INTELLECTUAL TRAINING.--THE CONCEPTIVE FACULTIES.
Up to this point, and for some way beyond it, children are better off at
home than at school; and no parent should be induced to think otherwise
by what is seen to be achieved at Infant Schools. At some Infant
Schools, little children who can scarcely speak, are found able to say
and do many wonderful things which might make inexperienced mothers fear
that their little ones at home had not been done justice to, and must be
sadly backward in their education: but if the anxious mother will
consider a little, and keep on the watch, she will perceive that her
children are better at home. These Infant Schools were set on foot with
the most benevolent of intentions; and they are really a vast benefit to
a large class in society: but it does not follow that they afford the
best training for infants. In their very nature they cannot do so. When
we stand in the midst of such an assemblage, we feel what a blessing it
is that little creatures who would be locked up in garrets all day while
the parents were at work, liable to falls or fire, or who would be
tumbling about in the streets or roads, dirty, quarrelsome, and exposed
to bad company, should be collected here under safe guardianship, and
taught, and kept clean, and amused with harmless play: but we cannot
help seeing, at the same time, that there is something unnatural in the
method; and whatever is unnatural is always radically bad. Nature makes
households, family groups where no two children are of the same age, and
where, with the utmost activity, there is a certain degree of quietness,
retirement, and repose; whereas, in the Infant School there is a crowd
of little creatures, dozens of whom are of the same age; and quietness
can be obtained only by drilling, while play occasions an uproar which
no nerves can easily bear. The brain and nerves of infants are tender
and irritable; and in the quietest home, a sensible mother takes care
that the little creature is protected from hurry, and loud noises, and
fear, and fatigue of its faculties. She sees when it begins to look
pale, or turns cross or sick, and instantly removes it from excitement.
But it is impossible thus to protect each child in a school: and the
consequence is that the amount of mortality in Infant Schools, as in
every large assemblage of infants, is very great. There is no saying
whether as many might not perish from accident and some kind of misery,
if they were left in their garrets and street haunts; but the facts show
that home is the proper place for little children whose parents make a
real home for them; and no apparent forwardness of school infants can
alter the case.
In truth, school is no place of education for any children whatever till
their minds are well put in action. This is the work which has to be
done at home, and which may be done in all homes where the mother is a
sensible woman. This done, a good school is a resource of inestimable
advantage for cultivating the intellect, and aiding the acquisition of
knowledge: but it is of little or no use without preparation at home. So
at the age of which we speak, parents may be satisfied that they have
the matter in their own hands.
We have seen that the Perceptive faculties are the first of the
intellectual powers which act: and that there is plenty of material for
their exercise everywhere, and all day long.
The next set of faculties comes pretty early into operation, and so much
of the future wealth of the mind depends on their cultivation that they
ought to have the serious attention of parents. I refer to the
Conceptive faculties. The time has come when the child is perhaps less
intensely impressed by actual objects, while it becomes capable of
conceiving of something that it does not see. At this period, the little
boy drags about the horse that has lost head and tail and a leg or two:
and the little girl hugs a rag bundle which she calls her doll. The boy
does not want a better horse, nor the girl a real doll. The idea is
everything to them, by virtue of their conceptive faculty. Staring,
meagre pictures please them now,--better than the finest; and stories,
with few incidents and no filling up. The faculty is so vigorous, while,
of course, very narrow in its range, from the scantiness of the child's
knowledge, that the merest sketch is enough to stimulate it to action;
the rudest toys, the most meagre drawing, the baldest story. The
mother's business is now clear and easy. Her business is to supply more
and more material for these faculties to work upon:--to give, as
occasion arises, more and more knowledge of actual things, and furnish
representations or suggestions in the course of her intercourse with the
child. Nothing is easier; for in fact she has only to make herself the
child's cheerful companion: and in a manner which can go on while she is
employed in her household occupations, or walking in the fields or the
streets. The child asks a myriad of questions; and she must make some
kind of cheerful answer to them all, if she lets him talk at all. She
will often have to tell him that she does not know this or that; for a
child's questions reach far beyond the bounds of our knowledge: but she
must not leave him without some sort of answer to appease his restless
faculties. And his questions will suggest to her a multitude of things
to tell him which he will be eager to hear, as long as they hang upon
any thing real which he knows already. Stories and pictures (including
toys, which to him are pictures) are what he likes best; and she will
make either stories or pictures,--short and vivid,--of what she tells
him. The stories and pictures of her conversation must be simple and
literal; and so must any sketches she may make for him with pencil and
paper, or a bit of chalk upon the pavement. She may make four straight
strokes, with two horizontal lines above, and a circle for a head, and
call it a horse; and a horse it will be to him, because it calls up the
image of a horse in his mind. But if she draws it ever so well, and puts
wings to it, he will not like it half so much, even if she tells him
that its name is Pegasus, and there are some pretty stories about such a
horse. Perhaps he will be afraid of it.
