DIDACTIC TEACHING. 207 been very generally neglected. The Jesuits, who were the best masters of the old school, did little beyond communicating facts, and insisting on their pupils committing these facts to memory. Their system of lecturing 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 scholars have 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 Dullness 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. And in the same spirit Mr. Wilson stigmatizes as synonymous "the most stupid and most didactic teaching." All the eminent authorities on education have a very different theory of the teacher's function "Education," says Pestalozzi, “instead of merely considering what is to be imparted to children, ought to consider first what they already possess, not merely their developed faculties, but also their innate faculties capable of development." The master's attention, then, 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 a teacher as a trainer. 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. Sayers' trainer brought up his man to face Heenan, but he could not have done so himself 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" (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. "Tout est dans tout" ("All is in all"), 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," etc., but merely to inquire into its meaning as applied to didactics. " If you asked an ordinary Frenchman 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 his first requisite, and that he managed to connect everything he taught with that "model-book." Of course, 66 5 TOUT EST DANS TOUT." 209 ས if "tout est dans tout," everything is in Télémaque;" and, said an objector, also in the first book of Télémaque," and in the first word. Jacotot went through a variety of subtilities to show that all “Télémaque is contained in the word Calypso, and perhaps he would have been equally successful, if he had been required to take only the first letter instead of the first word. 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 connection the different subjects of knowledge. If by means of these links we can attach in our minds the knowledge we acquire to the 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 Mr. Payne, of the connection of knowledge. Suppose we know only one subject, but know that thoroughly, our knowledge, if I may express myself algebraically, can not 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 almost 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. (See Appendix, p. 315.) 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 every thing to that.") 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, however little it might be. Pestalozzi, as I have mentioned, insisted on the children going over the elements again and again till they were completely master of them. "Not only," says he, " have the first elements of knowledge in every subject the most important bearing on its complete outline; but the child's confidence and interest are gained by perfect attainment even in the lowest stage of instruction." Ascham, Ratich, 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. "Thus is learned easily, sensibly, by little and little, not only all the hard congruities of grammar, the choice of THE MODEL-BOOK. 211 aptest words, the right framing of words and sentences, comeliness of figures, and forms fit for every matter and proper for every tongue; but that which is greater also-in marking daily and following diligently thus the best authors, like invention of arguments, like order in disposition, like utterance in elocution, is easily gathered up; whereby your scholar shall be brought not only to like eloquence, but also to all true understanding and right judgment, both for writing and speaking." The voice seems Jacotot's voice, though the hand is the hand of Ascham. 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 said, "Savoir par cœur est ne pas savoir;" which is echoed by Rousseau, H. Spencer, etc. Ratich required that nothing should be learnt by heart. Protests against "loading the memory," "saying without book," etc., are every where 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 knowl edge, 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 of knowledge of the thing signified. We are always too ready to suppose that words are connected with ideas, though both old |