Part 37

§ 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 in the University of Bacon and Newton. The Public School Commission of 1862 found that the curriculum was just as it had been settled at the Renascence. But if the walls of these educational Jerichos were still standing this was not from any remissness on the part of “the children of light” in shouting and blowing with the trumpet. They raised the war-cry “Not words, but things!” and the cry has been continued by a succession of eminent men against the schools of the 17th and 18th centuries and has at length begun to tell on the schools of the 19th. Perhaps the change demanded is best shown in the words of John Dury about 1649: “The true end of all human learning is to supply in ourselves and others the defects which proceed from our ignorance of the nature and use of the creatures and the disorderliness of our natural faculties in using them and reflecting upon them.” So the Innovators required teachers to devote themselves to natural science and to the science of the human mind.

§ 12. The first Innovators, like the people of the fifteen hundreds, thought mainly of the acquisition of knowledge, only the knowledge was to be not of the classics but of the material world. In this they seem inferior to Montaigne who had given the first place to virtue and judgment.

§ 13. But towards the middle of the sixteen hundreds a very eminent Innovator took a comprehensive view of education, and reduced instruction to its proper place, that is, he treated it as a part of education merely. This man, Comenius, was at once a philosopher, a philanthropist, and a schoolmaster; and in his writings we find the first attempt at a science of education. The outline of his science is as follows:—

“We live a threefold life—a vegetative, an animal, and an intellectual or spiritual. Of these, the first is perfect in the womb, the last in heaven. He is happy who comes with healthy body into the world, much more he who goes with healthy spirit out of it. According to the heavenly idea a man should—1st, Know all things; 2nd, He should be master of things and of himself; 3rd, He should refer everything to God. So that within us Nature has implanted the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of piety. To bring these seeds to maturity is the object of education. All men require education, and God has made children unfit for other employment that they may have time to learn.”

Here we have quite a new theory of the educator’s task. He is to bring to maturity the seeds of learning, virtue, and piety, which are already sown by Nature in his pupils. This is quite different from the pouring-in theory, and seems to anticipate the notion of Froebel, that the educator should be called not _teacher_ but _gardener_. But Comenius evidently made too much of knowledge. Had he lived two centuries later he would have seen the area of possible knowledge extending to infinity in all directions, and he would no longer have made it his ideal that “man should know all things.”

§ 14. The next great thinker about education—I mean Locke—seems to me chiefly important from his having taken up the principles of Montaigne and treated the giving of knowledge as of very small importance. Montaigne, as we have seen, was the first to bring out clearly that education was much more than instruction, as the whole was greater than its part, and that instruction was of far less importance than some other parts of education. And this lies at the root of Locke’s theory also. The great function of the educator, according to him, is not to _teach_, but to _dispose_ the pupil to virtue first, industry next, and then knowledge; but he thinks where the first two have been properly cared for knowledge will come of itself. The following are Locke’s own words:—“The great work of a governor is to fashion the carriage and to form the mind, to settle in his pupil good habits and the principles of virtue and wisdom, to give him little by little a view of mankind and work him into a love and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy; and in the prosecution of it to give him vigour, activity, and industry. The studies which he sets him upon are but, as it were, the exercise of his faculties and employment of his time; to keep him from sauntering and idleness; to teach him application and accustom him to take pains, and to give him some little taste of what his own industry must perfect.”[211] So we see that Locke agrees with Comenius in his enlarged view of the educator’s task, and that he thought much less than Comenius of the importance of the knowledge to be given.

§ 15. We already see a gradual escape from the “idols” of the Renascence. Locke, instead of accepting the learned ideal, declares that learning is the last and least thing to be thought of. He cares little about the ordinary literary instruction given to children, though he thinks they must be taught something and does not know what to put in its place. He provides for the education of those who are to remain ignorant of Greek, but only when they are “gentlemen.” In this respect the van is led by Comenius, who thought of education for _all_, boys and girls, rich and poor, alike. Comenius also gave the first hint of the true nature of our task—to bring to perfection the seeds implanted by Nature. He also cared for the little ones whom the schoolmaster had despised. Locke does not escape from a certain intellectual disdain of “my young masters,” as he calls them; but in one respect he advanced as far as the best thinkers among his successors have advanced. Knowledge, he says, must come by the action of the learner’s own mind. The true teacher is within.