There can scarcely be a stronger instance of the power of such a child's
conceptive faculty than in his own attempts to draw. He draws the cat,
or a soldier, and is in raptures with it. Mark his surprise when his
mother points out to him that the cat's head is bigger than her body,
and that the soldier is all legs and arms and gun, and has no body at
all. He sees this, and admits it, and draws a better one: but he would
not have found out for himself that there was anything amiss the first
time. The idea was complete in his mind; and he thought he saw its
representation on the paper, till his mother roused his perceptive
powers by making him observe the real cat and soldier, and their
proportions. I remember once being amused at seeing how very short a
time was necessary to bring the perceptive faculties into their due
relation to the conceptive. A little boy who had taken a journey, was
exceedingly delighted with the river-side inn at Ferry-bridge in
Yorkshire; and he must draw it. When he was a hundred miles further
north, he must draw it again: and diligently enough he persevered,
kneeling on a chair,--drawing the river and the bridge, and a house, and
a heap of coals,--each coal being round, and almost as big as the house.
When his paper was nearly all scrawled over, he went unwillingly away to
his dinner, from which he hastened back to his drawing. But O! what
consternation there was in his face, and what large tears rolled down
his cheeks, till he hid his face with his pinafore. He wailed and
sobbed:--"somebody had spoiled his drawing." When asked what made him
think so, and assured that nobody had touched it, he sobbed out "I'm
sure I never made it such a muddle." Before dinner, he saw his work with
the conceptive,--after dinner with the perceptive faculties; and it is
no wonder that he thought two persons had been at it.
Without going over again any of the ground traversed in the chapter on
Fear, I may just observe that at this period children are particularly
liable to fear. Almost any appearance suffices to suggest images; and
the repetition of any image invariably, at any time or place, is in
itself terrifying to those of older nerves than the children we are
thinking of. Now is the time when portraits seem to stare at the gazer,
and to turn their eyes wherever he moves. Now is the time when a crack
in the plaster of a wall, or an outline in a chintz pattern or a
paper-hanging, suggests the image of some monster, and perhaps makes the
child afraid of his room or his bed, while his mother has no perception
of the fact. The mother should be on the watch, without any appearance
of being so.
I have spoken of only the early stage of the activity of the conceptive
faculties. We see how it goes on in the appetite for fiction which is
common to all children,--in the eagerness of boys for books of voyages
and travels, and for playing soldiers, and school-master, and making
processions, while the girls are playing school-mistress, and dressing
up, and pretending to be the queen. The whole period is, or ought to be,
very precious to the parents; for it is the time for storing their
children's minds with images and ideas, which are the materials for the
exercise of the higher faculties at a later time. The simple method of
management is to practise the old maxim "Live and let live." The
mother's mind must be awake, to meet the vivacious mind of the child:
and she must see that the child's is lively and natural, and be careful
neither to over-excite it by her anxiety to be always teaching, nor to
baulk and depress it by discouraging too much its sometimes inconvenient
loquacity and curiosity. It is well that there should be times when
children of six and upwards should amuse themselves and one another
without troubling their elders; but a vivacious child must talk and
inquire a great deal every day, or, if repressed, suffer from some undue
exercise of its mental activity.
It should never be forgotten that the happier a child is, the cleverer
he will be. This is not only because, in a state of happiness, the mind
is free, and at liberty for the exercise of its faculties, instead of
spending its thoughts and energy in brooding over troubles; but also
because the action of the brain is stronger when the frame is in a state
of hilarity: the ideas are more clear; impressions of outward objects
are more vivid; and the memory will not let them slip. This is reason
enough for the mother to take some care that she is the cheerful guide
and comforter that her child needs. If she is anxious or fatigued she
will exercise some control over herself, and speak cheerfully, and try
to enter freely into the subject of the moment;--to meet the child's
mind, in short, instead of making his sink for want of companionship. A
rather low instance of the effect of the stimulus of joy in quickening
the powers occurred within my knowledge;--a rather low one, but
illustrative enough. A little girl, the youngest of her class at
school, did her French lessons fairly; but, as a matter of course, was
always at or near the bottom, while a tall girl, five years older,
clever and industrious, was always, as a matter of course, at the top.
