teacheth that by this exercise of double translating is learned easily,
sensibly, by little and little, not only all the hard congruities of
grammar, the choice of ablest words, the right pronouncing of words and
sentences, comeliness of figures, and forms fit for every matter and
proper for every tongue: but, that which is greater also, in marking
daily and following diligently thus the footsteps of the best authors,
like invention of arguments, like order in disposition, like utterance
in elocution, is easily gathered up; and hereby your scholar shall be
brought not only to like eloquence, but also to all true understanding
and rightful judgment, both for writing and speaking.”
Again he says: “For speedy attaining, I durst venture a good wager if a
scholar in whom is aptness, love, diligence, and constancy, would but
translate after this sort some little book in Tully (as _De Senectute_,
with two Epistles, the first ‘Ad Quintum Fratrem,’ the other ‘Ad
Lentulum’), that scholar, I say, should come to a better knowledge in
the Latin tongue than the most part do that spend from five to six years
in tossing all the rules of grammar in common schools.” After quoting
the instance of Dion Prussæus, who came to great learning and utterance
by reading and following only two books, the _Phædo_, and _Demosthenes
de Falsa Legatione_, he goes on: “And a better and nearer example
herein may be our most noble Queen Elizabeth, who never took yet Greek
nor Latin grammar in her hand after the first declining of a noun and a
verb; but only by this double translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates
daily, without missing, every forenoon, and likewise some part of Tully
every afternoon, for the space of a year or two, hath attained to such a
perfect understanding in both the tongues, and to such a ready utterance
of the Latin, and that with such a judgment, as there be few now in both
Universities or elsewhere in England that be in both tongues comparable
with Her Majesty.” Ascham’s authority is indeed not conclusive on this
point, as he, in praising the Queen’s attainments, was vaunting his
own success as a teacher, and, moreover, if he flattered her he could
plead prevailing custom. But we have, I believe, abundant evidence that
Elizabeth was an accomplished scholar.
§ 12. Before I leave Ascham I must make one more quotation, to which I
shall more than once have occasion to refer. Speaking of the plan of
double translation, he says: “Ere the scholar have construed, parsed,
twice translated over by good advisement, marked out his six points by
skilful judgment, he shall have necessary occasion to read over every
lecture a _dozen times at the least_; which because he shall do always in
order, he shall do it always with pleasure. And pleasure allureth love:
love hath lust to labour; labour always obtaineth his purpose.”
§ 13. A good deal has been said, and perhaps something learnt, about the
teaching of Latin since the days of Ascham. As far as I know the method
which Ascham denounced, and which most English schoolmasters stuck to for
more than two centuries longer, has now been abandoned. No one thinks
of making the beginner learn by heart all the Latin Grammar before he is
introduced to the Latin language. To understand the machinery of which
an account is given in the grammar, the learner must see it at work, and
must even endeavour in a small way to work it himself. So it seems pretty
well agreed that the information given in the grammar must be joined
with some construing and some exercises from the very first. But here
the agreement ends. Our teachers, consciously or in ignorance, follow
one or more of a number of methodizers who have examined the problem
of language-learning, such men as Ascham, Ratke, Comenius, Jacotot,
Hamilton, Robertson, and Prendergast. These naturally divide themselves
into two parties, which I have ventured to call “Rapid Impressionists,”
and “Complete Retainers.” The first of these plunge the beginner into the
language, and trust to the great mass of vague impressions clearing and
defining themselves as he goes along. The second insist on his learning
at the first a very small portion of the language, and mastering and
retaining everything he learns. It will be seen that in the first stage
of the course Ascham is a “Complete Retainer.” He does not talk, like
Prendergast, of “mastery,” nor, like Jacotot, does he require the learner
to begin every lesson at the beginning of the book: but he makes the
pupil go over each lesson “a dozen times at the least,” before he may
advance beyond it. As for his practice of double translation, for the
advanced pupil it is excellent, but if it is required from the beginner,
it leads to unintelligent memorizing. I think I shall be able to show
later on that other methodizers have advanced beyond Ascham. (_Infra_,
246 _n._)
VIII.
