how far I differ from Mr. Spencer. I believe that there is no one study
which is suited to train the faculties of the mind at every stage of
its development, and that when we have decided on the necessity of this
or that knowledge, we must consider further what is the right time for
acquiring it. I believe that intellectual education should aim, not so
much at communicating facts, however valuable, as at showing the boy
what true knowledge is, and giving him the power and the _disposition_
to acquire it. I believe that the exclusively scientific teaching which
Mr. Spencer approves would not effect this. It would lead at best to
a very one-sided development of the mind. It might fail to engage the
pupil’s interest sufficiently to draw out his faculties, and in this
case the net outcome of his school-days would be no larger than at
present. Of the knowledges which Mr. Spencer recommends for special
objects, some, I think, would not conduce to the object, and some could
not be communicated early in life, (1.) For indirect self-preservation
we do not require to know physiology, but the results of physiology.
(2.) The science which bears on special pursuits in life has not, in
many cases, any pecuniary value, and although it is most desirable that
every one should study the science which makes his work intelligible to
him, this must usually be done when his schooling is over. The school
will have done its part if it has accustomed him to the intellectual
processes by which sciences are learned, and has given him an intelligent
appreciation of their value.[191] (3.) The right way of rearing and
training children should be studied, but not by the children themselves.
(4.) The knowledge which fits a man to discharge his duties as a citizen
is of great importance, and, as Dr. Arnold pointed out, is likely to be
entirely neglected by those who have to struggle for a livelihood. The
schoolmaster should, therefore, by no means neglect this subject with
those of his pupils whose school-days will soon be over, but, probably,
all that he can do is to cultivate in them a sense of the citizen’s
duty, and a capacity for being their own teachers. (5.) The knowledge
of poetry, belles-lettres, and the fine arts, which Mr. Spencer hands
over to the leisure part of education, is the only knowledge in his
program which I think should most certainly form a prominent part in the
curriculum of every school.
§ 16. I therefore differ, though with great respect, from the conclusions
at which Mr. Spencer has arrived. But I heartily agree with him that we
are bound to inquire into the relative value of knowledges, and if we
take, as I should willingly do, Mr. Spencer’s test, and ask how does
this or that knowledge influence action (including in our inquiry its
influence on mind and character, through which it bears upon action),
I think we should banish from our schools much that has hitherto been
taught in them, besides those old tormentors of youth (laid, I fancy, at
last—_requiescant in pace_)—the _Propria quæ Maribus_ and its kindred
absurdities. What we _should_ teach is, of course, not so easily decided
as what we _should not_.
§ 17. I now come to consider Mr. Spencer’s second chapter, in which,
under the heading of “Intellectual Education,” he gives an admirable
summing up of the main principles in which the great writers on the
subject have agreed, from Comenius downwards. These principles are,
perhaps, not all of them unassailable, and even where they are true,
many mistakes must be expected before we arrive at the best method of
applying them; but the only reason that can be assigned for the small
amount of influence they have hitherto exercised is, that most teachers
are as ignorant of them as of the abstrusest doctrines of Kant and Hegel.
§ 18. In stating these principles Mr. Spencer points out that they merely
form a commencement for a science of education. “Before educational
methods can be made to harmonise in character and arrangement with the
faculties in the mode and order of unfolding, it is first needful that
we ascertain with some completeness how the faculties _do_ unfold. At
present we have acquired on this point only a few general notions. These
general notions must be developed in detail—must be transformed into
a multitude of specific propositions before we can be said to possess
that _science_ on which the _art_ of education must be based. And
then, when we have definitely made out in what succession and in what
combinations the mental powers become active, it remains to choose out
of the many possible ways of exercising each of them, that which best
conforms to its natural mode of action. Evidently, therefore, it is not
to be supposed that even our most advanced modes of teaching are the
right ones, or nearly the right ones.” It is not to be wondered at that
we have no science of education. Those who have been able to observe
the phenomena have had no interest in generalising from them. Up to
the present time the schoolmaster has been a person to whom boys were
sent to learn Latin and Greek. He has had, therefore, no more need of
a science than the dancing-master.[192] But the present century, which
has brought in so many changes, will not leave the state of education
as it found it. Latin and Greek, if they are not dethroned in our higher
schools, will have their despotism changed for a very limited monarchy. A
course of instruction certainly without Greek and perhaps without Latin
will have to be provided for middle schools. Juster views are beginning
to prevail of the schoolmaster’s function. It is at length perceived
that he has to assist the development of the human mind, and perhaps,
by-and-bye, he may think it as well to learn all he can of that which he
is employed in developing. When matters have advanced as far as this, we
may begin to hope for a science of education. In Locke’s day he could
say of physical science that there was no such science in existence. For
thousands of years the human race had lived in ignorance of the simplest
laws of the world it inhabited. But the true method of inquiring once
introduced, science has made such rapid conquests, and acquired so great
importance, that some of our ablest men seem inclined to deny, if not the
existence, at least the value, of any other kind of knowledge. So, too,
when teachers seek by actual observation to discover the laws of mental
development, a science may be arrived at, which, in its influence on
mankind, would perhaps rank before any we now possess.
