Part 35

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 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 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 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 _vivâ 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 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 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 as 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]

§ 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 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 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 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 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 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.

XXI.

THE SCHOOLMASTER’S MORAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE.

§ 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 boys _learn_, 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 his _arbitrium_, 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 the _open_ party 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.” The _reserved_, 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]