may, with regard to the first stage, be divided into two parties which I
have called _Complete Retainers_ and _Rapid Impressionists_. Two Complete
Retainers, Robertson and Prendergast, have, as it seems to me, made,
since Jacotot, a great advance on his method and that of his predecessor
Ascham. As I have had a good deal of experience with beginners in German,
I will give from an old lecture of mine the main conclusions at which
I have arrived:—“My principle is to attack the most vital part of the
language, and at first to keep the area small, or rather to enlarge
it very slowly; but within that area I want to get as much variety
as possible. The study of a book written in the language should be
carried on _pari passu_ with drill in its common inflexions. Now arises
the question, Should the book be made with the object of teaching the
language, or should it be selected from those written for other purposes?
I see much to be said on either side. The three great facts we have to
turn to account in teaching a language, are these:—first, a few words
recur so constantly that a knowledge of them and grasp of them gives
us a power in the language quite out of proportion to their number;
second, large classes of words admit of many variations of meaning by
inflection, which variations we can understand from analogy; third,
compound words are formed _ad infinitum_ on simple laws, so that the root
word supplies the key to a whole family. Now, if the book is written by
the language-teacher, he has the whole language before him, and he can
make the most of all these advantages. He can use only the important
words of the language; he can repeat them in various connections; he can
bring the main facts of inflection and construction before the learner
in a regular order, which is a great assistance to the memory; he can
give the simple words before introducing words compounded of them; and
he can provide that, when a word occurs for the first time, the learners
shall connect it with its root meaning. A short book securing all these
advantages would, no doubt, be a very useful implement, but I have never
seen such a book. Almost all delectuses, &c., bury the learner with a
pile of new words, under which he feels himself powerless. So far as I
know, the book has yet to be written. And even if it were written, with
the greatest success from a linguistic point of view, it would of course
make no pretension to a meaning. Having myself gone through a course of
Ahn and of Ollendorf, I remember, as a sort of nightmare, innumerable
questions and answers, such as “Have you my thread stockings? No, I have
your worsted stockings.” Still more repulsive are the long sentences of
Mr. Prendergast:—“How much must I give to the cabdriver to take my father
to the Bank in New Street before his second breakfast, and to bring him
home again before half-past two o’clock?” I cannot forget Voltaire’s
_mot_, which has a good deal of truth in it,—“Every way is good but
the tiresome way.” And most of the books written for beginners are
inexpressibly tiresome. No doubt it will be said, “Unless you adopt the
rapid-impressionist plan, any book _must_ be tiresome. What is a meaning
at first becomes no meaning by frequent repetition.” This, however, is
not altogether true. I myself have taught Niebuhr’s _Heroengeschichten_
for years, and I know some chapters by heart; but the old tales of Jason
and Hercules as they are told in Niebuhr’s simple language do not bore me
in the least.
“Ein Begriff muss bei dem Worte sein,”
says the Student in Faust; and a notion—a very pleasing notion,
too—remains to me about every word in the _Heroengeschichten_.
These, then, would be my books to be worked at the same time by a
beginner, say in German:—A book for drill in the principal inflexions,
followed by the main facts about gender, &c., and a book like the
_Heroengeschichten_. This I would have prepared very much after the
Robertsonian manner. It should be printed, as should also the Primer,
in good-sized Roman type; though, in an appendix, some of it should be
reprinted in German type. The book should be divided into short lessons.
