$ 1. One of the great wants of middle-class education at present, is an ideal to work towards. Our old public schools have such an ideal. The model public school-man is a gentleman who is an elegant Latin and Greek scholar. True, this may not be a very good ideal, and some of our ablest men, both literary and scientific, are profoundly dissatisfied with it. But, so long as it is maintained, all questions of reform are comparatively simple. In middle-class schools, on the other hand, there is noterminus ad quem. A number of boys are got together, and the question arises, not simplyhowto teach, butwhatto teach. Where the masters are not university men, they are, it may be, not men of broad views or high culture. Of course no one will suppose me ignorant of the fact that a great number of teachers who have never been at a university, are both enlightened and highly cultivated; and also that many teachers who have taken degrees, even in honours, are neither. But, speaking broadly of the two classes, I may fairly assume that the non-university men are inferior in these respects to the graduates. If not, our universities should be reformed on Carlyle’s “live-coal” principle without further loss of time. Many non-university mastershave been engaged in teaching ever since they were boys themselves, and teaching is a very narrowing occupation. They are apt therefore to be careless of general principles, and to aim merely at storing their pupils’ memory withfacts—facts about language, about history, about geography, without troubling themselves to consider what is and what is not worth knowing, or what faculties the boys have, and how they should be developed. The consequence is their boys get up, for the purpose of forgetting with all convenient speed, quantities of details about as instructive and entertaining as thePropria quæ maribus, such as the division of England under the Heptarchy, the battles in the wars of the Roses, and lists of geographical names. Where the masters are university men, they have rather a contempt for this kind of cramming, which makes them do it badly, if they attempt it at all; but they are driven to this teaching in many cases because they do not know what to substitute in its place. In their own school-education they were taught classics and mathematics and nothing else. Their pupils are too young to have much capacity for mathematics, and they will leave school too soon to get any sound knowledge of classics; so the strength of the teaching ought clearly not to be thrown into these subjects. But the master really knows no other. He soon finds that he is not much his pupils’ superior in acquaintance with the theory of the English language or with history and geography. There are not many men with sufficient strength of will to study whilst their energies are taxed by teaching; and standard books are not always within reach: so the master is forced to content himself with hearing lessons in a perfunctory way out of dreary school-books. Hence it comes to pass that he goes on teaching subjects of which he himself isignorant, subjects, too, of which he does not recognise the importance, with an enlightened disbelief in his own method of tuition. He finds it uphill work, to be sure, and is conscious that his pupils do not get on, however hard he may try to drive them; but he never hoped for success in his teaching, so the want of it does not distress him. I may be suspected of caricature, but not, I think, by university men who have themselves had to teach anything besides classics and mathematics.
§ 2. If there is any truth in what I have been saying, school-teaching, in subjects other than classics and mathematics (which I am not now considering), is very commonly a failure. And a failure it must remain until boys can be got to work with a will, in other words, to feel interest in the subject taught. I know there is a strong prejudice in some people’s minds against the notion of making learning pleasant. They remind us that school should be a preparation for after-life. After-life will bring with it an immense amount of drudgery. If, they say, things at school are made too easy and pleasant (words, by the way, very often and very erroneously confounded), school will cease to give the proper discipline: boys will be turned out not knowing what hard work is, which, after all, is the most important lesson that can be taught them. In these views I sincerely concur, so far as this at least, that we want boys to work hard, and vigorously to go through the necessary drudgery,i.e., labour in itself disagreeable. But this result is not attained by such a system as I have described. Boys do not learn to workhard, but in a dull stupid way, with most of their faculties lying dormant, and though they are put through a vast quantity of drudgery, they seem as incapable of throwing any energy into it asprisoners on the tread-mill. I think we shall find on consideration, that no one succeeds in any occupation unless that occupation is interesting, either in itself or from some object that is to be obtained by means of it. Only when such an interest is aroused is energy possible. No one will deny that, as a rule, the most successful men are those for whom their employment has the greatest attractions. We should be sorry to give ourselves up to the treatment of a doctor who thought the study of disease mere drudgery, or a dentist who felt a strong repugnance to operating on teeth. No doubt the successful man in every pursuit has to go through a great deal of drudgery, but he has a general interest in the subject, which extends, partially at least, to its most wearisome details; his energy, too, is excited by the desire of what the drudgery will gain for him.[199]
§ 3. Observe, that although I would have boys take pleasure in their work, I regard the pleasure as ameans, not an end. If it could be proved that the mind was best trained by the most repulsive exercises, I should most certainly enforce them. But I do not think that the mindisbenefited by galley-slave labour; indeed, hardly any of its faculties are capable of such labour. We can compel a boy to learn a thing by heart, but we cannot compel him to wish to understand it; and the intellect does not act without the will (v. suprap. 193). Hence, when anything is required which cannot be performed by the memory alone, the driving system utterly breaks down; and even the memory, as I hope to show presently, works much more effectually in matters about which the mind feels an interest. Indeed, the mind without sympathy and interest is like the sea-anemone when the tide is down, an unlovely thing, closed against external influences, enduring existence as best it can. But let it find itself in a more congenial element, and it opens out at once, shows altogether unexpected capacities, and eagerly assimilates all the proper food that comes within its reach. Our school teaching is often little better than an attempt to get sea-anemones to flourish on dry land.
