Part 19

On the question of the position and standing of the teacher Mulcaster’s contentions were scarcely more timely and just for his own generation than they are for the present time. Though certain ranks of the teaching profession have never been without social consideration, it remains true that teachers as a whole were long regarded as an inferior order of the clergy, who did not reach the goal of their ambition until they had succeeded in leaving their first calling, to take the more tranquil and dignified position of a cure of souls. As he puts it--“The school being used but for a shift, from which they will afterwards pass to some other profession, though it may send out competent men to other careers, remains itself far too bare of talent, considering the importance of the work.” It was only natural that the profession should suffer from this want of independence, in the general esteem, and therefore in its substantial rewards, but the claim which our author puts forward for greater public consideration, is obviously based, not on any petty resentment on behalf of himself or his fellows, but on broad general grounds of social advantage. He had a high sense of the importance of the teacher’s task for the national welfare, and he was anxious on all grounds that those most fitted to fulfil it with success, should in the first place be induced to enter the profession by the prospect of adequate recognition, and in the second place have sufficient opportunity of training to enable them to do justice to it. “I consider that in our universities there should be a special college for the training of teachers, inasmuch as they are the instruments to make or mar the growing generation of the country ... and because the material of their studies is comparable to that of the greatest profession, in respect of language, judgment, skill in teaching, variety in learning, wherein the forming of the mind and exercising of the body require the most careful consideration, to say nothing of the dignity of character which should be expected from them.” Mulcaster, it will here be seen, has good grounds to offer for magnifying his office, and striving to win a place of honour for it in the social economy. Subsequent experience has tended to suggest that his effort to gain greater consideration for his profession was more utopian than could perhaps have appeared to his contemporaries. There are certain general reasons why in a country like ours the teaching profession cannot be expected to reach the solidarity that belongs, for example, to the profession of medicine or of law. The wide economic differences in our civilisation inevitably perpetuate distinctions of rank, which are nowhere more clearly shown than in the choice of schools. It is natural and right that parents should be no less concerned about the companionship they provide for their children than about the quality of the teaching, and since a free and compulsory education has brought into the national schools not only the poorest but the lowest class, those who can afford it must be excused, and even commended, if they take advantage of other opportunities, where some principle of selection is applied. And as there are different classes of children, representing on the whole different kinds of home-upbringing, so there will be different ranks of teachers, varying widely in their status and emoluments. The question of numbers will always among day-schools give the town teacher an advantage over his country brother; the question of fees, in so far as these are not counter-balanced by endowments or State support, will draw the most highly-qualified teachers to the schools that serve the rich; and the secondary teacher will, on the whole, rank above the elementary teacher, partly because greater attainments are required from him, and partly because the higher teaching, requiring a prolonged school course, is demanded chiefly by the well-to-do classes. That this economic differentiation would become so marked could scarcely have been foreseen three centuries ago, and even though it already existed, Mulcaster was doing good service in protesting against its extremer forms. His claim that the elementary teacher is the most important of all, that he should have the smallest classes to deal with, and that he should be the most highly paid, must of course be taken as a counsel of perfection, but if there is no present prospect of its being fully admitted in practice, there is certainly a growing acceptance of the principle underlying it, that the most critical period of education is in the early years, when the first impressions are being received, and that no influence deserves to be so well considered as that which is to call forth an individual response from the awakening intelligence.

Difficult as the attainment of Mulcaster’s ideal of the position of teachers may have been, he was undoubtedly on the right path to seek it, when he advocated that their training should be entrusted to the universities. The demand for adequate preparation is the only reasonable means of securing at once a fitting status, and a reward sufficient to attract the best talent, and the recognition of the work of education as deserving to rank with the other learned professions for which a special academic training is required, is the natural expression of a healthy public sentiment on the matter. The higher the requirements are pitched, the safer will be the guarantee that aspirants will be drawn to the work by a genuine belief in it as their true vocation, for the sake of which it is worth while to make some sacrifice. The atmosphere of a university, moreover, offers the fullest opportunity to the teacher of acquiring the breadth of general culture, and the _savoir vivre_, in which he is so apt to be deficient.