A translation of each lesson should be given in parallel columns. Then
should come a vocabulary, in which all useful information should be
given about the really important words, _the unimportant words being
neglected_. Finally should come _variations_, and exercises in the
lessons; and in these the important words of that and previous lessons
should be used exclusively. The exercises should be such as the pupils
could do in writing out of school, and _vivâ voce_ in school. They should
be very easy—real exercises in what is already known, not a series of
linguistic puzzles. The object of the exercises, and also of a vast
number of _vivâ voce_ questions, should be to accustom the pupil to use
his knowledge _readily_. (But some teachers, young teachers especially,
are always _cross_-examining, and seem to themselves to fail when their
questions are answered without difficulty.) The ear, the voice, the hand,
should all be practised on each lesson. When the construing is known,
transcription of the German is not by any means to be despised. A good
variety of transcription is, for the teacher to write the German clause
by clause on the black-board, and rub out each clause before the pupils
begin to write it. Then a known piece may be prepared for dictation. In
reading this as dictation, the master may introduce small variations, to
teach his pupils to keep their ears open. He may, as another exercise,
read the German aloud, and stop here and there for the boys to give the
English of the last sentence read; or he may read to them either the
exact German in the book or small variations on it, and make the pupils
translate _vivâ voce_, clause by clause. He may then ask questions on the
piece in German and require answers in English.
For exercises, there are many devices by which the pupil may be trained
to observation, and also be confirmed in his knowledge of back lessons.
The great teacher, F. A. Wolf, used to make his own children ascertain
how many times such and such a word occurred in such and such pages.
As M. Bréal says, children are collectors by nature; and, acting on
this hint, we might say, “Write in column all the dative cases on pages
_a_ to _c_, and give the English and the corresponding nominatives.”
Or, “Copy from those pages all the accusative prepositions with the
accusatives after them.” Or, “Write out the past participles, with
their infinitives.” Or, “Translate such and such sentences, and explain
them with reference to the context.” Or, questions may be asked on the
subject-matter of the book. There is no end to the possible varieties of
such exercises.
As soon as they get any feeling of the language, the pupils should learn
by heart some easy poetry in it. I should recommend their learning the
English of the piece first, and then getting the German _vivâ voce_ from
the teacher. To quicken the German in their minds, I think it is well
to give them in addition a German prose version, using almost the same
words. Variations of the more important sentences should be learnt at the
same time.
In all these suggestions you will see what I am aiming at. I wish the
learner to get a feeling of, and a power over, the main words of the
language and the machinery in which they are employed.
[183] I append in a note a passage from the old edition of this book
referring to the Cambridge man of forty years ago. “The typical Cambridge
man studies mathematics, not because he likes mathematics, or derives any
pleasure from the perception of mathematical truth, still less with the
notion of ever using his knowledge; but either because, if he is “a good
man,” he hopes for a fellowship, or because, if he cannot aspire so high,
he considers reading the thing to do, and finds a satisfaction in mental
effort just as he does in a constitutional to the Gogmagogs. When such a
student takes his degree, he is by no means a highly cultivated man; but
he is not the sort of man we can despise for all that. He has in him, to
use one of his own metaphors, a considerable amount of _force_, which
may be applied in any direction. He has great power of concentration and
sustained mental effort even on subjects which are distasteful to him. In
other words, his mind is under the control of his will, and he can bring
it to bear promptly and vigorously on anything put before him. He will
sometimes be half through a piece of work, while an average Oxonian (as
we Cambridge men conceive of him at least) is thinking about beginning.
But his training has taught him to value mental force without teaching
him to care about its application. Perhaps he has been working at the
gymnasium, and has at length succeeded in “putting up” a hundredweight.
In learning to do this, he has been acquiring strength for its own sake.
He does not want to put up hundredweights, but simply to be able to put
them up, and his reward is the consciousness of power. Now the tripos
is a kind of competitive examination in putting up weights. The student
who has been training for it, has acquired considerable mental vigour,
and when he has put up his weight he falls back on the consciousness of
strength which he seldom thinks of using. Having put up the heavier, he
despises the lighter weights. He rather prides himself on his ignorance
of such things as history, modern languages, and English literature. He
“can get those up in a few evenings,” whenever he wants them. He reminds
me, indeed, of a tradesman who has worked hard to have a large balance at
his banker’s. This done, he is satisfied. He has neither taste nor desire
for the things which make wealth valuable; but when he sees other people
in the enjoyment of them, he hugs himself with the consciousness that he
can write a cheque for such things whenever he pleases.”