MULCASTER.
(1531(?)-1611.)
§ 1. The history of English thought on education has yet to be written.
In the literature of education the Germans have been the pioneers, and
have consequently settled the routes; and when a track has once been
established few travellers will face the risk and trouble of leaving it.
So up to the present time, writers on the history of European education
after the Renascence have occupied themselves chiefly with men who lived
in Germany, or wrote in German. But the French are at length exploring
the country for themselves; and in time, no doubt, the English-speaking
races will show an interest in the thoughts and doings of their common
ancestors.
We know what toils and dangers men will encounter in getting to the
source of great rivers; and although, as Mr. Widgery truly says, “the
study of origins is not everybody’s business,”[47] we yet may hope that
students will be found ready to give time and trouble to an investigation
of great interest and perhaps some utility—the origin of the school
course which now affects the millions who have English for their
mother-tongue.
§ 2. In the fifteen hundreds there were published several works on
education, three of which, Elyot’s _Governour_, Ascham’s _Scholemaster_,
and Mulcaster’s _Positions_, have been recently reprinted.[48] Others,
such as Edward Coote’s _English Schoolmaster_, and Mulcaster’s
_Elementarie_, are pretty sure to follow, without serious loss, let us
hope, to their editors, though neither Coote nor Mulcaster are likely to
become as well-known writers as Roger Ascham.
§ 3. Henry Barnard, whose knowledge of our educational literature no
less than his labours in it, makes him the greatest living authority,
says that Mulcaster’s _Positions_ is “one of the earliest, and still one
of the best treatises in the English language.” (_English Pedagogy_,
2nd series, p. 177.) Mulcaster was one of the most famous of English
schoolmasters, and by his writings he proved that he was far in advance
of the schoolmasters of his own time, and of the times which succeeded.
But he paid the penalty of thinking of himself more highly than he
should have thought; and whether or no the conjecture is right that
Shakespeare had him in his mind when writing _Love’s Labour’s Lost_,
there is an affectation in Mulcaster’s style which is very irritating,
for it has caused even the master of Edmund Spenser to be forgotten. In
a curious and interesting allegory on the progress of language (in the
_Elementarie_, pp. 66, ff.), Mulcaster says that Art selects the best
age of a language to draw rules from, such as the age of Demosthenes
in Greece and of Tully in Rome; and he goes on: “Such a period in the
English tongue I take to be in our days for both the pen and the speech.”
And he suggests that the English language, having reached its zenith,
is seen to advantage, not in the writings of Shakespeare or Spenser,
but in those of Richard Mulcaster. After enumerating the excellencies
of the language, he adds: “I need no example in any of these, whereof
my own penning is a general pattern.” Here we feel tempted to exclaim
with Armado in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ (Act 5, sc. 2): “I protest the
schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical: too too vain, too too vain.” He
speaks elsewhere of his “so careful, I will not say so curious writing”
(_Elementarie_, p. 253), and says very truly: “Even some of reasonable
study can hardly understand the couching of my sentence, and the depth of
my conceit” (_ib._, 235). And this was the death-warrant of his literary
renown.
§ 4. But there is good reason why Mulcaster should not be forgotten.
When we read his books we find that wisdom which we are importing in
the nineteenth century was in a great measure offered us by an English
schoolmaster in the sixteenth. The latest advances in pedagogy have
established (1) that the end and aim of education is to develop the
faculties of the mind and body; (2) that all teaching processes should
be carefully adapted to the mental constitution of the learner; (3) that
the first stage in learning is of immense importance and requires a very
high degree of skill in the teacher; (4) that the brain of children,
especially of clever children, should not be subjected to “pressure”; (5)
that childhood should not be spent in learning foreign languages, but
that its language should be the mother-tongue, and its exercises should
include handwork, especially drawing; (6) that girls’ education should
be cared for no less than boys’; (7) that the only hope of improving
our schools lies in providing training for our teachers. These are all
regarded as planks in the platform of “the new education,” and these were
all advocated by Mulcaster.