One day, there happened to be a long word in question in the vocabulary,
which nobody knew but the little girl; so she went to the top. There was
not much excitement of ambition in the case: she felt it to be an
accident merely, and the tall girl was very kind to her;--there could
hardly be less of the spirit of rivalry in such a case than there was
here. But the joy of the child was great; and her surprise,--both at the
fact of her position, and at the power she found in herself to keep
it;--and keep it she did for many weeks, though the tall girl never
missed a word in all that time. The dull French vocabulary suddenly
became to the child a book of living imagery. The very letters of the
words impressed themselves like pictures upon her memory; and each word,
becoming suddenly interesting of itself, called up some imagery, which
prevented its being forgotten. All this was pleasant; and then there was
the comfort and security about the lesson being perfect. The child not
only hoped every day that she should get well through, but felt it
impossible that she should ever forget a word of it. When at last she
failed, it was through depression of spirits. While she was learning her
lesson at home, her baby-sister was ill, and crying sadly. It was
impossible to get any impression out of the book:--the page turned into
common French vocabulary again; and the next morning, not only the tall
girl stepped into her proper place, but the little one rapidly passed
down to her old stand at the bottom.
Children who read from the love of reading are usually supremely happy
over their book. A wise parent will indulge the love of reading, not
only from kindness in permitting the child to do what it likes best, but
because what is read with enjoyment has intense effect upon the
intellect. The practice of reading for amusement must not begin too
soon: and it must be permitted by very slow degrees, till the child is
so practised in the art of reading as to have its whole mind at liberty
for the subject, without having to think about the lines or the words.
Till he is sufficiently practised for this, he should be read to: and it
will then soon appear whether he is likely to be moderate when he gets a
book into his own hands.--My own opinion is that it is better to leave
him to his natural tastes,--to his instincts,--when that important
period of his life arrives which makes him an independent reader. Of
course, his proper duty must be done;--his lessons, or work of other
kinds, and his daily exercise. But it seems to me better to abstain from
interfering with that kind of strong inclination than to risk the evils
of thwarting it. Perhaps scarcely any person of mature years can
conceive what the appetite for reading is to a child. It goes off, or
becomes changed in mature years, to such a degree as to make the facts
of a reading childhood scarcely credible in remembrance, or even when
before the eyes. But it is all right; and the process had better not be
disturbed. The apprehension of a child is so quick, his conceptive
faculty is so ravenous for facts and pictures, or the merest
suggestions, and he is so entirely free from those philosophical checks
which retard in adults the process of reception from books, that he can,
at ten years old, read the same book twice as fast as he can,--if he
duly improves meanwhile,--twenty years later. I have seen a young girl
read Moore's Lalla Rookh through, except a very few pages, before
breakfast,--and not a late breakfast; and not a passage of the poem was
ever forgotten. When she had done, the Arabian scenes appeared to be the
reality, and the breakfast table and brothers and sisters the dream: but
that was sure to come right; and all the ideas of the thick volume were
added to her store. I have seen a school-boy of ten lay himself down,
back uppermost, with the quarto edition of "Thalaba" before him, on the
first day of the Easter holidays, and turn over the leaves,
notwithstanding his inconvenient position, as fast as if he was looking
for something, till, in a very few hours it was done, and he was off
with it to the public library, bringing back the "Curse of Kehama."
Thus he went on with all Southey's poems, and some others, through his
short holidays,--scarcely moving voluntarily all those days except to
run to the library. He came out of the process so changed, that none of
his family could help being struck by it. The expression of his eye, the
cast of his countenance, his use of words, and his very gait were
changed. In ten days, he had advanced years in intelligence: and I have
always thought that this was the turning-point of his life. His parents
wisely and kindly let him alone,--aware that school would presently put
an end to all excess in the new indulgence. I can speak from experience
of what children feel towards parents who mercifully leave them to their
own propensities,--forbearing all reproach about the ill manners and the
selfishness of which the sinners are keenly conscious all the while.
