not anticipate the discoveries of science, but his language is very
different from what we should expect from a writer in the pre-scientific
age, _e.g._, “To serve the turn of these two, both _sense_ and _motion_,
Nature hath planted in our body a _brain_, the prince of all our parts,
which by spreading sinews of all sorts throughout all our parts doth work
all those effects which either _sense_ is seen in or _motion_ perceived
by.” (_El._, p. 32.) But much as he thinks of the body Mulcaster is no
materialist. “Last of all our soul hath in it an imperial prerogative
of understanding beyond sense, of judging by reason, of directing by
both, for duty towards God, for society towards men, for conquest in
affections, for purchase in knowledge, and such other things, whereby
it furnisheth out all manner of uses in this our mortal life, and
bewrayeth in itself a more excellent being than to continue still in this
roaming pilgrimage.” (p. 33.) The grand thing, he says, is to bring all
these abilities to perfection “which so heavenly a benefit is begun by
education, confirmed by use, perfected with continuance which crowneth
the whole work.” (p. 34.) “Nature makes the boy toward; nurture sees him
forward.” (p. 35.) The neglect of the material world which has been for
ages the source of mischief of all kinds in the schoolroom, and which has
not yet entirely passed away, would have been impossible if Mulcaster’s
elementary course had been adopted. “Is the body made by Nature nimble to
run, to ride, to swim, to fence, to do anything else which beareth praise
in that kind for either profit or pleasure? And doth not the Elementary
help them all forward by precept and train? The hand, the ear, the eye
be the greatest instruments whereby the receiving and delivery of our
learning is chiefly executed, and doth not this Elementary instruct the
hand to write, to draw, to play; the eye to read by letters, to discern
by line, to judge by both; the ear to call for voice and sound with
proportion for pleasure, with reason for wit? Generally whatsoever gift
Nature hath bestowed upon the body, to be brought forth or bettered by
the mean of train for any profitable use in our whole life, doth not this
Elementary both find it and foresee it?” (_El._, p. 35). “_The hand,
the ear, the eye, be the greatest instruments_,” said the Elizabethan
schoolmaster. So says the Victorian reformer.
[51] I wish some good author would write a book on _Unpopular Truths_,
and show how, on some subjects, wise men go on saying the same thing
in all ages and nobody listens to them. Plato said “In every work the
beginning is the most important part, especially in dealing with anything
young and tender.” (_Rep._, bk. ii, 377; Davies and Vaughan, p. 65.) And
the complaints about “bad grounding” prove our common neglect of what
Mulcaster urged three centuries ago: “For the _Elementarie_ because good
scholars will not abase themselves to it, it is left to the meanest, and
therefore to the worst. For that the first grounding would be handled
by the best, and his reward would be greatest, because both his pains
and his judgment should be with the greatest. And it would easily allure
sufficient men to come down so low, if they might perceive that reward
would rise up. No man of judgment will contrary this point, neither can
any ignorant be blamed for the contrary: the one seeth the thing to be
but low in order, the other knoweth the ground to be great in laying, not
only for the matter which the child doth learn: which is very small in
show though great for process: but also for the manner of handling his
wit, to hearten him for afterward, which is of great moment. The first
master can deal but with a few, the next with more, and so still upward
as reason groweth on and receives without forcing. It is the foundation
well and soundly laid, which makes all the upper building muster, with
countenance and continuance. If I were to strike the stroke, as I am
but to give counsel, the first pains truly taken should in good truth
be most liberally recompensed; and less allowed still upward, as the
pains diminish and the ease increaseth. Whereat no master hath cause to
repine, so he may have his children well grounded in the _Elementarie_.
Whose imperfection at this day doth marvellously trouble both masters and
scholars, so that we can hardly do any good, nay, scantly tell how to
place the too too raw boys in any certain form, with hope to go forward
orderly, the ground-work of their entry being so rotten underneath.”
(_PP._, pp. 233, 4.)
[52] Quaint as we find Mulcaster in his mode of expression, the thing
expressed is sometimes rather what we should expect from Herbert Spencer
than from a schoolmaster of the Renascence. I have met with nothing
more modern in thought than the following: “In time all learning may be
brought into one tongue, and that natural to the inhabitant: so that
schooling for tongues may prove needless, as once they were not needed;
but it can never fall out that arts and sciences in their right nature
shall be but most necessary for any commonwealth that is not given over
unto too too much barbarousness.” (_PP._, 240.)