§ 4. We see then, that a boy, before he can throw energy into a study, must find that studyinteresting in itself, or in its results.
Some subjects, properly taught, are interesting in themselves.
Some subjects may be interesting to older and more thoughtful boys, from a perception of their usefulness.
All subjects may be made interesting by emulation.
§ 5. Hardly any effort is made in some schools tointerest the younger children in their work, and yet no effort can be, as the Germans say, more “rewarding.” The teacher of children has this advantage, that his pupils are never dull and listless, as youths are apt to be. If they are not attending to him, they very soon give him notice of it; and if he has the sense to see that their inattention is his fault, not theirs, this will save him much annoyance and them much misery. He has, too, another advantage, which gives him the power of gaining their attention—their emulation is easily excited. In the Waisenhaus at Halle I once heard a class of very young children, none of them much above six years old, perform feats of mental arithmetic quite, as I should have said, beyond their age, and I well remember the pretty eagerness with which each child held out a little hand and shouted, “Mich! Bitte!” to gain the privilege of answering.
§ 6. Then again, there are many subjects in which children take an interest. Indeed, all visible things, especially animals, are much more to them than to us. A child has made acquaintance with all the animals in the neighbourhood, and can tell you much more about the house and its surroundings than you know yourself. But all this knowledge and interest you would wish forgotten directly he comes into school. Reading, writing, and figures are taught in the driest manner. The two first are in themselves not uninteresting to the child, as he has something to do, and young people are much more ready to do anything than to learn anything. But when lessons are given the child to learn, they are not about things concerning which he has ideas and feels an interest, but you teach him mere sounds—e.g., that Alfred (to him only a name) came to the throne in 871, though he has nonotion what the throne is, or what 871 means. The child learns the lesson with much trouble and small profit, bearing the infliction with what patience he can, till he escapes out of school and begins to learn much faster on a very different system.
§ 7. We cannot often introduce into the school the thing, much less the animal, which children would care to see, but we can introduce what will please them as well, in some cases even better, viz., good pictures. A teacher who could draw boldly on the blackboard, would have no difficulty in arresting the children’s attention. But, at present, few can do this, and pictures must be provided. A good deal has been done of late years in the way of illustrating children’s books, and even childhood must be the happier for such pictures as those of Tenniel and Harrison Weir. But it seems well understood that these gentlemen are incapable of doing anything for children beyond affording them innocent amusement, and we should be as much surprised at seeing their works introduced into that region of asceticism, the English school-room, as if we ran across one of Raphael’s Madonnas in a Baptist chapel.[200]
§ 8. I had the good fortune, many years ago, to be present at the lessons given by a very excellent teacher to the youngest class, consisting both of boys and girls, at the firstBürger-schuleof Leipzig. In Saxony the schooling which the state demands for each child, begins at six yearsold, and lasts till fourteen. These children were, therefore, between six and seven. In one year, a certain Dr. Vater taught them to read, write, and reckon. His method of teaching was as follows:—Each child had a book with pictures of objects, such as a hat, a slate, &c. Under the picture was the name of the object in printing and writing characters, and also a couplet about the object. The children having opened their books, and found the picture of a hat, the teacher showed them a hat, and told them a tale connected with one. He then asked the children questions about his story, and about the hat he had in his hand—What was the colour of it? &c. He then drew a hat on the blackboard, and made the children copy it on their slates. Next he wrote the word “hat” and told them that for people who could read this did as well as the picture. The children then copied the word on their slates. The teacher proceeded to analyse the word “hat, (hut).” “It is made up,” said he, “of three sounds, the most important of which is thea(u), which comes in the middle.” In all cases the vowel sound was first ascertained in every syllable, and then was given an approximation to consonantal sounds before and after. The couplet was now read by the teacher, and the children repeated it after him. In this way the book had to be worked over and over till the children were perfectly familiar with everything in it. They had been already six months thus employed when I visited the school, and knew the book pretty thoroughly. To test their knowledge, Dr. Vater first wrote a number of capitals at random on the board, and called out a boy to tell him words having these capitals as initials. This boy had to call out a girl to do something of the kind, she a boy, and so forth. Everything was done very smartly, bothby master and children. The best proof I saw of their accuracy and quickness was this: the master traced words from the book very rapidly with a stick on the blackboard, and the children always called out the right word, though I could not follow him. He also wrote with chalk words which the children had never seen, and made them name first the vowel sounds, then the consonantal, then combine them.