§ 19. Those who have read the previous Essays will have seen in various
forms most of the principles which Mr. Spencer enumerates, but I gladly
avail myself of his assistance in summing them up.
1. We should proceed from the simple to the complex, both in our choice
of subjects and in the way in which each subject is taught. We should
begin with but few subjects at once, and, successively adding to these,
should finally carry on all subjects abreast.
Each larger concept is made by a combination of smaller ones, and
presupposes them. If this order is not attended to in communicating
knowledge, the pupil can learn nothing but words, and will speedily sink
into apathy and disgust.
§ 20. That we must proceed from the known to the unknown is something
more than a corollary to the above;[193] because not only are new
concepts formed by the combination of old, but the mind has a liking
for what it knows, and this liking extends itself to all that can be
connected with its object. The principle of using the known in teaching
the unknown is so simple, that all teachers who really endeavour to make
anything understood, naturally adopt it. The traveller who is describing
what he has seen and what we have not seen tells us that it is in one
particular like this object, and in another like that object, with which
we are already familiar. We combine these different concepts we possess,
and so get some notion of things about which we were previously ignorant.
What is required in our teaching is that the use of the known should
be employed more systematically. Most teachers think of boys who have
no school learning as entirely ignorant. The least reflection shows,
however, that they know already much more than schools can ever teach
them. A sarcastic examiner is said to have handed a small piece of paper
to a student and told him to write _all he knew_ on it. Perhaps many
boys would have no difficulty in stating the sum of their school-learning
within very narrow limits, but with other knowledge a child of five years
old, could he write, might soon fill a volume.[194] Our aim should be to
connect the knowledge boys bring with them to the schoolroom with that
which they are to acquire there.[195] I suppose all will allow, whether
they think it a matter of regret or otherwise, that hardly anything
of the kind has hitherto been attempted. Against this state of things
I cannot refrain from borrowing Mr. Spencer’s eloquent protest. “Not
recognising the truth that the function of books is supplementary—that
they form an indirect means to knowledge when direct means fail, a
means of seeing through other men what you cannot see for yourself,
teachers are eager to give second-hand facts in place of first-hand
facts. Not perceiving the enormous value of that spontaneous education
which goes on in early years, not perceiving that a child’s restless
observation, instead of being ignored or checked, should be diligently
ministered to, and made as accurate and complete as possible, they insist
on occupying its eyes and thoughts with things that are, for the time
being, incomprehensible and repugnant. Possessed by a superstition which
worships the symbols of knowledge instead of the knowledge itself,
they do not see that only when his acquaintance with the objects and
processes of the household, the street, and the fields, is becoming
tolerably exhaustive, only then should a child be introduced to the new
sources of information which books supply, and this not only because
immediate cognition is of far greater value than mediate cognition, but
also because the words contained in books can be rightly interpreted into
ideas only in proportion to the antecedent experience of things.”[196]
While agreeing heartily in the spirit of this protest, I doubt whether we
should wait till the child’s acquaintance with the objects and processes
of the household, the streets, and the fields, is becoming tolerably
exhaustive before we give him instruction from books. The point of time
which Mr. Spencer indicates is, at all events, rather hard to fix, and
I should wish to connect book-learning as soon as possible with the
learning that is being acquired in other ways. Thus might both the books,
and the acts and objects of daily life, win an additional interest. If,
_e.g._, the first reading-books were about the animals, and later on
about the trees and flowers which the children constantly meet with,
and their attention was kept up by large coloured pictures, to which
the text might refer, the children would soon find both pleasure and
advantage in reading, and they would look at the animals and trees with
a keener interest from the additional knowledge of them they had derived
from books. This is, of course, only one small application of a very
influential principle.
§ 21. One marvellous instance of the neglect of this principle is found
in the practice of teaching Latin grammar before English grammar. As
Professor Seeley has so well pointed out, children bring with them to
school the knowledge of language in its concrete form. They may soon be
taught to observe the language they already know, and to find, almost
for themselves, some of the main divisions of words in it. But, instead
of availing himself of the child’s previous knowledge, the schoolmaster
takes a new and difficult language, differing as much as possible from
English, a new and difficult science, that of grammar, conveyed, too,
in a new and difficult terminology, and all this he tries to teach at
the same time. The consequence is that the science is destroyed, the
terminology is either misunderstood, or, more probably, associated with
no ideas, and even the language for which every sacrifice is made, is
found, in nine cases out of ten, never to be acquired at all.[197]
§ 22. 2. “All development is an advance from the indefinite to the
definite.” I do not feel very certain of the truth of this principle,
or of its application, if true. Of course, a child’s intellectual
conceptions are at first vague, and we should not forget this; but it is
rather a fact than a principle.
