“The first thing to note in the idea of development is that it indicates, not an increase in bulk or quantity (though it may include this), but an increase in complexity of structure, an improvement in power, skill, and variety in the performance of natural functions. We say that a thing is fully developed when its internal organisation is perfect in every detail, and when it can perform all its natural actions or functions perfectly. If we apply this distinction to mind, an increase in bulk will be represented by an increase in the amount of material retained in the mind, in thememory; development will be a perfecting of the structure of the mind itself, an increase of power and skill and variety in dealing with knowledge, and in putting knowledge to all its natural uses. The next thing to consider is how this development is produced. How can we aid in promoting this change from germ to complete organism, from partially developed thing to more highly developed thing? The answer comes from every part of creation with ever-increasing clearness and emphasis—development is produced by exercise of function, use of faculty. Neglect or disuse of any part of an organism leads to the dwindling, and sometimes even to the disappearance, of that part. And this applies not only to individuals, but stretches also from parent to child, from generation to generation, constituting then what we call heredity, or what Froebel calls the connectedness of humanity. Slowly through successive generations a faculty or organ may dwindle and decay, or may be brought to greater and greater perfection. As Froebel puts it, humanity past, present, and future is one continuous whole. Theamountof development, then, possible in any particular case plainly depends partly on the original outfit, and partly (and as a rule in a greater measure) on the opportunities there have been for exercise, and the use made of those opportunities. If we wish to develop the hand, we must exercise the hand. If we wish to develop the body, we must exercise the body. If we wish to develop the mind, we must exercise the mind. If we wish to develop thewholehuman being, we mustexercise the wholehuman being. But willanyexercise suffice? Again the answer is clear. Only that exercise which is always in harmony with the nature of the thing, and which is always proportioned to the strength of the thing, producestrue development. All other exercise is partially or wholly hurtful. And another condition, evident in every case, becomes still more evident when we apply these laws to the mind. To produce development most truly and effectively, the exercise must arise from and be sustained by the thing’s own activity—its own natural powers, and all of them (as far as these are inanysense connected with the activity proposed) should be awakened and become naturally active. If, for instance, we desire to further the development of a plant, what we have to do is to induce the plant (and the whole of it) to become active in its own natural way, and to help it to sustain that activity. We may abridge the time; we may modify the result; but we must act through and by the plant’s own activity. This activity of a thing’s own self we callself-activity(E. of M., § 9). We generally consider the mind in the light of its three activities ofknowing, feeling, and willing. The exercise which aims at producing mental development must be in harmony with the nature ofknowing,feeling, andwilling, and continually in proportion to their strength. And, further, it is found that the more the activity is that of thewholemind, the more it is the mind’sownactivity—self-produced, and self-maintained, and self-directed—the better is the result. In other words, knowing, feeling, and willing mustalltake their rightful share in the exercise; and, in particular, feeling and willing—the mind’s powers of prompting and nourishing, of maintaining and directing its own activities—must never be neglected†(H. C. Bowen onEd. of M.).
§ 18. “A divine message or eternal regulation of the Universe there verily is, in regard to every conceivable procedure and affair of man; faithfully following this, said procedure or affair will prosper ... not followingthis ... destruction and wreck are certain for every affair.†These words of Carlyle’s express Froebel’s thought about education. Before attempting to educate we must do all we can to ascertain the divine message and must then direct our proceedings by it. The divine message must be learnt according to Froebel by studying the nature of the organism we have to assist in developing. Each human being must “develop from within, self-active and free, in accordance with the eternal law. This is the problem and the aim of all education in instruction and training; there can be and should be no other†(Ed. of M., 13). For “all has come forth from the Divine, from God, and is through God alone conditioned. To this it is that all things owe their existence—to the Divine working in them. The Divine element that works in each thing is the true idea (das Wesen) of the thing.†Therefore “the destiny and calling of all things is to develop their true idea, and in so doing to reveal God in outward and through passing forms.â€
§19. What we must think of then is the “true idea†which each child should develop. How is this idea to be ascertained? In other words, how are we to learn the Divine Message about the bringing up of children? This Message is given us through the works of God. “In the creation, in nature and the order of the material world, and in the progress of mankind, God has given us the true type (Urbild) of education.â€
§ 20. So Froebel would have all educators lay to heart the great principle of the Baconian philosophy: We command Nature only by obeying her. They are to be very cautious how they interfere, and the education they give is to be “passive, following.†Even in teaching they mustbear in mind, that “the purpose of teaching is to bring ever moreout ofman rather than to put more and moreintohim.†(Ed. of M., 279.) Froebel in fact taught the Pestalozzian doctrine that the function of the educator was that of “benevolent superintendence.â€[176]
