Education at Home has been thus aptly illustrated: History and Geography
should begin at home. If we want a boy to know some day the families of
the Herods and the Cæsars, let him start by learning who was his own
grandfather. The Church Catechism rightly commences by making the child
tell his own name; it would be in many cases almost puzzling, but in all
cases and senses a most proper question, to ask him, further, the names
of his godfathers and godmothers; and so carrying him gradually onward,
he would know, what seldom happens, the kings of England before he
attempts those of Israel and Judah. This principle holds as true of
places as of persons. The things that touch us nearest interest us most.
Geography should begin from the school-walls: “Which side of this room
does the sun rise on?” “Does Church-lane run west or north?” “Whither
does the brook flow that rises on Squash-hill?” In this way the young
scholar would in time be brought to comprehend the round world and his
own position on it, and probably with some clearer perception of the
truth and relation of things than if he had begun by rote: “The earth is
a terraqueous globe, depressed at the poles, consisting of,” &c. But we
are all taught on the contrary plan. We begin at the wrong end; for, in
the ladder of learning, _Ego_, not Adam, is the true No. 1. We start
from the equator instead of High-street, and the result is the
lamentable fact, that even educated men are strangers in their own
country, and thousands die within the sound of Bow-bells who have never
seen the inside of St. Paul’s. Topography, then, should precede
geography. Yet perhaps there is not a schoolroom in England where a
county map is to be found hung up on the wall. Frightened by the
remembrance of having been once the deluded subscriber to a
Topographical Dictionary, even students have a horror of the word; and
the subject is consigned, in expensive folios, to a few professed
antiquaries, or to some eccentric member of a county family, who emerges
every third or fourth generation to preserve a provincial dignity which
he would not willingly let die.[70]
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Footnote 70:
_Quarterly Review._
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