I have been thus minute in my description of this lesson, because it seems to me an admirable example of the way in which children between six and eight years of age should be taught. The method (see Rüegg’sPädagogik, p. 360; alsoDie Normalwörtermethode, published by Orell, Füssli, Zürich, 1876), was arranged and the book prepared by the late Dr. Vogel, who was then Director of the school. Its merits, as its author pointed out to me, are:—1. That it connects the instruction with objects of which the child has already an idea in his mind, and so associates new knowledge with old; 2. That it gives the children plenty todoas well as to learn, a point on which the Doctor was very emphatic; 3. That it makes the children go over the same matter in various ways till they havelearnt a little thoroughly, and then applies their knowledge to the acquirement of more. Here the Doctor seems to have followed Jacotot. But though the method was no doubt a good one, I must say its success at Leipzig was due at least as much to Dr. Vater as to Dr. Vogel. This gentleman had been taking the youngest class in this school for twenty years, and, whether by practice or natural talent, he had acquired precisely the right manner for keeping children’s attention. He was energetic without bustle and excitement, and quiet without a suspicion of dulness or apathy. Byfrequently changing the employment of the class, and requiring smartness in everything that was done, he kept them all on the alert. The lesson I have described was followed without pause by one in arithmetic, the two together occupying an hour and three quarters, and the interest of the children never flagged throughout.
§ 9. Dr. Vater’s method for arithmetic I cannot now recall; but I do not doubt that, as a German teacher who had studied his profession, he understood what English teachers and pupil-teachers do not understand, viz., how children should get their first knowledge of numbers. Pestalozzi and Froebel insisted that children should learn about numbers fromthingswhich they actually counted; and, according to Grubé’s method, which I found in Germany over 30 years ago, and which is now extending to the United States, the whole of the first year is given to the relations of numbers not exceeding ten (seeGrubé’s Methodby L. Seeley, New York, Kellogg, and F. L. Soldan’sGrubé’s M., Chicago). In arithmetic everything depends on these relations becoming thoroughly familiar. The decimal scale is possibly not so good as the scale of eight or of twelve, but the human race has adopted it; and even the French Revolutionists, with all their belief in “reason,” and their hatred of the past, recoiled from any attempt to change it. But in accepting it, they endeavoured to remove anomalies, and so should we. Everything must be based on groups of ten; and with children we should do well, as Mr. W. Wooding suggests, to avoid the great anomaly in our nomenclature, and call the numbers between ten and twenty (i.e., twain-tens or two-tens), “ten-one, ten-two, &c.” Numeration should by a long way precede any kind of notation, and the main truths about numbers shouldbe got at experimentally with counters or coins. In these truths should be included all that we usually separate under the “First Four Rules,” and with integers we may even from the first give a clear conception of the fractional parts of whole numbers,e.g., that one third of 6 is 2.[201]
Actual measuring and weighing, besides actual counting, go towards actual arithmetic for children.
All this teaching, if conducted as Dr. Vater would have conducted it, would not give children any distaste for learning or make them dread the sound of the school bell.
§ 10. I will suppose a child to have passed through such a course as this by the time he is eight or nine years old. Besides having some clear notions of number and form, he can now read and copy easy words. What we next want for him is a series of good reading-books, about things in which he takes an interest. The language must of course be simple, but the matter so good that neither master nor pupils will be disgusted by its frequent repetition.
The first volume may very well be about animals—dogs, horses, &c., of which large pictures should be provided, illustrating the text. The first cost of these pictures would be considerable, but as they would last for years, the expense to the friends of each child taught from them would be a mere trifle.
§ 11. The books placed in the hands of the children should be well printed and strongly bound. In the present penny-wise system, school-books are given out in cloth, andthe leaves are loose at the end of a fortnight, so that children get accustomed to their destruction and treat it as a matter of course. This ruins their respect for books, which is not so unimportant a matter as it may at first appear.
§ 12. After each reading lesson, which should contain at least one interesting anecdote, there should be columns of all the words which occurred for the first time in that lesson. These should be arranged according to their grammatical classification, not that the child should be taught grammar, but this order is as good as any other, and by it the child would learn to observe certain differences in words almost unconsciously.[202]
Here I cannot resist quoting an excellent remark from Helps’sBrevia(p. 125). “We should make the greatest progress in art, science, politics, and morals, if we could train up our minds to look straight and steadfastly and uninterruptedly at the thing in question that we are observing. This seems a very slight thing to do; but practically it is hardly ever done. Between you and the object rises a mist of technicalities, of prejudices, of previous knowledge, and, above all, of terrible familiarity.” Perhapsit is this “terrible familiarity” that has prevented our seeing till quite lately that reading is the art of getting meaning by signs that appeal to the eye,notthe art of reporting to others the meaning we have thus arrived at. “Accustoming boys to read aloud what they do not first understand,” says Benjamin Franklin, “is the cause of those even set tones so common among readers, which, when they have once got a habit of using [them], they find so difficult to correct; by which means, among fifty readers we scarcely find a good one.” (Essays, Sk. of English Sch.) It seems to have escaped even Franklin’s sagacity that reading aloud is a different art to the art of reading, and a much harder one. The two should be studied separately, and most time and attention should be given to silent reading, which is by far the more important of the two. Colonel F. W. Parker, who has successfully cultivated the power of “looking straight at” things, gives us in hisTalks on Teachingthe right rule for reading. “Changing,” says he, “the beautiful power of expression, full of melody, harmony, and correct emphasis and inflection, to the slow, painful, almost agonising pronunciation that we have heard so many times in the school-room, is a terrible sin that we should never be guilty of. There is, indeed, not the slightest need of changing a good habit to a miserable one if we would follow the rule that the child has naturally followed all his life.Never allow a child to give a thought till he gets it” (p. 37). Now that the existence of a thought in children is allowed for, we may expect all sorts of improvements. Reading, as a means of ascertaining thought, is second only to hearing, and this art should be cultivated by giving children books of questions (e.g., Horace Grant’sArithmeticfor Young Children), and requiring the learner silently to get at the question and then give the answer aloud.
