formidable
national enemy; a few philosophers took the matter in hand, and
history, poetry, philosophy, proved the salvation of a ruined nation,
because such studies make for the development of personality,
public spirit, initiative, the qualities of which the State was in need,
and which most advance individual happiness and success. On the
other hand, the period when Germany made her school curriculum
utilitarian marks the beginning of her moral downfall. History repeats
itself. There are interesting rumours afloat of how the students at
Bonn, for example, went in solemn procession to make a bonfire of
French novels, certain prints, articles of luxury and the like; things
like these had brought about the ruin of Germany and it was the
part of the youth to save her now as before. Are they to have
another Tugendbund?

We want an education which shall nourish the mind while not

neglecting either physical or vocational training; in short, we want a
working philosophy of education. I think that we of the P.N.E.U. have
arrived at such a body of theory, tested and corrected by some thirty
years of successful practice with thousands of children. This theory
has already been set forth in volumes published at intervals during
the last thirty-five years; so I shall indicate here only a few salient
points which seem to me to differ from general theory and
practice,––

(a) The children, not the teachers, are the responsible persons;
they do the work by self-effort.

(b) The teachers give sympathy and occasionally elucidate, sum

up or enlarge, but the actual work is done by the scholars.

(c) These read in a term one, or two, or three thousand pages,

according to their age, school and Form, in a large number of set
books. The quantity set for each lesson allows of only a single
reading; but the reading is tested by narration, or by writing on a
test passage. When the terminal examination is at hand so much
ground has been covered that revision is out of the question; what
the children have read they know, and write on any part of it with
ease and fluency, in vigorous English; they usually spell well.

Much is said from time to time to show that ‘mere book-learning’ is

rather contemptible, and that “Things are in the saddle and ride
mankind.” May I point out that whatever discredit is due to the use
of books does not apply to this method, which so far as I can
discover has not hitherto been employed. Has an attempt been
made before on a wide scale to secure that scholars should know
their books, many pages in many books, at a single reading, in such
a way that months later they can write freely and accurately on any
part of the term’s reading?

(d) There is no selection of studies, or of passages or of episodes,

on the ground of interest. The best available book is chosen and is
read through perhaps in the course of two or three years.

(e) The children study many books on many subjects, but exhibit
no confusion of thought, and ‘howlers’ are almost unknown.

(f) They find that, in Bacon’s phrase, “Studies serve for delight”;
this delight being not in the lessons or the personality of the teacher,
but purely in their ‘lovely books,’ ‘glorious books.’

(g) The books used are, whenever possible, literary in style.

(h) Marks, prizes, places, rewards, punishments, praise, blame, or

other inducements are not necessary to secure attention, which is
voluntary, immediate and surprisingly perfect.

(i) The success of the scholars in what may be called disciplinary

subjects, such as Mathematics and Grammar, depends largely on the
power of the teacher, though the pupils’ habit of attention is of use
in these too.
 (j) No stray lessons are given on interesting subjects; the
knowledge the children get is consecutive.

The unusual interest children show in their work, their power of

concentration, their wide, and as far as it goes, accurate knowledge
of historical, literary and some scientific subjects, has challenged
attention and the general conclusion is that these are the children of
educated and cultivated parents. It was vain to urge that the home
schoolroom does not usually produce remarkable educational
results; but the way is opening to prove that the power these
children show is common to all children; at last there is hope that
the offspring of working-class parents may be led into the wide
pastures of a liberal education.

Are we not justified in concluding that singular effects must have

commensurate causes, and that we have chanced to light on
unknown tracts in the region of educational thought. At any rate that
golden rule of which Comenius was in search has discovered itself,
the Rule, “Whereby Teachers Shall Teach less and Scholars Shall
Learn More.”

Let me now outline a few of the educational principles which

account for unusual results.

III
Principles Hitherto Unrecognized or Disregarded

I have enumerated some of the points in which our work is

exceptional in the hope of convincing the reader that unusual work
carried on successfully in hundreds of schoolrooms––home and
other––is based on principles hitherto unrecognized. The recognition
of these principles should put our national education on an
intelligent basis and should make for general stability, joy in living,
and personal initiative.
 May I add one or two more arguments in support of my plea,––
The appeal is not to the clever child only, but to the average and
even to the ‘backward’ child.

This scheme is carried out in less time than ordinary school work
on the same subjects.

There are no revisions, no evening lessons, no cramming or

‘getting up’ of subjects; therefore there is much time whether for
vocational work or interests or hobbies.

All intellectual work is done in the hours of morning school, and

the afternoons are given to field nature studies, drawing,
handicrafts, etc.

Notwithstanding these limitations the children produce a surprising

amount of good intellectual work.

No homework is required.

It is not that ‘we’ (of the P.N.E.U.) are persons of peculiar genius;
it is that, like Paley’s man who found the watch, “we have chanced
on a good thing.”

“No gain that I experience must remain unshared.”

We feel that the country and indeed the world should have the
benefit of educational discoveries which act powerfully as a moral
lever, for we are experiencing anew the joy of the Renaissance, but
without its pagan lawlessness.

Let me trace as far as I can recall them the steps by which I

arrived at some of the conclusions upon which we are acting. While
still a young woman I saw a great deal of a family of Anglo-Indian
children who had come ‘home’ to their grandfather’s house and were
being brought up by an aunt who was my intimate friend. The
children were astonishing to me; they were persons of generous
impulses and sound judgment, of great intellectual aptitude, of
imagination and moral insight. These last two points were, I
recollect, illustrated one day by a little maiden of five who came
home from her walk silent and sad; some letting alone, and some
wise openings brought out at last between sobs,–– “a poor man––no
home––nothing to eat––no bed to lie upon,”––and then the child
was relieved by tears. Such incidents are common enough in
families, but they were new to me. I was reading a good deal of
philosophy and ‘Education’ at the time for I thought with the
enthusiasm of a young teacher that Education should regenerate the
world. I had an Elementary School and a pioneer Church High
School at this same time so that I was enabled to study children in
large groups; but at school children are not so self-revealing as at
home. I began under the guidance of these Anglo-Indian children to
take the measure of a person and soon to suspect that children are
more than we, their elders, except that their ignorance is illimitable.

One limitation I did discover in the minds of these little people; my

friend insisted that they could not understand English Grammar; I
maintained that they could and wrote a little Grammar (still waiting
to be prepared for publication!) for the two of seven and eight; but
she was right; I was allowed to give the lessons myself with what
lucidity and freshness I could command; in vain; the Nominative
‘Case’ baffled them; their minds rejected the abstract conception just
as children reject the notion of writing an “Essay on Happiness.” But
I was beginning to make discoveries; the second being, that the
mind of a child takes or rejects according to its needs.

From this point it was not difficult to go on to the perception that,

whether in taking or rejecting, the mind was functioning for its own
nourishment; that the mind, in fact, requires sustenance––as does
the body, in order that it increase and be strong; but because the
mind is not to be measured or weighed but is spiritual, so its
sustenance must be spiritual too, must, in fact, be ideas (in the
Platonic sense of images). I soon perceived that children were well
equipped to deal with ideas, and that explanations, questionings,
amplifications, are unnecessary and wearisome. Children have a
natural appetite for knowledge which is informed with thought. They
bring imagination, judgment, and the various so-called ‘faculties’ to
bear upon a new idea pretty much as the gastric juices act upon a
food ration. This was illuminating but rather startling; the whole
intellectual apparatus of the teacher, his power of vivid presentation,
apt illustration, able summing up, subtle questioning, all these were
hindrances and intervened between children and the right nutriment
duly served; this, on the other hand, they received with the sort of
avidity and simplicity with which a healthy child eats his dinner.

The Scottish school of philosophers came to my aid here with

what may be called their doctrine of the desires, which, I perceived,
stimulate the action of mind and so cater for spiritual (not
necessarily religious) sustenance as the appetites do for that of the
body and for the continuance of the race. This was helpful; I inferred
that one of these, the Desire of Knowledge (Curiosity) was the chief
instrument of education; that this desire might be paralysed or made
powerless like an unused limb by encouraging other desires to
intervene between a child and the knowledge proper for him; the
desire for place,––emulation; for prizes,––avarice; for power,––
ambition; for praise,––vanity, might each be a stumbling block to
him. It seemed to me that we teachers had unconsciously
elaborated a system which should secure the discipline of the
schools and the eagerness of the scholars,––by means of marks,
prizes, and the like,––and yet eliminate that knowledge-hunger, itself
the quite sufficient incentive to education.

Then arose the question,––Cannot people get on with little

knowledge? Is it really necessary after all? My child-friends supplied
the answer: their insatiable curiosity shewed me that the wide world
and its history was barely enough to satisfy a child who had not
been made apathetic by spiritual malnutrition. What, then, is
knowledge?––was the next question that occurred; a question which
the intellectual labour of ages has not settled; but perhaps this is
enough to go on with;––that only becomes knowledge to a person
which he has assimilated, which his mind has acted upon.

Children’s aptitude for knowledge and their eagerness for it made

for the conclusion that the field of a child’s knowledge may not be
artificially restricted, that he has a right to and necessity for as much
and as varied knowledge as he is able to receive; and that the
limitations in his curriculum should depend only upon the age at
which he must leave school; in a word, a common curriculum (up to
the age of say, fourteen or fifteen) appears to be due to all children.