[53] “Subject to a regulation like that of the ancient Spartans, the
theft of knowledge in our sex is only connived at while carefully
concealed, and if displayed [is] punished with disgrace.” So says Mrs.
Barbauld, and I have met with similar passages in other female writers.
[54] John Brinsley (the elder) who married a sister of Bishop Hall’s and
kept school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch (was it the _Grammar School_?) was one
of the best English writers on education. In his _Consolation for our
Grammar Schooles_, published early in the sixteen hundreds, he says:
“Amongst others myself having first had long experience of the manifold
evils which grow from the ignorance of a right order of teaching, and
afterwards some gracious taste of the sweetness that is to be found in
the better courses truly known and practised, I have betaken me almost
wholly, for many years unto this weighty work, and that not without much
comfort, through the goodness of our blessed God.” (p. 1.) “And for the
most part wherein any good is done, it is ordinarily effected by the
endless vexation of the painful master, the extreme labour and terror
of the poor children with enduring far overmuch and long severity. Now
whence proceedeth all this but because so few of those who undertake
this function are acquainted with any good method or right order of
instruction fit for a grammar school?” (p. 2.) It is sad to think how
many generations have since suffered from teachers “unacquainted with
any good method or right order of instruction.” And it seems to justify
Goethe’s dictum, “_Der Engländer ist eigentlich ohne Intelligenz_,” that
for several generations to come this evil will be but partially abated.
[55] At Cambridge (as also in London and Edinburgh) there is already a
Training College for Women Teachers in Secondary Schools.
[56] All we know of his life may soon be told. Richard Mulcaster was a
Cumberland man of good family, an “esquier borne,” as he calls himself,
who was at Eton, then King’s College, Cambridge, then at Christ Church,
Oxford. His birth year was probably 1530 or 1531, and he became a student
of Christ Church in 1555. In 1558 he settled as a schoolmaster in London,
and was elected first headmaster of Merchant Taylors’ School, which dates
from 1561. Here he remained twenty-five years, _i.e._ till 1586. Whether
he then became, as H. B. Wilson says, surmaster of St. Paul’s, I cannot
determine, but “he came in” highmaster in 1596, and held that office
for twelve years. Though in 1598 Elizabeth made him rector of Stanford
Rivers, there can be no doubt that he did not give up the highmastership
till 1608, when he must have been about 77 years old. He died at
Stanford Rivers three years later. While at Merchant Taylors’, viz., in
1581 and 1582, he published the two books which have secured for him a
permanent place in the history of education in England. The first was his
_Positions_, the second “The first part” (and, as it proved, the only
part) of his _Elementarie_. Of his other writings, his _Cato Christianus_
seems to have been the most important, and a very interesting quotation
from it has been preserved in Robotham’s Preface to the _Janua_ of
Comenius; but the book itself is lost: at least I never heard of a copy,
and I have sought in vain in the British Museum, and at the University
Libraries of Oxford and Cambridge. His _Catechismus Paulinus_ is a
rare book, but Rev. J. H. Lupton has found and described a copy in the
Bodleian.
[57] _Lectures and Essays_: _English in School_, by J. R. Seeley, p.
222. Elsewhere in the same lecture (p. 229) Professor Seeley says: “The
schoolmaster might set this right. Every boy that enters the school is
a _talking_ creature. He is a performer, in his small degree, upon the
same instrument as Milton and Shakespeare. Only do not sacrifice this
advantage. Do not try by artificial and laborious processes to give him
a new knowledge before you have developed that which he has already.
Train and perfect the gift of speech, unfold all that is in it, and you
train at the same time the power of thought and the power of intellectual
sympathy, you enable your pupil to think the thoughts and to delight in
the words of great philosophers and poets.” I wish this lecture were
published separately.
[58] _Rep._ bk. vii, 536, _ad f._; Davies and Vaughan, p. 264.
[59] In Buisson (_Dictionnaire_) No. 7 is “The children must have
frequent play, and a break after every lesson.” Raumer connects this with
No. 6, and says: “breaks were rendered necessary by Ratke’s plan, which
kept the learners far too silent.”
[60] In the matter of grammar Ratke’s advice, so long disregarded, has
recently been followed in the “Parallel Grammar Series,” published by
Messrs. Sonnenschein.