[184] On this interesting subject I will quote three men who said
nothing _inepte_—De Morgan, Helps, and the first Sir James Stephen. De
Morgan, speaking of Jacotot’s plan, wrote:—“There is much truth in the
assertion that new knowledge hooks on easily to a little of the old
thoroughly mastered. The day is coming when it will be found out that
crammed erudition got up for examination, does not cast out any hooks
for more.” (_Budget of Paradoxes_, p. 3.) Elsewhere he says:—“When the
student has occupied his time in learning a moderate portion of many
different things, what has he acquired—extensive knowledge or useful
habits? Even if he can be said to have varied learning, it will not long
be true of him, for nothing flies so quickly as half-digested knowledge;
and when this is gone, there remains but a slender portion of useful
power. A small quantity of learning quickly evaporates from a mind which
never held any learning except in small quantities; and the intellectual
philosopher can perhaps explain the following phenomenon—that men who
have given deep attention to one or more liberal studies, can learn to
the end of their lives, and are able to retain and apply very small
quantities of other kinds of knowledge; while those who have never learnt
much of any one thing seldom acquire new knowledge after they attain to
years of maturity, and frequently lose the greater part of that which
they once possessed.”
Sir Arthur Helps in _Reading_ (_Friends in C._) says:—“All things are so
connected together that a man who knows one subject well, cannot, if he
would, have failed to have acquired much besides; and that man will not
be likely to keep fewer pearls who has a string to put them on than he
who picks them up and throws them together without method. This, however,
is a very poor metaphor to represent the matter; for what I would aim at
producing not merely holds together what is gained, but has vitality in
itself—is always growing. And anybody will confirm this who in his own
case has had any branch of study or human affairs to work upon; for he
must have observed how all he meets seems to work in with, and assimilate
itself to, his own peculiar subject. During his lonely walks, or in
society, or in action, it seems as if this one pursuit were something
almost independent of himself, always on the watch, and claiming its
share in whatever is going on.”
In his Lecture on _Desultory and Systematic Reading_, Sir James Stephen
said:—“Learning is a world, not a chaos. The various accumulations of
human knowledge are not so many detached masses. They are all connected
parts of one great system of truth, and though that system be infinitely
too comprehensive for any one of us to compass, yet each component member
of it bears to every other component member relations which each of us
may, in his own department of study, search out and discover for himself.
A man is really and soundly learned in exact proportion to the number and
to the importance of those relations which he has thus carefully examined
and accurately understood.”
[185] This essay, which was written nearly twenty-five years ago, I leave
as it stands. I take some credit to myself for having early recognised
the importance of a book now famous. (June, 1890.)
[186] This proposition has been ably discussed by President W. H. Payne.
_Contributions to the Science of Education._ “Education Values.”
[187] “The brewer,” as Mr. Spencer himself tells us, “if his business is
very extensive, finds it pay to keep a chemist on the premises”—pay a
good deal better, I suspect, than learning chemistry at school.
[188] Helps, who by taste and talent is eminently literary, put in this
claim for science more than 20 [now nearer 50] years ago. “The higher
branches of method cannot be taught at first; but you may begin by
teaching orderliness of mind. Collecting, classifying, contrasting, and
weighing facts are some of the processes by which method is taught....
Scientific method may be acquired without many sciences being learnt; but
one or two great branches of science must be accurately known.” (_Friends
in Council, Education._) Helps, though by his delightful style he never
gives the reader any notion of over compression, has told us more truth
about education in a few pages than one sometimes meets with in a
complete treatise.
[189] J. S. Mill (who by the way, would leave history entirely to private
reading, _Address at St. Andrews_, p. 21), has pointed out that “there
is not a fact in history which is not susceptible of as many different
explanations as there are possible theories of human affairs,” and
that “history is not the foundation but the verification of the social
science.” But he admits that “what we know of former ages, like what
we know of foreign nations, is, with all its imperfectness, of much
use, by correcting the narrowness incident to personal experience.”
