INTELLECTUAL TRAINING.--ITS REQUISITES.
We are all accustomed to speak of the Intellect and moral powers of man
as if they were so distinct from one another that we can deal with each
set of powers without touching the other.
It is true that there is a division between the intellectual and moral
powers of man, as there is between one moral power and another. It is
true that we can think of them separately, and treat them separately:
but it does not follow that they will work separately. No part of the
brain will act alone, no part begins its own action. It is always put in
action by another part previously at work, and it excites in its turn
some other portion. While we sleep, that part of the brain is at work on
which depend those animal functions which are always going on: and, as
we know by our dreams, other portions work with this, giving us ideas
and feelings during sleep--perhaps as many as by day, if we could only
recollect them. The animal portions of the brain set the intellectual
and moral organs to work, and these act upon each other, so that there
is no separating their action,--no possibility of employing one faculty
at a time without help from any other. As memory cannot act till
attention has been awakened,--in other words, as people cannot remember
what they have never observed and received, so the timid cannot
understand, unless it is in a docile and calm state; nor meditate well
without the exercise of candour and truthfulness; nor imagine nobly
without the help of veneration and hope. If we take any great
intellectual work and examine it, we shall see what a variety of
faculties, moral as well as intellectual, have gone to the making of it.
Take "Paradise Lost," a work so glorious for the loftiness of its
imagination, and the extent of its learning, and the beauty of its
illustrations, and the harmony of its versification! These are its
intellectual beauties: but look what moral beauties are inseparable from
these. Look at the veneration,--not only towards God, but towards all
holiness, and power, and beauty! Look at the purity, the love, the
hopefulness, the strain of high honour throughout! And this intellectual
and moral beauty are so blended, that we see how impossible it would be
for the one to exist without the other. It is just so in the human
character--the intellect of a human being cannot be of a high order,
(though some particular faculties may be very strong) if the moral
nature is low and feeble: and the moral state cannot be a lofty one
where the intellect is torpid.
It does not follow from this that to be very good a child must be
exceedingly clever and "highly educated," as we call it. There are
plenty of highly-educated people who are not morally good; and there are
many honest and amiable and industrious people who cannot read and
write. The thing is, we misuse the word "Education." Book-learning is
compatible with great poverty of intellect; and there may be a very fine
understanding, great power of attention and observation, and possibly,
though rarely, of reflection, in a person who has never learned to
read,--if the moral goodness of that person has put his mind into a calm
and teachable and happy state, and his powers of thought have been
stimulated by active affections; if, as we say, his heart has quickened
his head. These are truths very important to know; and they ought to be
consolatory to parents who are grieved and alarmed because they cannot
send their children to school,--supposing that their intellectual part
must suffer and go to waste for want of school training and instruction
from books. I will say simply and openly what I think about this.
I think that no children, in any rank of life, can acquire so much
book-knowledge at home as at a good school, or have their intellectual
faculties so well roused and trained. I have never seen an instance of
such high attainment in languages, mathematics, history, or philosophy
in young people taught at home,--even by the best masters,--as in those
who have been in a good school. Without going into the reasons of this,
which would lend us out of our way here, I would fully admit the fact.
There are two ways of taking it. First, it cannot be helped. A much
larger number of people are unable to send their children to school than
can do so. The queen cannot send her children to school: and the
children of the peerage are under great disadvantage. The girls cannot,
or do not, go from home; and the boys go only to one or another of a
very small choice of public schools, where they must run tremendous
risks to both morals and intellect. Then there are multitudes of
families, in town and country, among rich and poor, where the children
must be taught at home. The number is much larger of the children who do
not go to school than of those who do. If we consider, again, how large
a proportion of schools, taking them from the highest to the lowest, are
so bad that children learn little in them, it is clear that the
home-trained intellects are out of all proportion more numerous than the
school-trained.
The other way of looking at the matter is in order to inquire what
school advantages may be brought home--what there is in the school that
children may have the benefit of at home.
The fundamental difference between school and home is clear enough. At
school, everything is done by rule; by a law which was made without a
view to any particular child, and which governs all alike: whereas, at
home, the government is not one of law, working on from year to year
without change, but of love, or, at least, of the mind of the parents,
varying with circumstances, and with the ages and dispositions of the
children. There is no occasion to point out here how great are the moral
advantages of a good home in comparison with the best of schools. Our
business now is with the intellectual training. Can the advantages of
school law be brought into the home?