We have left behind the feudal notion that intellect is a class

prerogative, that intelligence is a matter of inheritance and
environment; inheritance, no doubt, means much but everyone has
a very mixed inheritance; environment makes for satisfaction or
uneasiness, but education is of the spirit and is not to be taken in by
the eye or effected by the hand; mind appeals to mind and thought
begets thought and that is how we become educated. For this
reason we owe it to every child to put him in communication with
great minds that he may get at great thoughts; with the minds, that
is, of those who have left us great works; and the only vital method
of education appears to be that children should read worthy books,
many worthy books.

It will be said on the one hand that many schools have their own
libraries or the scholars have the free use of a public library and that
children do read; and on the other that the literary language of first-
rate books offers an impassable barrier to working-men’s children. In
the first place we all know that desultory reading is delightful and
incidentally profitable but is not education whose concern is
knowledge. That is, the mind of the desultory reader only rarely
makes the act of appropriation which is necessary before the matter
we read becomes personal knowledge. We must read in order to
know or we do not know by reading.
 As for the question of literary form, many circumstances and
considerations which it would take too long to describe brought me
to perceive that delight in literary form is native to us all until we are
‘educated’ out of it.

It is difficult to explain how I came to a solution of a puzzling

problem,––how to secure attention. Much observation of children,
various incidents from one’s general reading, the recollection of my
own childhood and the consideration of my present habits of mind
brought me to the recognition of certain laws of the mind, by
working in accordance with which the steady attention of children of
any age and any class in society is insured, week-in, week out,––
attention, not affected by distracting circumstances. It is not a
matter of personal magnetism, for hundreds of teachers of very
varying quality, working in home schoolrooms and in Elementary and
Secondary Schools on this method (in connection with the Parents’
Union School) secure it without effort; neither does it rest upon the
‘doctrine of interest’; no doubt the scholars are interested,
sometimes delighted; but they are interested in a great variety of
matters and their attention does not flag in the ‘dull parts.’

It is not easy to sum up in a few short sentences those principles

upon which the mind naturally acts and which I have tried to bring
to bear upon a school curriculum. The fundamental idea is, that
children are persons and are therefore moved by the same springs
of conduct as their elders. Among these is the Desire of Knowledge,
knowledge-hunger being natural to everybody. History, Geography,
the thoughts of other people, roughly, the humanities, are proper for
us all, and are the objects of the natural desire of knowledge. So
too, are Science, for we all live in the world; and Art, for we all
require beauty, and are eager to know how to discriminate; social
science, Ethics, for we are aware of the need to learn about the
conduct of life; and Religion, for, like those men we heard of at the
Front, we all ‘want God.’
 In the nature of things then the unspoken demand of children is
for a wide and very varied curriculum; it is necessary that they
should have some knowledge of the wide range of interests proper
to them as human beings, and for no reasons of convenience or time
limitations may we curtail their proper curriculum.

Perceiving the range of knowledge to which children as persons

are entitled the questions are, how shall they be induced to take
that knowledge, and what can the children of the people learn in the
short time they are at school? We have discovered a working answer
to these two conundrums. I say discovered, and not invented, for
there is only one way of learning, and the intelligent persons who
can talk well on many subjects and the expert in one learn in the
one way, that is, they read to know. What I have found out is, that
this method is available for every child, whether in the dilatory and
desultory home schoolroom or in the large classes of Elementary
Schools.

Children no more come into the world without provision for

dealing with knowledge than without provision for dealing with food.
They bring with them not only that intellectual appetite, the desire of
knowledge, but also an enormous, an unlimited power of attention
to which the power of retention (memory) seems to be attached, as
one digestive process succeeds another, until the final assimilation.
“Yes,” it will be said, “they are capable of much curiosity and
consequent attention but they can only occasionally be beguiled into
attending to their lessons.” Is not that the fault of the lessons, and
must not these be regulated as carefully with regard to the
behaviour of mind as the children’s meals are with regard to physical
considerations? Let us consider this behaviour in a few aspects. The
mind concerns itself only with thoughts, imaginations, reasoned
arguments; it declines to assimilate the facts unless in combination
with its proper pabulum; it, being active, is wearied in the passive
attitude of a listener, it is as much bored in the case of a child by the
discursive twaddle of the talking teacher as in that of a grown-up by
conversational twaddle; it has a natural preference for literary form;
given a more or less literary presentation, the curiosity of the mind is
enormous and embraces a vast variety of subjects.

I predicate these things of ‘the mind’ because they seem true of

all persons’ minds. Having observed these, and some other points in
the behaviour of mind, it remained to apply the conclusions to which
I had come to a test curriculum for schools and families. Oral
teaching was to a great extent ruled out; a large number of books
on many subjects were set for reading in morning school-hours; so
much work was set that there was only time for a single reading; all
reading was tested by a narration of the whole or a given passage,
whether orally or in writing. Children working on these lines know
months after that which they have read and are remarkable for their
power of concentration (attention); they have little trouble with
spelling or composition and become well-informed, intelligent
persons. (The small Practising School attached to the House of
Education––ages of scholars from six to eighteen––affords
opportunities for testing the programmes of work sent out term by
term and the examinations set at the end of each term. The work in
each Form is easily done in the hours of morning-school. )

But, it will be said, reading or hearing various books read, chapter

by chapter, and then narrating or writing what has been read or
some part of it,––all this is mere memory work. The value of this
criticism may be readily tested; will the critic read before turning off
his light a leading article from a newspaper, say, or a chapter from
Boswell or Jane Austen, or one of Lamb’s Essays; then, will he put
himself to sleep by narrating silently what he has read. He will not
be satisfied with the result but he will find that in the act of narrating
every power of his mind comes into play, that points and bearings
which he had not observed are brought out; that the whole is
visualized and brought into relief in an extraordinary way; in fact,
that scene or argument has become a part of his personal
experience; he knows, he has assimilated what he has read. This is
not memory work. In order to memorise, we repeat over and over a
passage or a series of points or names with the aid of such clues as
we can invent; we do memorise a string of facts or words, and the
new possession serves its purpose for a time, but it is not
assimilated; its purpose being served, we know it no more. This is
memory work by means of which examinations are passed with
credit. I will not try to explain (or understand!) this power to
memorise;––it has its subsidiary use in education, no doubt, but it
must not be put in the place of the prime agent which is attention.

Long ago, I was in the habit of hearing this axiom quoted by a

philosophical old friend: “The mind can know nothing save what it
can produce in the form of an answer to a question put to the mind
by itself.” I have failed to trace the saying to its source, but a
conviction of its importance has been growing upon me during the
last forty years. It tacitly prohibits questioning from without; (this
does not, of course, affect the Socratic use of questioning for
purposes of moral conviction); and it is necessary to intellectual
certainty, to the act of knowing. For example, to secure a
conversation or an incident, we ‘go over it in our minds’; that is, the
mind puts itself through the process of self-questioning which I have
indicated. This is what happens in the narrating of a passage read:
each new consecutive incident or statement arrives because the
mind asks itself,––“What next?” For this reason it is important that
only one reading should be allowed; efforts to memorise weaken the
power of attention, the proper activity of the mind; if it is desirable
to ask questions in order to emphasize certain points, these should
be asked after and not before, or during, the act of narration.

Our more advanced psychologists come to our support here; they,

too, predicate “instead of a congerie of faculties, a single subjective
activity, attention;” and again, there is “one common factor in all
psychics activity, that is attention.” (I again quote from the article on
Psychology in the Encyclopedia Britannica.) My personal addition is
that attention is unfailing, prompt and steady when matter is
presented suitable to a child’s intellectual requirements, if the
presentation be made with the conciseness, directness, and
simplicity proper to literature.
 Another point should be borne in mind; the intellect requires a
moral impulse, and we all stir our minds into action the better if
there is an implied ‘must’ in the background; for children in class the
‘must’ acts through the certainty that they will be required to narrate
or write from what they have read with no opportunity of ‘looking
‘up,’ or other devices of the idle. Children find the act of narrating so
pleasurable in itself that urgency on the part of the teacher is
seldom necessary.

Here is a complete chain of the educational philosophy I have

endeavoured to work out, which has, at least, the merit that it is
successful in practice. Some few hints I have, as I have said,
adopted and applied, but I hope I have succeeded in methodising
the whole and making education what it should be, a system of
applied philosophy; I have, however, carefully abstained from the
use of philosophical terms.

This is, briefly, how it works:––

A child is a Person with the spiritual requirements and capabilities

of a person.

Knowledge ‘nourishes’ the mind as food nourishes the body.

A child requires knowledge as much as he requires food.

He is furnished with the desire for Knowledge, i.e., Curiosity; with

the power to apprehend Knowledge, that is, attention; with powers
of mind to deal with Knowledge without aid from without––such as
imagination, reflection, judgment; with innate interest in all
Knowledge that he needs as a human being; with power to retain
and communicate such Knowledge; and to assimilate all that is
necessary to him.

He requires that in most cases Knowledge be communicated to

him in literary form; and reproduces such Knowledge touched by his
own personality; thus his reproduction becomes original.
 The natural provision for the appropriation and assimilation of
Knowledge is adequate and no stimulus is required; but some moral
control is necessary to secure the act of attention; a child receives
this in the certainty that he will be required to recount what he has
read. Children have a right to the best we possess; therefore their
lesson books should be, as far as possible, our best books.