§ 13. Easy descriptive and narrative poetry should be learnt by heart at this stage. That the children may repeat it well, they should get their first notions of it from the mastervivâ voce. According to the usual plan, they get it up with false emphasis and false stops, and the more thoroughly they have learnt the piece, the more difficulty the master has in making them say it properly.
§ 14. Every lesson should be worked over in various ways. The columns of words at the end of the reading lessons may be printed with writing characters, and used for copies. To write an upright column either of words or figures is an excellent exercise in neatness. The columns will also be used as spelling lessons, and the children may be questioned about the meaning of the words. The poetry, when thoroughly learned, may sometimes be written from memory. Sentences from the book may be copied either directly or from the black-board, and afterwards used for dictation.
§ 15. Boys should, as soon as possible, be accustomed to write out fables, or the substance of other reading lessons, in their own words. They may also write descriptions of things with which they are familiar, or any event which has recently happened, such as a country excursion. Every one feels the necessity, on grounds of practical utility at all events, of boys being taught to express their thoughts neatly on paper, in good English and with correct spelling. Yet this is a point rarely reached before the age of fifteen or sixteen, often never reached at all. The reason is, that written exercises must be carefully looked over by the master, or they are done in a slovenly manner. Anyonewho has never taught in a school will say, “Then let the master carefully look them over.” But the expenditure of time and trouble this involves on the master is so great, that in the end he is pretty sure either to have few exercises written, or to neglect to look them over. The only remedy is for the master not to have many boys to teach, and not to be many hours in school. Even then, unless he set apart a special time every day for correcting exercises, he is likely to find them “increase upon him.”
§ 16. The course of reading-books, accompanied by large illustrations, may go on to many other things which the children see around them, such as trees and plants, and so lead up to instruction in natural history and physiology. But in imparting all knowledge of this kind, we should aim, not at getting the children to remember a number of facts, but at opening their eyes, and extending the range of their interests.
§ 17. I should suggest, then, for children, three books to be used concurrently, viz., a reading book about animals and things, a poetry book, and a prose narrative or Æsop’s Fables. With the first commences a series culminating in works of science; with the second, a series that should lead up to Milton and Shakespeare; the third should be succeeded by some of our best writers in prose.
§ 18. But many schoolmasters will shudder at the thought of a child’s spending a year or two at school without ever hearing of the Heptarchy or Magna Charta, and without knowing the names of the great towns in any country of Europe. I confess I regard this ignorance with great equanimity. If the child, or the youth even, takes no interest in the Heptarchy and Magna Charta, and knows nothing of the towns but their names, I think him quite aswell off without this knowledge as with it—perhaps better, as such knowledge turns the lad into a “wind-bag,” as Carlyle might say, and gives him the appearance of being well-informed without the reality. But I neither despise a knowledge of history and geography; nor do I think that these studies should be neglected for foreign languages or science: and it is because I should wish a pupil of mine to become, in the end, thoroughly conversant in history and geography, that I should, if possible, conceal from him the existence of the numerous school manuals on these subjects.
We will suppose that a parent meets with a book which he thinks will be both instructive and entertaining to his children. But the book is a large one, and would take a long time to get through; so instead of reading any part of it to them or letting them read it for themselves, he makes themlearn by heart the table of contents. The children donotfind it entertaining; they get a horror of the book, which prevents their ever looking at it afterwards, and they forget what they have learnt as soon as they possibly can. Just such is the sagacious plan adopted in teaching history and geography in schools, and such are the natural consequences. Every student knows that the use of an epitome is tosystematiseknowledge, not to communicate it, and yet, in teaching, we give the epitome first, and allow it to precede, or rather to supplant, the knowledge epitomised. The children are disgusted, and no wonder. The subjects, indeed, are interesting, but not so the epitomes. I suppose if we could see the skeletons of the Gunnings, we should not find them more fascinating than any other skeletons.[203]
§ 19. The first thing to be aimed at, then, is to excite the children’s interest. Even if we thought of nothing but the acquiring of information, this is clearly the true method.What are the facts which we remember? Those in which we feel an interest. If we are told that So-and-so has met with an accident, or failed in business, we forget it directly, unless we know the person spoken of. Similarly, if I read anything about Addison or Goldsmith, it interests me, and I remember it because they are, so to speak, friends of mine; but the same information about Sir Richard Blackmore or Cumberland would not stay in my head for four-and-twenty hours. So, again, we naturally retain anything we learn about a foreign country in which a relation has settled, but it would require some little trouble to commit to memory the same facts about a place in which we had no concern. All this proceeds from two causes. First, that the mind retains that in which it takes an interest; and, secondly, that one of the principal helps to memory is the association of ideas. These were, no doubt, the ground reasons which influenced Dr. Arnold in framing his plan of a child’s first history book. This book, he says, should be a picture-book of the memorable deeds which would best appeal to the child’s imagination. They should be arranged in order of time, but with no other connection. The letter-press should simply, but fully, tell thestoryof the action depicted. These would form starting-points of interest. The child would be curious to know more about the great men whose acquaintance he had made, and would associate with them the scenes of their exploits; and thus we might actually find our children anxious to learn history and geography! I am sorry that even the great authority of Dr. Arnold has not availed to bring this method into use. Such a book would, of course, be dear. Bad pictures are worse than none at all: and Goethe tells us that his appreciation of Homer was for years destroyed by his havingbeen shown, when a child, absurd pictures of the Homeric heroes. The book would, therefore, cost six or eight shillings at least; and who would give this sum for an account of single actions of a few great men, when he might buy the lives of all great men, together with ancient and modern history, the names of the planets, and a great amount of miscellaneous information, all for a shilling in “Mangnall’s Questions”?