Some children's greediness for books is like a drunkard's for wine. They
can no more keep their hands off a beloved book than the tippler from
the bottle before him. The great difference as to the safety of the case
is that the child's greediness is sure to subside into moderation in
time, from the development of new faculties, while the drunkard's is
sure to go on increasing till all is over with him. If parents would
regard the matter in this way, they would neither be annoyed at the
excess of the inconvenient propensity, nor proud of any child who has
it. It is no sign yet of a superiority of intellect; much less of that
wisdom which in adults is commonly supposed to arise from large
book-knowledge. It is simply a natural appetite for that provision of
ideas and images which should, at this season, be laid in for the
exercise of the higher faculties which have yet to come into use.--As I
have said, I know from experience the state of things which exists when
a child cannot help reading to an amount which the parents think
excessive, and yet are unwilling, for good reasons, to prohibit. One
Sunday afternoon, when I was seven years old, I was prevented by illness
from going to chapel;--a circumstance so rare that I felt very strange
and listless. I did not go to the maid who was left in the house, but
lounged about the drawing-room, where, among other books which the
family had been reading, was one turned down upon its face. It was a
dull-looking octavo volume, thick, and bound in calf, as untempting a
book to the eyes of a child as could well be seen: but, because it
happened to be open, I took it up. The paper was like skim milk,--thin
and blue, and the printing very ordinary. Moreover, I saw the word
Argument,--a very repulsive word to a child. But my eye caught the word
"Satan;" and I instantly wanted to know how anybody could argue about
Satan. I saw that he fell through chaos, found the place in the
poetry;--and lived heart, mind, and soul in Milton from that day till I
was fourteen. I remember nothing more of that Sunday, vivid as is my
recollection of the moment of plunging into chaos: but I remember that
from that time till a young friend gave me a pocket edition of Milton,
the calf-bound volume was never to be found because I had got it
somewhere; and that, for all those years, to me the universe moved to
Milton's music. I wonder how much of it I knew by heart--enough to be
always repeating some of it to myself, with every change of light and
darkness, and sound and silence,--the moods of the day, and the seasons
of the year. It was not my love of Milton which required the forbearance
of my parents,--except for my hiding the book, and being often in an
absent fit. It was because this luxury had made me ravenous for more. I
had a book in my pocket,--a book under my pillow; and in my lap as I sat
at meals: or rather, on this last occasion it was a newspaper. I used to
purloin the daily London paper before dinner, and keep possession of
it,--with a painful sense of the selfishness of the act; and with a
daily pang of shame and self-reproach, I slipped away from the table
when the dessert was set on, to read in another room. I devoured all
Shakspere, sitting on a footstool, and reading by firelight, while the
rest of the family were still at table. I was incessantly wondering that
this was permitted; and intensely, though silently grateful I was for
the impunity and the indulgence. It never extended to the omission of
any of my proper business. I learned my lessons; but it was with the
prospect of reading while I was brushing my hair at bedtime; and many a
time have I stood reading, with the brush suspended, till I was far too
cold to sleep. I made shirts with due diligence,--being fond of sewing;
but it was with Goldsmith, or Thomson, or Milton open on my lap, under
my work, or hidden by the table, that I might learn pages and cantos by
heart. The event justified my parents in their indulgence. I read more
and more slowly, fewer and fewer authors, and with ever-increasing
seriousness and reflexion, till I became one of the slowest of readers,
and a comparatively sparing one.--Of course, one example is not a rule
for all; but the number of ravenous readers among children is so large,
and among adults so small in comparison, that I am disposed to consider
it a general fact that when the faculties, naturally developed, reach a
certain point of forwardness, it is the time for laying in a store of
facts and impressions from books which are needed for ulterior purposes.
The parents' main business during this process is to look to the quality
of the books read:--I mean merely to see that the child has the freest
access to those of the best quality. Nor do I mean only to such as the
parent may think good for a child of such and such an age. The child's
own mind is a truer judge in this case than the parents' suppositions.
Let but noble books be on the shelf,--the classics of our language,--and
the child will get nothing but good.
The last thing that parents need fear is that the young reader will be
hurt by passages in really good authors which might raise a blush a few
years later. Whatever children do not understand slips through the mind,
and leaves no trace; and what they do understand of matters of passion
is to them divested of its mischief. Purified editions of noble books
are monuments of wasted labour: for it ought to be with adults as it is
with children;--their purity should be an all-sufficient purifier.
The second stage in the Intellectual Education of the Household
children, then seems to be that in which the young creatures, having
learned to use their own limbs and senses, and acquired the command of
speech, begin to use their powers for the acquisition of materials for
future thought. They listen, they look about them, they inquire, they
read; and, above all, they dream. Life is for them all pictures.
Everything comes to them in pictures. In preparation for the more
serious work to come, the parent has chiefly to watch and follow
Nature;--to meet the requirements of the child's mind, put the material
of knowledge in its way, and furnish it with the arts necessary for the
due use of its knowledge and its nobler powers:--the arts of reading,
ready writing, and the recording and working of numbers; and the
knowledge of the grammar of some one language, at least. Besides this,
these best days of his memory should be used for storing up
word-knowledge, and technical rules, and, as a luxury after these dry
efforts, as much poetry as the pupil is disposed to learn; which will be
a good deal, if the selection is, in any degree, left to his own choice:
and some portion of it may well be so.
Thus far, here is nothing that may not be supplied in the most homely
Household in the land, where there is any value for the human intellect,
and any intention to educate the children. It is difficult to say what
more could be done in the school-room of a palace. The intellect of the
high and low is of the same nature, and developes itself in the same
modes. While its training depends on the love and good sense of parents,
as in this stage, it depends simply on the quality of the parents
whether the children of the palace or of the cottage are the better
educated.
"No mystery is here; no special boon
For high and not for low; for proudly graced,
And not for meek of heart."