§ 5. Before I point this out in detail I may remark how greatly education
has suffered from being confounded with learning. There are interesting
passages both in Ascham and Mulcaster which prove that the class-ideal
of the “scholar and gentleman” was of later growth. In the fifteen
hundreds learning was thought suitable, not for the rich, but for the
clever. Still, learning, and therefore education, was not for the many,
but the few. Mulcaster considers at some length how the number of the
educated is to be kept down (_Positions_, chapp. 36, 37, 39), though even
here he is in the van, and would have everyone taught to read and write
(_Positions_, chapp. 5, 36). But the true problem of education was not
faced till it was discovered that every human being was to be considered
in it. This was, I think, first seen by Comenius.
With this abatement we find Mulcaster’s sixteenth-century notions not
much behind our nineteenth.
§ 6. (1 & 2) “Why is it not good,” he asks, “to have every part of the
body and every power of the soul to be fined to his best?” (_PP._,
p. 34[49]). Elsewhere he says: “The end of education and train is to
help Nature to her perfection, which is, when all her abilities be
perfected in their habit, whereunto right elements be right great helps.
Consideration and judgment must wisely mark whereunto Nature is either
evidently given or secretly affectionate and must frame an education
consonant thereto.” (_El._, p. 28).
Michelet has with justice claimed for Montaigne that he drew the
teacher’s attention from the thing to be learnt to the _learner_: “_Non
l’objet, le savoir, mais le sujet, c’est l’homme._” (_Nos Fils_, p. 170.)
Mulcaster has a claim to share this honour with his great contemporary.
He really laid the foundation of a science of education. Discussing our
natural abilities, he says: “We have a perceiving by outward sense to
feel, to hear, to see, to smell, to taste all sensible things; which
qualities of the outward, being received in by the _common sense_ and
examined by _fantsie_, are delivered to _remembrance_, and afterward
prove our great and only grounds unto further knowledge.”[50] (_El._,
p. 32.) Here we see Mulcaster endeavouring to base education, or as he
so well calls it, “train,” on what we receive from Nature. Elsewhere he
speaks of the three things which we “find peering out of the little young
souls,” viz: “wit to take, memory to keep, and discretion to discern.”
(_PP._, p. 27.)
§ 7. (3) I have pointed out that the false ideal of the Renascence led
schoolmasters to neglect children. Mulcaster remarks that the ancients
considered the training of children should date from the birth; but he
himself begins with the school age. Here he has the boldness to propose
that those who teach the beginners should have the smallest number
of pupils, and should receive the highest pay. “The first groundwork
would be laid by the best workman,” says Mulcaster (_PP._, 130),
here expressing a truth which, like many truths that are not quite
convenient, is seldom denied but almost systematically ignored.[51]
§ 8. (4) In the _Nineteenth Century_ Magazine for November, 1888,
appeared a vigorous protest with nearly 400 signatures, many of which
carried great weight with them, against our _sacrifice of education to
examination_. Our present system, whether good or bad, is the result
of accident. Winchester and Eton had large endowments, and naturally
endeavoured by means of these endowments to get hold of clever boys. At
first no doubt they succeeded fairly well; but other schools felt bound
to compete for juvenile brains, and as the number of prizes increased,
many of our preparatory schools became mere racing stables for children
destined at 12 or 14 to run for “scholarship stakes.” Thus, in the
scramble for the money all thought of education has been lost sight of;
injury has been done in many cases to those who have succeeded, still
greater injury to those who have failed or who have from the first been
considered “out of the running.” These very serious evils would have
been avoided had we taken counsel with Mulcaster: “Pity it were for so
petty a gain to forego a greater; to win an hour in the morning and lose
the whole day after; as those people most commonly do which start out
of their beds too early before they be well awaked or know what it is
o’clock; and be drowsy when they are up for want of their sleep.” (_PP._,
p. 19; see also _El._, xi., pp. 52 ff.)
