Part 8

§ 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 quotes the saying “Magis magnos clericos non sunt magis magnos sapientes” (“the greatest clerks are not the greatest sages”), this singular piece of Latinity is appropriately put into the mouth of a monk, who represents everything the Renascence scholars despised. In Montaigne we strike into a new vein of thought, and we find that what the monk alleges in defence of his ignorance the cultured gentleman adopts as the expression of an important truth.

§ 2. We ordinary people see truths indeed, but we see them indistinctly, and are not completely guided by them. It is reserved for men of genius to see truths, some truths that is, often a very few, with intense clearness. Some of these men have no great talent for speech or writing, and they try to express the truths they see, not so much by books as by action. Such men in education were Comenius, Pestalozzi, and Froebel. But sometimes the man of genius has a great power over language, and then he finds for the truths he has seen, fitting expression, which becomes almost as lasting as the truths themselves. Such men were Montaigne and Rousseau. If the historian of education is asked “What did Montaigne do?” he will answer “Nothing.” “What did Froebel say?” “He said a great deal, but very few people can read him and still fewer understand him.” Both, however, are and must remain forces in education. Montaigne has given to some truths imperishable form in his _Essays_, and Froebel’s ideas come home to all the world in the Kindergarten.

§ 3. The ideal set up by the Renascence attached the highest importance to learning. Montaigne maintained that the resulting training _even at its best_ was not suited to a gentleman or man of action. Virtue, wisdom, and intellectual activity should be thought of before learning. Education should be first and foremost the development and exercise of faculties. And even if the acquirement of knowledge is thought of, Montaigne maintains that the pedants do not understand the first conditions of knowledge and give a semblance not the true thing.—“_Il ne faut pas attacher le savoir à l’âme, il faut l’incorporer._—Knowledge cannot be fastened on to the mind; it must become part and parcel of the mind itself.”[40]

Here then we have two separate counts against the Renascence education:

1st.—Knowledge is not the main thing.

2nd.—True knowledge is something very different from knowing by heart.

§ 4. It is a pity Montaigne’s utterances about education are to be found in English only in the complete translation of his essays. Seeing that a good many millions of people read English, and are most of them concerned in education, one may hope that some day the sayings of the shrewd old Frenchman may be offered them in a convenient form.

§ 5. Here are some of them: “The evil comes of the foolish way in which our [instructors] set to work; and on the plan on which we are taught no wonder if neither scholars nor masters become more able, whatever they may do in becoming more learned. In truth the trouble and expense of our fathers are directed only to furnish our heads with knowledge: not a word of judgment or virtue. Cry out to our people about a passer-by, ‘There’s a learned man!’ and about another ‘There’s a good man!’ they will be all agog after the learned man, and will not look at the good man. One might fairly raise a third cry: ‘There’s a set of numskulls!’ We are ready enough to ask ‘Does he know Greek or know Latin? Does he write verse or write prose?’ But whether he has become wiser or better should be the first question, and that is always the last. We ought to find out, not who knows _most_ but who knows _best_.” (I, chap. 24, _Du Pédantisme_, page or two beyond _Odi homines_.)

§ 6. The true educators, according to Montaigne, were the Spartans, who despised literature, and cared only for character and action. At Athens they thought about words, at Sparta about things. At Athens boys learnt to speak well, at Sparta to do well: at Athens to escape from sophistical arguments, and to face all attempts to deceive them; at Sparta to escape from the allurements of pleasure, and to face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, even death itself. In the one system there was constant exercise of the tongue, in the other of the soul. “So it is not strange that when Antipater demanded of the Spartans fifty children as hostages they replied they would sooner give twice as many grown men, such store did they set by their country’s training.” (_Du Pédantisme_, ad f.)

§ 7. It is odd to find a man of the fifteen hundreds who quotes from the old authors at every turn, and yet maintains that “we lean so much on the arm of other people that we lose our own strength.” The thing a boy should learn is not what the old authors say, but “what he himself ought to do when he becomes a man.” Wisdom, not knowledge! “We may become learned from the learning of others; wise we can never be except by our own wisdom.” (Bk. j, chap. 24).

§ 8. So entirely was Montaigne detached from the thought of the Renascence that he scoffs at his own learning, and declares that true learning has for its subject, not the past or the future, but the present. “We are truly learned from knowing the present, not from knowing the past any more than the future.” And yet “we toil only to stuff the memory and leave the conscience and the understanding void. And like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain bring it home in their beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young, so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there out of several authors, and hold it at their tongue’s end, only to spit it out and distribute it amongst their pupils.” (_Du Pédantisme._) “We are all richer than we think, but they drill us in borrowing and begging, and lead us to make more use of other people’s goods than of our own.”[41] (Bk. iij, chap. 12, _De la Physionomie_, beg. of 3rd paragraph).

