The Reconstructed School eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 123 pages of information about The Reconstructed School.

The Reconstructed School eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 123 pages of information about The Reconstructed School.
mark for his parrot-like definition and spelling and leaves him in crass ignorance of the reality.  The boy deals only with the husk and misses the kernel.  When he can spell and define, the work has only just begun, and not until the teacher has contrived to have him emotionalize the ocean will he enter into the heart of its greatness, and power, and utility in promoting life, and so come to experience a feeling of respect for it.  When it has won his respect he can read Victor Hugo’s matchless description of the sea with understanding, measurable appreciation, and, certainly, a thrill of delight.

It is rare fun for children, and even for grown-ups, to locate the constellations, planets, and stars.  Of course, the North Star is everybody’s favorite because it is so steady, so reliable, so dependable.  We know just where to find it, and it never disappoints us.  Two boys who once were crossing from New York to Naples found great delight in a star in the Southern sky that retained its relative position throughout the journey.  At the conclusion of dinner in the evening the boys were wont to repair to the deck to find their star and receive its greetings.  In their passage through the Mediterranean they became curious, wondering how it came about that the star failed to change its relative position in their journey of three thousand miles.  When they realized that their star is the apex of a triangle whose base is three thousand miles but whose other legs are so long that the base is infinitesimally short by comparison, their amazement knew no bounds and for the first time in their lives they gained a profound respect for space.

This new concept of space was worth the trip across the ocean to those boys, and the wonder is that space had never before meant anything more or other than a word to be spelled.  The school and the home had had boundless opportunities to inculcate in them a sense of space, yet this delightful task was left to a passenger on board the ship.  But for his kindly offices those boys might have gone on for years conceiving of space as merely a word of five letters.  It would have been easy for parent or teacher to engender in them some appreciation of space by explaining to them that if they were to travel thirty miles a day it would require twenty-two years to reach the moon,—­which is, in reality, our next-door neighbor,—­and that to reach the sun, at the same rate of travel, would require more than eight thousand years, or the added lifetimes of almost three hundred generations.  But they were sent abroad to see the wonders of the Old World with no real conception of space and, therefore, no feeling of respect for it.  Before their trip abroad they never could have read the last two verses of the eighth chapter of Romans with any real appreciation.

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The Reconstructed School from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.