did not set your face against? =E.= There were many, but I preferred
emulation which stimulated the idle rather than the industrious. Most
“prizes” act only on those who would be better without them. =A.= Do you
see no danger in encouraging rivalry between different bodies? The strife
between parties has often been more virulent than the strife between
individuals. =E.= Yes, I know well that in exciting party-feeling one
is playing with edged tools; and besides this, a boy who for any cause
is thought a disgrace to his side, is very likely to be bullied by it.
Let me tell you of one form of stimulus which seemed to work well and
was free from most of the objections you are thinking of. When I had a
small school of my own in which there were only young boys, I put up in
the school-room a list of the boys’ names in alphabetical order with
blank spaces after the names. I looked over the boys’ written work very
carefully, and whenever I came across any written exercise evidently
done with great painstaking and for that boy with more than ordinary
success, I marked it with a G, and I put up the G in one of the spaces
after that boy’s name in the list hung up in the school-room. When the
school collectively had obtained a fixed number of G’s we had an extra
half-holiday. The announcement of a G was therefore always hailed with
delight. =A.= I see one thing in favour of that device. You might by a
G give encouragement to a boy when he has just begun to _try_. This is
often a turning-point in a boy’s life; and a master’s early recognition
of effort may do much to strengthen into a habit what might, without
the recognition, have proved nothing but a passing whim. At the very
least, all such devices have one good effect; they break the monotony
of school-work; and monotony is much more wearing to the young than it
is to their elders. Can you tell me of others who have used such plans?
=E.= A friend of mine who has a genius for inventing school plans of
all kinds and marvellous energy in working them, has a boarding-house
in connexion with a large school. The marks of every boy in the school
are given out for each week. My friend gives a supper at the end of the
quarter if the average marks of his house come up to a certain standard.
He puts up each week a list of “Furtherers,” _i.e._, of the boys who
have surpassed the average, and of “Hinderers,” _i.e._, of boys who have
fallen below it =A.= No doubt this is an effective spur, but I should
fear it would in practice deliver the hindermost to Satan. The boy whom
nature has made a “hinderer” is likely to have by no means a good time
in that house. Do you know if such devices as you have mentioned are
common in schools? =E.= I really can’t say. I have seen in American
school papers accounts of class matches. In the New England _Journal of
Education_ (22nd November, 1888) Mr. A. E. Winship gave an account of
some inter-class matches at Milwaukee. There is a match between three
classes, say in penmanship. If there are seventy boys in the three
classes together, each boy draws a number from one to seventy, and puts
not his name but his number on his paper. The same lesson is set for all.
The papers are collected, divided into three equal heaps, and looked
over and marked by three masters. Finally the _average_ of each class is
taken. In mental arithmetic each class chooses its own champions. This
would be fun, but would do nothing for the lower end of the class. The
principal of McDonough School No. 12, New Orleans, Mr. H. E. Chambers,
gives an account in the New York _School Journal_ (8th December, 1888),
how he organised sixteen boys into teams of four, putting the best and
worst together as I did in making up scratch pairs. The match between
these teams was to see which could get the best record for the month. As
Mr. Chambers tells us the sharper boys managed with more success than the
master to let light into the dull intellects of boys in the same team
with them. This union of interests between the “strong” and the “weak” as
the French call them, is a very good feature in combats of _sides_.
=The Jesuits.=—=A.= What is it that interests you so much in the Jesuits?
=E.= Two things. First, the Jesuit shows the effects of a definitely
planned and rigidly carried out system of education; and next, in such
a society you find a continuity of effort which is and must be wanting
in the life of an individual. If ever “we feel that we are greater than
we know” it is when we can think of ourselves as parts of a society,
a society which existed long before us, and will last after us. For
instance, it is a great thing to be connected with an historical school
such as Harrow. We then realise, as the school’s poet, Mr. E. E. Bowen,
has said, that we are no mere “sons of yesterday,” and thinking of the
connection between the mighty dead and the old school we join heartily in
the chorus of the school song:—
“Their glory thus shall circle us
“Till time be done.”
=A.= I verily believe you expect your share in this “glory” for having
invented the Harrow “Blue Book,” which is likely to outlive _Educational
Reformers_; but if the boys ever thought of the inventor (which they
don’t) they would naturally suppose that he was some contemporary of
Cadmus or Deucalion. _Sic transit!_ But what has this to do with the
Jesuits? =E.= Only this, that by corporate life you secure a continuity
of effort. There is to me something very attractive in the idea of a
teaching society. How such a society might capitalise its discoveries!
