ON PUBLIC AND PRIVATE EDUCATION.
The anxious parent, after what has been said concerning tasks and
classical literature, will inquire whether the whole plan of education
recommended in the following pages, is intended to relate to public or
to private education. It is intended to relate to both. It is not
usual to send children to school before they are eight or nine years
old: our first object is to show how education may be conducted to
that age in such a manner, that children may be well prepared for the
acquisition of all the knowledge usually taught at schools, and may be
perfectly free from many of the faults that pupils sometimes have
acquired before they are sent to any public seminary. It is obvious,
that public preceptors would be saved much useless labour and anxiety,
were parents to take some pains in the previous instruction of their
children; and more especially, if they were to prevent them from
learning a taste for total idleness, or habits of obstinacy and of
falsehood, which can scarcely be conquered by the utmost care and
vigilance. We can assure parents, from experience, that if they pursue
steadily a proper plan with regard to the understanding and the moral
habits, they will not have much trouble with the education of their
children after the age we have mentioned, as long as they continue to
instruct them at home; and if they send them to public schools, their
superiority in intellect and in conduct will quickly appear. Though we
have been principally attentive to all the circumstances which can be
essential to the management of young people during the first nine or
ten years of their lives, we have by no means confined our
observations to this period alone; but we have endeavoured to lay
before parents a general view of the human mind (as far as it relates
to our subject) of proper methods of teaching, and of the objects of
rational instruction--so that they may extend the principles which we
have laid down, through all the succeeding periods of education, and
may apply them as it may best suit their peculiar situations, or their
peculiar wishes. We are fully conscious, that we have executed but
very imperfectly even our own design; that experimental education is
yet but in its infancy, and that boundless space for improvement
remains; but we flatter ourselves, that attentive parents and
preceptors will consider with candour the practical assistance which
is offered to them, especially as we have endeavoured to express our
opinions without dogmatical presumption, and without the illiberal
exclusion of any existing institutions or prevailing systems. People
who, even with the best intentions, attack with violence any of these,
and who do not consider what is practicable, as well as what ought to
be done, are not likely to persuade, or to convince mankind to
increase the general sum of happiness, or their own portion of
felicity. Those who really desire to be of service to society, should
point out decidedly, but with temperate indulgence for the feelings
and opinions of others, whatever appears to them absurd or
reprehensible in any prevailing customs: having done this, they will
rest in the persuasion that what is most reasonable, will ultimately
prevail.
Mankind, at least the prudent and rational part of mankind, have an
aversion to pull down, till they have a moral certainty that they can
build up a better edifice than that which has been destroyed. Would
you, says an eminent writer, convince me, that the house I live in is
a bad one, and would you persuade me to quit it; build a better in my
neighbourhood; I shall be very ready to go into it, and shall return
you my very sincere thanks. Till another house be ready, a wise man
will stay in his old one, however inconvenient its arrangement,
however seducing the plans of the enthusiastic projector. We do not
set up for projectors, or reformers: we wish to keep steadily in view
the actual state of things, as well as our own hopes of progressive
improvement; and to seize and combine all that can be immediately
serviceable: all that can assist, without precipitating improvements.
Every well informed parent, and every liberal school-master, must be
sensible, that there are many circumstances in the management of
public education which might be condemned with reason; that too much
time is sacrificed to the study of the learned languages; that too
little attention is paid to the general improvement of the
understanding and formation of the moral character; that a
school-master cannot pay attention to the temper or habits of each of
his numerous scholars; and that parents, during that portion of the
year which their children spend with them, are not sufficiently
solicitous to co-operate with the views of the school-master; so that
the public is counteracted by the private education. These, and many
other things, we have heard objected to schools; but what are we to
put in the place of schools? How are vast numbers who are occupied
themselves in public or professional pursuits, how are men in business
or in trade, artists or manufacturers, to educate their families, when
they have not time to attend to them; when they may not think
themselves perfectly prepared to undertake the classical instruction
and entire education of several boys; and when, perhaps, they may not
be in circumstances to engage the assistance of such a preceptor as
they could approve? It is obvious, that if in such situations parents
were to attempt to educate their children at home, they would harass
themselves, and probably spoil their pupils irrecoverably. It would,
therefore, be in every respect impolitic and cruel to disgust those
with public schools, who have no other resource for the education of
their families. There is another reason which has perhaps operated
upon many in the middle ranks of life unperceived, and which
determines them in favour of public education. Persons of narrow
fortune, or persons who have acquired wealth in business, are often
desirous of breeding up their sons to the liberal professions: and
they are conscious that the company, the language, and the style of
life, which their children would be accustomed to at home, are beneath
what would be suited to their future professions. Public schools
efface this rusticity, and correct the faults of provincial dialect:
in this point of view they are highly advantageous. We strongly
recommend it to such parents to send their children to large public
schools, to Rugby, Eton, or Westminster; not to any small school; much
less to one in their own neighbourhood. Small schools are apt to be
filled with persons of nearly the same stations, and out of the same
neighbourhood: from this circumstance, they contribute to perpetuate
uncouth antiquated idioms, and many of those obscure prejudices which
cloud the intellect in the future business of life.