Mulcaster’s proposals for university reform in general will be found in several important respects to have anticipated the course of subsequent legislation. He wished the State to have a free hand in controlling the uses of private endowments according to the special needs of each generation, as long as the confidence of the original founders was not betrayed, and he was not slow to point out directions where he considered that changes were urgently needed. We know that in his time the condition of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge was far from satisfactory, partly because definite abuses had crept in, and partly because their constitution naturally offered a passive resistance to regulative organisation. Mulcaster’s suggestions all tend to greater concentration of aim and facility of classification. He may have carried his desire for uniformity too far when he advocated the specialisation of every college to a particular study, and even to a particular stage in that study. So far as residence is concerned there is surely no need to forgo the benefits of a varied social intercourse among students of different standing and pursuits, but it cannot be doubted that every effort should be made to counteract the loss this may entail by providing full opportunities throughout the whole university for the emulation of those who are in the same academic position. In Elizabethan days there was not the same freedom of interchange in lectures among the various colleges that now obtains, and Mulcaster was doing good service in deprecating the isolation and dispersion of interest that interfered with progress. We must also commend the discernment he showed in presenting the claims of a definite and comprehensive curriculum in general learning to the attention of those who wished to engage in professional studies, as well as his zeal for the more careful selection of candidates for scholarships, fellowships, and degrees. Nor is it to be forgotten that he was probably the first to suggest the appointment of “readers” in the universities,--an arrangement that was not adopted till almost our own time.

The significance of Mulcaster’s theories may best be appreciated by comparing them with those of the great educational reformer who came next in order of time. The services rendered to the world by Comenius are too well accredited, and too widely acknowledged, to suffer any serious loss of prestige by such a comparison. It has been already urged that true originality in social affairs means an enlightened judgment as to what is possible and desirable for one’s own time and country, and the reform of education had to be worked out and proclaimed for continental Europe on independent lines. It is not likely that Mulcaster’s writings had any direct influence on Comenius, though they could hardly fail to make some contribution to the general stock of ideas that is successively inherited by each generation, and spreads almost imperceptibly over an ever widening area. Even apart from any claim to priority in doctrine, the forcible personality of the Moravian writer, expressing itself in a singularly exhaustive treatment of educational problems and their practical application, will always assure to him an unquestioned authority, while his assertion of the weighty principle that words and things must be taught together, spoken and written signs being constantly associated with the objects, qualities, or actions they represent, is in itself enough to secure him a lasting reputation. But from the national point of view, which in tracing such historical successions it is not unreasonable to assume, we may justly note that there are a considerable number of educational doctrines, now generally accepted among us in theory if not in practice, the earliest formulation of which, though generally ascribed to Comenius, is really to be found in the writings of Richard Mulcaster. More than this, it may be maintained that on several important points a more penetrating insight was shown by our own countryman, in spite of his disadvantage in time. In regard both to the end and the scope of education, for example, a more humanistic conception seems to have been held by Mulcaster. Unlike Comenius, who lays chief stress on the preparation for eternity, he sets forth as the main purpose of youthful training the more proximate aims of self-realisation and useful service to one’s fellowmen. “The end of education and training is to help nature to her perfection in the complete development of all the various powers ... whereby each shall be best able to perform all those functions in life which his position shall require, whether public or private, in the interest of his country in which he was born, and to which he owes his whole service.” And while both writers insist that the rudiments of learning should be taught to children of every social class and of both sexes, the Englishman alone expresses sympathy with the ideal of a higher education for girls where circumstances permit. It would seem also that Mulcaster took the more reasonable view of the relation of a teacher to his class, for his claim that the elementary master should have the smallest number to deal with, at least shows a fuller sense of the importance of individual treatment than is conveyed in the later writer’s dictum that it does not matter how large a class is if the teacher has monitors to help him.