[61] The ordinary teaching of almost every subject offers illustrations
of the neglect of this principle. Take, _e.g._, the way in which children
are usually taught to read. First, they have to say the alphabet—a
very easy task as it seems to us, but if we met with a strange word
of _twenty-six syllables_, and that not a compound word, but one of
which every syllable was new to us, we might have some difficulty in
remembering it. And yet such a word would be to us what the alphabet is
to a child. When he can perform this feat, he is next required to learn
the visual symbols of the sounds and to connect these with the vocal
symbols. Some of the vocal symbols bring the child in contact with the
sound itself, but most are simply conventional. What notion does the
child get of the aspirate from the name of the letter _h_? Having learnt
twenty-six visual and twenty-six vocal symbols, and connected them
together, the child _finally comes to the sounds_ (over 40 in number)
_which the symbols are supposed to represent_.
[62] See Mr. E. E. Bowen’s vigorous essay on “Teaching by means of
Grammar,” in _Essays on a Liberal Education_, 1867.
I have returned to the subject of language-learning in § 15 of _Jacotot_
in the _note_. See page 426.
[63] Preface to the _Prodromus_.
[64] Preface to _Prodromus_, first edition, p. 40; second edition (1639),
p. 78. The above is Hartlib’s translation, see _A Reformation of Schools,
&c._, pp. 46, 47.
[65] Preface to _Prodromus_, first edition, p. 40; second edition, p. 79.
_A Reformation, &c._, p. 47.
[66] Very interesting are the “immeasurable labours and intellectual
efforts” of Master Samuel Hartlib, whom Milton addresses as “a person
sent hither by some good providence from a far country, to be the
occasion and incitement of great good to this island.” (_Of Education_,
A.D. 1644.) See Masson’s _Life of Milton_, vol. iii; also biographical
and bibliographical account of Hartlib by H. Dircks, 1865. Hartlib’s
mother was English. His father, when driven out of Poland by triumph of
the Jesuits, settled at Elbing, where there was an English “Company of
Merchants” with John Dury for their chaplain. Hartlib came to England not
later than 1628, and devoted himself to the furtherance of a variety of
schemes for the public good. He was one of those rare beings who labour
to promote the schemes of others as if they were their own. He could,
as he says, “contribute but little” himself, but “being carried forth
to watch for the opportunities of provoking others, who can do more, to
improve their talents, I have found experimentally that my endeavours
have not been without effect.” (Quoted by Dircks, p. 66.) The philosophy
of Bacon seemed to have introduced an age of boundless improvement; and
men like Comenius, Hartlib, Petty, and Dury, caught the first unchecked
enthusiasm. “There is scarce one day,” so Hartlib wrote to Robert Boyle,
“and one hour of the day or night, being brim full with all manner of
objects of the most public and universal nature, but my soul is crying
out ‘Phosphore redde diem! Quid gaudia nostra moraris? Phosphore redde
diem!’”
But in this world Hartlib looked in vain for the day. The income of £300
a year allowed him by Parliament was £700 in arrears at the Restoration,
and he had then nothing to hope. His last years were attended by much
physical suffering and by extreme poverty. He died as Evelyn thought at
Oxford in 1662, but this is uncertain.
[67] _Dilucidatio_, Hartlib’s trans., p. 65.
[68] The _Dilucidation_, as he calls it, is added. All the books above
mentioned are in the Library of the British Museum under _Komensky_.
[69] Masson’s _Milton_, vol. iii, p. 224, Prof. Masson is quoting _Opera
Didactica_, tom. ii, Introd.
[70] _Unum Necessarium_, quoted by Raumer.
Compare George Eliot: “By desiring what is perfectly good, even when we
don’t quite know what it is, and cannot do what we would, we are part of
the Divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the
struggle with darkness narrower.”—_Middlemarch_, bk. iv, p. 308 of first
edition.
[71] Compare Mulcaster, _supra_, p. 94.
[72] Comenius here follows Ratke, who, as I have mentioned above (p.
116), required beginners to study the translation _before the original_.