Whilst we admit the necessity which compels the largest portion of
society to prefer public seminaries of education, it is incumbent upon
us to caution parents from expecting that the moral character, the
understandings, or the tempers of their children, should be improved
at large schools; there the learned languages, we acknowledge, are
successfully taught. Many satisfy themselves with the assertion, that
public education is the least troublesome, that a boy once sent to
school is settled for several years of life, and will require only
short returns of parental care twice a year at the holydays. It is
hardly to be supposed, that those who think in this manner, should
have paid any anxious, or at least any judicious attention to the
education of their children, previously to sending them to school. It
is not likely that they should be very solicitous about the
commencement of an education which they never meant to finish: they
would think, that what could be done during the first few years of
life, is of little consequence; that children from four to seven years
old are too young to be taught; and that a school would speedily
supply all deficiencies, and correct all those faults which begin at
that age to be troublesome at home. Thus to a public school, as to a
general infirmary for mental disease, all desperate subjects are sent,
as the last resource. They take with them the contagion of their
vices, which quickly runs through the whole tribe of their companions,
especially amongst those who happen to be nearly of their own age,
whose sympathy peculiarly exposes them to the danger of infection. We
are often told, that as young people have the strongest sympathy with
each other, they will learn most effectually from each other's
example. They do learn quickly from example, and this is one of the
dangers of a public school: a danger which is not necessary, but
incidental; a danger against which no school-master can possibly
guard, but which parents can, by the previous education of the pupils,
prevent. Boys are led, driven, or carried to school; and in a
school-room they first meet with those who are to be their fellow
prisoners. They do not come with fresh unprejudiced minds to commence
their course of social education; they bring with them all the ideas
and habits which they have already learned at their respective homes.
It is highly unreasonable to expect, that all these habits should be
reformed by a public preceptor. If he had patience, how could he have
time for such an undertaking? Those who have never attempted to break
a pupil of any one bad habit, have no idea of the degree of patience
requisite to success. We once heard an officer of dragoons assert,
that he would rather break twenty horses of their bad habits, than one
man of his. The proportionate difficulty of teaching boys, may be
easily calculated.
It is sometimes asserted, that the novelty of a school life, the
change of situation, alters the habits, and forms in boys a new
character. Habits of eight or nine years standing, cannot be
instantaneously, perhaps can never be radically, destroyed; they will
mix themselves imperceptibly with the new ideas which are planted in
their minds, and though these may strike the eye by the rapidity of
their growth, the others, which have taken a strong root, will not
easily be dispossessed of the soil. In this new character, as it is
called, there will, to a discerning eye, appear a strong mixture of
the old disposition. The boy, who at home lived with his father's
servants, and was never taught to have any species of literature, will
not acquire a taste for it at school, merely by being compelled to
learn his lessons; the boy, who at home was suffered to be the little
tyrant of a family, will, it is true, be forced to submit to superior
strength or superior numbers at school;[29] but does it improve the
temper to practise alternately the habits of a tyrant and a slave? The
lesson which experience usually teaches to the temper of a school-boy,
is, that strength, and power, and cunning, will inevitably govern in
society: as to reason, it is out of the question, it would be hissed
or laughed out of the company. With respect to social virtues, they
are commonly amongst school-boys so much mixed with party spirit, that
they mislead even the best dispositions. A boy at home, whose
pleasures are all immediately connected with the idea of self, will
not feel a sudden enlargement of mind from entering a public school.
