deals in a spirit in harmony with his enlightened conception of
general instruction. His assumption that the day-school is the
normal arrangement, and that either an entirely private or a
boarding-school education requires to be justified by special
circumstances, gives him a far wider outlook and a safer standpoint
than can be claimed for theorists, whose ideal, like that of Locke,
regards only the upbringing of a gentleman’s son at home under a
tutor, or, like that of Milton, involves the collection of large
numbers in boarding establishments of a conventual nature. This is
a matter that is naturally related to the extension of educational
opportunities throughout all classes of the community. As long
as only a select few were thought fit for learning, residence
in the monastery was almost an affair of necessary convenience,
but when teaching came to be more widely offered, the day-school
became a recognised institution, and such other arrangements as
implied greater expenditure were retained only by the rich, as
instruments of social exclusiveness. It is in countries where
distinctions of rank are comparatively little marked that the
day-school system has flourished most, and the partiality shown
in Mulcaster’s day for the services of a private tutor, and in
subsequent times for the boarding-school, is certainly to be taken
in great measure as an assertion of class superiority. Mulcaster
was no democrat, but he saw that the rich had more to lose than
to gain by arrangements that unduly restricted their experience.
Moreover he clearly discerned the importance of the family as
the true social unit, the nursery of the virtues that should be
developed in the school, and find exercise in the public, as well
as the private, conduct of life. It is not his fault that his
countrymen have become bound hand and foot to a system under which
the vast majority of well-to-do parents hand over their children,
body and soul, from the tenderest years to the care of professional
upbringers, divesting themselves with a light heart of the most
precious responsibilities that nature has conferred on them. “How
can education be private?” he asks, “It is an abuse of the name as
well as of the thing.” But on the other hand he urges--“All the
considerations which persuade people rather to have their children
taught at home than along with others outside, especially with
regard to their manners and behaviour, form arguments for their
boarding at least at home, if the parents will take their position
seriously.... They are distinct offices, to be a parent, and a
teacher, and the difficulties of upbringing are too serious for all
the responsibilities to be thrown into the hands of one alone.”
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?