[73] Professor Masson (_Life of Milton_, vol. iii, p. 205, _note_) gives
us the following from chap. ix (cols. 42-44), of the _Didactica Magna_:—
“Nor, to say something particularly on this subject, can any sufficient
reason be given why the weaker sex [_sequior sexus_, literally the
_later_ or _following_ sex, is his phrase, borrowed from Apuleius, and,
though the phrase is usually translated the inferior sex, it seems to
have been chosen by Comenius to avoid that implication] should be wholly
shut out from liberal studies whether in the native tongue or in Latin.
For equally are they God’s image; equally are they partakers of grace,
and of the Kingdom to come; equally are they furnished with minds agile
and capable of wisdom, yea, often beyond our sex; equally to them is
there a possibility of attaining high distinction, inasmuch as they
have often been employed by God Himself for the government of peoples,
the bestowing of wholesome counsels on Kings and Princes, the science
of medicine and other things useful to the human race, nay even the
prophetical office, and the rattling reprimand of Priests and Bishops
[etiam ad propheticum munus, et increpandos Sacerdotes Episcoposque, are
the words; and as the treatise was prepared for the press in 1638 one
detects a reference, by the Moravian Brother in Poland to the recent
fame of Jenny Geddes, of Scotland]. Why then should we admit them to
the alphabet, but afterwards debar them from books? Do we fear their
rashness? The more we occupy their thoughts, the less room will there be
in them for rashness, which springs generally from vacuity of mind.”
[74] Translated by Daniel Benham as _The School of Infancy_. London, 1858.
[75] Here Comenius seems to be thinking of the intercourse of children
when no older companion is present; Froebel made more of the very
different intercourse when their thoughts and actions are led by some
one who has studied how to lead them. Children constantly want help
from their elders even in amusing themselves. On the other hand, it is
only the very wisest of mortals who can give help enough and _no more_.
Self-dependence may sometimes be cultivated by “a little wholesome
neglect.”
[76] Comical and at the same time melancholy results follow. In an
elementary school, where the children “took up” geography for the
Inspector, I once put some questions about St. Paul at Rome. I asked in
what country Rome was, but nobody seemed to have heard of such a place.
“It’s geography!” said I, and some twenty hands went up directly: their
owners now answered quite readily, “In Italy.”
[77] “A talent for History may be said to be born with us, as our chief
inheritance. In a certain sense all men are historians. Is not every
memory written quite full of annals...? Our very speech is curiously
historical. Most men, you may observe, speak only to narrate.” (Carlyle
on _History_. Miscellanies.)
[78] South Kensington, which controls the drawing of millions of
children, says precisely the opposite, and prescribes a kind of drawing,
which, though it may give manual skill to adults, does not “afford
delight” to the mind of children.
[79] “Generalem nos intendimus institutionem omnium qui homines nati
sunt, ad omnia humana.... Vernaculæ (scholæ) scopus metaque erit, ut
omnis juventus utriusque sexus, intra annum sextum et duodecimum seu
decimum tertium, ea addoceatur quorum usus per totam vitam se extendat.”
I quote this Latin from the excellent article _Coménius_ (by several
writers) in Buisson’s _Dictionnaire_. It is a great thing to get an
author’s exact words. Unfortunately the writer in the _Dictionnaire_
follows custom and does not give the means of verifying the quotation.
Comenius in Latin I have never seen except in the British Museum.
[80] In Sermon on Charity Schools, A.D. 1745. The Bishop points out that
“training up children is a very different thing from merely teaching
them some truths necessary to be known or believed.” He goes into the
historical aspect of the subject. As since the days of Elizabeth there
has been legal provision for the maintenance of the poor, there has
been “need also of some particular legal provision in behalf of poor
children for their _education_; this not being included in what we
call maintenance.” “But,” says the Bishop, “it might be necessary that
a burden so entirely new as that of a poor-tax was at the time I am
speaking of, should be as light as possible. Thus the legal provision
for the poor was first settled without any particular consideration of
that additional want in the case of children; as it still remains with
scarce any alteration in this respect.” And _remained_ for nearly a
century longer. Great changes naturally followed and will follow from the
extension of the franchise; and another century will probably see us with
a Folkschool worthy of its importance. By that time we shall no longer be
open to the sarcasm of “the foreign friend:” “It is highly instructive
to visit English elementary schools, for there you find everything that
should be avoided.” (M. Braun quoted by Mr. A. Sonnenschein. The _Old_
Code was in force.)