They weary of talk, and questions bore them, so that they should
be allowed to use their books for themselves; they will ask for such
help as they wish for.

They require a great variety of knowledge,––about religion, the

humanities, science, art; therefore, they should have a wide
curriculum, with a definite amount of reading set for each short
period of study.

The teacher affords direction, sympathy in studies, a vivifying

word here and there, help in the making of experiments, etc., as
well as the usual teaching in languages, experimental science and
mathematics.

Pursued under these conditions, “Studies serve for delight,” and

the consciousness of daily progress is exhilarating to both teacher
and children.

The reader will say with truth,––“I knew all this before and have
always acted more or less on these principles”; and I can only point
to the unusual results we obtain through adhering not ‘more or less,’
but strictly to the principles and practices I have indicated. I suppose
the difficulties are of the sort that Lister had to contend with; every
surgeon knew that his instruments and appurtenances should be
kept clean, but the saving of millions of lives has resulted from the
adoption of the great surgeon’s antiseptic treatment; that is from the
substitution of exact principles scrupulously applied for the rather
casual ‘more or less’ methods of earlier days.
 Whether the way I have sketched out is the right and the only way
remains to be tested still more widely than in the thousands of cases
in which it has been successful; but assuredly education is slack and
uncertain for the lack of sound principles exactly applied. The
moment has come for a decision; we have placed our faith in
‘civilisation,’ have been proud of our progress; and of the pangs that
the War has brought us, perhaps none is keener than that caused by
the utter breakdown of the civilisation which we have held to be
synonymous with education. We know better now, and are thrown
back on our healthy human instincts and the Divine sanctions. The
educable part of a person is his mind. The training of the senses and
muscles is, strictly speaking, training and not education. The mind,
like the body, requires quantity, variety and regularity in the
sustenance offered to it. Like the body, the mind has its appetite, the
desire for knowledge. Again, like the body, the mind is able to
receive and assimilate by its powers of attention and reflection. Like
the body, again, the mind rejects insipid, dry, and unsavoury food,
that is to say, its pabulum should be presented in a literary form.
The mind is restricted to pabulum of one kind: it is nourished upon
ideas and absorbs facts only as these are connected with the living
ideas upon which they hang. Children educated upon some such
lines as these respond in a surprising way, developing capacity,
character, countenance, initiative and a sense of responsibility. They
are, in fact, even as children, good and thoughtful citizens.

I have in this volume attempted to show the principles and

methods upon which education of this sort is being successfully
carried out, and have added chapters which illustrate the history of a
movement the aim of which is, in the phrase of Comenius,––“All
knowledge for all men.” As well as these I have been permitted to
use the criticisms of various teachers and Directors of education and
others upon the practical working of the scheme.

It is a matter of rejoicing that the way is open to give to all classes

a basis of common thought and common knowledge, including a
common store of literary and historic allusions, a possession which
has a curious power of cementing bodies of men, and, in the next
place, it is an enormous gain that we are within sight of giving to the
working-classes, notwithstanding their limited opportunities, that
stability of mind and magnanimity of character which are the proper
outcome and the unfailing test of a liberal education.

I shall confine myself in this volume to the amplification and

illustration of some of the points I have endeavoured to make in this
introductory statement.
 Chapter 1: Self-Education
The title of this chapter may awaken some undeserved sympathy;
gratifying visions of rhythmic movements, independent action, self-
expression in various interesting ways, occur to the mind––for surely
these things constitute ‘self-education’? Most of these modern
panacea are desirable and by no means to be neglected; limbs
trained to grace and agility, a hand, to dexterity and precision, an
eye made to see and an ear to hear, a voice taught to interpret,––we
know to-day that all these possibilities of joy in living should be open
to every child, and we look forward even too hopefully to the
manner of citizen who shall be the outcome of our educational zeal.

Now, although we, of the Parents’ Union, have initiated some of

these educational outworks and have gladly and gratefully adopted
others, yet is our point of view different; we are profoundly sceptical
as to the effect of all or any of these activities upon character and
conduct. A person is not built up from without but within, that is, he
is living, and all external educational appliances and activities which
are intended to mould his character are decorative and not vital.

This sounds like a stale truism; but, let us consider a few

corollaries of the notion that ‘a child is a person,’ and that a person
is, primarily, living. Now no external application is capable of
nourishing life or promoting growth; baths of wine, wrappings of
velvet have no effect upon physical life except as they may hinder it;
life is sustained on that which is taken in by the organism, not by
that which is applied from without.

Perhaps the only allowable analogy with the human mind is the
animal body, especially the human body, for it is that which we know
most about; the well-worn plant and garden analogy is misleading,
especially as regards that tiresome busybody, the gardener, who will
direct the inclination of every twig, the position of every leaf; but,
even then apart from the gardener, the child-garden is an intolerable
idea as failing to recognize the essential property of a child, his
personality, a property all but absent in a plant. Now, let us consider
for a moment the parallel behaviour of body and mind. The body
lives by air, grows on food, demands rest, flourishes on a diet wisely
various. So, of the mind,––(by which I mean the entire spiritual
nature, all that which is not body),––it breathes in air, calls for both
activity and rest and flourishes on a wisely varied dietary.

We go round the house and round the house, but rarely go into
the House of Mind; we offer mental gymnastics, but these do not
take the place of food, and of that we serve the most meagre
rations, no more than that bean a day! Diet for the body is
abundantly considered, but no one pauses to say, “I wonder does
the mind need food, too, and regular meals, and what is its proper
diet?”

I have asked myself this question and have laboured for fifty years
to find the answer, and am anxious to impart what I think I know,
but the answer cannot be given in the form of ‘Do’ this and that, but
rather as an invitation to ‘Consider’ this and that; action follows
when we have thought duly.

The life of the mind is sustained upon ideas; there is no

intellectual vitality in the mind to which ideas are not presented
several times, say, every day. But ‘surely, surely,’ as ‘Mrs. Proudie’
would say, scientific experiments, natural beauty, nature study,
rhythmic movements, sensory exercises, are all fertile in ideas? Quite
commonly, they are so, as regards ideas of invention and discovery;
and even in ideas of art; but for the moment it may be well to
consider the ideas that influence life, that is, character and conduct;
these, would seem, pass directly from mind to mind, and are neither
helped nor hindered by educational outworks. Every child gets many
of these ideas by word of mouth, by way of family traditions,
proverbial philosophy,––in fact, by what we might call a kind of oral
literature. But, when we compare the mind with the body, we
perceive that three ‘square’ meals a day are generally necessary to
health, and that a casual diet of ideas is poor and meagre. Our
schools turn out a good many clever young persons, wanting in
nothing but initiative, the power of reflection and the sort of moral
imagination that enables you to ‘put yourself in his place.’ These
qualities flourish upon a proper diet; and this is not afforded by the
ordinary school book, or, in sufficient quantity by the ordinary lesson.
I should like to emphasize quantity, which is as important for the
mind as the body; both require their ‘square meals.’

It is no easy matter to give its proper sustenance to the mind;

hard things are said of children, that they have ‘no brains,’ ‘a low
order of intellect,’ and so on; many of us are able to vouch for the
fine intelligence by children who are fed with the proper mind-stuff;
but teachers do not usually take the trouble to find out what this is.
We come dangerously near to what Plato condemns as “that lie of
the soul,” that corruption of the highest truth, of which Protagoras is
guilty in the saying that, “Knowledge is sensation.” What else are we
saying when we run after educational methods which are purely
sensory? Knowledge is not sensation, nor is it to be derived through
sensation; we feed upon the thoughts of other minds; and thought
applied to thought generates thought and we become more
thoughtful. No one need invite us to reason, compare, imagine; the
mind, like the body, digests its proper food, and it must have the
labour of digestion or it ceases to function.

But the children ask for bread and we give them a stone; we give
information about objects and events which mind does not attempt
to digest but casts out bodily (upon an examination paper?). But let
information hang upon a principle, be inspired by an idea, and it is
taken with avidity and used in making whatsoever in the spiritual
nature stands for tissue in the physical.

“Education,” said Lord Haldane, some time ago, “is a matter of the
spirit,”––no wiser word has been said on the subject, and yet we
persist in applying education from without as a bodily activity or
emollient. We begin to see light. No one knoweth the things of a
man but the spirit of a man which is in him; therefore, there is no
education but self-education, and as soon as a young child begins
his education he does so as a student. Our business is to give him
mind-stuff, and both quality and quantity are essential. Naturally,
each of us possesses this mind-stuff only in limited measure, but we
know where to procure it; for the best thought the world possesses
is stored in books; we must open books to children, the best books;
our own concern is abundant provision and orderly serving.

I am jealous for the children; every modern educational

movement tends to belittle them intellectually; and none more so
than a late ingenious attempt to feed normal children with the pap-
meat which may be good for the mentally sick: but, “To all wildly
popular things comes suddenly and inexorably death, without hope
of resurrection.” If Mr. Bernard Shaw is right, I need not discuss a
certain popular form of ‘New Education.’ It has been ably said that
education should profit by the divorce which is now in progress from
psychology on the one hand and sociology on the other; but what if
education should use her recovered liberty make a monstrous
alliance with pathology?