However, if the saving of a few shillings is more to be thought of than the best method of instruction, the subject hardly deserves our serious consideration.
§ 20. It is much to be regretted that books for the young are so seldom written by distinguished authors. I suppose that of the three things which the author seeks, money, reputation, influence, the first is not often despised, nor the last considered the least valuable. And yet both money and influence are more certainly gained by a good book for the young than by any other. The influence of “Tom Brown,” however different in kind, is probably not smaller in amount than that of “Sartor Resartus.”
§ 21. What we want is a Macaulay for boys, who shall handle historical subjects with that wonderful art displayed in the “Essays,”—the art of elaborating all the more telling portions of the subject, outlining the rest, and suppressing everything that does not conduce to heighten the general effect. Some of these essays, such as the “Hastings” and “Clive,” will be read with avidity by the elder boys; but Macaulay did not write for children, and he abounds in words to them unintelligible. Had he been a married man, we might perhaps have had such a volume of historical sketches for boys as now we must wish for in vain. But there are good story-tellers left among us, and we mightsoon expect such books as we desiderate, if it were clearly understood what is the right sort of book, and if men of literary ability and experience would condescend to write them.
§ 22. If, in these latter days, “the individual withers, and the world is more and more,” we must not expect our children to enter into this. Their sympathy and their imagination can be aroused, not for nations, but for individuals; and this is the reason why some biographies of great men should precede any history. These should be written after Macaulay’s method. There should be no attempt at completeness, but what is most important and interesting about the man should be narrated in detail, and the rest lightly sketched, or omitted altogether. Painters understand this principle, and, in taking a portrait, very often depict a man’s features minutely without telling all the truth about the buttons on his waistcoat. But, because in a literary picture each touch takes up additional space, writers seem to fear that the picture will be distorted unless every particular is expanded or condensed in the same ratio.
§ 23. At the risk of wearisome repetition, I must again say that I care as little about driving “useful knowledge” into a boy as the most ultra Cambridge man could wish; but I want to get the boy to have wide sympathies, and to teach himself; and I should therefore select the great men from very different periods and countries, that his net of interest (so to speak) may be spread in all waters.
§ 24. When we have thus got our boys to form the acquaintance of great men, they will have certain associations connected with many towns and countries. Constant reference should be made to the map, and the boys’ knowledge and interest will thus make settlements in differentparts of the globe. These may be extended by a good book of travels, especially of voyages of discovery. There are now many such books suitable for the purpose, but I am still partial to a book which has been a delight to me and to my own children from our earliest years:—Miss Hack’s “Winter Evenings; or, Tales of Travelers”; or, as Routledge now calls a part of it, “Travels in Hot and Cold Lands.” In studying such travels, the map should, of course, be always in sight; and outline maps may be filled up by the boys as they learn about the places in the traveller’s route. Anyone who has had the management of a school library knows how popular “voyage and venture” is with the boys who have passed the stage in which the picture-books of animals were the main attraction. Captain Cook, Mungo Park, and Admiral Byron are heroes without whom boyhood would be incomplete; but as boys are engrossed by the adventures, and never trouble themselves about the map, they often remember the incidents without knowing where they happened.
Of course, school geographies never mention such people as celebrated travellers; if they did, it would be impossible to give all the principal geographical names in the world within the compass of 200 pages.
§ 25. What might we fairly expect from such a course of teaching as I have here suggested?
At the end of a year and a half, or two years, from the age, say, of nine, the boy would read to himself intelligently; he would write fairly; he would spell all common English words correctly; he would be thoroughly familiar with the relations of all common numbers, that is, of all numbers below 100; he would have had his interest aroused, or, to speak more accurately, not stifled but increased in commonobjects, such as animals, trees, and plants; he would have made the acquaintance of some great men, and traced the voyages of some great travellers; he would be able to say by heart and to write from memory some of the best simple English poetry, and his ear would be familiar with the sound of good English prose. So much, at least, on the positive side. On the negative there might also be results of considerable value. He wouldnothave learned to look upon books and school-time as the torment of his life, nor have fallen into the habit of giving them as little of his attention as he could reconcile with immunity from the cane. The benefit of the negative result might outweigh a very glib knowledge of “tables” and Latin Grammar.
