Word: notionalism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1873-1873
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...without experience. But starting from this place, the student of Harvard finds that the consideration which he receives increases in proportion to the number of miles which separate him from his point of departure; and, with this increase of consideration, he also observes that there springs up an exaggerated notion of the life he leads at college...
There are two reasons why this notion should exist, the first of which arises, through no fault of the students themselves, from a liking in other persons for contrast. This love of contrast is shown in the disposition which makes ministers' sons and deacons' daughters stand as types of youthful waywardness; while, in fact, these persons form the most unassuming portion of creation. So with the name of student, - many would be glad to make it synonymous with its antipodes...
...JOHN RUSKIN has been spending the greater portion of his life in endeavoring to free the world from an old idea, that works of art should be admired for their own apparent power, for the force with which they strike the observer. In place of this notion, he has labored to introduce a taste for art measured by definite rules and lines...
...long as these things are so, the student may study conscientiously, but his study will be a task. He may pore over the pages of his classics in the prescribed manner, but he will rise from his labor with no notion of the grandeur of the work which he has read, - only with a vague idea of disconnected subjunctives and confused optatives floating through his troubled and wearied brain...
...wide experience being considered essential qualifications to a good instructor. So strong is this feeling in some minds that one of our New England colleges, in a recent prospectus, holds out as an inducement to students the fact that it employs no tutors. In contrast with this notion, that young teachers are to be tolerated only because older ones are not to be had, it is interesting to read in President Eliot's Report these words...