Various considerations urge upon me a rather distasteful task. It is

time I showed my hand and gave some account of work, the
principles and practices of which should, I think, be of general use.
Like those lepers who feasted at the gates of a famished city, I begin
to take shame to myself! I have attempted to unfold (in various
volumes) a system of educational theory which seems to me able to
meet any rational demand, even that severest criterion set up by
Plato; it is able to “run the gauntlet of objections, and is ready to
disprove them, not by appeals to opinion, but to absolute truth.”
Some of it is new, much of it is old. Like the quality of mercy, it is
not strained; certainly it is twice blessed, it blesses him that gives
and him that takes, and a sort of radiancy of look distinguishes both
scholar and teacher engaged in this manner of education; but there
are no startling results to challenge attention.
 Professor Bompas Smith remarked in an inaugural address at the
University of Manchester that,––“If we can guide our practice by the
light of a comprehensive theory we shall widen our experience by
attempting tasks which would not otherwise have occurred to us.” It
is possible to offer the light of such a comprehensive theory, and the
result is precisely what the Professor indicates,––a large number of
teachers attempt tasks which would not otherwise have occurred to
them. One discovers a thing because it is there, and no sane person
takes credit to himself for such discovery. On the contrary, he
recognizes with King Arthur,––“These jewels, whereupon I chanced
Divinely, are for public use.” For many years we have had access to a
sort of Aladdin’s cave which I long to throw open ‘for public use.’

Let me try to indicate some of the advantages of the theory I am

urging––It fits all ages, even the seven ages of man! It satisfies
brilliant children and discovers intelligence in the dull. It secures
attention, interest, concentration, without effort on the part of
teacher or taught.

Children, I think, all children, so taught express themselves in

forcible and fluent English and use a copious vocabulary. An unusual
degree of nervous stability is attained; also, intellectual occupation
seems to make for chastity in thought and life. Parents become
interested in the schoolroom work, and find their children ‘delightful
companions.’ Children shew delight in books (other than story
books) and manifest a genuine love of knowledge. Teachers are
relieved from much of the labour of corrections. Children taught
according to this method do exceptionally well at any school. It is
unnecessary to stimulate these young scholars by marks, prizes, etc.

After all, it is not a quack medicine I am writing about, though the

reader might think so, and there is no IS. I 1/2d. a bottle in
question!

Over thirty years ago I published a volume about the home

education of children and people wrote asking how those counsels of
perfection could be carried out with the aid of the private governess
as she then existed; it occurred to me that a series of curricula
might be devised embodying sound principles and securing that
children should be in a position of less dependence on their teacher
than they then were; in other words, that their education should be
largely self-education. A sort of correspondence school was set up,
the motto of which,––“I am, I can, I ought, I will,” has had much
effect in throwing children upon the possibilities, capabilities, duties
and determining power belonging to them as persons.

“Children are born persons,” is the first article of the educational

credo in question. The response made by children (ranging in age
from six to eighteen) astonished me; though they only shewed the
power of attention, the avidity for knowledge, the clearness of
thought, the nice discrimination in books, and the ability to deal with
many subjects, for which I had given them credit in advance. I need
not repeat what I have urged elsewhere on the subject of
‘Knowledge’ and will only add that anyone may apply a test; let him
read to a child of any age from six to ten an account of an incident,
graphically and tersely told, and the child will relate what he has
heard point by point, though not word for word, and will add
delightful original touches; what is more, he will relate the passage
months later because he has visualised the scene and appropriated
that bit of knowledge. A rhetorical passage, written in ‘journalese,’
makes no impression on him; if a passage be read more than once,
he may become letter-perfect, but the spirit, the individuality has
gone out of the exercise. An older boy or girl will read one of
Bacon’s Essays, say, or a passage from De Quincey, and will write or
tell it forcibly and with some style, either at the moment or months
later. We know how Fox recited a whole pamphlet of Burke’s at a
College supper though he had probably read it no more than once.
Here on the very surface is the key to that attention, interest,
literary style, wide vocabulary, love of books and readiness in
speaking, which we all feel should belong to an education that is
only begun at school and continued throughout life; these are the
things that we all desire, and how to obtain them is some part of the
open secret I am labouring to disclose ‘for public use.’

I am anxious to bring a quite successful educational experiment

before the public at a moment when we are told on authority that
“Education must be . . . an appeal to the spirit if it is to be made
interesting.” Here is Education which is as interesting and fascinating
as a fine art to parents, children and teachers.

During the last thirty years thousands of children educated on

these lines have grown up in love with Knowledge and manifesting a
‘right judgment in all things’ so far as a pretty wide curriculum gives
them data.

I would have children taught to read before they learn the

mechanical arts of reading and writing; and they learn delightfully;
they give perfect attention to paragraph or page read to them and
are able to relate the matter point by point, in their own words; but
they demand classical English and cannot learn to read in this sense
upon anything less. They begin their ‘schooling’ in ‘letters’ at six, and
begin at the same time to learn mechanical reading and writing. A
child does not lose by spending a couple of years in acquiring these
because he is meanwhile ‘reading’ the Bible, history, geography,
tales, with close attention and a remarkable power of reproduction,
or rather, of translation into his own language; he is acquiring a
copious vocabulary and the habit of consecutive speech. In a word,
he is an educated child from the first, and his power of dealing with
books, with several books in the course of a morning’s ‘school,’
increases with his age.

But children are not all alike; there is as much difference between
them as between men or women; two or three months ago, a small
boy, not quite six, came to school (by post); and his record was that
he could read anything in five languages, and was now teaching
himself the Greek characters, could find his way about the
Continental Bradshaw, and was a chubby, vigorous little person. All
this the boy brings with him when he comes to school; he is
exceptional, of course, just as a man with such accomplishments is
exceptional; I believe that all children bring with them much capacity
which is not recognized by their teachers, chiefly intellectual
capacity, (always in advance of motor power), which we are apt to
drown in deluges of explanation or dissipate in futile labours in
which there is no advance.

People are naturally divided into those who read and think and
those who do not read or think; and the business of schools is to see
that all their scholars shall belong to the former class; it is worth
while to remember that thinking is inseparable from reading which is
concerned with the content of a passage and not merely with the
printed matter.

The children I am speaking of are much occupied with things as

well as with books, because ‘Education is the Science of Relations,’ is
the principle which regulates their curriculum; that is, a child goes to
school with many aptitudes which he should put into effect. So, he
learns a good deal of science, because children have no difficulty in
understanding principles, though technical details baffle them. He
practises various handicrafts that he may know the feel of wood,
clay, leather, and the joy of handling tools, that is, that he may
establish a due relation with materials. But, always, it is the book,
the knowledge, the clay, the bird or blossom, he thinks of, not his
own place or his own progress.

I am afraid that some knowledge of the theory we advance is

necessary to the open-minded teacher who would give our practices
a trial, because every detail of schoolroom work is the outcome of
certain principles. For instance, it would be quite easy, without much
thought to experiment with our use of books; but in education, as in
religion, it is the motive that counts, and the boy who reads his
lesson for a ‘good mark’ becomes word-perfect, but does not know.
But these principles are obvious and simple enough, and, when we
consider that at present education is chaotic for want of a unifying
theory, and that there happens to be no other comprehensive theory
in the field which is in line with modern thought and fits every
occasion, might it not be well to try one which is immediately
practicable and always pleasant and has proved itself by producing
many capable, serviceable, dutiful men and women of sound
judgment and willing mind?