§ 1. All who are acquainted with the standard treatises on the theory of education, and also with the management of schools, will have observed that moral and religious training occupies a larger and more prominent space in theory than in practice. On consideration, we shall find perhaps that this might naturally be expected. Of course we are all agreed that morality is more important than learning, and masters who are many of them clergymen, will hardly be accused of under-estimating the value of religion. Why then, does not moral and religious training receive a larger share of the master’s attention? The reason I take to be this. Experience shows that it depends directly on the master whether a boy acquires knowledge, but only indirectly, and in a much less degree, whether he grows up a good and religious man. The aim which engrosses most of our time is likely to absorb an equal share of our interest; and thus it happens that masters, especially those who never associate on terms of intimacy with their pupils out of school, throw energy enough into making boyslearn, but seldom think at all of the development of their character, or about their thoughts and feelings in matters of religion.This statement may indeed be exaggerated, but no one who has the means of judging will assert that it is altogether without foundation. And yet, although a master can be more certain of sending out his pupils well-taught than well-principled, his influence on their character is much greater than it might appear to a superficial observer. I am not speaking of formal religious instruction. I refer now to the teacher’s indirect influence. The results of his formal teaching vary as its amount, but he can apply no such gauge to his informal teaching. A few words of earnest advice or remonstrance, which a boy hears at the right time from a man whom he respects, may affect that boy’s character for life. Here everything depends, not on the words used, but on the feeling with which they are spoken, and on the way in which the speaker is regarded by the hearer. In such matters the master has a much more delicate and difficult task than in mere instruction. The words, indeed, are soon spoken, but that which gives them their influence is not soon or easily acquired. Here, as in so many other instances, we may in a few minutes throw down what it has cost us days—perhaps years—to build up. An unkind word will destroy the effects of long-continued kindness. Boys always form their opinion of a man from the worst they know of him. Experience has not yet taught them that good people have their failings, and bad people their virtues. If the scholars find the master at times harsh and testy, they cannot believe in his kindness of heart and care for their welfare. They do not see that he may have an ideal before him to which he is partly, though not wholly true. They judge him by his demeanour in his least guarded moments—at times when he is jaded and dissatisfied with the result of his labours. At such times he is no longer“in touch” with his pupils. He is conscious only of his own power and mental superiority. Feeling almost a contempt for the boys’ weakness, he does not care for their opinion of him or think for an instant what impression he is making by his words and conduct. He gives full play to hisarbitrium, and says or does something which seems to the boys to reveal him in his true character, and which causes them ever after to distrust his kindness.
§ 2. When we consider the way in which masters endeavour to gain influence, we shall find that they may be divided roughly into two parties, whom I will call the open and the reserved. A teacher of theopenparty endeavours to appear to his pupils precisely as he is. He will hear of no restraint except that of decorum. He believes that if he is as much the superior of his pupils as he ought to be, his authority will take care of itself without his casting round it a wall of artificial reserve. “Be natural,” he says; “get rid of affectations and shams of all kinds; and then, if there is any good in you, it will tell on those around you. Whatever is bad, would be felt just as surely in disguise; and the disguise would only be an additional source of mischief.” Thereserved, on the other hand, wish their pupils to think of them as they ought to be rather than as they are. Against the other party they urge that our words and actions cannot always be in harmony with our thoughts and feelings, however much we may desire to make them so. We must, therefore, they say, reconcile ourselves to this; and since our words and actions are more under our control than our thoughts and feelings, we must make them as nearly as possible what they should be, instead of debasing them to involuntary thoughts and feelings which are not worthy of us. Then again, a teacher who is an idealist may say,“The young require some one to look up to. In my better moments I am not altogether unworthy of their respect; but if they knew all my weaknesses, they would naturally, and perhaps justly, despise me. For their sakes, therefore, I must keep my weaknesses out of sight, and the effort to do this demands a certain reserve in all our intercourse.”