I think they may, to a certain extent: and I think it of great
importance that they should. Law will not do all at home that it does at
school. It is known to be new made, for the sake of the parties under
it; and it cannot possibly work so undeviatingly in a family as in a
school; and the children of a family, no two of whom are of the same
age, cannot have their faculties so stimulated to achieve irksome labour
as in a large class of comrades of the same age and standing. But still,
rule and regularity will do much: and when we consider the amount of
drudgery that children have to get through in acquiring the elements of
knowledge, we shall feel it to be only humane and fair to give them any
aid that can be afforded through the plans of the household.
Those kinds and parts of knowledge which interest the reasoning
faculties and the imagination are not in question just now. They come by
and by, and can better take care of themselves, or are more sure to be
taken care of by others, than the drudgery which is the first stage in
all learning. The drudgery comes first; and it is wise and kind to let
it come soon enough. The quickness of eye, and tenacity and readiness of
memory, which belong to infancy should be made use of while at their
brightest, for gaining such knowledge as is to be had by the mere eye,
ear, and memory. How easily can the most ordinary child learn a hymn or
other piece of poetry by heart;--sometimes before it can speak plain,
and very often indeed before it can understand the meaning! What a pity
that this readiness should not be used,--that the child, for instance,
should not learn to count, and to read, and to say the multiplication
table, while it can learn these things with the least trouble! We must
remember that while we see the child to be about a great and heavy work,
the child himself does not know this, and cannot be oppressed by the
thought. All he knows about is the little bit he learns every day. And
that little bit is easy to him, if the support of law be given him. It
is here that law must come in to help him. He should, if possible, be
saved all uncertainty, all conflict in his little mind, as to his daily
business. If there is a want of certainty and punctuality about his
lessons, there will be room for the thought of something which, for the
moment, he would like better; and again, his young faculties will become
confused and irregular in their working from uncertainty of seasons and
of plans. If there can be a particular place, and a particular time for
him, every day but Sundays, and he is never put off, his faculties will
come to their work with a freshness and steadiness which nothing but
habit will secure. A law of work which leaves him no choice, but sets
all his faculties free for his business, saves him half the labour of
it; as it does in after life to those who are so blessed as to be
destined to necessary, and not voluntary labour. In houses where there
cannot be a room set apart for the lessons, perhaps there may be a
corner. If there cannot be any place, perhaps there may be a time: and
the time should be that which can best be secured from interruption.
Where the father is so fond of his children, and so capable of
self-denial for their sakes as to devote an hour or two of his evenings
to the instruction of his children, he may rely upon it that he is
heaping up blessings for himself with every minute of those hours. His
presence, the presence of the worker of the household, is equal to
school and home influence together. The scantiness of his leisure makes
the law; and his devotedness in using it thus makes the inestimable home
influence. Under his teaching, if it be regular and intelligent, head
and heart will come on together, to his encouragement now, and his
great future satisfaction.
When I come to speak of habits, by and by, it will be seen that this
introduction of law at home is to relate only to affairs of habit, and
intellectual attainment. The misfortune of school is that the affections
and feelings must come under the control of law, instead of the guidance
of domestic love. It would be a wanton mischief indeed to spoil the
freedom of home by stretching rule and law there beyond their proper
province.
There are houses, many houses, and not always very poor ones, where the
parents think they cannot provide for the intellectual improvement of
their children, and mourn daily over the thought. I wish such parents
could be induced to consider well what intellectual improvement is, and
then they would see how much they may do for their children's minds
without book, pen, or paper. It goes against me to suppose children
brought up without knowledge of reading and writing; and I trust this is
not likely to be the fate of any children of the parents who read this.
But it is as well to suppose the extreme case, in order to see whether
even people who cannot read and write must remain ignorant and debarred
from the privileges of mind.