§21. But if Froebel would thus limit the action of the educator he would greatly extend the action of those educated; and here we see the great principle with which the name of Froebel is likely to be permanently associated. “The starting-point of all that appears, of all that exists, and therefore of all intellectual conception, is act, action. From the act, from action, must therefore start true human education, the developing education of the man; in action, in acting, it must be rooted and must spring up.... Living, acting, conceiving,—these must form a triple chord within every child of man, though the sound now of this string, now of that, may preponderate, and then again of two together.â€
§ 22. Many thinkers before Froebel had seen the transcendent importance of action; but Froebel not only based everything upon it, but he based it upon God. “God creates and works productively in uninterrupted continuity. Each thought of God is a work, a deed†(Ed. of M., § 23). As Jesus has said: “My Father worketh hitherto and Iwork†(St. John v, 17). From this it follows that, since God created man in his own image, “man should create and bring forth like God†(Ed. of M.,ib.). “He who will early learn to recognise the Creator must early exercise his own power of action with the consciousness that he is bringing about what is good; for the doing good is the link between the creature and the Creator, and the conscious doing of it the conscious connexion, the true living union of the man with God, of the individual man as of the human race, and is therefore at once the starting point and the eternal aim of all education.†Elsewhere he says: “We become truly God-like in diligence and industry, in working and doing, which are accompanied by the clear perception or even by the vaguest feeling that thereby we represent the inner in the outer; that we give body to spirit, and form to thought; that we render visible the invisible; that we impart an outward, finite, transient being to life in the spirit. Through this God-likeness we rise more and more to a true knowledge of God, to insight into His Spirit; and thus, inwardly and outwardly, God comes ever nearer to us. Therefore Jesus says of the poor, ‘Theirs is the kingdom of heaven,’ if they could but see and know it and practice it in diligence and industry, in productive and creative work. Of children too is the kingdom of heaven; for unchecked by the presumption and conceit of adults they yield themselves in child-like trust and cheerfulness to their formative and creative instinct†(Ed. of M., § 23. P. 31).
§ 23. This “formative and creative instinct†which as we must suppose has existed in all children in all nations and in all ages of the world, Froebel was the first to take duly into account for education. Pestalozzi saw the importanceof getting children tothink, and to think about their material surroundings. These the child can observe and search into; and in doing this he may discover what is not at first obvious to sight or touch and may even ascertain relations between the several parts of the same thing or connexions between different things compared together. All these discoveries may be made by the child’s self-activity, but only on one condition, viz.: that the child is interested. But in the search interest soon flags and then observation comes to an end. Besides, even while it lasts in full vigour the activity is mental only; it is concerned with perceiving, taking in; and for development something more is needed; the organism must not only take in, it must alsogive out. And so we find in children a restless eagerness to touch, pull about, and change the condition of things around them. When this activity of theirs, instead of being checked is properly directed, the children are delighted in recognising desirable results which they themselves have brought about; especially those which give expression to what is their own thought. In this way the child “renders the inner outer;†and in thus satisfying his creative instinct he is led to exercise some faculties both of mind and body.
§ 24. The prominence which Froebel gave to action, his doctrine that man is primarily a doer and even a creator, and that he learns only through “self-activity,†may produce great changes in educational methods generally, and not simply in the treatment of children too young for schooling. But it was to the first stage of life that Froebel paid the greatest attention, and it is over this stage that his influence is gradually extending. Froebel held that each age has a completeness of its own (“First the blade, thenthe ear, then the full corn in the earâ€), and that the perfection of the later stage can be attained only through the perfection of the earlier. If the infant is what he should be as an infant, and the child as a child, he will become what he should be as a boy, just as naturally as new shoots spring from the healthy plant. Every stage, then, must be cared for and tended in such a way that it may attain its own perfection. But as Bacon says with reference to education, the gardener bestows most care on the young plants, and it was “the young plants†for whom Froebel designed his Kindergarten. Like Pestalozzi he attached the very highest importance to giving instruction to mothers. But he would not like Pestalozzi leave young children entirely in the mother’s hands. There was something to be done for them which even the ideal mother in the ideal family could not do. Pestalozzi held that the child belonged to the family. Fichte on the other hand claimed it for society and the state. Froebel, whose mind, like that of our own theologian Frederick Maurice, delighted in harmonising apparent contradictions, and who taught that “all progress lay through opposites to their reconciliation,†maintained that the child belongs both to the family and to society; and he would therefore have children prepare for society by spending some hours of the day in a common life and in well-organised common employments.