§ 9. (5) It would have been a vast gain to all Europe if Mulcaster had
been followed instead of Sturm. He was one of the earliest advocates of
the use of English instead of Latin (see Appendix, p. 534), and good
reading and writing in English were to be secured before Latin was begun.
His elementary course included these five things: English reading,
English writing, drawing, singing, playing a musical instrument. If the
first course were made to occupy the school-time up to the age of 12,
Mulcaster held that more would be done between 12 and 16 than between 7
and 17 in the ordinary way. There would be the further gain that the
children would not be set against learning. “Because of the too timely
onset too little is done in too long a time, and the school is made a
torture, which as it brings forth delight in the end when learning is
held fast, so should it pass on very pleasantly by the way, while it is
in learning.”[52] (_PP._, 33.)
§ 10. (6) Among the many changes brought about in the nineteenth century
we find little that can compare in importance with the advance in the
education of women. In the last century, whenever a woman exercised
her mental powers she had to do it by stealth,[53] and her position
was degraded indeed when compared not only with her descendants of the
nineteenth century, but also with her ancestors of the sixteenth. This I
know has been disputed by some authorities, _e.g._, by the late Professor
Brewer: but to others, _e.g._, to a man who, as regards honesty and
wisdom, has had few equals and no superiors in investigating the course
of education, I mean the late Joseph Payne, this educational superiority
of the women of Elizabeth’s time has seemed to be entirely beyond
question. On this point Mulcaster’s evidence is very valuable, and, to me
at least, conclusive. He not only “admits young maidens to learn,” but
says that “custom stands for him,” and that “the custom of my country ...
hath made the maidens’ train her own approved travail.” (_PP._, p. 167.)
§ 11. (7) Of all the educational reforms of the nineteenth century by
far the most fruitful and most expansive is, in my opinion, the training
of teachers. In this, as in most educational matters, the English,
though advancing, are in the rear. Far more is made of “training” on
the Continent and in the United States than in England. And yet we
made a good start. Our early writers on education saw that the teacher
has immense influence, and that to turn this influence to good account
he must have made a study of his profession and have learnt “the best
that has been thought and done” in it. Every occupation in life has a
traditional capital of knowledge and experience, and those who intend
to follow the business, whatever it may be, are required to go through
some kind of training or apprenticeship before they earn wages. To this
rule there is but one exception. In English elementary schools children
are paid to “teach” children, and in the higher schools the beginner is
allowed to blunder at the expense of his first pupils into whatever skill
he may in the end manage to pick up. But our English practice received no
encouragement from the early English writers, Mulcaster, Brinsley,[54]
and Hoole.
As far as I am aware the first suggestion of a training college for
teachers came from Mulcaster. He schemed seven special colleges at the
University; and of these one is for teachers. Some of his suggestions,
_e.g._, about “University Readers” have lately been adopted, though
without acknowledgment; and as the University of Cambridge has since
1879 acknowledged the existence of teachers, and appointed a “Teachers’
Training Syndicate,” we may perhaps in a few centuries more carry out his
scheme, and have training colleges at Oxford and Cambridge.[55] Some of
the reasons he gives us have not gone out of date with his English. They
are as follows:—
“And why should not these men (the teachers) have both this sufficiency
in learning, and such room to rest in, thence to be chosen and set forth
for the common service? Be either children or schools so small a portion
of our multitude? or is the framing of young minds, and the training
of their bodies so mean a point of cunning? Be schoolmasters in this
Realm such a paucity, as they are not even in good sadness to be soundly
thought on? If the chancel have a minister, the belfry hath a master:
and where youth is, as it is eachwhere, there must be trainers, or there
will be worse. He that will not allow of this careful provision for such
a seminary of masters, is most unworthy either to have had a good master
himself, or hereafter to have a good one for his. Why should not teachers
be well provided for, to continue their whole life in the school, as
_Divines_, _Lawyers_, _Physicians_ do in their several professions?