§ 16. We now come to the least practical and at the same time the most influential of all the writers on education—I mean Rousseau. He, like Rabelais, Montaigne, and Locke, was (to use Matthew Arnold’s expression) a “child of the idea.” He attacked scholastic use and wont not in the name of expedience, but in the name of reason; and such an attack—so eloquent, so vehement, so uncompromising—had never been made before.

Still there remained even in theory, and far more in practice, effects produced by the false ideal of the Renascence. This ideal Rousseau entirely rejected. He proposed making a clean sweep and returning to what he called the state of Nature.

§ 17. Rousseau was by no means the first of the Reformers who advocated a return to Nature. There has been a constant conviction in men’s minds from the time of the Stoics onwards that most of the evils which afflict humanity have come from our not following “Nature.” The cry of “Everything according to Nature” was soon raised by educationists. Ratke announced it as one of his principles. Comenius would base all action on the analogy of Nature. Indeed, there has hardly ever been a system of education which did not lay claim to be the “natural” system. And by “natural” has been always understood something different from what is usual. What is the notion that produces this antithesis?

§ 18. When we come to trace back things to their cause we are wont to attribute them to God, to Nature, or to Man. According to the general belief, God works in and through Nature, and therefore the tendency of things apart from human agency must be to good. This faith which underlies all our thoughts and modes of speech, has been beautifully expressed by Wordsworth—

“A gracious spirit o’er this earth presides, And in the heart of man; invisibly It comes to works of unreproved delight And tendency benign; directing those Who care not, know not, think not, what they do.”

_Prelude_, v, _ad f._

But if the tendency of things is to good, why should the usual be in such strong contrast with “the natural”? Here again we may turn to Wordsworth. After pointing to the harmony of the visible world, and declaring his faith that “every flower enjoys the air it breathes,” he goes on—

“If this belief from heaven be sent, If this be Nature’s holy plan, Have I not reason to lament, What Man has made of Man?”

This passage might be taken as the motto of Rousseauism. According to that philosophy man is the great disturber and perverter of the natural order. Other animals simply follow nature, but man has no instinct, and is thus left to find his own way. What is the consequence? A very different authority from Rousseau, the poet Cowper, tells us in language which Rousseau might have adopted—

“Reasoning at every step he treads, Man yet mistakes his way: While meaner things whom instinct leads, Are seldom known to stray.”

Man has to investigate the sequences of Nature, and to arrange them for himself. In this way he brings about a great number of foreseen results, but in doing this he also brings about perhaps even a greater number of unforeseen results; and alas! it turns out that many, if not most, of these unforeseen results are the reverse of beneficial.

§ 19. Another thing is observable. Other animals are guided by instinct; we, for the most part, are guided by tradition. Man, it has been said, is the only animal that capitalises his discoveries. If we capitalised nothing but our discoveries, this accumulation would be an immense advantage to us; but we capitalise also our conjectures, our ideals, our habits, and unhappily, in many cases, our blunders.[212] So a great deal of action which is purely mischievous in its effects, comes not from our own mistakes, but from those of our ancestors. The consequence is, that what with our own mistakes and the mistakes we inherit, we sometimes go far indeed out of the course which “Nature” has prescribed for us.

§ 20. The generation which found a mouthpiece in Rousseau had become firmly convinced, not indeed of its own stupidity, but of the stupidity of all its predecessors; and the vast patrimony bequeathed to it seemed nothing but lumber or worse. So Rousseau found an eager and enthusiastic audience when he proposed a return to Nature, in other words, to give up all existing customs, and for the most part to do nothing and “give Nature a chance.” His boy of twelve years old was to have been taught _nothing_. Up to that age the great art of education, says Rousseau, is to do everything by doing nothing. The first part of education should be purely negative.

§ 21. Rousseau then was the first who escaped completely from the notion of the Renascence, that man was mainly a _learning_ and _remembering_ animal. But if he is not this, what is he? We must ascertain, said Rousseau, not _a priori_, but by observation. We need a new art, the art of observing children.