[81] “Adhuc sub judice lis est.” I find the editor of an American
educational paper brandishing in the face of an opponent as a quotation
from Professor N. A. Calkins’ “Ear and Voice Training”: “The senses are
the only powers by which children can gain the elements of knowledge;
and until these have been trained to act, no definite knowledge can be
acquired.” But Calkins says, “act, under direction of the mind.”
[82] “What do you learn from ‘Paradise Lost’? Nothing at all. What do
you learn from a cookery book? Something new, something that you did
not know before, in every paragraph. But would you therefore put the
wretched cookery book on a higher level of estimation than the divine
poem? What you owe to Milton is not any _knowledge_, of which a million
separate items are but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly
level; what you owe is _power_, that is, exercise and expansion to your
own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and
each separate influx is a step upward—a step ascending as upon a Jacob’s
ladder from earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All the steps
of knowledge from first to last carry you further on the same plane, but
could never raise you one foot above your ancient level of earth; whereas
the very _first_ step in power is a flight, is an ascending into another
element where earth is forgotten.” I have met with this as a quotation
from De Quincey.
[83] When I visited (some years ago) the “École Modèle” at Brussels
I was told that books were used for _nothing_ except for learning to
read. Comenius was saved from this consequence of his realism by his
fervent Christianity. He valued the study of the Bible as highly as the
Renascence scholars valued the study of the classics, though for a very
different reason. He cared for the Bible not as literature, but as the
highest authority on the problems of existence. Those who, like Matthew
Arnold, may attribute to it far less authority may still treasure it as
literature, while those who despise literature and recognise no authority
above things would limit us to the curriculum of the “École Modèle” and
care for natural science only.
In this country we are fortunately able to advocate some reforms which
were suggested by the realism of Comenius without incurring any suspicion
of rejecting his Christianity. It is singular to see how the highest
authorities of to-day—men conversant with the subject on the side of
practice as well as theory—hold precisely the language which practical
men have been wont to laugh at as “theoretical nonsense” ever since
the days of Comenius. A striking instance will be found in a lecture
by the Principal of the Battersea Training College (Rev. Canon Daniel)
as reported in _Educational Times_, July, 1889. Compare what Comenius
said (_supra_ p. 151) with the following: “Children are not sufficiently
required to use their senses. They are allowed to observe by deputy. They
look at Nature through the spectacles of Books, and through the eyes of
the teacher, but do not observe for themselves. It might be expected that
in object lessons and science lessons, which are specially intended to
cultivate the observing faculty, this fault would be avoided, but I do
not find that such is the case. I often hear lessons on objects that are
not object lessons at all. The object is not allowed to speak for itself,
eloquent though it is, and capable though it is of adapting its teaching
to the youngest child who interrogates it. The teacher buries it under a
heap of words and second-hand statements, thereby converting the object
lesson into a verbal lesson and throwing away golden opportunities of
forming the scientific habit of mind. Now mental science teaches us that
our knowledge of the sensible qualities of the material world can come to
us only through our senses, and through the right senses. If we had no
senses we should know nothing about the material world at all; if we had
a sense less we should be cut off from a whole class of facts; if we had
as many senses as are ascribed to the inhabitants of Sirius in Voltaire’s
novel, our knowledge would be proportionately greater than it is now.
Words cannot compensate for sensations. The eloquence of a Cicero would
not explain to a deaf man what music is, or to a blind man what scarlet
is. Yet I have frequently seen teachers wholly disregard these obvious
truths. They have taught as though their pupils had eyes that saw not,
and ears that heard not, and noses that smelled not, and palates that
tasted not, and skins that felt not, and muscles that would not work.
They have insisted on taking the words out of Nature’s mouth and speaking
for her. They have thought it derogatory to play a subordinate part to
the object itself.”
This subject has been well treated by Mr. Thos. M. Balliet in a paper on
shortening the curriculum (_New York School Journal_, 10th Nov., 1888).
“Studies,” says he, “are of two kinds (1) studies which supply the mind
with thoughts of images, and (2) those which give us ‘labels,’ _i.e._ the
means of indicating and so communicating thought. Under the last head
come the study of language, writing (including spelling), notation, &c.”
Mr. Balliet proposes, as Comenius did, that the symbol subjects shall
not be taken separately, but in connexion with the thought subjects.
Especially in the mother-tongue, we should study language for thought,
not thought for the sake of language.