Among the doctrines of Comenius to which his expositors have attached special importance may be numbered the following: that the earliest teaching should be given in the vernacular; that the first subjects taught should be such as give scope to the child’s activity; that knowledge should be communicated through the senses and put to immediate use; that examples should be taught before rules; that the arts should be taught practically; that in language-study grammar should accompany reading and speaking; that learning should be spontaneous and pleasant without undue pressure; that children should not be beaten for failure in study, but only for moral offences; and that education should follow in general the guidance of nature. These principles now rank among the commonplaces of educational method, and in so far as their acceptance has been furthered by the persuasive advocacy of Comenius the gratitude of the world is due to him; but why should Englishmen forget that they had all been proclaimed with unmistakable clearness in this country half a century earlier? Readers of the foregoing pages must be already convinced that the doctrines in question form an essential part of Mulcaster’s theory of education; but it may be worth while to recall in a connected form a few of the more striking passages in which they are expressed. On the use of the vernacular in the early years: “As for the question whether English or Latin should be first learned, hitherto there may seem to have been some reasonable doubt, although the nature of the two tongues ought to decide the matter clearly enough, ... but now ... we can follow the direction of reason and nature in learning to read first that which we speak first, to take most care over that which we use most, and in beginning our studies where we have the best chance of good progress, owing to our natural familiarity with our ordinary language, as spoken by those around us in the affairs of everyday life.” No particular quotation is needed to illustrate Mulcaster’s dependence for his elementary training on studies that called forth individual effort from the child, for the course he planned includes no other kind of occupation, but the following sentences may stand for a proof that he recognised the natural channels through which knowledge is acquired and utilised in the guidance of action: “Nature has ... given us for self-preservation the power of perceiving all sensible things by means of feeling, hearing, seeing, smelling, and tasting. These qualities of the outward world, being apprehended by the understanding and examined by the judgment, are handed over to the memory, and afterwards prove our chief--nay, our only--means of obtaining further knowledge.... To serve the end both of sense-perception and of motion, nature has planted in the body a brain, the prince of all our organs, which by spreading its channels through every part of our frame, produces all the effects through which sense passes into motion.” On the point of subordinating rules to the imitation of examples, and learning the arts by practically engaging in them, Mulcaster writes: “Children know not what they do, much less why they do it, till reason grow into some ripeness in them, and therefore in their training they profit more by practice than by knowing why, till they feel the use of reason, which teaches them to consider causes.... When the end of any art is wholly in doing, the initiation should be short, so as not to hinder that end by keeping the learners too long musing upon rules.... We must keep carefully that rule of Aristotle which teaches that the best way to learn anything well which has to be done after it is learned, is always to be a-doing while we are a-learning.” To the question of the best method in linguistic study, Mulcaster was ready to apply this principle of learning directly through practice, and his sense of the proper place of grammatical knowledge is shown in the following passage: “Grammar in itself is but the bare rule, and a very naked thing.... In grammar, which is the introduction to speech, there should be no such length as is customary, because its end is to write and to speak, and in doing this as much as possible we learn our grammar best, when it is applied to matter and not clogged with rules. As for understanding writers, that comes with years and ripeness of intelligence, not by means of the rules of grammar.” It has already been seen that Mulcaster shared fully in the humaner views upon the treatment of children that were beginning to assert themselves in his day; but it is interesting to notice that he based his conviction not only on the general claims of sympathy, but also on grounds of purely educational expediency. “These three things--perception, memory, and judgment--ye will find peering out of the little young souls. Now these natural capacities being once discovered must as they arise be followed with diligence, increased by good method and encouraged by sympathy, till they come to their fruition. The best way to secure good progress, so that the intelligence may conceive clearly, memory may hold fast, and judgment may choose and discern the best, is so to ply them that all may proceed voluntarily, and not with violence, so that the will may be ready to do well and loth to do ill, and all fear of correction may be entirely absent. Surely to beat for not learning a child that is willing enough to learn, but whose intelligence is defective, is worse than madness.... Beating must only be for ill-behaviour, not for failure in learning.” Finally we must admit that the principle urged by Comenius, and afterwards pushed to an extreme by Rousseau and Froebel, of following the guidance of nature in planning the procedure of instruction was explicitly stated by Mulcaster. “The third proof of a good elementary course was that it should follow nature in the multitude of its gifts, and that it should proceed in teaching as she does in developing. For as she is unfriendly wherever she is forced, so she is the best guide that anyone can have, wherever she shows herself favourable.”