He will, probably, preserve his selfish character in his new society;
or, even suppose he catches that of his companions, the progress is
not great in moral education from selfishness to spirit of party: the
one is a despicable, the other a dangerous, principle of action. It
has been observed, that what we are when we are twenty, depends on
what we were when we were ten years old. What a young man is at
college, depends upon what he was at school; and what he is at school,
depends upon what he was before he went to school. In his father's
house, the first important lessons, those which decide his future
abilities and character, must be learned. We have repeated this idea,
and placed it in different points of view, in hopes that it will catch
and fix the attention. Suppose that parents educated their children
well for the first eight or nine years of their lives, and then sent
them all to public seminaries, what a difference this must immediately
make in public education: the boys would be disposed to improve
themselves with all the ardour which the most sanguine preceptor would
desire; their tutors would find that there was nothing to be
_unlearned_; no habits of idleness to conquer; no perverse stupidity
would provoke them; no capricious contempt of application would appear
in pupils of the quickest abilities. The moral education could then be
made a part of the preceptor's care, with some hopes of success; the
pupils would all have learned the first necessary moral principles and
habits; they would, consequently, be all fit companions for each
other; in each other's society they would continue to be governed by
the same ideas of right and wrong by which they had been governed all
their lives; they would not have any new character to learn; they
would improve, by mixing with numbers, in the social virtues, without
learning party spirit; and though they would love their companions,
they would not, therefore, combine together to treat their instructers
as pedagogues and tyrants. This may be thought an Utopian idea of a
school; indeed it is very improbable, that out of the numbers of
parents who send their children to large schools, many should suddenly
be much moved, by any thing that we can say, to persuade them to take
serious trouble in their previous instruction. But much may be
effected by gradual attempts. Ten well educated boys, sent to a public
seminary at nine or ten years old, would, probably, far surpass their
competitors in every respect; they would inspire others with so much
emulation, would do their parents and preceptors so much credit, that
numbers would eagerly inquire into the causes of their superiority;
and these boys would, perhaps, do more good by their example, than by
their actual acquirements. We do not mean to promise, that a boy
judiciously educated, shall appear at ten years old a prodigy of
learning; far from it: we should not even estimate his capacity, or
the chain of his future progress, by the quantity of knowledge stored
in his memory, by the number of Latin lines he had got by rote, by his
expertness in repeating the rules of his grammar, by his pointing out
a number of places readily in a map, or even by his knowing the
latitude and longitude of all the capital cities in Europe; these are
all useful articles of knowledge: but they are not the test of a good
education. We should rather, if we were to examine a boy of ten years
old, for the credit of his parents, produce proofs of his being able
to reason accurately, of his quickness in invention, of his habits of
industry and application, of his having learned to generalize his
ideas, and to apply his observations and his principles: if we found
that he had learned all, or any of these things, we should be in
little pain about grammar, or geography, or even Latin; we should be
tolerably certain that he would not long remain deficient in any of
these; we should know that he would overtake and surpass a competitor
who had only been technically taught, as certainly as that the giant
would overtake the panting dwarf, who might have many miles the start
of him in the race. We do not mean to say, that a boy should not be
taught the principles of grammar, and some knowledge of geography, at
the same time that his understanding is cultivated in the most
enlarged manner: these objects are not incompatible, and we
particularly recommend it to _parents who intend to send their
children to school_, early to give them confidence in themselves, by
securing the rudiments of literary education; otherwise their pupils,
with a real superiority of understanding, may feel depressed, and may,
perhaps, be despised, when they mix at a public school with numbers
who will estimate their abilities merely by their proficiency in
particular studies.
Mr. Frend,[30] in recommending the study of arithmetic for young
people, has very sensibly remarked, that boys bred up in public
schools, are apt to compare themselves with each other merely as
classical scholars; and, when they afterwards go into the world
excellent Greek and Latin scholars, are much astonished to perceive,
that many of the companions whom they had under-valued at school, get
before them when they come to actual business, and to active life.
