Maggie's Farm

Usage: Education, properly a drawing forth, implies not so much the communication of knowledge as the discipline of the intellect, the establishment of the principles, and the regulation of the heart. Instruction is that part of education which furnishes the mind with knowledge. Teaching is the same, being simply more familiar.
[1913 Webster]

Here, then, lies the deeper significance of the problem method of teaching because of the direct effect of the school training on our citizenship and national progress. The history of education contains several illustrations of the relation of school training to citizenship and national advancement, the most striking of which, perhaps, is found in the Mohammedan system of education. In the elementary schools, and also in the universities of these countries, the instruction consists of dictating passages from the Koran or from commentaries on the Koran. It is all memoriter work and prevails much more than in America. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, has given a most interesting description of the work in an elementary school in Tangier in North Africa. In this school for young children, he found a white-bearded man clothed in white, seated on straw in the center of a group of children. He had a long, flexible fishing-rod with which he could reach every pupil. This teacher recited several words from the Koran and then the children repeated these words in unison exactly as they had been given. Mr. Eliot states that this was the only work done in that school. Later, he visited the University of Cairo and found that every teacher was doing the same thing, but to a greater degree.

This memoriter method in education is the prime cause of the backward condition of the Mohammedans. This is the reason that for many centuries natural science has made no progress in these countries, and clearly shows the relation of school training to national progress.

Likewise, the cause of the static condition of the Chinese people may be traced to the kind of education given in their schools. Their method is that of direct and exact imitation. "The object of the teacher is to compel his pupils, first, to remember; secondly, to remember; thirdly, and evermore, to remember."

--Teaching Boys and Girls How to Study' (1919) by Peter Jeremiah Zimmers, Superintendent of City Schools, Manitowoc, Wisconsin