In urging a method of self-education for children in lieu of the

vicarious education which prevails, I should like to dwell on the
enormous relief to teachers, a self-sacrificing and greatly
overburdened class; the difference is just that between driving a
horse that is light and a horse that is heavy in hand; the former
covers the ground of his own gay will and the driver goes merrily.
The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books
is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no
longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.
Other documents randomly have
different content
 FAMILY sketches; 205 the clothing store of G. W. Slocum &
Company, ready-made clothiers and dealers in furnishing goods,
boots and shoes, etc. He is a Mason, a member of Hobasco Lodge,
Aurora Chapter, and was the master of Genoa Lodge No. 421 at the
time of the dedication of the Masonic Temple at New York. In 1863
Mr. Slocum married Kate Young, of Genoa, and they have two sons
and two daughters. Schoonmaker, Helen, was born in Ithaca and
educated in the Ithaca Academy. At the age of eighteen she was
married to W. D. Schoonmaker, who died in 1874, leaving the farm
to his wife, who has carried it on successfully. Mrs. Schoonmaker
takes an interest in social and church matters, as well as the
educational questions, and is a member of the Aurora Street Church.
Her father, Benjamin Pew, came to the town of Ithaca in 1801 from
New Jersey, being then nine years of age. He located on a farm, and
in after life, having acquired a competency, he retired from active
work and moved into the village. Smith, Horace I., was born in
Dryden, April 5, 1829, the sixth of a family of eight children of Isaac
S. Smith, also a native of this county, who died in 1836. The early
education of our subject was obtained in his native town. In 1853 he
left the farm and came to Ithaca, and has since been engaged in
various employments. He was in the mercantile business for two
years, and for four years was engaged in the manufacture of sewing
silks. He has also dealt in real estate. May 1, 1888, he became
connected with Cornell University, at first holding the position of
superintendent of contractors in >the erection of their buildings. He
held that position during the greater part of the next four years, until
May 1, 1892, when he was appointed superintendent of construction
and grounds for the university, which po ition he now holds. In
politics Mr. Smith is independent. In 1857 he married Mary E. Gay, of
this town. Simpson, George F., was born in Ithaca, October 19,
1841, a son of Edwin Simpson, a native of Steuben county, who
came here when a youth and followed farming and stock dealing.
Our subject was his only child. He was educated in the old Ithaca
Academy, and after leaving school engaged in the hotel business,
conducting the Alhambra about fifteen years. In 1891 he engaged in
the real estate and brokerage business, and is now conducting an
office in the same line. He is a member of Hobasco Lodge, Eagle
Chapter, St. Augustine Commandery, No. 38, and the Mystic Shrine
at Rochester. He married, in 1878, Mary Post, of Spencer, Tioga
county, N. Y. Sabin, John, was born in the town of Ithaca, August 7,
1854, a son of Abel, who was a native of Lewis county, and came to
this section about fifty years ago, locating in the town of Ithaca. He
moved to Danby about twenty-five years ago, where he now resides.
He had seven children, six now living. John finished his education at
the Ithaca Academy,, and his first occupation was as a farmer. In
1890 he left the farm and came to the town of Ithaca, where he
established a wagon mart at 43 Cayuga street, where he now carries
a complete line of lumber wagons, sleighs, cutters, horse blankets,
lap robes, hand-made and oak-tanned harnesses, wagon boxes,
spring seats, road carts, democrat wagons, and everything of the
line needed on the farm and city stables. Mr. Sabin has established a
reputation for fair and correct dealing, which has made him a leader
of this class of trade in the country. He is a Democrat, but not an
aspirant for political honors. He married, in 1881, Cora Stewart, of
Caroline.
 300 LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY. Swartwood, G.
M., was born in the town of Newfleld, April 13, 1837. William, his
father, was a native of Pennsylvania, born in 1807, was a farmer all
his life, and also a blacksmith. He settled in this county in 1834,
taking a farm in Newfleld, about a mile north of where our subject
now lives, his farm consisting of 233 acres, on which .he built a log
cabin at first. He married Priscilla Brown, of Pennsylvania, and they
had seven children, six surviving. Of these children G-. M. was the
third, and began business as a mechanic and carpenter. This he
followed several years, and has built several buildings in the town.
He is also a farmer. February 13, 1868, he married Adelaide
Ousmun, of Newfleld, by whom he has four children, all living at
home, though one son is in the Havana school. Mr. Swartwood is a
prominent member of the G. A. R. of Newfleld, Gregg Post, No. 123,
having served in the late war six months, when he was compelled to
leave on account of disease contracted in the service. He enlisted in
July, 1862, and returned in January, 1863. He has held the office of
senior vice-commander and quartermaster, and has been road
commissioner for one term. He is a Republican. Sher,wood, William
I., was born in Ulysses, July 8, 1849; was educated in the public
schools and Trumansburgh Academy, and for fourteen years has
been in partnership with the late G. H. Stewart in the undertaking
business, and is now a farmer. February 25, 1874, he married
Phoebe M. Tripp of Kingston, Pa., and they had two sons : Edwin S.,
who died young, and Merritt T., who died aged ten years. Mr.
Sherwood's father, Augustine M., was born in the town of Covert,
Seneca county, August 5, 1812, and came with his parents to this
county when young, February 1, 1837, he married Charlotte S. King
of this town, and they had eight children: Mary H.,' Maria K., Minerva
B., Blias K., William I., Ida M., Annie A. »nd Minnie A. The father died
August 7, 1885, and the mother resides on the homestead. Mrs.
Sherwood's father, Isaac Tripp, was born in Soranton, Pa.,
September 7, 1817, and February 17,1840, married Margaret
Shoemaker of Wyoming, Pa. They had six children: Mary A.,
Penelope B., Phoebe M., Isaac E., Margaret B. and Emma C. Mr.
Sherwood's family was well represented in the late war. He was
elected postmaster of the town in 1886, and has held that position
since with the exception of one year. He has been assistant engineer
of the Fire Department, and for the past two years chief engineer.
He is a member of the I. 0. 0. F., being its present secretary, also of
the A. O. U. W., in which he is recorder. Smiley, SanfordB.," was bom
in the town of Dry den, March 6, 1852. His father, Robert Smiley,
was among the early settlers in the town. Sanford E. Smiley was
educated in the common schools, to which he has added through life
by reading and observation. At the age of twenty he married Almeda
L Snyder, daughter of Joseph Snyder, and they are the parents of
two children, Leroy and Fred K. He takes the Republican side in
politics and now holds theofflce.of highway commissioner, and takes
an intelligent interest in educational and religious matters, and in
advancing the best interests of his town. In 1872 he bought part of
the Joseph Snyder estate, having seventy-seven acres of some of
the best farm and wood land in his town, raising hay, grain and
stock. He is recognized in his town as a conservative, independent
and intelligent citizen, and a practical and successful farmer.
 FAMILY SKETCHKS. 207 Shaver, Williard, was born February
26, 1844. His father, Ira C. Shaver, was born in Ithaca, August 2,
1817, and came to the town of Dryden in the spring of 1823 with his
father, John 0. Shaver and bought of Luther Gere a farm of 145
acres, wliich is in the possession of the family to the present day.
Mrs. Ira C. Sliaver was a daughter of W. H. Sut6n. In 1854 he
bought the George White property, just northwest of Freeville, where
the family now resides, and has eighty acres of some of the beet
farm land in the town. Williard Shaver, at the age of twenty-nine,
married Fannie, daughter of Peter Saulpaugh of Buffalo, and they
have three children, James G., Ira C. and Frank. W. In 1891 he
purchased of his father the old homestead property where he now
resides. Our subject is a well read, intelligentcitizen, taking an active
interest in church and school matters, having been trustee of the
school district for four years, his father having held the same ofiSce
for fifteen consecutive years. The family have always taken a
prominent part in advancing the best interest of the town, and are
practical and successful farmers. Stickle, Theodore, was born in the
town of Dryden, November 9, 1864. His father, Anson Stickle, came
from Dutchess (jounty in 1837, and in 1860 he bought Ihe Albert
Twogood property of 288 acre.". Mr. Stickle was educated in the
Dryden Academy, after which he returned to his father's farm. He
takes the Republican side in politics and an active interest in
educational and religious matters. Anson Stickle married Susan Van
Buskirk of Hamilton, Monroe county. Pa. Our subject is one of the
largest farmers in his town, raising large quantities of hay, grain and
stock, and making a specialty of sheep raising and dairying, and is
recognized as a practical and successful farmer. Scott, Adelbert C,
was born in the town of Dryden, July 5, 1859, was educated in the
common schools, and finished at Cortland Normal School. At the age
of twentyfour be married Flora L., daughter of William R. Curtis of
Cortland, and they have had one son, William A., born in 1881. Mr.
Scott bought the homestead, which has been in the possession of
the family for sixty years. It comprises 114 acres of fine land, and in
1893 Mr. Scott purchased part of the Rose estate adjoining, having
now 135 acres, which he devotes principally to dairying and the
raising of hay. Our subject takes an. active interest in all movements
for the best interests of the town. ShultB, Theophilus, was born in
Palatine, Montgomery county, March 15, 1822, and came to this
county, town of Dryden, in 1874. He bought part of the Jesse M.
Blanchard property of 161 acres, and in 1889 bought the Abel White
property of forty-five acres, and in 1882 bought the Giles farm of
100 acres, having now 306 acres, on which he raises large crops of
hay and grain, and makes a specialty of breeding pure Holstein
cattle. At the aee of twenty-two Mr. Shultz married Lany Flander,
daughter of Jacob H. Flander of St. Johnaville, and they have had
.seven children, one of whom, Charles A., is now living, and is
managing the farm. At the age of twenty-two the latter married Miss
Ida E., daughter of Romanzo George of Grand Rapids, Mich., and