§ 22. Now at length there was hope for the Science of Education. This science must be based on a study of the subject on whom we have to act. According to Locke there is such variation not only in the circumstances, but also in the personal peculiarities of individuals, that general laws either do not exist or can never be ascertained. But this variation is no less observable in the human body, and the art of the physician has to conform itself to a science which is still very far from perfect. The physician, however, does not despair. He carefully avails himself of such science as we now have, and he makes a study of the human body in order to increase that science. When a few more generations have passed away, the medical profession will very likely smile at mistakes made by the old Victorian doctors. But, meantime, we profit by the science of medicine in its present state, and we find that this science has considerably increased the average duration of human life. We therefore require every practitioner to have made a scientific study of his calling, and to have had a training in both the theory and practice of it. The science of education cannot be said to have done much for us at present, but it will do more in the future, and might do more now if no one were allowed to teach before he or she had been trained in the best theory and practice we have. Since the appearance of the Emile the best educators have studied the subject on whom they had to act, and they have been learning more and more of the laws or sequences which affect the human mind and the human body. The marvellous strides of science in every other department encourages us to hope that it will make great advances in the field of education where it is still so greatly needed. Perhaps the day may come when a Pestalozzi may be considered even by his contemporaries on an equality with a Napoleon, and the human race may be willing to give to the art of instruction the same amount of time, money, thought, and energy, which in our day have been devoted with such tremendous success to the art of destruction. It is already dawning on the general consciousness that in education as in physical science “we conquer Nature by obeying her,” and we are learning more and more how to obey her.

§ 23. Rousseau’s great work was first, to expose the absurdities of the school-room, and second, to set the educator on studying the laws of nature in the human mind and body. He also drew attention to the child’s restless activity. He would also (like Locke before him), make the young learner his own teacher.

§ 24. There is another way in which the appearance of the Emile was, as the Germans say, “epoch-making.” From the time of the earliest Innovators, we have seen that “Things not Words,” had been the war-cry of a strong party of Reformers. But _things_ had been considered merely as a superior means of instruction. Rousseau first pointed out the intimate relation that exists between children and the material world around them. Children had till then been thought of only as immature and inferior men. Since his day an English poet has taught us that in some ways the man is far inferior to the child, “the things which we have seen we now can see no more,” and that

“nothing can bring back the hour “Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower.”

Rousseau had not Wordsworth’s gifts, but he, too, observed that childhood is the age of strong impressions from without and that its material surroundings affect it much more acutely than they will in after life. Which of us knows as much about our own house and furniture as our children know? Still more remarkable is the sympathy children have with animals. If a cat comes into a room where there are grown people and also a child, which sees the cat first? which observes it most accurately? Now, this intimate relation of the child with its surroundings plays a most important part in its education. The educator may, if so minded, ignore this altogether, and stick to grammar, dates, and county towns, but if he does so the child’s real education will not be much affected by him. Rousseau saw this clearly, and wished to use “things” not for instruction but for education. Their special function was to train the senses.

§ 25. Perhaps it is not too much to say of Rousseau that he was the first who gave up thinking of the child as a being whose chief faculty was the faculty of remembering, and thought of him rather as a being who feels and reflects, acts and invents.

§ 26. But if the thought may be traced back to Rousseau, it was, as left by him, quite crude or rather embryonic. Since his time this conception of the young has been taken up and moulded into a fair commencement of a science of education. This commencement is now occupying the attention of thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, and much may be expected from it even in the immediate future. For the science so far as it exists we are indebted mainly to the two Reformers with whom I will conclude—Pestalozzi and Froebel.

§ 27. Pestalozzi, like Comenius more than 100 years before him, conceived of education for all. “Every human being,” said he, “has a claim to a judicious development of his faculties.” Every child must go to school.

But the word _school_ includes a great variety of institutions. The object these have in view differs immensely. With us the main object in some schools seems to be to prepare boys to compete at an early age for entrance scholarships awarded to the greatest proficients in Latin and Greek. In other schools the object is to turn the children out “good scholars” in another sense; that is, the school is held to be successful when the boys and girls acquire skill in the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and can remember a number of facts—facts of history, of geography, and even of natural science. So the common notion is that what is wanted in the way of education depends entirely on the child’s social position. There still linger among us notions derived from the literary men of the Renascence. We still measure all children by their literary and mnemonic attainments. We still consider knowledge of Latin and Greek the highest kind of knowledge. Children are sent to school that they may not be ignorant.[213] Pestalozzi, who had studied Rousseau, entirely denied all this. He required that the school-coach should be turned and started in a new direction. The main object of the school was not to teach, but to develop, not to _put in_ but to _draw out_.

§ 28. The study of nature shows us that every animal comes into the world with certain faculties or capabilities. There are a set of circumstances which will develop these capabilities and make the most of them. There are other circumstances which would impede this development, decrease it, or even prevent it altogether. All other animals have this development secured for them by their ordinary environment: but Man, with far higher capacities, and with immeasurably greater faculties both for good and evil, is left far more to his own resources than the other animals. Placed in an almost endless variety of circumstances we have to ascertain how the development of our offspring may best be brought about. We have to consider what are the inborn faculties of our children, and also what aids and what hinders their development. When we have arrived at this knowledge we must educate them by placing them in the best circumstances in our power, and then superintending, judiciously and lovingly, the development of their faculties and of their higher nature.