§ 3. I suppose an excess in either direction might lead to mischievous results. The “open” man might be wanting in self-restraint, and might say and do things which, though not wrong in themselves, might have a bad effect on the young. Then, again, the lower and more worldly side of his character might show itself in too strong relief; and his pupils seeing this mainly, and supposing that they understood him entirely, might disbelieve in his higher motives and religious feeling. On the other hand, those who set up for being better than they really are, are, as it were, walking on stilts. They gain no real influence by their separation from their pupils, and they are always liable to an accident which may expose them to their ridicule.[204]
§ 4. I am, therefore, though with some limitation, in favour of theopenschool. I am well aware, however, what an immense demand this system makes on the master who desires to exercise a good influence on the moral and religious character of his pupils. If he would have his pupils know him as he is, if he would have them think as he thinks, feel as he feels, and believe as he believes, he must be, at least in heart and aim, worthy of their imitation. He must(with reverence be it spoken) enter, in his humble way, into the spirit of the perfect Teacher, who said, “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” Are we prepared to look upon our calling in this light? I believe that the school-teachers of this country need not fear comparison with any other body of men, in point of morality, and religious earnestness; but I dare say many have found, as I have, that the occupation is a verynarrowingone, that the teacher soon gets to work in a groove, and from having his thoughts so much occupied with routine work, especially with small fault-findings and small corrections, he is apt to settle down insensibly into a kind of moral and intellectual stagnation—Philistinism, as Matthew Arnold has taught us to call it—in which he cares as little for high aims and general principles as his most commonplace pupil. Thus it happens sometimes that a man who set out with the notion of developing all the powers of his pupils’ minds, thinks in the end of nothing but getting them to work out equations and do Latin exercises without false concords; and the clergyman even, who began with a strong sense of his responsibility and a confident hope of influencing the boys’ belief and character, at length is quite content if they conform to discipline and give him no trouble out of school-hours. We may say of a really good teacher what Wordsworth says of the poet; in his work he must neither
lack that first great gift, the vital soul,Nor general truths, which are themselves a sortOf elements and agents, under-powers,Subordinate helpers of the living mind.—Prelude, i. 9.
lack that first great gift, the vital soul,Nor general truths, which are themselves a sortOf elements and agents, under-powers,Subordinate helpers of the living mind.—Prelude, i. 9.
lack that first great gift, the vital soul,
Nor general truths, which are themselves a sort
Of elements and agents, under-powers,
Subordinate helpers of the living mind.—Prelude, i. 9.
But the “vital soul” is too often crushed by excessive routine labour, and then when general truths, both moraland intellectual, have ceased to interest us, our own education stops, and we become incapable of fulfilling the highest and most important part of our duty in educating others.
§ 5. It is, then, the duty of the teacher to resist gravitating into this state, no less for his pupils’ sake than for his own. The ways and means of doing this I am by no means competent to point out; so I will merely insist on the importance of teachers not being overworked—a matter which has not, I think, hitherto received due attention.
We cannot expect intellectual activity of men whose minds are compelled “with pack-horse constancy to keep the road” hour after hour, till they are too jaded for exertion of any kind. The man himself suffers, and his work, even his easiest work, suffers also. It may be laid down as a general rule, that no one can teach long and teach well. All satisfactory teaching and management of boys absolutely requires that the master should bein good spirits. When the “genial spirits fail,” as they must from an overdose of monotonous work, everything goes wrong directly. The master has no longer the power of keeping the boys’ attention, and has to resort to punishments even to preserve order. His gloom quenches their interest and mental activity, just as fire goes out before carbonic acid; and in the end teacher and taught acquire, not without cause, a feeling of mutual aversion.
§ 6. And another reason why the master should not spend the greater part of his time in formal teaching is this—his doing so compels him to neglect the informal but very important teaching he may both give and receive by making his pupils his companions.
§ 7. I fear I shall be met here by an objection which has only too much force in it. Most Englishmen are at a losshow to make any use of leisure. If a man has no turn for thinking, no fondness for reading, and is without a hobby, what good shall his leisure do him? he will only pass it in insipid gossip, from which any easy work would be a relief. That this is so in many cases, is a proof to my mind of the utter failure of our ordinary education: and perhaps an improved education may some day alter what now seems a national peculiarity. Meantime the mind, even of Englishmen, is more than a “succedaneum for salt;”[205]and its tendency to bury its sight, ostrich-fashion, under a heap of routine work must be strenuously resisted, if it is to escape its deadly enemies, stupidity and ignorance.
§ 8. I have elsewhere expressed what I believe is the common conviction of those who have seen something both of large schools and of small, viz., that the moral atmosphere of the former is, as a rule, by far the more wholesome;[206]and also that each boy is more influenced by his companions than by his master. More than this, I believe that in many, perhaps in most, schools, one or two boys affect the tone of the whole body more than any master.[207]What are called Preparatory Schools labour under this immense disadvantage, that their ruling spirits are mere children without reflection or sense of responsibility.[208]But where the leading boys are virtually young men, these may be made a medium through which the mind of the master may act upon the whole school. They can enter into the thoughts, feelings, and aims of the master on the one hand, and they know what is said and done among the boys on the other. The master must, therefore, know the elder boys intimately, and they mustknow him. This consummation, however, will not be arrived at without great tact and self-denial on the part of the master. The youth who is “neither man nor boy” is apt to be shy and awkward, and is not by any means so easy to entertain as the lad who chatters freely of the school’s cricket or football, past, present, and to come. But the master who feels how all-important is thetoneof the school, will not grudge any pains to influence those on whom it chiefly depends.
