A letter to the citizens of Aberdeen, on the improvement of their academical institutions / [John Stuart Blackie].

  • Blackie, John Stuart, 1809-1895
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the citizens of Aberdeen, on the improvement of their academical institutions / [John Stuart Blackie]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sity class so unprepared ; that it is not my business to teach the elements of grammar ; and that, if they wish to do any good, they must set themselves stoutly to work through the Grammatical Exercises, or some such book, during the vaca¬ tion, otherwise they will not only reap no fruit from their hours of study spent in my class-room, but may be remanded back to the first class, when they come to present themselves for admission to the second; which accordingly sometimes happens. With all this, however, accomplished as the Aber¬ deen schoolmasters generally are in the grand preparatory sub¬ structure of grammatical drilling, and determined as I myself am not to allow myself to be dragged down deeper than need be in the mire of academical mediocrity, still I cannot but feel that this lamentable mediocrity is the element in which I must generally move, and that there is something very low and unambitious, not to say puerile and degrading, in the whole scholastic atmosphere of Scottish Universities, so far at least as I have had any experience of them. What it is that I spe» cially complain of in the preparatory training of my students will be stated more conveniently afterwards ; in the mean¬ while, I beseech the reflective reader to cast a glance at the beggarly elements of which the Junior Greek and Mathema¬ tical Classes are composed; and if he does not then blush for the academical position of our good city, he may throw down this paper forthwith, for it is not to men of such creeping as¬ pirations and limited notions on public education that these lines are addressed. Contemplate, for a moment, the position of a man of real talent and professional enthusiasm in the First Mathematical and First Greek Class of any University in Scotland. Between the natural desire to keep his standard as high as possible, “ making no compromise” (as Professor Pillans expresses it) of academical dignity, and the consue¬ tudinary necessity imposed upon him to commence with the simplest rudiments of puerile instruction, he is apt to sway and waver in a series of most uncertain and unsatisfactory at¬ tempts to combine incompatibilities. If he is an ambitious man, with a touch of vanity and a love of display, bis na¬ tural endeavour will be to hurry on the weak and the raw for the sake of the more mature and vigorous student. Jf, on the other hand, he is of a slow and steady temperament, pre¬ cise and exact, quiet and unpretending, he will consider that safe steps actually placed for the many are more his business, than the opportunity of magnificent flights opened up for the few. Of the two extremes in the method of academic teach¬ ing, the latter is unquestionably the less perilous ; for the first k 2