In America I saw many families of settlers, where the children were
strangely circumstanced. There was always plenty to eat and drink; the
barns were full of produce, and there were horses in the meadow; and
every child would have hereafter a goodly portion of land: but there
were no servants, and there could be no "education," because the mother
and children had to do all the work of the house. In one of these homes
the day was spent thus.--The father (a man of great property) went out
upon his land, before daylight, taking with him his little sons of six
and seven years old, who earned their breakfasts by leading the horses
down to water, and turning out the cows, and sweeping the stable: and,
when the milking was done (by a man on the farm, I think), they brought
up the milk. Meantime, their mother, an educated English lady, took up
the younger children, and swept the kitchen, lighted the fire, and
cooked the beef-steak for her husband's breakfast, and boiled the eggs
which the little ones brought in from the paddock. Soon after seven, the
farmer and boys were gone again: and then the mother set down in the
middle of the kitchen floor a large bowl of hot water and the breakfast
things: and the little girl of _four_, and her sister of _two_, set to
work. The elder washed the cups and dishes, and the younger wiped them,
as carefully and delicately as if she had been ten years older. She
never broke anything, or failed to make all bright and dry. Then they
went to make their own little beds: they could just manage that, but not
the larger ones. Meantime, their mother was baking, or washing, or
brewing, or making soap,--boiling it in a cauldron over a fire in the
wood. There were no grocers' shops within scores of miles. In the
season, the family had to make sugar in the forest from their maple
trees; and wine from the fruit they grew: and there were the apples, in
immense quantities, to be split and cored, and hung up in strings for
winter use. Every morning in the week was occupied with one or another
of these employments; and in the midst of them, dinner had to be cooked,
and ready by noon: another beef-steak, with apple-sauce or onions, and
hot "corn" bread (made of Indian meal), and a squash pie, or something
of the sort. There was enough to do, all the afternoon, in finishing off
the morning's work: and there must be another steak for tea or
supper.--The children had been helping all day: and now their parents
wished to devote this time,--after six p.m.--to their benefit. It is
true, the mother had now to sew; this being her only time for making and
mending: but she got out the slates and lesson-books, and put one little
girl and boy before her, while their father took the other two, and set
them a sum and a copy on the slate. But alas! by this time, no one of
the party could keep awake. They did try. The parents were so extremely
anxious for their children that they did strive: but nature was
overpowered. After a few struggles, the children were sent to bed; and
in the very midst of a sentence, the mother's head would sink over her
work, and the father's down upon the table, in irresistible sleep. Both
had been very fond of chess, in former days: and the husband bade his
wife put away her work, and try a game of chess. But down went the
board, and off slid the men, in the middle of a game! Now,--what could
be done for the children's education here? In time, there was hope that
roads and markets would be opened where the produce of the farm might be
sold, and money obtained to send the children to schools, some hundreds
of miles off: or, at least, that neighbours enough might settle round
about to enable the township to invite a school-master. But what could
be done meantime?
So much might be, and was, done as would astonish people who think that
intellectual education means school learning. I do not at all wish to
extenuate the misfortune of these children in being doomed to write a
bad hand, if any; to be slow at accounts; to have probably no taste for
reading; and no knowledge, except by hearsay, of the treasures of
literature. But I do say that they were not likely to grow up ignorant
and stupid. They knew every tree in the forest, and every bird, and
every weed. They knew the habits of all domestic animals. They could
tell at a glance how many scores of pigeons there were in a flock, when
clouds of these birds came sailing towards the wood. They did not want
to measure distances, for they knew them by the eye. They could give
their minds earnestly to what they were about; and ponder, and plan, and
imagine, and contrive. Their faculties were all awake. And they obtained
snatches of stories from father and mother, about the heroes of old
times, and the history of England and America. They worshipped God, and
loved Christ, and were familiar with the Bible. Now, there are some
things here that very highly educated people among us might be glad to
be equal to: and the very busiest father, the hardest-driven mother in
England may be able, in the course of daily business, to rouse and
employ the faculties of their children,--their attention, understanding,
reflection, memory and imagination,--so as to make their intellects
worth more than those of many children who are successful at school.
Their chance is doubled if books are opened to them: but if not, there
is nothing to despair about.
I was much struck by a day's intellectual education of a little boy of
seven who was thrown out of his usual course of study and play. The
family were in the country,--in a house which they had to themselves for
a month, in beautiful scenery, where they expected to be so continually
out of doors that the children's toys were left at home. Some days of
unintermitting, drenching rain came; and on one of these days, the
little fellow looked round him, after breakfast, and said, "Papa, I
don't exactly see what I can do." He would have been thankful to say his
lessons: but papa was absolutely obliged to write the whole day; and
mama was up-stairs nursing his little sister, who had met with an
accident. His papa knew well how to make him happy. He set him to find
out the area of the house, and of every room in it. He lent him a
three-foot rule, showed him how he might find the thickness of the
walls, and gave him a slate and pencil. This was enough. All day, he
troubled nobody, but went quietly about, measuring and calculating, and
writing down;--from morning till dinner,--from dinner till supper: and
by that time he had done. When they could go out to measure the outside,
they found him right to an inch: and the same with every room in the
house.--This boy was no genius. He was an earnest, well-trained boy: and
who does not see that if he and his parents had lived in an American
forest, or in the severest poverty at home, he would have been, in the
best sense, an educated boy! He would not have understood several
languages, as he does now: but his faculties would have been busy and
cultivated, if he had never in his life seen any book but the
Bible.--Anxious parents may take comfort from the thought that nothing
ever exists or occurs which may not be made matter of instruction to the
mind of man. The mind and the material being furnished to the parents'
hands, it is their business to bring them together, whether books be
among the material or not.