§ 9. But, allowing the value of all these indirect influences, can we afford to neglect direct formal religious instruction? We have most of us the greatest horror of what we call a secular education, meaning thereby an education without formal religious teaching. But this horror seems to affect our theory more than our practice. Few parents ever enquire what religious instruction their sons get at Eton, Harrow, or Westminster. At Harrow when I was in the Fourth Form there (nearly fifty years ago by the way) we had no religious instruction except a weekly lesson in Watts’s Scripture History; and when I was a master some twenty years ago my form had only a Sunday lesson in a portion of the Old Testament, and a lesson in French Testament at “First School” on Monday. Even in some “Voluntary Schools” we do not find “religious instruction” made so much of as the arithmetic.
§ 10. In this matter we differ very widely from the Germans. All their classes have a “religion-lesson” (Religionstunde) nearly every day, the younger children in the German Bible, the elder in the Greek Testament or Church History; and in all cases the teacher is careful to instruct his pupils in the tenets of Luther or Calvin. The Germans may urge that if we believe a set of doctrines to be a fittingexpression of Divine revelation, it is our first duty to make the young familiar with those doctrines. I cannot say, however, that I have been favourably impressed by the religion-lessons I have heard given in German schools. I do not deny that dogmatic teaching is necessary, but the first thing to cultivate in the young is reverence; and reverence is surely in danger if you take a class in “religion” just as you take a class in grammar. Emerson says somewhere, that to the poet, the saint, and the philosopher, all distinction of sacred and profane ceases to exist, all things become alike sacred. As the schoolboy, however, does not as yet come under any one of these denominations, if the distinction ceases to exist for him, all things will become alike profane.
§ 11. I believe that religious instruction is conveyed in the most impressive way when it is connected with worship. Where the prayers are joined with the reading of Scripture and with occasional simple addresses, and where the congregation have responses to repeat, and psalms and hymns to sing, there is reason to hope that boys will increase, not only in knowledge, but in wisdom and reverence too. Without asserting that the Church of England service is the best possible for the young, I hold that any form for them should at least resemble it in its main features, should be as varied as possible, should require frequent change of posture, and should give the congregation much to say and sing. Much use might be made as in the Church of Rome, of litanies. The service, whatever its form, should be conducted with great solemnity, and the boys should not sit or kneel so close together that the badly disposed may disturb their neighbours who try to join in the act of worship. If good hymns are sung, these may be taken occasionally as thesubject of an address, so that attention may be drawn to their meaning. Music should be carefully attended to, and the danger of irreverence at practices guarded against by never using sacred words more than is necessary, and by impressing on the singers the sacredness of everything connected with Divine worship. Questions combined with instruction may sometimes keep up boys’ attention better than a formal sermon. Though common prayer should be frequent, this should not be supposed to take the place of private prayer. In many schools boys have hardly an opportunity for private prayer. They kneel down, perhaps, with all the talk and play of their schoolfellows going on around them, and sometimes fear of public opinion prevents their kneeling down at all. A schoolmaster cannot teach private prayer, but he can at least see that there is opportunity for it.
Education to goodness and piety, as far as it lies in human hands, must consist almost entirely in the influence of the good and pious superior over his inferiors, and as this influence is independent of rules, these remarks of mine cannot do more than touch the surface of this most important subject.[209]
§ 12. In conclusion, I wish to say a word on the education of opinion. Sir Arthur Helps lays great stress onpreparing the way to moderation and open-mindedness by teaching boys that all good men are not of the same way of thinking. It is indeed a miserable error to lead a young person to suppose that his small ideas are a measure of the universe, and that all who do not accept his formularies are less enlightened than himself. If a young man is so brought up, he either carries intellectual blinkers all his life, or, what is far more probable, he finds that something he has been taught is false, and forthwith begins to doubt everything. On the other hand, it is a necessity with the young to believe, and we could not, even if we would, bring a youth into such a state of mind as to regard everything about which there is any variety of opinion as an open question. But he may be taught reverence and humility; he may be taught to reflect how infinitely greater the facts of the universe must be than our poor thoughts about them, and how inadequate are words to express even our imperfect thoughts. Then he will not suppose that all truth has been taught him in his formularies, nor that he understands even all the truth of which those formularies are the imperfect expression.[210]
§ 1. When I originally published these essays (more than 22 years ago) the critic of theNonconformistin one of the best, though by no means most complimentary, of the many notices with which the book was favoured, took me to task for being in such a hurry to publish. I had confessed incompleteness. What need was there for me to publish before I had completed my work? Since that time I have spent years on my subject and at least two years on these essays themselves; but they now seem to me even further from completeness than they seemed then. However, I have reason to believe that the old book, incomplete as it was, proved useful to teachers; and in its altered form it will, I hope, be found useful still.
§ 2. It may be useful I think in two ways.
First: it may lead some teachers to the study of the great thinkers on education. There are some vital truths which remain in the books which time cannot destroy. In the world as Goethe says are few voices, many echoes; and the echoes often prevent our hearing the voices distinctly. Perhaps most people had a better chance of hearing thevoices when there were fewer books and no periodicals. Speakers properly so called cannot now be heard for the hubbub of the talkers; and as literature is becoming more and more periodical our writers seem mostly employed like children on card pagodas or like the recumbent artists of the London streets who produce on the stones of the pavement gaudy chalk drawings which the next shower washes out.
But if I would have fewer books what business have I to add to the number? I may be told that—