they have three children : RoUo T., Altha C, and Christine. Our
subject is identified with all the leading movements of the town, and
is a practical and energetic farmer.
 208 LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY. Snyder, Mrs.
Caroline, was born in Montezuma, Wayne county, October 4, 1845.
Her father, George G. Ellison, came to the town of Dryden in 1859
and died in 1860, when the burden of the family fell upon Mrs.
Susan Ellison, and her five children, of whom Caroline was the eldest
and who, seeing the necessity of being self-supporting, at once went
to work, and has through force of character provided for herself
from thirteen years of age up to the present. At twenty-two she
married Conwell Snyder, son of John Snyder, who died in 1888,
leaving his many business affairs to be taken up and carried on by
his wife, who with unexpected business ability has accepted the task
and achieved a remarkable success. Mrs. Snyder lives with her
mother, Mrs. Susan Ellison, and also the mother of her husband,
Mrs. Maria Snyder, and is known as a true hearted, benevolent
woman, superintending the farm of 125 acres, which has forced her
to lead an active life. Snyder, Bradford, was born in the town of
Dryden, February 24, 1836. His father, Jeremiah, came to this town
in June, 1801, and settled on lot forty-three. The family were of
German descent, and came to Kew Jersey from Germany, two of the
brothers, ifenry and Christopher, being among the pioneer settlers in
Dryden, Peter taking up a section of 640 acres, to which he
afterwards added, acquiring eventually 1,000 acres, which he
distributed among his seven sons, two daughters and a
granddaughter. Our subject now resides on the homstead, having
160 acres of the original Snyder purchase. !3radford Snyder was
educated at the old eight-square brick school bouse, and finished dt
the Ithaca Academy under S. D. Carr. At the age of thirty-six he
married Ann, daughter of William Doxtader of Stratford, Fulton
county, and they have four children : Ward, Nora, Lena and Beva.
Mr. Snyder is a Republican, and is now serving as overseer of the
poor. He is also secretary of the Dryd.^'n and Groton Fire Insurance
company, having held both offices for the past twelve years. Shank,
Mrs. Lucy J., of Lake Ridge, proprietor of the Lake Ridge Hotel and
general store, was born in Lansing in 1853. She is the daughter of
Lo'ronzo D. and Mary J. Ives, natives of Cayuga county. The
grandparents were Noah and Anna (Clark) Ives of Connecticut, but
early settlers in Cayuga county. The father of our subject was a
carpenter in his earlier days, later a farmer in Lansing. In 1871 he
purchased the store aud hotel at Lake Ilidge, and operated them
bolli until his death ill December, 1884. The mother died in
November, 1865. They had two children : Emaline and Lucy. Mrs.
Shank received her education in the common schools in Lansing. At
the death of her father she came into possession of the farm of 130
acres, which she still owns. In 1893 she purchased the store and
hotel property at Lake Ridge of her sister Emaline, and with her
husband, B. C. Shank, carries on a general merchandise business
and hotel. In July, 1891, Mrs. Shank took an extended trip west
through Canada, Washington to San Francisco, returning home in
March, 1892. She has one child by a former husband, Ives W. Morey,
born July 13, 1886. She is a lady of fine tastes and youthful
appearance. Van Nortwick, W. J., was born in the town of Dryden,
October 2, 1828. His father, John Van Nortwick, son of Simeon,
came from New Jersey and they were among the first settlers in the
town. W. J. Van Nortwick was educated in the common schools.
 FAMILY SKETCHES. 209 to which he has added through life
by reading and close observation. At the age of thirty-fix he married
Nancy, daughter of Alexander McKinney, of Dryden, and they are the
parents of two children, one son, William, and one daughter, Lulu
May. In 1850, he began to acquire real estate, buying out other heirs
and part of his uncle's estate, having sixty-six acres on which he has
erected handsome buildings, raising hay, grain and stock, making a
specialty of dairying. Our subject is one of the conservative,
independent men of his town, where he is recognized as a practical
and successful farmer. He takes an interest in the leading events of
the day and in advancing the best interests of his town.
Yandemarks, Benjamin, was born in the town of Caroline, November
15, 1830. James M., his father, a native of Ulster county, moved to
Tompkins county when quite small, and always followed farming,
owning a farm near Brookton. He married Rachael Personious of the
town of Caroline, and they had eight children, our subject being the
second, and now sixty-three years old. The latter has followed
farming from early life, working at home with his father until his
marriage in 1863 to Charlotte, daughter of Feter Dennis of the town
of Caroline. They are the parents of five children, all at home but
one. All were educated in the common schools except one, who
graduated from the Ithaca High School, viz., Charles. In politics our
subject is ■> Democrat. Thomas, John, was born December U,
1825, in the town of Dover, Dutchess county, and came to Tompkins
county at the age of six months with his parents. He was educated
in. the district schools, to which be added by reading and
observation. He married Amelia, daughter of James Mulks of Ithaca,
by whom he had two children, a son and a daughter. Mrs. Thomas
died ten years after their marriage. Our subject afterwards sold bis
farm in Ithaca, and bought what was known as the Lewis Hanford
farm of seventy acres, to which he has added since. In 1864 he
married second Mary E. Swartout^.daughter of Adam Hoffman of
the town of Caroline. He is a Democrat in politics and takes an active
interest in temperance, education and religion, being one of the
leading men of the place. Thomas, E. J., was born in Dryden, May
26, 1840, a son of Benjamin, a native of Dutchess county, who was
left an orphan when young, and worked at farming till he reached
manhood, when he married Mary, daughter of Bryant Thomas, of
Dutchess county, and in 1834 moved to the farm now occuppied by
our subject. Here he died in 1872, having been a prosperous farmer
and a good citizen. He and wife had four children, E. J. being the
third. He also followed farming through early life. He was educated
in the public schools and at the age of twenty-three married Olive
RWinfield, daughter of William WinBeld of Slaterville, and they had
two children, Mary and Jane. Mr. Thomas has always voted the
Republican ticket Taggart, William, was born in Ireland, August 21,
1832, and came to this county in 1849. He settled in Dryden,
remaining five years, then worked for different farmers, and in 1857
he started for himself, buying a farm of thirty acres, which he traded
for eighty acres in Newfield, then traded that for his present place,
about eleven years ago. He served one year in the Bebellion. In
1860 he married Margaret Hodges and thej
 210 LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY. have had six
children, two deceased. Mr. Taggart is a member of the Grange, also
oE Ct A. R. In politics he is a Republican. Tree, Edward, was born in
England, July 5, 1844, and was less than two years ot age when his
parents came to this country. His father, Edward, sr., came to this
country and located in the town of Lansing, and here made his home
till 1837, when he moved to Ithaca and engaged in paper making.
He died February "19, 1885, aged seventy-one years. Of his ten
children, eight survive, our subject being the oldest son. The latter
was educated in the public schools, and his first occupation was as a
paper maker. At the age of fifteen he began as an apprentice in the
Ithaca paper mill, and rapidly rose to higher positions, following the
business thirty-two years. January 10, 1878, Mr. Tree established a
general grocery and provision store at 227 Aurora street, which his
son conducted while Mr. Tree worked in the paper mill. January 1,
1890, the son became a partner in the firm, and under the name of
E. Tree & Son, the concern is well known in commercial circles. In
1891 they added a market to their store, and now have one of the
finest stores of the kind in the place. Mr. Tree is a Democrat and in
1878 was elected on the Democratic and Workingmen's ticket as
trustee of the village. He is a member of the Aurora street church
and also of the R. A. November 22, 1866, he married Sarah J.
Sincepaugh of Ithaca, and they have had two children : William, and
Maud R. Tucker, George S., was born in the town of Dryden,
February 5, 1850. His father, George W. Tucker, was one of the early
settlers. He was educated in the common schools to which he has
added through life by reading and close observation. At the age of
thirty he married Ella Mericle, and they have one son, George 0., and
one daughter, Blanche D. He takes the Republican side in politics
and an active interest in school and church matters, being now
trustee of the school. In the year 1886 he bought the Joseph Fisher
place of six acres where be now resides. Our subject through life has
followed the trade ot carpenter and builder, making a specialty of
bridge building and railroad work. Teeter, George W., a life resident
of Lansing, was born on the farm he now owns December 29, 1817,
the son of Henry Teeter, who came to Lansing with his father, Henry,
from Northampton county, Pa., in 1791, and settled in this county.
The grandfather, Henry, died in 1804, leaving nine children ; all now
deceased. Henry, son ot the latter, and father of George W., spent
his life on his father's farm. He married a Miss Wintchy Sly, daughter
of Michael Sly of Elmira, formerly of Pennsylvania, and ot their
thirteen children, eleven grew to maturity : John, Joseph, Daniel,
Sally, Vincent, Hannah, Sly, Catharine, George, Henry and Smith.
Henry died about 1844, and his wife in 1872. George W. attended
the district schools and has always made this farm his home. He
followed boating on the Erie Canal for ten years, plying between
Buffalo and New York city. In the mean time he sold the farm left
him by his father, and after leaving the canal bought a farm in
Dryden, and a year later traded with his brother for the homestead
farm, which he has improved with new buildings, etc. January 15,
1849, he married Matilda E. Hagin, born in 1822, daughter of
Charles Hagin, and they have had five children : Foris May, born
December 1, 1849, now of Portland,
 FAMILY SKETCHES. 211 Ore.; Florence Belle, born in 1852,
wife of Cicero Miller, of Kirkwood, Broome county; Frances E., wife of
R. Miller of Lansing, born in 1855; George H., born in 18G0; Charles
8. twin of George H., who died aged three years; Lena L., born in
1867, wife of L. E. Holden of Tennessee. Mr. Teeter is a Democrat,
and has served as commissioner of roads. Reynolds, James Spencer,