§ 23. 3. “Our lessons ought to start from the concrete, and end in the
abstract.” What Mr. Spencer says under this head well deserves the
attention of all teachers. “General formulas which men have devised to
express groups of details, and which have severally simplified their
conceptions by uniting many facts into one fact, they have supposed
must simplify the conceptions of a child also. They have forgotten that
a generalisation is simple only in comparison with the whole mass of
particular truths it comprehends; that it is more complex than any one of
these truths taken simply; that only, after many of these single truths
have been acquired, does the generalisation ease the memory and help the
reason; and that, to a mind not possessing these single truths, it is
necessarily a mystery. Thus, confounding two kinds of simplification,
teachers have constantly erred by setting out with “first principles,”
a proceeding essentially, though not apparently, at variance with the
primary rule [of proceeding from the simple to the complex], which
implies that the mind should be introduced to principles through the
medium of examples, and so should be led from the particular to the
general, from the concrete to the abstract.” In conformity with this
principle, Pestalozzi made the actual counting of things precede the
teaching of abstract rules in arithmetic. Basedow introduced weights
and measures into the school, and Mr. Spencer describes some exercise
in cutting out geometrical figures in cardboard, as a preparation for
geometry. The difficulty about such instruction is that it requires
apparatus, and apparatus is apt to get lost or out of order. But if
apparatus is good for anything at all, it is worth a little trouble.
There is a tendency in the minds of many teachers to depreciate
“mechanical appliances.” Even a decent black-board is not always to be
found in our higher schools. But, though such appliances will not enable
a bad master to teach well, nevertheless, other things being equal, the
master will teach better with them than without them. There is little
credit due to him for managing to dispense with apparatus. An author
might as well pride himself on being saving in pens and paper.
§ 24. 4. “The genesis of knowledge in the individual must follow the same
course as the genesis of knowledge in the race.” This is the thesis on
which I have no opinion to offer.
§ 25. 5. From the above principle Mr. Spencer infers that every study
should have a purely experimental introduction, thus proceeding through
an empirical stage to a rational.
§ 26. 6. A second conclusion which Mr. Spencer draws is that, in
education, the process of self-development should be encouraged to the
utmost. Children should be led to make their own investigations, and to
draw their own inferences. They should be told as little as possible,
and induced to discover as much as possible. I quite agree with Mr.
Spencer that this principle cannot be too strenuously insisted on, though
it obviously demands a high amount of intelligence in the teacher. But
if education is to be a training of the faculties, if it is to prepare
the pupil to teach himself, something more is needed than simply to
pour in knowledge and make the pupil reproduce it. The receptive and
reproductive faculties form but a small portion of a child’s powers,
and yet the only portion which many schoolmasters seek to cultivate.
It is indeed, not easy to get beyond this point; but the impediment
is in us, not in the children. “Who can watch,” ask Mr. Spencer, “the
ceaseless observation, and inquiry, and inference, going on in a child’s
mind, or listen to its acute remarks in matters within the range of
its faculties, without perceiving that these powers it manifests, if
brought to bear systematically upon studies _within the same range_,
would readily master them without help? This need for perpetual telling
results from our stupidity, not from the child’s. We drag it away
from the facts in which it is interested, and which it is actively
assimilating of itself. We put before it facts far too complex for it to
understand, and therefore distasteful to it. Finding that it will not
voluntarily acquire these facts, we thrust them into its mind by force
of threats and punishment. By thus denying the knowledge it craves, and
cramming it with knowledge it cannot digest, we produce a morbid state
of its faculties, and a consequent disgust for knowledge in general.
And when, as a result, partly of the stolid indolence we have brought
on, and partly of still-continued unfitness in its studies, the child
can understand nothing without explanation, and becomes a mere passive
recipient of our instruction, we infer that education must necessarily
be carried on thus. Having by our method induced helplessness, we make
the helplessness a reason for our method.” It is, of course, much easier
to point out defects than to remedy them: but every one who has observed
the usual indifference of schoolboys to their work, and the waste of time
consequent on their inattention or only half-hearted attention to the
matter before them, and then thinks of the eagerness with which the same
boys throw themselves into the pursuits of their play-hours, will feel a
desire to get at the cause of this difference; and, perhaps, it may seem
to him partly accounted for by the fact that their school-work makes a
monotonous demand on a single faculty—the memory.
§ 27. 7. This brings me to the last of Mr. Spencer’s principles of
intellectual education. Instruction must excite the interest of the
pupils and therefore be pleasurable to them. “Nature has made the
healthful exercise of our faculties both of mind and body pleasurable.