(Dissertations, Vol. I, p. 112.)
[190] It is difficult to treat seriously the arguments by which Mr.
Spencer endeavours to show that a knowledge of science is necessary for
the practice or the enjoyment of the fine arts. Of course, the highest
art of every kind is based on science, that is, on truths which science
takes cognizance of and explains; but it does not therefore follow
that “without science there can be neither perfect production nor full
appreciation.” Mr. Spencer tells us of mistakes which John Lewis and
Rossetti have made for want of science. Very likely; and had those
gentlemen devoted much of their time to science we should never have
heard of their blunders—or of their pictures either. If they were to
paint a piece of woodwork, a carpenter might, perhaps, detect something
amiss in the mitring. If they painted a wall, a bricklayer might point
out that with their arrangement of stretchers and headers the wall would
tumble down for want of a proper bond. But even Mr. Spencer would not
wish them to spend their time in mastering the technicalities of every
handicraft, in order to avoid these inaccuracies. It is the business
of the painter to give us form and colour as they reveal themselves to
the eye, not to prepare illustrations of scientific text-books. The
physical sciences, however, are only part of the painter’s necessary
equipment, according to Mr. Spencer. “He must also understand how the
minds of spectators will be affected by the several peculiarities of his
work—a question in psychology!” Still more surprising is Mr. Spencer’s
dictum about poetry. “Its rhythm, its strong and numerous metaphors,
its hyperboles, its violent inversions, are simply exaggerations of
the traits of excited speech. To be good, therefore, poetry must pay
attention to those laws of nervous action which excited speech obeys.” It
is difficult to see how poetry can pay attention to anything. The poet,
of course must not violate those laws, but, if he _has paid attention_
to them in composing, he will do well to present his MS. to the local
newspaper. [It seems the class is not extinct of whom Pope wrote:—
“Some drily plain, without invention’s aid
“Write dull receipts how poems may be made.”
_Essay on Criticism._]
[191] Speaking of law, medicine, engineering, and the industrial arts,
J. S. Mill remarks: “Whether those whose speciality they are will learn
them as a branch of intelligence or as a mere trade, and whether having
learnt them, they will make a wise and conscientious use of them, or
the reverse, depends less on the manner in which they are taught their
profession, than upon _what sort of mind they bring to it—what kind
of intelligence and of conscience the general system of education has
developed in them_.”—Address at St. Andrews, p. 6.
[192] “Comme vous n’avez pas su ou comme vous n’avez pas voulu atteindre
la pensée de l’enfant, vous n’avez aucune action sur son développement
moral et intellectuel. Vous êtes le maître de latin et de grec.” Bréal.
_Quelques Mots, &c._, p. 243.
[193] Mr. Spencer does not mention this principle in his enumeration,
but, no doubt, considers he implies it.
[194] “Si l’on partageait toute la science humaine en deux parties, l’une
commune à tous les hommes, l’autre particulière aux savants, celle-ci
serait très-petite en comparaison de l’autre. Mais nous ne songeons guère
aux acquisitions générales, parce qu’elles se font sans qu’on y pense, et
même avant l’âge de raison; que d’ailleurs le savoir ne se fait remarquer
que par ses différences, et que, comme dans les équations d’algèbre, les
quantités communes se comptent pour rien.”—_Émile_, livre i.
[195] This is well said in Dr. John Brown’s admirable paper _Education
through the Senses_. (Horæ Subsecivæ, pp. 313, 314.)
[196] After remarking on the wrong order in which subjects are taught, he
continues, “What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by early thwartings,
and a coerced attention to books, what with the mental confusion produced
by teaching subjects before they can be understood, and in each of
them giving generalisations before the facts of which they are the
generalisations, what with making the pupil a mere passive recipient of
others’ ideas and not in the least leading him to be an active inquirer
or self-instructor, and what with taxing the faculties to excess, there
are very few minds that become as efficient as they might be.”