deceased, was born in the town of Lansing, Tompkins county,
October 2, 1825, a son of Spencer Reynolds, a native of New. Jersey
and one of the early settlers of this county, who was three times
married and had nine children. James S. was the first born and was
educated in the old Ithaca Academy. After leaving school, and at the
age of sixteen, he was apprenticed to learn the iron moulder's trade
in the Coy foundry, and after finishing his apprenticeship he was
employed in the same foundry until be established a business for
himself, and besides the foundry added a machine shop, which he
conducted alone for some lime, and then was joined by J. B. Lang,
and the firm is still in existence, the estate of our subject being a
part of the firm. Mr. Reynolds died October 31, 1891, mourned and
lamented by all who knew him. He was a Republican, and although
often urged to accept office invariably declined on account of his
private business interests. In 1854 he married Francis P. Keny on,
tlaughter of William Kenyon, formerly a cabinetmaker of Hector, but
late of the Western States, who died in. Shasta, Cat. Ross, J. D., was
born in Savona, Steuben county, N. T., May 29, 1867. His father,
James H. Ross, is a retired clergyman of the M. E. Church after a
pastorate of forty years. Our subject was educated in the Cook
Academy, Havana, N. Y., and afterwards attended Cornell University.
After leaving the university he took up the study of law in connection
with D. F. Van Vleet, of Ithaca, and removed to the village of Drjrden
in 1890, where be was elected justice of the peace in 1891. At the
age of twenty-five be married Alice Sweetland, daughter of George
J. Sweetland of Dryden. Our subject is one of the rising young
lawyers in his town, where he is recognized as a man of conservative
character and ability, being selected by his townspeople to fill
various positions of trust. Roe, H. W., was born in the town of
Dryden May 9, 1859, and was educated in the common schools, to
which he has added through life by reading and close observation.
After leaving school he served as clerk in the general store at Etna
for three years, and then came to Freeville as clerk for A. C. Stone,
and has continued in the same business up to the present date, the
firm being Roe & Sutfin, carrying a general line of dry goods,
groceries, boots and shoes, wall paper, crockery and drugs. Our
subject is the leading merchant in his town, carrying the largest and
most complete stock of merchandise in the town. At the age of
twenty-nine he married Ida C. Reed, daughter of T. B. Reed of
Dryden, and they have one son, Clinton M. Roe. He takes an active
interest in temperance principles, and in advancing the best interests
of his town, where he is recognized as a citizen of high principles
and strict integrity. Reed, Joseph A., was born in the city of Ithaca,
September 23, 1838. In 1882 he went into the wholesale pork
packing business and conducted a market for fifteen years. Since
1890 he has done nothing. In 1890 he erected the fine buildings at
the
 212 LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY. corner of Aurora
and Buffalo streets, known as the Reed block. It is sixty six by sixty-
eight feet, of brick, three stories, the lower floor occupied by stores,
the two upper doors by living compartments. In 1880 he married
Ella A. Brook of the town of Lansing, daughter of Alfred Brook, a
farmer. He has a beautiful residence on Green street, rebuilt in 1879.
Rothschild Brothers. — This firm is composed of Jacob, Isaac and
Daniel G. Rothschild, who first started in business about eighteen
years ago in Binghamton. After seven years they removed to Ithaca,
starting in on the corner of Aurora and State streets, and removed to
their present grand headquarters during the spring of 1888. Their
stock consists of everything in the dry goods line, with cloaks,
shawls and bedding on the main floor of their large double store (55
x 100 feet). The basement is given up to china, of the finest quality,
also glassware and crockery, suitable for the mechanic or the
connoisseur, lamps of all varieties, brackets, tinware, eta Rhodes,
George,. was born November 2, 1821, in the town of Ithaca, and
was educated in the district schools, but at an early age he went to
work on his father's farm, which he helped to clear. His grandfather
bought the farm for his two sons, John and Frederick, the place
comprising 314 acres, and in 1853 George R. bought the place of his
father and now owns it. Our subject is Democratic in politics.
December 14, 1865, he married Hannah M. Teachmen, daughter of
L. M. Teachmen of Hector, and they have had two daughters, both
now married and settled in homes of their own. Reed, Dr. F. A., was
born in Caroline, September 14, 1849, a son of H. C. Reed, also born
in this county in 1812, who was a carpenter for four years in Ithaca.
H. C. married, in 1836, Mary A., daughter of Bethel Gray, of
Chenango county, and continued his work in Ithaca for nearly eight
years, living at Mott's Corners, now Brookton.. He then bought a
farm on Bald Hill, though he continued to work at his trade for the
next three years, then settled down to farm work. He was a
Republican and served as commissioner for two terms, was trustee
of the school and a prominent member of the M. £. Church. He had
four sons and one daughter, our subject being the fourth child. He
remained at home with his parents for a number of years, and at the
age of thirty-seven married Hattie, daughter of John D. Cannon, of
Connecticut, from which place he moved into Delaware county, N. Y.
His nratriage occurred February 27, 1878, after which he resided on
his father's farm ten years, then moved to West Slaterville, where
they remained two years, our subject attending college part of the
time in Cleveland, Ohio. Returning, he located in Brockton, where he
has since had a successful practice. He still owns a farm, however,
which is worked by a tenant. He is a Republican, a Mason of Caroline
Lodge, No. 681 ; also a member of the Grange. He has two children,
Maggie E. and Herman 0. Richardson, W. H., was born in Freetown,
Cortland county, December 15, 1835, and was educated in the
common schools and finished at the Groton Academy. At the age of
twenty-five was married to Miss Ellen Van Nortwick, daughter of
William Van Nortwick, and they have one son, Clarke H. Richardson.
In 1863 he bought part of the Van Nortwick estate, and in 1866 he
bought what was known as the Palmer Drake property of sixty-eight
acres, which adjoins his own property, having in all about 150
 FAMILY SKETCHES. 213 acres. In 1875 he came to the
village and established a coal, lime, lumber and agricultural
implements business, and as buyer and shipper of produce. Our
subject is one of the oldest merchants in his town, taking an active
interest in temperance, educational and religious matters, and is
recognized as an independent, conservative citizen of steeling v7orth
and high integrity. Rummer, Charles E:, was born in the tovfn of
Dryden, May 1, 1869, and was educated in the common schools and
finished at Groton Academy. After leaving school he went to Sparrow
Point, Md., and served as a clerk in the Sparrow Point Company's
store tor two years and then returned to Dryden. In the fall of 1893,
in connection with his father, Q-. Rummer, he bought the stock of
boots and shoes and rubber goods of the W. J. Lombard estate, and
they have the leading house in their line in the town of Dryden. At
the age of twenty-three he married Corinne Powers, daughter of
Frederick Powers, of Groton. Our subject takbs the Republican side
in politics and is recognized in his town as a man of high business
ability and character. Rummer, Richard C, was born in Dryden,
October 5, 1852, and was among the earliest settlers in the town.
He was educated in the common schools and finished at Dryden
Academy, under Professor Jackson Graves. At the age of twenty-
three he married Olive Heffron, who passed away in 1880, and in
1889 he married Louisa A., daughter of John Turk, of Caroline, and
they have one daughter and one son. In 1889 he bought the
homestead farm of 200 acres, and in 1891' part of the Cady estate
of forty-eight acres, having 248 acres, and raising hay, grain and
stock, making a specialty of dairying. Our subject takes the
Republican side in politics, and is now president of the Board of
Health of Freeville. He is interested in school and church matters and
takes a prominent part in advancing the best interests of his town.
Robinson, Edmund B., was born in the village of Groton, September
22, 1853. Filander H., the father of our subject, was born in Vesper,
Onondaga county, and is a miller by trade. The boyhood of our
subject was passed in his native town, and at the age of seventeen
he went as an operator on the Union Pacific Railroad, and spent four
years in Wyoming, Utah, and Montana. He was educated in the
public schools and Groton Academy, before going west. On his
return in 1874 he was a short time at home, then spent'.one year on
the Illinois Central Railroad at Cairo. In 1875 he came east on a visit,
and while at home was offered a position as ticket agent and
operator for Sayre on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which he accepted,
and the next year was made agent for the L. V., the G. I. & S., and
the S. C. Tne next year, at the consolidation of these roads, Mr.
Robmson was made superintendent of the telegraph, and train
dispatcher, and transferred to Ithaca in July, 1877, since which time
he has been a resident of this city. He remained in the employ of this
company until May 16, 1892, and on his retirement bad the
satisfaction of feeling he had never lost the company a dollar nor
made a mistake. Mr. Robinson is a Republican, and in May, 1883, he
was appointed deputy revenue collector for the twenty-first district
under James Armstrong, which position he held until 1885. He was
also elected assistant chief engineer of the Fire Department, and in
1885 elected chief, filling that office until July 21, 1889, at
 314 LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY. which time he
was appointed postmaster. During 1887-'88-'89 he was chairman o£
the Republican County Committee. In 1888 he was nominated for
alderman of the first ward, but declined to serve. He is a member of
Hobasco Lodge No. 716 F. &A.M. In 1876 Mr. Robinson married Alice
A., daughter of Anson WyckotF, a farmer of Moravia, and they have
three children : E. Winifred, Frederica, and Nathan Lavere. Mr.
Robinson has been a delegate to every senatorial and district
convention for the past twelve years, and to him the Republican
party is indebted for much of its prosperity in this locality. Robinson,
H. H., was born in Caroline, May 29, 1841, a son of Solomon, a
native of Ulster county, who came to this county when eight years
old with his parents, settling in Slaterville Springs, where his father
kept a hotel. At the age of eighteen Solomon started out for himself,
