the puppet-show with all the properties of the things they represent. His feelings and affections, easily excited, find an object to love or dislike in every person and thing he meets with. On the other hand, he has no conception of what is abstract, and no interest except in actual known persons, animals, and things. There is, then, between the child of nine and the youth of fourteen or fifteen a greater difference than between the youth and the man of twenty; and this demands a corresponding difference in their studies. And yet, as matters are carried on now, the child is too often kept to the drudgery of learning by rote mere collections of hard words, perhaps, too, in a foreign language; and absorbed by the present, he gets little comfort from the teacher's hæc olim meminisse juvabit. How to educate the child is doubtless the most difficult problem of all, and it is generally allotted to those who are the least likely to find a satisfactory solution. The earliest educator of the children of many rich parents is the nursemaid-a person not usually distinguished by either intellectual or moral excellence.. At an early age, this educator is superseded by the Preparatory School. Taken as a body, the ladies whose pecuniary needs compel them to open 'establishments for young gentlemen' (though doubtless possessed of many excellent qualities) cannot be said to hold enlarged views, or indeed any views whatever, on the subject of education. Their intention is not so much to cultivate the children's facul BLUNDERS IN EARLY EDUCATION. 183 ties as to make a livelihood, and to hear no complaints that pupils who have left them have been found. deficient in the expected knowledge by the master of their new school. If anyone would investigate the sort of teaching which is considered adapted to the capacity of children at this stage, let him look into a standard work still in vogue (‘Mangnall's Questions'), from which the young of both sexes acquire a great quantity and variety of learning; the whole of ancient and modern history and biography, together with the heathen mythology, the planetary system, and the names of all the constellations, lying very compactly in about 300 pages. (See Appendix, p. 314.) Unfortunately, moreover, from the gentility of these ladies, their scholars' bodies are often treated in preparatory schools no less injuriously than their minds. It may be natural in a child to use his lungs and delight in noise, but this can hardly be considered genteel, so the tendency is, as far as possible, suppressed. It is found, too, that if children are allowed to run about they get dirty and spoil their clothes, and do not look like 'young gentlemen,' so they are made to take exercise in a much more genteel fashion, walking slowly two-and-two, with gloves on. At nine or ten years old, boys are commonly put to a school taught by masters. Here they lose sight of their gloves, and learn the use of their limbs; but their minds are not so fortunate as their bodies. The studies of the school have been arranged without any thought of their peculiar needs. The youngest class is generally the largest, often much the largest, and it is handed over to the least com petent and worst paid master on the staff of teachers. The reason is, that little boys are found to learn the tasks imposed upon them very slowly. A youth or a man who came fresh to the Latin grammar would learn in a morning as much as the master with great labour can get into children in a week. It is thought, therefore, that the best teaching should be applied where it will have most result. If anyone were to say to the manager of a school, The master who takes the lowest form teaches badly, and the children learn nothing;' he would perhaps say, 'Very likely; but if I paid a much higher salary, and got a better man, they would learn but little.' The only thing the school-manager thinks of is, How much do the little boys learn of what is taught in the higher forms? How their faculties are being developed, or whether they have any faculties except for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and for getting grammarrules, &c., by heart, he is not so 'unpractical' as to enquire. Pestalozzi, it has been said, invented nothing new. Most assuredly he did not invent the principle that education is a developing of the faculties rather than an imparting of knowledge. But he did much to bring this truth to bear on early education, and to make it not only received but acted on. Much has been written about the amount of originality which may be allowed to Pestalozzi, but the question is, after all, of no great importance. We must, at least, concede to him the merit which he himself claims, of having lighted upon truths little noticed before, and principles which, though almost generally 6 185 acknowledged, were seldom carried out in practice.** As Sydney Smith said of Hamilton, 'his must be the credit of the man who is so deeply impressed with the importance of what he thinks he has discovered that he will take no denial, but, at the risk of fame and fortune, pushes through all opposition, and is determined the discovery shall not perish, at least for want of a fair trial.' But Pestalozzi is distinguished from other educators not more by what he did, than by what he endeavoured to do; in other words, his differentia is rather his aim than his method. 6 If we seek for the root of Pestalozzi's system, we shall find it, I think, in that which was the motive power of Pestalozzi's career, the enthusiasm of humanity.' Consumed with grief for the degradation of the Swiss peasantry, he never lost faith in their true dignity as men, and in the possibility of raising them to a condition worthy of it. He cast about for the best means of thus raising them, and decided that it could be effected, not by any improvement in their outward circumstances, but by an education which should make them what their Creator intended them to be, and should give them the use and the consciousness of all their inborn faculties. From my youth up,' he says, 'I felt what a high and indispensable human duty it is to labour for the poor and miserable; ... that he may attain to a consciousness of his own dignity through his feeling of the universal powers and endowments which he possesses awakened within him; that he may not only learn to * Letters on Early Education, vi. p. 23. gabble over by rote the religious maxim that "man is created in the image of God, and is bound to live and die as a child of God," but may himself experience its truth by virtue of the Divine power within him, so that he may be raised, not only above the ploughing oxen, but also above the man in purple and silk who lives unworthily of his high destiny.'* Again he says (and I quote at length on the point, as it is indeed the key to Pestalozzianism), 'Why have I insisted so strongly on attention to early physical and intellectual education? Because I consider these as merely leading to a higher aim, to qualify the human being for the free and full use of all the faculties implanted by the Creator, and to direct all these faculties towards the perfection of the whole being of man, that he may be enabled to act in his peculiar station as an instrument of that All-wise and Almighty Power that has called him into life.'t Believing in this high aim of education, Pestalozzi required a proper early training for all alike. 'Every human being,' said he, has a claim to a judicious development of his faculties by those to whom the care of his infancy is confided.'‡ Pestalozzi therefore most earnestly addressed himself to mothers, to convince them of the power placed in their hands, and to teach them how to use it. The mother is qualified, and qualified by * Quoted in Barnard, p. 13. Letters on Early Education, xxxii. p. 160. ‡ Ibid. xxxii. p. 163. For the very striking passage which follows, see Note on p. 198 infra. |