Many, in the pursuit of their classical studies, have neglected all
other knowledge, especially that of arithmetic, that useful, essential
branch of knowledge, without which neither the abstract sciences nor
practical arts can be taught. The precision which the habit of
applying the common rules of arithmetic, gives to the understanding,
is highly advantageous, particularly to young people of vivacity, or,
as others would say, of genius. The influence which the habit of
estimating has upon that part of the moral character called prudence,
is of material consequence. We shall further explain upon this subject
when we speak of the means of teaching arithmetic and reasoning to
children; we only mention the general ideas here, to induce
intelligent parents to attend early to these particulars. If they mean
to send their children to public classical schools, it must be
peculiarly advantageous to teach them early the rudiments of
arithmetic, and to give them the habit of applying their knowledge in
the common business of life. We forbear to enumerate other useful
things, which might easily be taught to young people before they leave
home, because we do not wish to terrify with the apprehension, that a
perplexing variety of things are to be taught. One thing well taught,
is better than a hundred taught imperfectly.
The effect of the pains which are taken in the first nine or ten years
of a child's life, may not be apparent immediately to the view, but it
will gradually become visible. To careless observers, two boys of nine
years old, who have been very differently educated, may appear nearly
alike in abilities, in temper, and in the promise of future character.
Send them both to a large public school, let them be placed in the
same new situation, and exposed to the same trials, the difference
will then appear: the difference in a few years will be such as to
strike every eye, and people will wonder what can have produced in so
short a time such an amazing change. In the Hindoo art of dyeing, the
same liquors communicate different colours to particular spots,
according to the several bases previously applied: to the ignorant
eye, no difference is discernible in the ground, nor can the design be
distinctly traced till the air, and light, and open exposure, bring
out the bright and permanent colours to the wondering eye of the
spectator.
Besides bestowing some attention upon early education, parents, who
send their children to school, may much assist the public preceptor
by judicious conduct towards children during that portion of the year
which is usually spent at home.[31] Mistaken parental fondness,
delights to make the period of time which children spend at home, as
striking a contrast as possible with that which they pass at school.
The holydays are made a jubilee, or rather resemble the Saturnalia.
Even if parents do not wish to represent a school-master as a tyrant,
they are by no means displeased to observe, that he is not the friend
or favourite of their children. They put themselves in mean
competition with him for their affection, instead of co-operating with
him in all his views for their advantage. How is it possible, that any
master can long retain the wish or the hope of succeeding in any plan
of education, if he perceives that his pupils are but partially under
his government; if his influence over their minds be counteracted from
time to time by the superior influence of their parents? An influence
which he must not wish to destroy. To him is left the power to punish,
it is true; but parents reserve to themselves the privilege to reward.
The ancients did not suppose, that even Jupiter could govern the world
without the command of pain and pleasure. Upon the vases near his
throne, depended his influence over mankind.
And what are these holyday delights? And in what consists parental
rewards? In dissipation and idleness. With these are consequently
associated the idea of happiness and the name of pleasure; the name is
often sufficient, without the reality. During the vacation, children
have a glimpse of what is called _the world_; and then are sent back
to their prison with heads full of visions of liberty, and with a
second-sight of the blessed lives which they are to lead when they
have left school for ever. What man of sense, who has studied the
human mind, who knows that the success of any plan of education must
depend upon the concurrence of every person, and every circumstance,
for years together, to the same point, would undertake any thing more
than the partial instruction of pupils, whose leading associations and
habits must be perpetually broken? When the work of school is undone
during the holydays, what hand could have the patience perpetually to
repair the web?
During the vacations spent at home, children may be made extremely
happy in the society and in the affections of their friends, but they
need not be taught, that idleness is pleasure: on the contrary,
occupation should, by all possible methods, be rendered agreeable to
them; their school acquisitions, their knowledge and taste, should be
drawn out in conversation, and they should be made to feel the value
of what they have been taught; by these means, there would be some
connection, some unity of design, preserved in their education. Their
school-masters and tutors should never become the theme of insipid
ridicule; nor should parents ever put their influence in competition
with that of a preceptor: on the contrary, his pupils should uniformly
perceive, that from his authority there is no appeal, except to the
superior power of reason, which should be the avowed arbiter to which
all should be submitted.