[197] A class of boys whom I once took in Latin Delectus denied, with
the utmost confidence, when I questioned them on the subject, that there
were any such things in English as verbs and substantives. On another
occasion, I saw a poor boy of nine or ten caned, because, when he had
said that _proficiscor_ was a deponent verb, he could not say what a
deponent verb was. Even if he had remembered the inaccurate grammar
definition expected of him, “A deponent verb is a verb with a passive
form and an active meaning,” his comprehension of _proficiscor_ would
have been no greater. It is worth observing that, even when offending
grievously in great matters against the principle of connecting fresh
knowledge with the old, teachers are sometimes driven to it in small.
They find that it is better for boys to see that _lignum_ is like
_regnum_, and _laudare_ like _amare_, than simply to learn that _lignum_
is of the Second Declension, and _laudare_ of the First Conjugation. If
boys had to learn by a mere effort of memory the particular declension
or conjugation of Latin words before they were taught anything about
declensions and conjugations, this would be as sensible as the method
adopted in some other instances, and the teachers might urge, as usual,
that the information would come in useful afterwards.
[198] Mr. Spencer and Professor Tyndall appeal to the results of
experience as justifying a more rational method of teaching. Speaking of
geometrical deductions, Mr. Spencer says: “It has repeatedly occurred
that those who have been stupefied by the ordinary school-drill—by its
abstract formulas, its wearisome tasks, its cramming—have suddenly had
their intellects roused by thus ceasing to make them passive recipients,
and inducing them to become active discoverers. The discouragement
caused by bad teaching having been diminished by a little sympathy, and
sufficient perseverance excited to achieve a first success, there arises
a revolution of feeling affecting the whole nature. They no longer find
themselves incompetent; they too can do something. And gradually, as
success follows success, the incubus of despair disappears, and they
attack the difficulties of their other studies with a courage insuring
conquest.”
[199] On this subject I can quote the authority of a great observer
of the mind—no less a man, indeed, than Wordsworth. He speaks of the
“grand elementary principal of pleasure, by which man knows, and feels,
and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy,” he continues, “but what is
propagated by pleasure—I would not be misunderstood—but wherever we
sympathise with pain, it will be found that the sympathy is produced and
carried on by subtile combinations with pleasure. We have no knowledge,
that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular
facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by
pleasure alone. The man of science, the chemist, and mathematician,
whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have to struggle with,
know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the
anatomist’s knowledge may be connected, he feels that his knowledge is
pleasure, and _when he has no pleasure he has no knowledge_.”—Preface to
second edition of _Lyrical Ballads_. So Wordsworth would have agreed with
Tranio: (_T. of Shrew_, j. 1.)
“No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en;
In brief, Sir, study what you most affect.”
[200] This remark, I am glad to say, is much less true now (1890) than
when first published. Indeed some purveyors of books for children are
getting to rely too exclusively on the pictures, just as I have noticed
that an organ-grinder with a monkey seldom or never has a good organ. Of
large pictures for class teaching, some of the best I have seen (both for
history and natural history) are published by the S.P.C.K.
[201] Tillich’s boxes of bricks (sold by the B’ham Midland Educational
Supply Company, and by Arnold, Briggate, Leeds), are very useful for
“intuitive” arithmetic: for higher stages one might say the same of W.
Wooding’s “Decimal Abacus” with vertical wires.
[202] The grammar question is still a perplexing one. There are
Inspectors who require children (as I once heard in a remote country
school) to distinguish “7 kinds of adverbs.” Then we have children
discriminating after the fashion of one of my own pupils, (I quote from
a grammar paper,) “Parse _it_.” “_It_ is a prepreition. Almost all small
words are prepreitions.” In such cases it is very hard indeed to find
any common ground for the minds of the old and the young. The true way I
believe is to lead the young to make their own observations. The way is
very very slow, but it developes power. I have lately seen an interesting
little book on these lines, called _Language Work_ by Dr. De Garmo
(Bloomington, Ill., U.S.A.)