Essays on Educational Reformers

But if I see weaknesses in the foregoing book, why do I not make it better? Just for two reasons: to improve the book I should have to spend more time on it and more money. The...

Of course, if it is not possible to get children to take interest in anything they could be taught in school, there is an end of the matter. But no one really goes as far as thi...

We see from this how the Renascence ideal had the extraordinary effect of banishing literature from the school-room. Literature has indeed not ceased to influence the young; it...

§ 4. I am, therefore, though with some limitation, in favour of the _open_ school. I am well aware, however, what an immense demand this system makes on the master who desires t...

§ 16. “We are born weak, we have need of strength; we are born destitute of everything, we have need of assistance; we are born stupid, we have need of understanding. All that w...

§ 13. To Pestalozzi there seemed one answer and one only. This was _by education_. To many people in the present day it might seem that “education,” when quite successful, would...

1. We learn some facts by “intuition,” _i.e._, by direct experience. It may be as well to make the number of them as large as possible. No doubt there are no facts which are _kn...

§ 11. Till the present century this revolution did not extend to our schools and universities. It is only within the last fifty years that natural science has been studied even...

§ 18. I. Mr. Browning attributes to Rabelais, Montaigne, and Locke the desire to bring up a well-developed man rather than a good scholar. But Rabelais certainly craved for the...

§ 9. Rarely indeed have those who either theoretically or practically have made a study of education ever acquired sufficient literary skill to catch the ear of the public or (w...

§ 30. Their popularity was due, moreover, to the means employed, as well as to the result attained. The Jesuit teachers were to _lead_, not drive their pupils, to make their lea...

§ 40. The world might be pardoned for neglecting an _Inquiry_ which even a biographer finds “prolix and obscure.” But why could it see nothing in another book which Pestalozzi p...

[166] _First_ look to himself, but there may be other causes of failure as well. The great thing is never to put up contentedly, or even discontentedly, with failure. In teachin...

[139] All this is very crude, and so is the artifice by which Julie in the _Nouvelle Héloïse_ entraps her son into learning to read. No doubt Rousseau is right when he says that...

“I have just come from a visit with my father to the Philanthropinum, where I saw Herr Basedow, Herr Wolke, Herr Simon, Herr Schweighäuser, and the little Philanthropinists. I a...

§ 38. Milton was then a reformer “for his own hand;” and notwithstanding his moral and intellectual elevation and his superb power of rhetoric, he seems to me a less useful writ...

§ 10. In the Second Book of the _Scholemaster_, Ascham discusses the various branches of the study then common, viz.: 1. Translatio linguarum; 2. Paraphrasis; 3. Metaphrasis; 4....

§ 48. On this subject Comenius may speak for himself: “The ground of this business is, that sensual objects [we now say _sensible_: why not _sensuous_?] be rightly presented to...

[187] “The brewer,” as Mr. Spencer himself tells us, “if his business is very extensive, finds it pay to keep a chemist on the premises”—pay a good deal better, I suspect, than...

The Port-Royalists seem to me in some respects far behind Comenius, but they were right in rejecting him as a methodiser in language-learning. Lancelot in the preface to his “Ga...

The quantity and the diffuseness of the writings of Comenius are truly bewildering. In these days eminent men, Carlyle, _e.g._, sometimes find it difficult to get into print; bu...

It is our hearts and affections that lead us right or wrong far more than our intellects. In advocating the training of the minds of the people, Lord Derby once remarked that as...

§ 64. Of the state of things in the early days of the Institute we have a very lively account written for his own children by Professor Vuillemin, who entered it in 1805 as a ch...

§ 2. John Amos Komensky or Comenius, the son of a miller, who belonged to the Moravian Brethren, was born, at the Moravian village of Niwnic, in 1592. Of his early life we know...

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 c...

“Months passed before I had the satisfaction of having my hand grasped by a single grateful parent. But the children were won over much sooner. They even wept sometimes when the...

§30. From this we see that the training was literary. But in the study of form the Port-Royalists did not neglect the inward for the outward. Their great work, which still stand...

§ 1. Since the Revival of Learning, no body of men has played so prominent a part in education as the Jesuits. With characteristic sagacity and energy they soon seized on educat...

§ 1. The learned ideal established by the Renascence was accepted by Rabelais, though he made some suggestions about _Realien_[39] that seem to us much in advance of it. When he...

§ 4. When I speak of the discovery of the ancient literatures as rivalling that of America, this use of the word “discovery” may be disputed. It may be urged that though the Gre...

[75] Here Comenius seems to be thinking of the intercourse of children when no older companion is present; Froebel made more of the very different intercourse when their thought...

“Do I advise you then to be on the defensive throughout the whole year and like a stranger among your pupils? No! a thousand times, No! It is just to make their relations with y...

The International Education Series was projected for the purpose of bringing together in orderly arrangement the best writings, new and old, upon educational subjects, and prese...

§ 112. What about the education of the other “nation,” a nation of which the verb “to rule” has for many centuries been used in the passive voice, but can be used in that voice...

§ 20. Comenius has left voluminous Latin writings. Professor Laurie gives us the titles of the books connected with education, and they are in number forty-two: so there must be...

§ 7. At the peace of Fontainebleau (signed in May, 1814) Froebel returned to Berlin, and became curator of the Museum of Mineralogy under Professor Weiss. In accepting this appo...

1. They proceed from the concrete to the abstract, giving some knowledge of the thing itself before the rules which refer to it. 2. They employ the student in analysing matter p...

“In natural history they were very quick in corroborating what I taught them by their own personal observations on plants and animals. I am quite sure that, by continuing in thi...

§ 22. Many thinkers before Froebel had seen the transcendent importance of action; but Froebel not only based everything upon it, but he based it upon God. “God creates and work...

[5] I see Carlyle has used a similar metaphor in the same connexion: “Consider the old schoolmen and their pilgrimage towards Truth! the faithfullest endeavour, incessant unwear...

But he has met with less approbation than neglect. His “axiomatic truths” that I quoted in the old appendix were abused without mercy by a critic of those days who accused me of...

Past a doubt the besetting weakness of teachers is “telling.” They can hardly resist the tendency to be didactic. They have the knowledge which they desire to find in their pupi...

§ 14. But, if adopting Mr. Spencer’s own measure, we estimate the value of knowledge by its influence on action, we shall probably rank “accomplishments” much higher than they h...

A great variety of written exercises is soon joined with the learning by heart. Pieces must be written from memory, and the spelling, pointing, &c., corrected by the pupil himse...

=Professional Knowledge.=—A. What a pity it is that in English we have no name for _Kernsprüche_! When an important truth has been aptly expressed, the very expression may be an...

C. A. Schmid’s _Encyclopädie des Erziehungs-und-Unterrichtswesens_ is a vast mine of information on everything connected with education. The work is still in progress. The part...

§ 1. The history of education, much as it has been hitherto neglected, especially in England, must have a great future before it. If we ignore the Past we cannot understand the...