§ 29. There is, said Pestalozzi, only one way in which faculty can be developed, and that is by exercise; so his system sought to encourage the activities of children, and in this respect he was surpassed, as we shall see, by Froebel. “Dead” knowledge, as it has been called—the knowledge commonly acquired for examinations, our school-knowledge, in fact—was despised by Pestalozzi as it had been by Locke and Rousseau before him. In its place he would put knowledge acquired by “intuition,” by the spring of the learner’s own intelligence.

§ 30. The conception of every child as an organism and of education as the process by which the development of that organism is promoted is found first in Pestalozzi, but it was more consistently thought out by Froebel. There is, said Froebel, a divine idea for every human being, for we are all God’s offspring. The object of the education of a human being is to further the development of his divine idea. This development is attainable only through action; for the development of every organism depends on its self-activity. Self-activity then, activity “with a will,” is the main thing to be cared for in education. The educator has to direct the children’s activity in such a way that it may satisfy their instincts, especially the formative and creative instincts. The child from his earliest years is to be treated as a _doer_ and even a _creator_.

§ 31. Now, at last, we have arrived at the complete antithesis between the old education and the New. The old education had one object, and that was learning. Man was a being who learnt and remembered. Education was a process by which he _learnt_, at first the languages and literatures of Rome and Greece only; but as time went on the curriculum was greatly extended. The New Education treats the human being not so much a learner as a doer and creator. The educator no longer fixes his eyes on the object—the knowledge, but on the subject—the being to be educated. The success of the education is not determined by what the educated _know_, but by what they _do_ and what they _are_. They are well educated when they love what is good, and have had all their faculties of mind and body properly developed to do it.

§ 32. The New Education then is “passive, following,” and must be based on the study of human nature. When we have ascertained what are the faculties to be developed we must consider further how to foster the self-activity that will develop them.

§ 33. We have travelled far from Dr. Johnson, who asserted that education was as well known as it ever could be. Some of us are more inclined to assert that in his day education was not invented. On the other hand, there are those who belittle the New Education and endeavour to show that in it there is nothing new at all. As it seems to me a revolution of the most salutary kind was made by the thinkers who proposed basing education on a study of the subject to be educated, and, more than this, making the process a “following” process with the object of drawing out self-activity.

§ 34. This change of object must in the end be fruitful in changes of every kind. But as yet we are only groping our way; and, if I may give a caution which, in this country at least, is quite superfluous, we should be cautious, and till we see our way clearly we should try no great experiment that would destroy our connexion with the past. Most of our predecessors thought only of knowledge. By a reaction some of our New Educationists seem to despise knowledge. But knowledge is necessary, and without some knowledge development would be impossible. We probably cannot do too much to assist development and encourage “intuition,” but there is, perhaps, some danger of our losing sight of truths which schoolroom experience would bring home to us. Even the clearest “concepts” get hazy again and totally unfit for use, unless they are permanently fixed in the mind by repetition, which to be effective must to some extent take the form of _drill_. The practical man, even the crammer, has here mastered a truth of the teaching art which the educationist is prone to overlook. And there are, no doubt, other things which the practical man can teach. But the great thinkers would raise us to a higher standing-point from which we may see much that will make the right road clearer to us, and lead us to press forward in it with good heart and hope.

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES

[1] When the greater part of this volume was already written, Mr. Parker published his sketch of the history of Classical Education (_Essays on a Liberal Education_, edited by Farrar). He seems to me to have been very successful in bringing out the most important features of his subject, but his essay necessarily shows marks of over-compression. Two volumes have also lately appeared on _Christian Schools and Scholars_ (Longmans, 1867). Here we have a good deal of information which we want, and also, it seems to me, a good deal which we do not want. The work characteristically opens with a 10th century description of the personal appearance of St. Mark when he landed at Alexandria. The author treats only of the times which preceded the Council of Trent. A very interesting account of early English education has been given by Mr. Furnivall, in the 2nd and 3rd numbers of the _Quarterly Journal of Education_ (1867). [I did not then know of Dr. Barnard’s works.]

[2] This article is omitted in the last edition.

[3] The rest of this chapter was published in the September, 1880 number of _Education_. Boston, U.S.A.