It is true that some of the highest mental powers as yet but little
developed in the race, and congenitally possessed in any considerable
degree only by the most advanced, are indisposed to the amount of
exertion required of them. But these, in virtue of their very complexity
will in a normal course of culture come last into exercise, and will,
therefore, have no demands made on them until the pupil has arrived at
an age when ulterior motives can be brought into play, and an indirect
pleasure made to counterbalance a direct displeasure. With all faculties
lower than these, however, the immediate gratification consequent on
activity is the normal stimulus, and under good management the only
needful stimulus. When we have to fall back on some other, we must take
the fact as evidence that we are on the wrong track. Experience is daily
showing with greater clearness that there is always a method to be found
productive of interest—even of delight—and it ever turns out that this is
the method proved by all other tests to be the right one.”
§ 28. As far as I have had the means of judging, I have found that the
majority of teachers reject this principle. If you ask them why, most of
them will tell you that it is impossible to make school-work interesting
to children. A large number also hold that it is not desirable. Let us
consider these two points separately.
Of course, if it is not possible to get children to take interest in
anything they could be taught in school, there is an end of the matter.
But no one really goes as far as this. Every teacher finds that some of
the things boys are taught they like better than others, and perhaps
that one boy takes to one subject and another to another; and he also
finds, both of classes and individuals, that they always get on best
with what they like best. The utmost that can be maintained is, then,
that some subjects which must be taught will not interest the majority
of the learners. And if it be once admitted that it is desirable to make
learning pleasant and interesting to our pupils, this principle will
influence us to some extent in the subjects we select for teaching, and
still more in the methods by which we endeavour to teach them. I say we
shall be guided _to some extent_ in the selection of subjects. There
are theorists who assert that nature gives to young minds a craving for
their proper aliment, so that they should be taught only what they show
an inclination for. But surely our natural inclinations in this matter,
as in others, are neither on the one hand to be ignored, nor on the
other to be uncontrolled by such motives as our reason dictates to us.
We at length perceive this in the physical nurture of our children.
Locke directs that children are to have very little sugar or salt.
“Sweetmeats of all kinds are to be avoided,” says he, “which, whether
they do more harm to the maker or eater is not easy to tell.” (Ed. §
20.) Now, however, doctors have found out that young people’s taste for
sweets should in moderation be gratified, that they require sugar as
much as they require any other kind of nutriment. But no one would think
of feeding his children entirely on sweetmeats, or even of letting them
have an unlimited supply of plum puddings and hardbake. If we follow out
this analogy in nourishing the mind, we shall, to some extent, gratify
a child’s taste for “stories,” whilst we also provide a large amount
of more solid fare. But although we should certainly not ignore our
children’s likes and dislikes in learning, or in anything else, it is
easy to attach too much importance to them. Dislike very often proceeds
from mere want of insight into the subject. When a boy has “done” the
First Book of Euclid without knowing how to judge of the size of an
angle, or the Second Book without forming any conception of a rectangle,
no one can be surprised at his not liking Euclid. And then the failure
which is really due to bad teaching is attributed by the master to the
stupidity of his pupil, and by the pupil to the dulness of the subject.
If masters really desired to make learning a pleasure to their pupils, I
think they would find that much might be done to effect this without any
alteration in the subjects taught.
But the present dulness of school-work is not without its defenders. They
insist on the importance of breaking in the mind to hard work. This can
only be done, they say, by tasks which are repulsive to it. The schoolboy
does not like, and ought not to like, learning Latin grammar any more
than the colt should find pleasure in running round in a circle: the very
fact that these things are not pleasant makes them beneficial. Perhaps
a certain amount of such training may train _down_ the mind and qualify
it for some drudgery from which it might otherwise revolt; but if this
result is attained, it is attained at the sacrifice of the intellectual
activity which is necessary for any higher function. As Carlyle says,
(_Latter-Day PP._, No. iij), when speaking of routine work generally, you
want nothing but a sorry nag to draw your sand-cart; your high-spirited
Arab will be dangerous in such a capacity. But who would advocate for all
colts a training which should render them fit for nothing but such humble
toil? I shall say more about this further on (_v._ pp. 472 _ff._); here I
will merely express my strong conviction that boys’ minds are frequently
dwarfed, and their interest in intellectual pursuits blighted, by the
practice of employing the first years of their school-life in learning
by heart things which it is quite impossible for them to understand or
care for. Teachers set out by assuming that little boys cannot understand
anything, and that all we can do with them is to keep them quiet and cram
them with forms which will come in useful at a later age. When the boys
have been taught on this system for two or three years, their teacher
complains that they are stupid and inattentive, and that so long as they
can say a thing by heart they never trouble themselves to understand it.
In other words, the teacher grumbles at them for doing precisely what
they have been taught to do, for repeating words without any thought of
their meaning.