Some of the dangerous effects of that mixed society at schools, of
which we have complained, may be counteracted by the judicious conduct
of parents during the time which children spend at home. A better view
of society, more enlarged ideas of friendship and of justice, may be
given to young people, and the vile principle of party spirit may be
treated with just contempt and ridicule. Some standard, some rules may
be taught to them, by which they may judge of character independently
of prejudice, or childish prepossession.
"I do not like you, Doctor Fell;
The reason why, I cannot tell:
But this I know full well,
I do not like you, Doctor Fell"--
is an exact specimen of the usual mode of reasoning, of the usual
method in which an ill educated school-boy expresses his opinion and
feelings about all persons, and all things. "The reason why," should
always be inquired whenever children express preference or aversion.
To connect the idea of childhood with that of inferiority and
contempt, is unjust and impolitic; it should not be made a reproach to
young people to be young, nor should it be pointed out to them, that
when they are some years older, they will be more respected; the
degree of respect which they really command, whether in youth or age,
will depend upon their own conduct, their knowledge, and their powers
of being useful and agreeable to others. If they are convinced of
this, children will not at eight years old long to be fifteen, or at
fifteen to be one and twenty; proper subordination would be preserved,
and the scale of happiness would not have a forced and false
connection with that of age. If parents did not first excite foolish
wishes in the minds of their children, and then imprudently promise
that these wishes shall be gratified at certain periods of their
existence, children would not be impatient to pass over the years of
childhood; those years which idle boys wish to pass over as quickly as
possible, men without occupation regret as the happiest of their
existence. To a child, who has been promised that he shall put on
manly apparel on his next birthday, the pace of time is slow and heavy
until that happy era arrive. Fix the day when a boy shall leave
school, and he wishes instantly to mount the chariot, and lash the
horses of the sun. Nor when he enters the world, will his restless
spirit be satisfied; the first step gained, he looks anxiously forward
to the height of manly elevation,
"And the brisk minor pants for twenty-one"
These juvenile anticipations diminish the real happiness of life;
those who are in continual expectation, never enjoy the present; the
habit of expectation is dangerous to the mind, it suspends all
industry, all voluntary exertion. Young men, who early acquire this
habit, find existence insipid to them without the immediate stimuli of
hope and fear: no matter what the object is, they must have something
to sigh for; a curricle, a cockade, or an opera-dancer.
Much may be done by education to prevent this boyish restlessness.
Parents should refrain from those imprudent promises, and slight
inuendoes, which the youthful imagination always misunderstands and
exaggerates.--Never let the moment in which a young man quits a
seminary of education, be represented as a moment in which all
instruction, labour, and restraints, cease. The idea, that he must
restrain and instruct himself, that he must complete his own
education, should be excited in a young man's mind; nor should he be
suffered to imagine that his education is finished, because he has
attained to some given age.
When a common school-boy bids adieu to that school which he has been
taught to consider as a prison, he exults in his escape from books and
masters, and from all the moral and intellectual discipline, to which
he imagines that it is the peculiar disgrace and misery of childhood
to be condemned. He is impatient to be thought a man, but his ideas of
the manly character are erroneous, consequently his ambition will only
mislead him. From his companions whilst at school, from his father's
acquaintance, and his father's servants, with whom he has been
suffered to consort during the vacations, he has collected imperfect
notions of life, fashion, and society. These do not mix well in his
mind with the examples and precepts of Greek and Roman virtue: a
temporary enthusiasm may have been kindled in his soul by the
eloquence of antiquity; but, for want of sympathy, this enthusiasm
necessarily dies away. His heroes are not the heroes of the present
times; the maxims of his sages are not easily introduced into the
conversation of the day. At the tea-table he now seldom hears even
the name of Plato; and he often blushes for not knowing a line from a
popular English poet, whilst he could repeat a cento from Horace,
Virgil, and Homer; or an antistrophe from AEschylus or Euripides. He
feels ashamed to produce the knowledge he has acquired, because he has
not learned sufficient address to produce it without pedantry. On his
entrance into the world, there remains in his mind no grateful, no
affectionate, no respectful remembrance of those under whose care he
has passed so many years of his life. He has escaped from the
restraints imposed by his school-master, and the connection is
dissolved for ever.