§ 25. His study of children showed him that one of their most striking characteristics was restlessness. This was, first, restlessness of body, delight in mere motion of the limbs; and, secondly, restlessness of mind, a constant curiosity about whatever came within the range of the senses, and especially a desire to examine with the handevery unknown object within reach.[177]Children’s fondness for using their hands was especially noted by Froebel; and he found that they delighted, not merely in examining by touch, but also in altering whatever they could alter, and further that they endeavoured to imitate known forms whether by drawing or whenever they could get any kind of plastic material by modelling. Besides remarking in them these various activities, he saw that children were sociable and needed the sympathy of companions. There was, too, in them a growing moral nature, passions, affections, and conscience, which needed to be controlled, responded to, cultivated. Both the restraints and the opportunities incident to a well-organised community would be beneficial to their moral nature, and prove a cure for selfishness.
§ 26. As all education was to be sought in rightly directed but spontaneous action, Froebel considered how the children in this community should be employed. At that age their most natural employment is play, especially as Wordsworth has pointed out, games in which they imitate and “con the parts†they themselves will have to fill in after years. Froebel agreed with Montaigne that the games of children were “their most serious occupations,†and with Locke that “all the plays and diversions of children should be directed towards good and useful habits, or else they will introduceill ones†(Th. c. Ed., § 130). So he invented a course of occupations, a great part of which consisted in social games. Many of the names are connected with the “Gifts,†as he called the series of simple playthings provided for the children, the first being the ball, “the type of unity.†The “gifts†are chiefly not mere playthings but materials which the children work up in their own way, thus gaining scope for their power of doing and inventing and creating. The artistic faculty was much thought of by Froebel, and, as in the education of the ancients, the sense of rhythm in sound and motion was cultivated by music and poetry introduced in the games. Much care was to be given to the training of the senses, especially those of sight, sound, and touch. Intuition (Anschauung) was to be recognised as the true basis of knowledge, and though stories were to be told, and there was to be much intercourse in the way of social chat, instruction of the imparting and “learning-up†kind was to be excluded. There was to be no “dead knowledge;†in fact Froebel like Pestalozzi endeavoured to do for the child what Bacon nearly 200 years before had done for the philosopher. Bacon showed the philosopher that the way to study Nature was not to learn what others had surmised but to go straight to Nature and use his own senses and his own powers of observation. Pestalozzi and Froebel wished children to learn in this way as well as philosophers.
§ 27. Schools for very young children existed before Froebel’s Kindergarten, but they had been thought of more in the interest of the mothers than of the children. It was for the sake of the mothers that Oberlin established them in the Vosges more than a century ago, his firstConductrices de l’Enfancebeing peasant women, Sara Banzet and Louise Scheppler. In the early part of this century the notion wastaken up by James Buchanan and Samuel Wilderspin in this country (see James Leitch’sPractical Educationists) and by J. M. D. Cochin in France. But Froebel’s conception differed from that of the “Infant School.†His object was purely educational but he would have no “schooling.†He called these communities of childrenKindergarten, Gardens of children,i.e., enclosures in which young human plants are nurtured.[178]The children’s employment is to be play. But any occupation in which children delight isplayto them; and Froebel’s series of employments, while they are in this sense play to the children, have nevertheless, as seen from the adult point of view, a distinctly educational object. This object, as Froebel himself describes it, is “to give the children employment in agreement with their whole nature, to strengthen their bodies, to exercise their senses, to engage their awakening mind, and through their senses to bring them acquainted with nature and their fellow-creatures; it is especially to guide aright the heart and the affections, and to lead them to the original ground of all life, to unity with themselves.â€
§ 28. No less than six-and-thirty years ago Henry Barnard (in his Report to Governor of Connecticut, 1854) declared the Kindergarten to be “by far the most original, attractive, and philosophical form of infant development the world has yet seen.†Since then it has spread in allcivilised lands, and in many of them there are nowpublicKindergartens, the first I believe having been established in 1873 by Dr. William T. Harris in St. Louis, Mo. But Froebel’s ideas are not so easily got hold of as his “Gifts,†and the real extension of his system may be by no means so great as it seems. “The Kindergarten system in the hands of one who understands it,†says Dr. James Ward, “produces admirable results; but it is apt to be too mechanical and formal. There does not seem room for the individuality of a child, to which all free play possible should be given in the earliest years.†(InParents’ ReviewAp. 1890.) And Mr. Courthope Bowen has well said: “Kindergarten work without the Kindergarten idea, like a body without a soul, is subject to rapid degeneration and decay.†So perhaps it will in the end prove that Froebel in hisEducation of Manwhich is “a book with seven seals†has left us a more precious legacy than in his “Gifts†and Occupations which are so popular and so easily adopted.