Thereby judgment, cunning, and discretion will grow in them: and masters
would prove old men, and such as _Xenophon_ setteth over children in the
schooling of _Cyrus_. Whereas now, the school being used but for a shift,
afterward to pass thence to the other professions, though it send out
very sufficient men to them, itself remaineth too too naked, considering
the necessity of the thing. I conclude, therefore, that this trade
requireth a particular college, for these four causes. 1. First, for the
subject being the mean to make or mar the whole fry of our State. 2.
Secondly, for the number, whether of them that are to learn, or of them
that are to teach. 3. Thirdly, for the necessity of the profession, which
may not be spared. 4. Fourthly, for the matter of their study, which is
comparable to the greatest professions, for language, for judgment, for
skill how to train, for variety in all points of learning, wherein the
framing of the mind, and the exercising of the body craveth exquisite
consideration, beside the staidness of the person.” (_PP._, 9 pp. 248, 9.)
§ 12. Though once a celebrated man, and moreover the master of Edmund
Spenser, Mulcaster has been long forgotten; but when the history of
education in England comes to be written, the historian will show that
few schoolmasters in the fifteen hundreds or since were so enlightened as
the first headmaster of Merchant Taylors’.[56]
IX.
RATICHIUS.
(1571-1635.)
§ 1. The history of Education in the fifteen hundreds tells chiefly of
two very different classes of men. First we have the practical men,
who set themselves to supply the general demand for instruction in
the classical languages. This class includes most of the successful
schoolmasters, such as Sturm, Trotzendorf, Neander, and the Jesuits.
The other class were thinkers, who never attempted to teach, but merely
gave form to truths which would in the end affect teaching. These were
especially Rabelais and Montaigne.
§ 2. With the sixteen hundreds we come to men who have earned for
themselves a name unpleasant in our ears, although it might fittingly be
applied to all the greatest benefactors of the human race. I mean the
name of _Innovators_. These men were not successful; at least they seemed
unsuccessful to their contemporaries, who contrasted the promised results
with the actual. But their efforts were by no means thrown away: and
posterity at least, has acknowledged its obligations to them. One sees
now that they could hardly have expected justice in their own time. It is
safe to adopt the customary plan; it is safe to speculate how that plan
may and should be altered; but it is dangerous to attempt to translate
new thought into new action, and boldly to advance without a track,
trusting to principles which may, like the compass, show you the right
direction, but, like the compass, will give you no hint of the obstacles
that lie before you.
The chief demands made by the Innovators have been: 1st, that the study
of _things_ should precede, or be united with, the study of _words_ (_v._
Appendix, p. 538); 2nd, that knowledge should be communicated, where
possible, by appeals to the senses; 3rd, that all linguistic study should
begin with that of the mother-tongue; 4th, that Latin and Greek should
be taught to such boys only as would be likely to complete a learned
education; 5th, that physical education should be attended to in all
classes of society for the sake of health, not simply with a view to
gentlemanly accomplishments; 6th, that a new method of teaching should be
adopted, framed “according to Nature.”
Their notions of method have, of course, been very various; but their
systems mostly agree in these particulars:—
1. They proceed from the concrete to the abstract, giving some knowledge
of the thing itself before the rules which refer to it. 2. They employ
the student in analysing matter put before him, rather than in working
synthetically according to precept. 3. They require the student to _teach
himself_ and investigate for himself under the superintendence and
guidance of the master, rather than be taught by the master and receive
anything on the master’s authority. 4. They rely on the interest excited
in the pupil by the acquisition of knowledge, and renounce coercion. 5.
Only that which is understood may be committed to memory (_v. supra, p.
74, n._)
§ 3. The first of the Innovators was Wolfgang Ratichius, who, oddly
enough, is known to posterity by a name he and his contemporaries never
heard of. His father’s name was Radtké or Ratké, and the son having
received a University education, translated this into Ratichius. With
our usual impatience of redundant syllables, we have attempted to reduce
the word to its original dimensions, and in the process have hit upon
_Ratich_, which is a new name altogether.