§ 9. So far Montaigne. What do we schoolmasters say to all this? If we would be quite candid I think we must allow that, after reading Montaigne’s essay, we put it down with the conviction that in the main he was right, and that he had proved the error and absurdity of a vast deal that goes on in the schoolroom. But from this first view we have had on reflection to make several drawbacks.

§ 10. Montaigne, like Locke and Rousseau, who followed in his steps, arranges for every boy to have a tutor entirely devoted to him. We may question whether this method of bringing up children is desirable, and we may assert, without question, that in most cases it is impossible. It seems ordained that at every stage of life we should require the companionship of those of our own age. If we take two beings as little alike as a man and a child and force them to be each other’s companions, so great is the difference in their thoughts and interests that they will fall into inevitable boredom and restraint. So we see that this plan, even in the few cases in which it would be possible, would not be desirable; and for the great majority of boys it would be out of the question. We must then arrange for the young to be taught, not as individuals, but in classes, and this greatly changes the conditions of the problem. One of the first conditions is this, that we have to employ each class regularly and uniformly for some hours every day. Schoolmasters know what their non-scholastic mentors forget: we can make a class learn, but, broadly speaking, we cannot make a class think, still less can we make it judge. As a great deal of occupation has to be provided, we are therefore forced to make our pupils learn. Whatever may be the value of the learning in itself it is absolutely necessary _as employment_.

§ 11. No doubt it will make a vast difference whether we consider the learning mainly as employment, as a means of taking up time and preventing “sauntering,” as Locke boldly calls it, or whether we are chiefly anxious to secure some special results. The knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages and the Latin and Greek authors was a result so highly prized by the Renascence scholars that they insisted on a prodigious quantity of learning, not as employment, but simply as the means of acquiring this knowledge. As the knowledge got to be less esteemed the pressure was by degrees relaxed. In our public schools fifty or sixty years ago the learning was to some extent retained as employment, but there certainly was no pressure, and the majority of the boys never learnt the ancient languages. So the masters of that time had given up the Renascence enthusiasm for the classics, and on the negative side of his teaching had come to an agreement with Montaigne. Any one inclined to sarcasm might say that on the positive side they were still totally opposed to him, for _he_ thought virtue and judgment were the main things to be cared for, and _they_ did not care for these things at all. But this is not a fair statement. The one thing gained, or supposed to be gained, in the public schools was the art of living, and this art, though it does not demand heroic virtue, requires at least prudence and self-control. Montaigne’s system was a revolt against the _bookishness_ of the Renascence. “In our studies,” says he, “whatever presents itself before us is book enough; a roguish trick of a page, a blunder of a servant, a jest at table, are so many new subjects.” So the education _out of school_ was in his eyes of more value than the education in school. And this was acknowledged also in our public schools: “It is not the Latin and Greek they learn or don’t learn that we consider so important,” the masters used to say, “but it is the tone of the school and the discipline of the games.” But of late years this virtual agreement with Montaigne has been broken up. School work is no longer mere employment, but it is done under pressure, and with penalties if the tale of brick turned out does not pass the inspector.

§ 12. What has produced this great change? It is due mainly to two causes:

1. The pressure put on the young to attain classical knowledge was relaxed when it was thought that they could get through life very well without this knowledge. But in these days new knowledge has awakened a new enthusiasm. The knowledge of science promises such great advantages that the latest reformers, headed by Mr. Herbert Spencer, seem to make the well-being of the grown person depend mainly on the amount of scientific knowledge he stored up in his youth. This is the first cause of educational pressure.