§ 29. It has been well said that “the essence of stupidity is in the demand for final opinions.†How our thoughts have widened about education since a man like Dr. Johnson could assert, “Education is as well known, and has long been as well known, as ever it can be!â€[179](Hill’sBoswell’s J.ij, 407.) The astronomers of the Middle Ages might as well have asserted that nothing more could ever be known about astronomy.
Was Froebel what he believed himself to be, the Kepleror the Newton of the educational system? Whoso is wise will not during the nineteenth century lay claim to a “final opinion†on this point. But the “New Education†seems gaining ground. F. W. Parker emphatically declares “the Kindergarten†(by which he probably means Froebel’s encouragement of self-activity) to be “the most important far-reaching educational reform of the nineteenth century.†We sometimes see it questioned whether the “New Education†has any proper claim to its title; but the education which Dr. Johnson considered final and which seems to us old aimed at learning; and the education which aims not at learning, but at developing through self-activity is so different from this that it may well be called New. If we consider the platform of the New Educationists as it stands,e.g., in the New YorkSchool Journal, we shall find that if it is not all new in theory it would be substantially new in practice.
§ 30. Let us look at a brief statement of what the “New Education†requires:—
1. Each study must be valued in proportion as it developspower; and power is developed by self-activity.
2. The memory must be employed in strict subservience to the higher faculties of the mind.
3. Whatever instruction is given, it must be adapted to the actual state of the pupil, and not ruled by the wants of the future boy or man.
4. More time must be given to the study of nature and to modern language and literature; less to the ancient languages.
5. The body must be educated as well as the mind.
6. Rich and poor alike must be taught to use their eyes and hands.7. The higher education of women must be cared for no less than that of men.
8. Teachers, no less than doctors, must go through a course of professional training.
To these there must in time be added another:
9. All methods shall have a scientific foundation,i.e., they shall be based on the laws of the mind, or shall have been tested by those laws.
§ 31. When this program is adopted, even as the object of our efforts, we shall, indeed, have a New Education. At present the encouragement of self-activity is thought of, if at all, only as a “counsel of perfection.†Our school work is chiefly mechanical and will long remain so. “From the primary school to the college productive creative doing is almost wholly excluded. Knowledge in its barrenest form is communicated, and tested in the barrenest, wordiest way possible. Never is the learner taught or permitted to apply his knowledge to even second-hand life-purpose.... So inveterate is the habit of the school that the Kindergarten itself, although invented by the deep-feeling and far-seeing Froebel for the very purpose of correcting this fault, has in most cases fallen a victim to its influence.†So says W. H. Hailmann (Kindergarten, May, 1888) and those who best know what usually goes on in the school-room are the least likely to differ from him.
§ 32. During the last thirty years I have spent the greatest part of my working hours in a variety of school-rooms; and if my school experience has shown me that our advance is slow, my study of the Reformers convinces me that it is sure.
“Ring out the old, ring in the new!â€
“Ring out the old, ring in the new!â€
“Ring out the old, ring in the new!â€
It has been well said that to study science is to study the thoughts of God; and thus it is that all true educational Reformers declare the thoughts of God to us. “A divine message, of eternal regulation of the Universe, there verily is in regard to every conceivable procedure and affair of man;†and it behoves us to ascertain what that message is in regard to the immensely important procedure and affair of bringing up children. After innumerable mistakes we seem by degrees to be getting some notion of it; and such insight as we have we owe to those who have contributed to the science of education. Among these there are probably no greater names than the names of Pestalozzi and Froebel.