following various occupations, and built a grist-mill in 1836 at
Slaterville Springs. In connection with this work he conducted a
large farm of 309 acres, employing many hands. In 1857 he sold his
mill, and in 1859 sold half of his farm, after which his son H. H. took
charge of the remaining part, a large farm in itself, in 1877
commencing a dairy with seven head of cattle, which he has
increased to twenty-five head. He has three horses, and does a large
trade in butter and milk, being unable sometimes to fill his orders.
He married Frances L., daughter of David L. Clark of Richford, Tioga
county, in 1860, and they occupy a pleasant and comfortable liome.
He is a Granger, and a liberal supporter of the Methodist Episcopal
church. He is also an active worker in the Republican party. Pratt,
Ephraim S., was born in Tolland, Mass., December 25, 1811, and
came with his parents to Wolcott, Wayne county, at the age of seven
years. He was educated in the schools of that day, and moved to
Seneca county. November 9, 1834, he married Huldah B. Williams, of
Weston, Conn., by whom he had eight children, four sons and four
daughters: David S., Thomas H., Abby A., Tamsen L., Orlo H., Olive
h., Florence, and James R. Mrs. Pratt died May 26, 1885, and he
married second, April 12, 1886, Susan P. Pease, widow of Orman
Osborne, a farmer of Fairfield, Conn., who died May 5, 1873, leaving
one son, Alvin P. Osborne. Mr. Pratt's father, Silas, was born in
Sandersfield, Mass., August 17, 1781, a son of Justin, born in
Granville, Mass., October 21, 1731. He was the son of Barnard, born
at Hingham, Mass., July 1, 1710. The latter was the son of Aaron,
son of Phineas, whos
 FAMILY SKETCHES. 215 surviving, Georgie, who married »
Mr. Quick, who was, however, no relative. She has one son, Clifford
D. Quick, aged five months. Mr. Quick is assessor of the town, a
Democrat, and a member of the Grange. Pratt, David S., was born in
the town of Covert, Seneca county, January 13, 1836, was educated
m the public schools and Trumansburgh Academy ; also Union
College, Schenectady. April 9, 1860, he married Emily M., daughter
of the late Simeon Pease, of Trumansburgh. They have one son and
two daughters : Leslie, Antoinette L., and Agnes H. Leslie married
Augusta Seiglemah, and has three children : Harold, Cora, and
Agnes. Antoinette L. married James N. Layne, of Missouri, and Agnes
H. lives at home. Mr. Pratt is for the present engaged in farming in
the west. Pratts, George W., of Newfield, was born December 27,
1823, a son of Peter Pratts, who was born in 1801, who was a
farmer by occupation and married Sophronia Cha£Fee, by whom he
had six children. Of these our subject was the oldest, being now
seventy years of age. He has been a farmer as was his father before
him, the farm being owned by himself and L. C. Pratts, his brother.
Our subject has never married. He is a member of the Grange and in
politics is a Republican. Pratts, C. W., was born in Newfield,
September 9, 1831. Adam, his father, was a native of Pennsylvania,
who came to this county when quite young, settling in this town,
where he took up farming at which he was very successful. He
married Catharine Sebring of this county, and they had three
children. C. W. Pratts has always followed farming. He marrried in
1852 Delilah Sherman of this town, and they had two children, both
deceased, one dying at the age of six months, and the other aged
twenty-two years. Mr. Pratts votes the Democratic ticket. Pratt,
Charles F., was born in Groton, January 21, 1856. His father,
Benjamin F. Pratt, was a well known resident of Groton. He was
educated in the Dryden Academy after leaving the common schools.
At the age of thirty four he married Josephine Montgomery,
daughter of John Montgomery of Dryden. In 1878 he bought part of
the John Southworth estate of ninety-five acres, in 1889 he bought
forty acres of the Joseph Thomas estate and in the spring of 1893
he bought part of the Eliag Cady estate of sixty-one acres, lying just
west of the village of Dryden. Our subject is one of the prominent
men of his town, having nearly 200 acres of the best farm lands in
his town, where he is known as » conservative man of energy and
ability and as a successful and practical farmer. Pierce, Clarence W.,
was born in Susquehanna county. Pa., February 16, 1862. He was
educated in the common schools and Wyoming Seminary at
Kingston, Pa. After leaving school he remained on the farm for about
three years, and then entered the employ of the D., L. & W. R. R.
Co. At first he was a passenger brakeman and rose to passenger
conductor, and in 1890 he came to Ithaca to take charge of the retail
coal trade. He is a Republican in politics, but has held no offices. He
is a member of Fidelity Lodge, F. & A. M. and Eagle Chapter. In 1884
he married Emma Mills of Susquehanna county, Pa. They have one
child, a daughter. Pike William L., the present secretary and general
manager of the Groton Carriage Company, was a native of Richmond
county, N. Y., born January 9, 1853. He began
 216 LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY. active business
life on reaching tiis majority, and was then a well trained and
competent practical wagonmaker. About 1870 he established himself
at Tully, N. Y.; and soon became ths head of the firm of Pike, Smith
& Walsh, which for several years was well known in that part of
Onondaga county. Pike & Walsh succeeded the older firm and
afterward established the Waterloo Wagon Company, at Waterloo, in
Seneca county. After about three years this business was disposed
of, and in 1895 Mr. Pike came to Groton to take the general
management and the secretaryship of the local company. That he
has been abundantly successful in that capacity is attested by the
fact that the business of the company has been largely increased
during the period of his connection with it; and it is a conceded fact
that the Oroton Carriage Company is one of the most successful
institutions of its kind in Central New York. On coming to Groton Mr.
Pike found the business of the concern conducted according to old
usages, and to him is due the credit of having successfully
remodeled its working arrangements and inaugurating a system in
every department in accordance with the modern and now popular
ideas of wagon, carriage and sleigh making. Although much
engrossed in business Mr. Pike has found time to interest himself
somewhat in local politics. He is a firm Democrat and was candidate
for the Assembly in 1892, and though defeated at the polls the result
of the vote was the source of gratification to himself and his friends.
Again in February, 1893, he was the nominee of his party for the
office of supervisor against Dana Rhodes, the latter vice-president of
the carriage company, and a man of great strength and popularity
throughout the town. However, in this last canvass Mr. Pike was
reluctant to become a candidate and only consented to do so in
oider to fill a breach in the party ticket. Quigley, Mrs. D. C, is a
daughter of James C. Knight, who was born in Lodi, Seneca county,
June 15, 1810. He was well educated and taught school several
seasons. He began his mercantile career in Farmer Village in 1833
with a capital of $140, to which he added gradually until he obtained
a competency. He married Luvezar, daughter of William Mundy, and
they had four children : William, who died young ; Edward,
Henrietta, and Mary. Edward married Josephine Covert of Lodi,
Henrietta married Oscar G. Wheeler of Farmer, and Mary, our
subject, married Henry Bean of Geneva, a hardware merchant, who
died in 1878. For her second hnsband she married David C. Quigley,
who was born in New Jersey, and came here in company with his
parents in 1844. They had one son, James K., born June 20, 1880.
Mr. Quigley was a merchant tailor, doing a large and successful
business. He died January 31, 1881. He was an active member of
the Presbyterian church of Trumansburgh, and a leader of the choir.
Mrs. Quigley's father was one of the leading men of Seneca county,
and always ready to give good advice to all who called on him for it,
many dating their success in life to his timely counsel. He died
November 26, 1881, and his wife June 23. 1886. Pearson, Pierce
(deceased), was born in the town of Newfield, February 22, 1840.
His father, Robert, came from Borduntown, N. J., to Newfield in
1835, remaining there until his death, in 18G4, The family originally
came from Yorkshire, Engknd. Pierce Pearson received his early
education in the district schools, and completed it by his own efforts
through his life. He was looked upon as a leader in the town in
which he
 FAMILY SKETCHES. 217 lived, known and recognized as a
man ot signal ability. In the fall nt 1867, lie with his brother Nicholas,
bought the well known farm "up the Inlet" of John Fisher, to which
they soon added their other adjoming farm, and then engaged in the
nursery business. At the age of thirty-one he married Alma J. Foster
of Ithaca, who bore him six children, two sons and two daughters
now living, and with the help ot their mother carry on the farm, and
raising large amounts of tobacco, grain and stock. Mr. Pearson
attended the Congregational church ot Ithaca, to which he gave his
hearty support. He died in April, 1891. Quick, Charles, was born in
the town of Caroline, May 7, 1848. He has followed farming from
early boyhood, working at home for his father most of the time until
he reached his majority, and he then went to work for his
grandfather. At the age ot twenty-one he married Charlotte Hubbard
of the town of Dryden, and they have had four children, two sons
and two daughters. Mr. Quick is not a politician, though he always
votes the Democratic ticket. Poole, Hon. Murray Edward, was torn
July 17, 1857, at Centre Moreland, Wyoming county, Pa., at the head
of the historic Wyoming Valley. He is a son of the late Edward V.
Poole, a prominent business man and private banker of Tioga
county, and a descendant from Captain Edward Poole, the founder ot
Weymouth, Mass., in 1635. Six of his ancestors were officers in the
Revolutionary War, and another served in the Massachusetts Colonial
Assembly during the same period. He was prepared at Wyoming
Seminary at Kingston, Pa., and graduated at Cornell University as A.
B., in 1880. lie studied law with Judge Marcus Lyon, Judge Bradley
Almy, Col. Charles H. Blair and Hon. Jared T. Newman, of Ithaca;
Judge Charles A. Clark and Frank A. Darrow, esq., ot Owego, and
Judge Adolphus C. Allen, of Waverly. He was admitted to the bar
May 3, 1889, at Syracuse. He married November i, 1891, Eva,
daughter of James Zeliffe, ot Limestone, N. Y. She was born March
31, 1862, and graduated at Baxter University of Music, Friendship,
N. Y., in 1880. They have one daughter, Laura France."!, born
December 4, 1893. He has always taken an active interest in
Democratic politics, Avas appointed special county judge of
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