§ 13. 2. The second and more urgent cause is the rapid development of our system of examinations. Everybody’s educational status is now settled by the examiner, a potentate whose influence has brought back in a very malignant form all the evils of which Montaigne complains. Do what we will, the faculty chiefly exercised in preparing for ordinary examinations is the “carrying memory.” So the acquisition of knowledge—mere memory or examination knowledge—has again come to be regarded as the one thing needful in education, and there is great danger of everything else being neglected for it. Of the fourfold results of education—virtue, wisdom, good manners, learning—the last alone can be fairly tested in examinations; and as the schoolmaster’s very bread depends nowadays first on his getting through examinations himself and then on getting his pupils through, he would be more than human, if with Locke he thought of learning “last and least.” A great change has come over our public schools. The amount of work required from the boys is far greater than it used to be and masters again measure their success by the amount of knowledge the average boy takes away with him. It seems to me high time that another Montaigne arose to protest that a man’s intellectual life does not consist in the number of things he remembers, and that his true life is not his intellectual life only, but embraces his power of will and action and his love of what is noble and right. “Wisdom cried of old, I am the mother of fair Love and Fear and Knowledge and holy Hope” (_Ecclesiasticus_). In these days of science and examinations does there not seem some danger lest knowledge should prove the sole survivor? May not Knowledge, like another Cain, raise its hand against its brethren “fair Love and Fear and holy Hope?” This is perhaps the great danger of our time, a danger especially felt in education. Every school parades its scholarships at the public schools or at the universities, or its passes in the Oxford and Cambridge Locals, or its percentage at the last Inspection, and asks to be judged by these. And yet these are not the one thing or indeed the chief thing needful: and it will be the ruin of true education if, as Mark Pattison said, the master’s attention is concentrated on the least important part of his duty.[42]

VII.

ASCHAM.

(1515-1568.)

§ 1. Masters and scholars who sigh over what seem to them the intricacies and obscurities of modern grammars may find some consolation in thinking that, after all, matters might have been worse, and that our fate is enviable indeed compared with that of the students of Latin 400 years ago. Did the reader ever open the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander de Villa Dei, which was the grammar in general use from the middle of the thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century? (_v._ Appendix, p. 532). If so, he is aware how great a step towards simplicity was made by our grammatical reformers, Lily, Colet, and Erasmus. Indeed, those whom we now regard as the forgers of our chains were, in their own opinion and that of their contemporaries, the champions of freedom (Appendix, p. 533).

§ 2. I have given elsewhere (Appendix, p. 533) a remarkable passage from Colet, in which he recommends the leaving of rules, and the study of examples in good Latin authors. Wolsey also, in his directions to the masters of Ipswich School (dated 1528), proposes that the boys should be exercised in the eight parts of speech in the first form, and should begin to speak Latin and translate from English into Latin in the second. If the masters think fit, they may also let the pupils read Lily’s _Carmen Monitorium_, or Cato’s _Distichs_. From the third upwards a regular course of classical authors was to be read, and Lily’s rules were to be introduced by degrees. “Although I confess such things are necessary,” writes Wolsey, “yet, as far as possible, we could wish them so appointed as not to occupy the more valuable part of the day.” Only in the sixth form, the highest but two, Lily’s syntax was to be begun. In these schools the boys’ time was wholly taken up with Latin, and the speaking of Latin was enforced even in play hours, so we see that anomalies in the accidence as taught in the _As in præsenti_ were not given till the boys had been some time using the language; and the syntax was kept till they had a good practical knowledge of the usages to which the rules referred.[43]

§ 3. But although there was a great stir in education throughout this century, and several English books were published about it, we come to 1570 before we find anything that has lived till now. We then have Roger Ascham’s _Scholemaster_, a posthumous work brought out by Ascham’s widow, and republished in 1571 and 1589. The book was then lost sight of, but reappeared, with James Upton as editor, in 1711,[44] and has been regarded as an educational classic ever since. Dr. Johnson says “it contains perhaps the best advice that was ever given for the study of languages,” and Professor J. E. B. Mayor, who on this point is a higher authority than Dr. Johnson, declares that “this book sets forth the only sound method of acquiring a dead language.”

§ 4. With all their contempt for theory, English schoolmasters might have been expected to take an interest in one part of the history of education, viz., the history of methods. There is a true saying attributed by Marcel to Talleyrand, “_Les Méthodes sont les maîtres des maîtres_—Method is the master’s master.” The history of education shows us that every subject of instruction has been taught in various ways, and further, that the contest of methods has not uniformly ended in the survival of the fittest. Methods then might often teach the teachers, if the teachers cared to be taught; but till within the last half century or so an unintelligent traditional routine has sufficed for them. There has no doubt been a great change since men now old were at school, but in those days the main strength of the teaching was given to Latin, and the masters knew of no better method of starting boys in this language than making them learn by heart Lily’s, or as it was then called, the Eton Latin Grammar. If reason had had anything to do with teaching, this book would have been demolished by Richard Johnson’s _Grammatical Commentaries_ published in 1706; but worthless as Johnson proved it to be, the Grammar was for another 150 years treated by English schoolmasters as the only introduction to the Latin tongue. The books that have recently been published show a tendency to revert to methods set forth in Elizabeth’s reign in Ascham’s _Scholemaster_ (1570) and William Kempe’s _Education of Children_ (1588), but the innovators have not as a rule been drawn to these methods by historical inquiry.