Froebel’sEducation of Man, trans. by W. N. Hailmann, is a vol. of Appleton’s Series, ed. by Dr. W. T. Harris. TheAutobiographytrans., by Michaelis and Moore, is published by Sonnenschein. TheMutter-u-K.-liederhave been trans. by Miss Lord (London, Rice).Reminiscences of Froebelby the Baroness Marenholtz-Bülow, is trans. by Mr. Horace Mann.The Child and Child Natureis trans. from the Baroness by Miss A. M. Christie. The Froebel lit. is now immense. I will simply mention some of those who have expounded Froebel inEnglish: Miss Shirreff, Miss E. A. Manning, Miss Lyschinska, Miss Heerwart, Mdme. De Portugall, Miss Peabody, H. G Bowen, F. W. Parker, W. N. Hailmann, Joseph Payne, W. T. Harris, are the names that first suggest themselves. Henry Barnard’sKindergarten and Child Cultureis a valuable collection of papers.
Froebel’sEducation of Man, trans. by W. N. Hailmann, is a vol. of Appleton’s Series, ed. by Dr. W. T. Harris. TheAutobiographytrans., by Michaelis and Moore, is published by Sonnenschein. TheMutter-u-K.-liederhave been trans. by Miss Lord (London, Rice).Reminiscences of Froebelby the Baroness Marenholtz-Bülow, is trans. by Mr. Horace Mann.The Child and Child Natureis trans. from the Baroness by Miss A. M. Christie. The Froebel lit. is now immense. I will simply mention some of those who have expounded Froebel inEnglish: Miss Shirreff, Miss E. A. Manning, Miss Lyschinska, Miss Heerwart, Mdme. De Portugall, Miss Peabody, H. G Bowen, F. W. Parker, W. N. Hailmann, Joseph Payne, W. T. Harris, are the names that first suggest themselves. Henry Barnard’sKindergarten and Child Cultureis a valuable collection of papers.
§ 1. We are now by degrees becoming convinced that teachers, like everyone else who undertakes skilled labour, should be trained before they seek an engagement. This has led to a great increase in the number of Normal Schools. In some of these schools it has already been discovered that while the study of principles requires much time and the application of much intellectual force, the study of methods is a far simpler matter and can be knocked off in a short time and with no intellectual force at all. Methods are special ways of doing things, and when it has been settled what is to be done and why, a knowledge of the methods available adds greatly to a teacher’s power; but the what and the why demand our attention before the how, and the study of methods disconnected from principles leads straight to the prison-house of all the teachers’ higher faculties—routine.
§ 2. I have called Jacotot a methodizer because he invented a special method and wished everything to be taught by it. But in advocating this method he appeals to principles; and his principles are so important that at leastone man great in educational science, Joseph Payne, always spoke of him as his master.
§ 3. In the following summary of Jacotot’s system I am largely indebted to Joseph Payne’s Lectures, which he published in theEducational Timesin 1867, and which I believe Dr. J. F. Payne has lately reprinted in a volume of his father’s collected papers.
§ 4. Jacotot was born at Dijon, of humble parentage, in 1770. Even as a boy he showed his preference for “self-teaching.†We are told that he rejoiced greatly in the acquisition of all kinds of knowledge that could be gained by his own efforts, while he steadily resisted what was imposed on him by authority. He was, however, early distinguished by his acquirements, and at the age of twenty-five was appointed sub-director of the Polytechnic School. Some years afterwards he became Professor of “the Method of Sciences†at Dijon, and it was here that his method of instruction first attracted attention. “Instead of pouring forth a flood of information on the subject under attention from his own ample stores—explaining everything, and thus too frequently superseding in a great degree the pupil’s own investigation of it—Jacotot, after a simple statement of the subject, with its leading divisions, boldly started it as a quarry for the class to hunt down, and invited every member of it to take part in the chase.†All were free to ask questions, to raise objections, to suggest answers. The Professor himself did little more than by leading questions put them on the right scent. He was afterwards Professor of Ancient and Oriental Languages, of Mathematics, and of Roman Law; and he pursued the same method, we are told, with uniform success. Being compelled to leave France as an enemy of the Bourbons, he was appointed, in 1818, when he was forty-eight years old,to the Professorship of the French Language and Literature at the University of Louvain. The celebrated teacher was received with enthusiasm, but he soon met with an unexpected difficulty. Many members of his large class knew no language but the Flemish and Dutch, and of these he himself was totally ignorant. He was, therefore, forced to consider how to teach without talking to his pupils. The plan he adopted was as follows:—He gave the young Flemings copies of Fénelon’s “Télémaque,†with the French on one side, and a Dutch translation on the other. This they had to study for themselves, comparing the two languages, and learning the French by heart. They were to go over the same ground again and again, and as soon as possible they were to give in French, however bad, the substance of those parts which they had not yet committed to memory. This method was found to succeed marvellously. Jacotot attributed its success to the fact that the students had learntentirely by the efforts of their own minds, and that, though working under his superintendence, they had been, in fact, their own teachers. Hence he proceeded to generalise, and by degrees arrived at a series of astounding paradoxes. These paradoxes at first did their work well, and made noise enough in the world; but Jacotot seems to me like a captain who in his eagerness to astonish his opponents takes on board guns much too heavy for his own safety.