But when a son separates from his father, if he has been well
educated, he wishes to continue his own education: the course of his
ideas is not suddenly broken; what he has been, joins immediately with
what he is to be; his knowledge applies to real life, it is such as he
can use in all companies; there is no sudden metamorphosis in any of
the objects of his ambition; the boy and man are the same individual.
Pleasure will not influence him merely by her name, or by the contrast
of her appearance with the rigid discipline of scholastic learning; he
will feel the difference between pleasure and happiness, and his early
taste for domestic life will remain or return upon his mind. His old
precepts and new motives are not at war with each other; his
experience will confirm his education, and external circumstances will
call forth his latent virtues. When he looks back, he can trace the
gradual growth of his knowledge; when he looks forward, it is with the
delightful hope of progressive improvement. A desire in some degree to
repay the care, to deserve the esteem, to fulfil the animating
prophecies, or to justify the fond hopes of the parent who has watched
over his education, is one of the strongest motives to an ingenuous
young man; it is an incentive to exertion in every honourable pursuit.
A son who has been judiciously and kindly educated, will feel the
value of his father's friendship. The perception, that no man can be
more entirely interested in every thing that concerns him, the idea,
that no one more than his father can share in his glory or in his
disgrace, will press upon his heart, will rest upon his understanding.
Upon these ideas, upon this common family interest, the real strength
of the connection between a father and his son depends. No public
preceptor can have the same advantages; his connection with his pupil
is not necessarily formed to last.
After having spoken with freedom, but we hope with moderation, of
public schools, we may, perhaps, be asked our opinion of universities.
Are universities the most splendid repositories of learning? We are
not afraid to declare an opinion in the negative. Smith, in his Wealth
of Nations, has stated some objections to them, we think, with
unanswerable force of reasoning. We do not, however, wish to destroy
what we do not entirely approve. Far be that insanity from our minds
which would, like Orlando, tear up the academic groves; the madness of
innovation is as destructive as the bigotry of ancient establishments.
The learning and the views of the rising century must have different
objects from those of the wisdom and benevolence of Alfred, Balsham,
or Wolsey; and, without depreciating or destroying the magnificence or
establishments of universities, may not their institutions be
improved? May not their splendid halls echo with other sounds than the
exploded metaphysics of the schools? And may not other learning be as
much rewarded and esteemed as pure _latinity_?
We must here distinctly point out, that young men designed for the
army or the navy, should not be educated in private families. The
domestic habits, the learned leisure of private education, are
unsuited to them; it would be absurd to waste many years in teaching
them the elegancies of classic literature, which can probably be of no
essential use to them; it would be cruel to give them a nice and
refined choice of right and wrong, when it will be their professional
duty to act under the command of others; when implicit, prompt,
unquestioning obedience must be their first military virtue. Military
academies, where the sciences practically essential to the professions
are taught, must be the best situations for all young sailors and
soldiers; strict institution is the best education for them. We do not
here inquire how far these professions are necessary in society; it is
obvious, that in the present state of European cultivation, soldiers
and sailors are indispensable to every nation. We hope, however, that
a taste for peace may, at some future period in the history of the
world, succeed to the passion for military glory; and in the mean
time, we may safely recommend it to parents, never to trust a young
man designed for a soldier, to the care of a philosopher, even if it
were possible to find one who would undertake the charge.
We hope that we have shown ourselves the friends of the public
preceptor, that we have pointed out the practicable means of improving
public institutions by parental care and parental co-operation. But,
until such a meliorating plan shall actually have been carried into
effect, we cannot hesitate to assert, that even when the abilities of
the parent are inferiour to those of the public preceptor, the means
of ensuring success preponderate in favour of private education. A
father, who has time, talents, and temper, to educate his family, is
certainly the best possible preceptor; and his reward will be the
highest degree of domestic felicity. If, from his situation, he is
obliged to forego this reward, he may select some man of literature,
sense, and integrity, to whom he can confide his children. Opulent
families should not think any reward too munificent for such a private
preceptor. Even in an economic point of view, it is prudent to
calculate how many thousands lavished on the turf, or lost at the
gaming table, might have been saved to the heirs of noble and wealthy
families by a judicious education.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] V. Barne's Essay on public and private education. Manchester
Society.
[30] V. Mr. Frend's Principles of Algebra.
[31] V. Williams's Lectures on Education.