§ 5. There seem to be only three English writers on education who have caught the ear of other nations, and these are Ascham, Locke, and Herbert Spencer. Of a contemporary we do well to speak with the same reserve as of “present company,” but of the other two we may say that the choice has been somewhat capricious. Locke’s _Thoughts_ perhaps deserves the reputation and influence it has always had, but in it he hardly does himself justice as a philosopher of the mind; and much of the advice which has been considered his exclusively, is to be found in his English predecessors whose very names are unknown except to the educational antiquarian. Ascham wrote a few pages on method which entitle him to mention in an account of methods of language-learning. He also wrote a great many pages about things in general which would have shared the fate of many more valuable but long forgotten books had he not had one peculiarity in which the other writers were wanting, that indescribable something which Matthew Arnold calls “charm.”

§ 6. Ascham has been very fortunate in his editors, Professor Arber and Professor Mayor, and the last editions[45] give everyone an opportunity of reading the _Scholemaster_. I shall therefore speak of nothing but the method.

§ 7. Latin is to be taught as follows:—First, let the child learn the eight parts of speech, and then the right joining together of substantives with adjectives, the noun with the verb, the relative with the antecedent. After the concords are learned, let the master take Sturm’s selection of Cicero’s Epistles, and read them after this manner: “first, let him teach the child, cheerfully and plainly, the cause and matter of the letter; then, let him construe it into English so oft as the child may easily carry away the understanding of it; lastly, parse it over perfectly. This done, then let the child by and by both construe and parse it over again; so that it may appear that the child doubteth in nothing that his master has taught him before. After this, the child must take a paper book, and, sitting in some place where no man shall prompt him, by himself let him translate into English his former lesson. Then showing it to his master, let the master take from him his Latin book, and pausing an hour at the least, then let the child translate his own English into Latin again in another paper book. When the child bringeth it turned into Latin, the master must compare it with Tully’s book, and lay them both together, and where the child doth well, praise him,” where amiss point out why Tully’s use is better. Thus the child will easily acquire a knowledge of grammar, “and also the ground of almost all the rules that are so busily taught by the master, and so hardly learned by the scholar in all common schools.... We do not contemn rules, but we gladly teach rules; and teach them more plainly, sensibly, and orderly, than they be commonly taught in common schools. For when the master shall compare Tully’s book with the scholar’s translation, let the master at the first lead and teach the scholar to join the rules of his grammar book with the examples of his present lesson, until the scholar by himself be able to fetch out of his grammar every rule for every example; and let the grammar book be ever in the scholars hand, and also used by him as a dictionary for every present use. This is a lively and perfect way of teaching of rules; where the common way used in common schools to read the grammar alone by itself is tedious for the master, hard for the scholar, cold and uncomfortable for them both.” And elsewhere Ascham says: “Yea, I do wish that all rules for young scholars were shorter than they be. For, without doubt, _grammatica_ itself is sooner and surer learned by examples of good authors than by the naked rules of grammarians.”

§ 8. “As you perceive your scholar to go better on away, first, with understanding his lesson more quickly, with parsing more readily, with translating more speedily and perfectly than he was wont; after, give him longer lessons to translate, and, withal, begin to teach him, both in nouns and verbs, what is _proprium_ and what is _translatum_, what _synonymum_, what _diversum_, which be _contraria_, and which be most notable _phrases_, in all his lectures, as—

Proprium Rex sepultus est magnifice.

Translatum Cum illo principe, sepulta est et gloria et salus reipublicæ.

Synonyma Ensis, gladius: laudare, prædicare.

Diversa Diligere, amare: calere, exardescere: inimicus, hostis.

Contraria Acerbum et luctuosum bellum, dulcis et læta pax.

Phrases Dare verba, adjicere obedientiam.”

Every lesson is to be thus carefully analysed, and entered under these headings in a third MS. book.

§ 9. Here Ascham leaves his method, and returns to it only at the beginning of Book II. He there supposes the first stage to be finished and “your scholar to have come indeed, first to a ready perfectness in translating, then to a ripe and skilful choice in marking out his six points.” He now recommends a course of Cicero, Terence, Cæsar, and Livy which is to be read “a good deal at every lecture.” And the master is to give passages “put into plain natural English.” These the scholar shall “not know where to find” till he shall have tried his hand at putting them into Latin; then the master shall “bring forth the place in Tully.”