§ 5. “All human beings are equally capable of learning,†said Jacotot.
The truth which Jacotot chose to throw into this more than doubtful form, may perhaps be expressed by saying that the student’s power of learning depends, in a great measure, on hiswill, and that where there is no will there is no capacity.
§ 6. “Everyone can teach; and, moreover, can teach that which he does not know himself.â€
Let us ask ourselves what is the meaning of this. First of all, we have to get rid of some ambiguity in the meaning of the wordteach. To teach, according to Jacotot’s idea, is to cause to learn. Teaching and learning are therefore correlatives: where there is no learning there can be no teaching. But this meaning of the word only coincides partially with the ordinary meaning. We speak of the lecturer or preacher as teaching when he gives his hearers an opportunity of learning, and do not say that his teaching ceases the instant they cease to attend. On the other hand, we do not call a parent a teacher because he sends his boy to school, and so causes him to learn. The notion of teaching, then, in the minds of most of us, includes giving information, or showing how an art is to be performed, and we look upon Jacotot’s assertion as absurd, because we feel that no one can give information which he does not possess, or show how anything is to be done if he does not himself know. But let us take the Jacototian definition of teaching—causing to learn—and then see how far a person can cause another to learn that of which he himself is ignorant.
§ 7. Subjects which aretaughtmay be divided into three great classes:—1, Facts; 2, reasonings, or generalisation from facts,i.e., science; 3, actions which have to be performed by the learner,i.e., arts.
1. We learn some facts by “intuition,â€i.e., by direct experience. It may be as well to make the number of them as large as possible. No doubt there are no facts which areknownso perfectly as these. For instance, a boy who has tried to smoke knows the fact that tobacco is apt to produce nausea much better than another who has picked upthe information second-hand. An intelligent master may suggest experiments, even in matters about which he himself is ignorant, and thus, in Jacotot’s sense, he teaches things which he does not know. But some facts cannot be learnt in this way, and then a Newton is helpless either to find them out for himself, or to teach them to others without knowing them. If the teacher does not know in what county Tavistock is, he can only learn from those who do, and the pupils will be no cleverer than their master. Here, then, I consider that Jacotot’s pretensions utterly break down. “No,†the answer is; “the teacher may give his pupil an atlas, and direct the boy to find out for himself: thus the master will teach what he does not know.†But, in this case, he is a teacher only so far as he knows. For what he does not know, he hands over the pupil to the maker of the map, who communicates with him, not orally, but by ink and paper. The master’s ignorance is simply an obstacle to the boy’s learning; for the boy would learn sooner the position of Tavistock if it were shown him on the map. “That’s the very point,†says the disciple of Jacotot. “If the boy gets the knowledge without any trouble, he is likely to forget it again directly. ‘Lightly come, lightly go.’ Moreover, his faculty of observation will not have been exercised.†It is indeed well not to allow the knowledge even of facts to come too easily; though the difficulties which arise from the master’s ignorance will not be found the most advantageous. Still there is obviously a limit. If we gave boys their lessons in cipher, and offered a prize to the first decipherer, one would probably be found at last, and meantime all the boys’ powers of observation, &c., would have been cultivated by comparing like signs in different positions, and guessing at their meaning;but the boys’ time might have been better employed. Jacotot’s plan of teaching a language which the master did not know, was to put a book with, say, “Arma virumque cano,†&c., on one side, and “I sing arms and the man, &c.†on the other, and to require the pupil to puzzle over it till he found out which word answered to which. In this case the teacher was the translator; and though from the roundabout way in which the knowledge was communicated the pupil derived some benefit, the benefit was hardly sufficient to make up for the expenditure of time involved.
