$ 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 no terminus ad quem. a number of boys are got together, and the question arises, not simply how to teach, but what to 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 masters[471] have 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 with facts—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 the propria qu? 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 is[472] ignorant, 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 work hard, 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 as[473] prisoners 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]
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§ 3. observe, that although i would have boys take pleasure in their work, i regard the pleasure as a means, 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 mind is benefited 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. supra p. 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 study interesting 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 to[475] interest 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 no[476] notion 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 first bürger-schule of leipzig. in saxony the schooling which the state demands for each child, begins at six years[477] old, 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 the a (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, both[478] by 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’s p?dagogik, p. 360; also die normalw?rtermethode, 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 to do as 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 have learnt 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. by[479] frequently 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 from things which 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 (see grubé’s method by l. seeley, new york, kellogg, and f. l. soldan’s grubé’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 should[480] be 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, and[481] the 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’s brevia (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.” perhaps[482] it 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, not the 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 his talks on teaching the 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’s arithmetic[483] for 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 master viva 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. anyone[484] who 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 ?sop’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 as[485] well 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 them learn by heart the table of contents. the children do not find 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 to systematise knowledge, 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]
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§ 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.[487] 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 the story of 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 having[488] been 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 might[489] soon 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 different[490] parts 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 common[491] objects, 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 would not have 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.