It not infrequently happens that the doctrines of a notable reformer, while they are full of light and leading for his contemporaries, have no more than a historical interest for succeeding generations. The rapidity of their absorption in the general current of established theory must be largely determined by the strength of the influence with which they were first asserted, so that in one aspect it may be said that the more potent the impress of the original mind, the sooner will its individual effects become imperceptible. But it would be as rash to make this rule the measure of an estimate of relative greatness, without taking account of other contributing conditions, as it would be unreasonable to be misled into the opposite error of undervaluing proposals which had only a temporary fitness and are of no present significance. In truth it is a good deal a matter of accident whether the words of wisdom which fall from men of genius and insight bear fruit early or late, and while distance in time offers a vantage-ground for the just assignment of the tributes of admiration and gratitude, the question of immediate applicability must not bulk too largely among the elements on which our judgment of a reputation is based. As has been already suggested, Mulcaster lost his opportunity of speedy acceptance for his ideals through his inability to commend them with persuasive eloquence, though such an impediment to appreciation is happily not irremovable. The more searching investigation of our time into the history of educational thought might or might not have discovered a high present value in the aspirations to which he gave somewhat inadequate expression, without his title to fame being materially affected. But it will undoubtedly give to his writings a great additional interest if it should appear that they set forth lessons which the three intervening centuries have failed to learn, and which are still clamouring for acceptance in our own day.

It would not be difficult to show that many of the reforms which he urged and anticipated, while they have been formally admitted as necessary or expedient, have as yet made little way in leavening the whole mass of educational practice. There is good reason to maintain, for example, that the impartial diffusion of the opportunities of learning throughout all classes of the community, which was a fundamental part of Mulcaster’s gospel, has been much less completely realised among us than is generally supposed. We are apt to rest satisfied with the idea of universal education without over-careful a scrutiny into the nature of what is offered in its name. In so far as elementary instruction was concerned Mulcaster drew no distinction between rich and poor, between those of gentle and of lowly birth; all were to have the same treatment, irrespective of the uses to which their knowledge might afterwards be turned. Our State system of education may profess to carry out this aim, but the justice of the claim must be denied so long as the nature and quality of what is forcibly imposed upon the mass of the people is seriously at fault. Our system of public elementary education in this country, however efficiently it may be organised, fails entirely to provide a sound general training owing to its adoption of a curriculum that is unduly utilitarian in aim. It is undeniable that this is largely due to an implicit caste feeling which prescribes that the education of the masses shall fit them directly for the performance of certain industrial tasks in a state of economic subjection. The well-to-do citizen wishes his own child, even from the first, to be taught differently from the child of poorer parents, whose schooling he helps to pay for and has some share in regulating. The course of study he chooses may be no better,--in some respects it is undoubtedly worse; but at least it is different, and conforms to the conventional standard of a liberal training for life as a whole. The codes drawn up for our national system are not framed for any such purpose. Partly from ingrained class prejudice, partly to get tangible results to show for the public money expended, and partly from a benevolent but short-sighted regard for supposed utilities, we have overburdened the curriculum with the more mechanical parts of learning. We put too much of the drudgery into the years when we can make sure of the children, so that a minimum of interest is taken in the work for its own sake, with the result that when the compulsory term is reached, the great majority of them use their liberty to throw aside their books for ever. While this reproach remains just, can we say that the ideal of a true universal elementary education has yet been reached?