Jacotot, then, did not teach facts of which he was ignorant, except in the sense in which the parent who sends his boy to school may be said to teach him. All Jacotot did was to direct the pupil to learn, sometimes in a very awkward fashion, from somebody else.[180]
§ 8. 2. When we come to science, we find all the best authorities agree that the pupil should be led to principles if possible, and not have the principles brought to him. Men like Tyndall, Huxley, H. Spencer, J. M. Wilson have spoken eloquently on this subject, and shown how valuable scientific teaching is, when thus conducted, in drawing out the faculties of the mind. But although a schoolboy may be led to great scientific discoveries by anyone who knows the road, he will have no more chance of making them with an ignorant teacher than he would have had in the days of the Ptolemies. Here again, then, I cannot understand how the teacher can teach what he does not know. He may, indeed, join his pupil in investigating principles, but hemust either keep with the pupil or go in advance of him. In the first case he is only a fellow-pupil; in the second, he teaches only that which he knows.
§ 9. Finally, we come to arts, and we are told that Jacotot taught drawing and music, without being either a draughtsman or a musician. In art everything depends onrightly directed practice. The most consummate artist cannot communicate his skill, and, except for inspiration may be inferior as a teacher to one whose attention is more concentrated on the mechanism of the art. Perhaps it is not even necessary that the teacher should be able to do the exercises himself, if only he knows how they should be done; but he seldom gets credit for this knowledge, unless he can show that he knows how the thing should be done, by doing it. Lessing tells us that Raphael would have been a great painter even if he had been born without hands. He would not, however, have succeeded in getting mankind to believe it. I grant, then, that the teacher of art need not be a first-rate artist, and, in some very exceptional cases, need not be an artist at all; but, if he cannot perform the exercises he gives his pupil, he must at leastknow how they should be done. But Jacotot claims perfect ignorance. We are told that he “taught†drawing by setting objects before his pupils, and making them imitate them on paper as best they could. Of course the art originated in this way, and a person with great perseverance, and (I must say, in spite of Jacotot) with more than average ability, would make considerable progress with no proper instruction; but he would lose much by the ignorance of the person calling himself his teacher. An awkward habit of holding the pencil will make skill doubly difficult to acquire, and thus half his time might be wasted. Then, again, he would hardly have a better eyethan the early painters, so the drawing of his landscape would not be less faulty than theirs. To consider music I am told that a person who is ignorant of music can teach, say, the piano or the violin. This seems to go beyond the region of paradox into that of utter nonsense. Talent often surmounts all kinds of difficulties; but in the case of self-taught, and ill-taught musicians, it is often painful to see what time and talent have been wasted for want of proper instruction.
I have thus carefully examined Jacotot’s pretensions to teach what he did not know, because I am anxious that what seems to me the rubbish should be cleared away from his principles, and should no longer conceal those parts of his system which are worthy of general attention.
§ 10. At the root of Jacotot’s paradox lay a truth of very great importance. The highest and best teaching is not that which makes the pupils passive recipients of other peoples’ ideas (not to speak of the teaching which conveys mere words without any ideas at all), but that which guides and encourages the pupils in working for themselves and thinking for themselves. The master, as Joseph Payne well says, can no more think, or practise, or see for his pupil, than he can digest for him, or walk for him. The pupil must owe everything to his own exertions, which it is the function of the master to encourage and direct. Perhaps this may seem very obvious truth, but obvious or not it has been very generally neglected. The old system of lecturing which found favour with the Jesuits, has indeed now passed away, and boys are left to acquire facts from school-books instead of from the master. But this change is merely accidental. The essence of the teaching still remains. Even where the master does not confine himself to hearing what the scholarshave learnt by heart, he seldom does more than offer explanations. He measures the teaching rather by the amount which has been put before the scholars—by what he has done for them and shown them—than by what they have learned. But this is not teaching of the highest type. When the votary of Dulness in the “Dunciad†is rendering an account of his services, he arrives at this climax,
“For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,And write about it, Goddess, and about it.â€
“For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,And write about it, Goddess, and about it.â€
“For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, Goddess, and about it.â€
And in the same spirit Mr. J. M. Wilson stigmatises as synonymous “the most stupid and mostdidacticteaching.â€
§ 11. All the eminent authorities on education have a very different theory of the teachers function. According to them the master’s attention is not to be fixed on his own mind and his own store of knowledge, but on his pupil’s mind and on its gradual expansion. He must, in fact, be not so much ateacheras atrainer. Here we have the view which Jacotot intended to enforce by his paradox; for we may possibly train faculties which we do not ourselves possess, just as the sportsman trains his pointer and his hunter to perform feats which are altogether out of the range of his own capacities. Now, “training is the cultivation bestowed on any set of faculties with the object of developing them†(J. M. Wilson), and to train any faculty, you must set it to work. Hence it follows, that as boys’ minds are not simply their memories, the master must aim at something more than causing his pupils to remember facts. Jacotot has done good service to education by giving prominence to this truth, and by showing in his method how other faculties may be cultivated besides the memory.
§ 12. “Tout est dans tout†(“All is in allâ€), is another of Jacotot’s paradoxes. I do not propose discussing it as the philosophical thesis which takes other forms, as “Every man is a microcosm,†&c., but merely to inquire into its meaning as applied to didactics.
If you asked an ordinary French schoolmaster who Jacotot was, he would probably answer, Jacotot was a man who thought you could learn everything by getting up Fénelon’s “Télémaque†by heart. By carrying your investigation further, you would find that this account of him required modification, that the learning by heart was only part, and a very small part, of what Jacotot demanded from his pupils, but you would also find that entire mastery of “Télémaque†was the first requisite, and that he managed to connect everything he taught with that “model-book.†Of course, if “tout est dans tout,†everything is in “Télémaque;†and, said an objector, also in the first book of “Télémaque†and inthe first word. Jacotot went through a variety of subtilties to show that all “Télémaque†is contained in the wordCalypso, and perhaps he would have been equally successful, if he had been required to take only the first letter instead of the first word. His maxim indeed becomes by his treatment of it a mere paraphrase of “Quidlibet ex quolibet.†The reader is amused rather than convinced by these discussions, but he finds them not without fruit. They bring to his mind very forcibly a truth to which he has hitherto probably not paid sufficient attention. He sees that all knowledge is connected together, or (what will do equally well for our present purpose) that there are a thousand links by which we may bring into connexion the different subjects of knowledge. If by means of these links we can attach in our minds the knowledge we acquire tothe knowledge we already possess, we shall learn faster and more intelligently, and at the same time we shall have a much better chance of retaining our new acquisitions. The memory, as we all know, is assisted even by artificial association of ideas, much more by natural. Hence the value of “tout est dans tout,†or, to adopt a modification suggested by Joseph Payne, of the connexion of knowledges. Suppose we know only one subject, but know that thoroughly, our knowledge, if I may express myself algebraically, cannot be represented by ignorance plus the knowledge of that subject. We have acquired a great deal more than that. When other subjects come before us, they may prove to be so connected with what we had before, that we may also seem to know them already. In other words when we know a little thoroughly, though our actual possession is small, we have potentially a great deal more.[181]
§ 13. Jacotot’s practical application of his “tout est dans tout†was as follows:—“Il faut apprendre quelque chose, et y rapporter tout le reste.†(“The pupil must learn something thoroughly, and refer everything to that.â€) For language he must take a model book, and become thoroughly master of it. His knowledge must not be a verbal knowledge only, but he must enter into the sense and spirit of the writer. Here we find that Jacotot’s practical advice coincides with that of many other great authorities, who do not base it on the same principle. The Jesuits’ maxim was, that their pupils should always learn something thoroughly, howeverlittle it might be. Pestalozzi insisted on the children going over the elements again and again till they were completely master of them. Ascham, Ratke, and Comenius all required a model-book to be read and re-read till words and thoughts were firmly fixed in the pupil’s memory. Jacotot probably never read Ascham’s “Schoolmaster.†If he had done so he might have appropriated some of Ascham’s words as exactly conveying his own thoughts. Ascham, as we saw, recommended that a short book should be thoroughly mastered, each lesson being worked over in different ways a dozen times at the least, and in this way “your scholar shall be brought not only to like eloquence, but also to all true understanding and right judgment, both for writing and speaking.†In this the Englishman and the Frenchman are in perfect accord.
§ 14. But if Jacotot agrees so far with earlier authorities, there is one point in which he seems to differ from them. He makes great demands on the memory, and requires six books of “Télémaque†to be learned by heart. On the other hand, Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau, H. Spencer, and other great writers would be opposed to this. Ratke insisted that nothing should be learnt by heart. Protests against “loading the memory,†“saying without book,†&c., are everywhere to be met with, and nowhere more vigorously expressed than in Ascham. He says of the grammar-school boys of his time, that “their whole knowledge, by learning without the book, was tied only to their tongue and lips, and never ascended up to the brain and head, and therefore was soon spit out of the mouth again. They learnt without book everything, they understood within the book little or nothing.†But these protests were really directed at verbal knowledge, when it is made to take the place ofknowledge of the thing signified. We are always too ready to suppose that words are connected with ideas, though both old and young are constantly exposing themselves to the sarcasm of Mephistopheles:—