The Roman Church has shown a genius for such societies, witness the
Jesuits and the Christian Brothers. The experience of centuries must have
taught them much that we could learn of them. =A.= The Jesuits seem to
me to be without the spirit of investigators and discoverers. The rules
of their Society do not permit of their learning anything or forgetting
anything. Ignatius Loyola was a wonderful man, but he must have been
superhuman if he could legislate for all time. By the way, I see you say
the first edition of the _Ratio_ was published in 1585. What is your
authority? =E.= I took the date from the copy in the British Museum.
According to a volume published by Rivingtons in 1838 (_Constitutiones
Societatis Jesu_) the _Constitutions_ were first printed in 1558, but
were not divulged till “the celebrated suit of the MM. Lionci and Father
La Valette” in 1761.
=Alexander’s Doctrinale (p. 80).=—=A.= I thought you made it a rule
to give only what was useful. What can be the use of the quotations
which your old Appendix contained “from a celebrated grammar written
by a Franciscan of Brittany about the middle of the 13th century”?
=E.= Perhaps I had an attack of antiquarianism; but I rather think the
quotations were given in order to shew our progress since those days.
The Teachers’ art of making easy things difficult is well exemplified in
Alexander’s rules for the first declension. But life is short, and folly
is best forgotten.
=Lily’s Grammar (p. 80).= =A.= Would not your last remark rule out what
you told us about Lily’s Grammar? =E.= As regards Lily’s assertion,
“Genders of nouns be 7,” it certainly would. Surely nobody but a writer
of school-books would ever have thought of making a “gender” out of “hic,
hæc, hoc, felix”! But the absurdity did not originate with Lily. He was
all for simplification, and though there were some changes in the Eton
Latin Grammar which succeeded the “Short introduction of Grammar” known
as Lily’s Grammar, these changes were, some of them at least, by no means
improvements. The old book put _a_ before _all_ ablatives and taught that
“by a kingdom” was _a regno_. If this was not any better than teaching
that _domino_ by itself was “by a Lord,” it was at least no worse. The
optative of the old book (“_Utinam sim_ I pray God I be; _Utinam Essem_
would God I were, &c.”) and the subjunctive (“_Cum Sim_ When I am,
&c.,”) were better than the oracular statement which perplexed my youth,
“The subjunctive mood is declined like the potential.” How often I said
those words, and being of an inquiring mind wondered what on earth “the
subjunctive mood” was!
=Colet.= =E.= The passage I refer to on page 80 from Colet is in a little
book in the B.M. It is “Joannis Coleti theologi, olim Decani Divi Pauli,
editio, una cum quibusdam G. Lilii Grammatices Rudimentis, &c. Antuerpiæ
1535.” After the accidence of the eight parts of speech, he says:—“Of
these eight parts of speech in order well construed, be made reasons
and sentences, and long orations. But how and in what manner, and with
what constructions of words, and all the varieties, and diversities, and
changes in Latin speech (which be innumerable), if any man will know, and
by that knowledge attain to understand Latin books, and to speak and to
write clean Latin, let him, above all, busily learn and read good Latin
authors of chosen poets and orators, and note wisely how they wrote and
spake; and study always to follow them, desiring none other rules but
their examples. For in the beginning men spake not Latin because such
rules were made, but, contrariwise, because men spake such Latin, upon
that followed the rules, and were made. That is to say, Latin speech was
before the rules, and not the rules before the Latin speech. Wherefore,
well-beloved masters and teachers of grammar, after the parts of speech
sufficiently known in our schools, read and expound plainly unto your
scholars good authors, and show to them [in] every word, and in every
sentence, what they shall note and observe, warning them busily to follow
and do like both in writing and in speaking; and be to them your own self
also speaking with them the pure Latin very present, and leave the rules;
for reading of good books, diligent information of learned masters,
studious advertence and taking heed of learners, hearing eloquent men
speak, and finally, busy imitation with tongue and pen, more availeth
shortly to get the true eloquent speech, than all the traditions, rules,
and precepts of masters.” This passage is, I find, well known. It is
given in Knights’ _Life of Colet_ and is referred to by Mr. Seebohm. Mr.
J. H. Lupton, Colet’s latest biographer, has kindly corrected the date
for me: it is indistinct in the Museum copy.
=Mulcaster for English (p. 97).= =A.= Except in Clarke’s edition,
your extracts from Mulcaster’s _Elementarie_ have been omitted by
your American reprinters. =E.= So I see. I should have thought the
Americans would have been much interested by this early praise of our
common language. The passage is certainly a very remarkable one, and
Professor Masson has thought it worth quoting in his _Life of Milton_.
The _Elementarie_ is a scarce book; so I will not follow my reprinters
in leaving out this passage:—“Is it not a marvellous bondage to become
servants to one tongue, for learning’s sake, the most part of our time,
with loss of most time, whereas we may have the very same treasure in
our own tongue with the gain of most time? our own bearing the joyful
title of our liberty and freedom, the Latin tongue remembering us of our
thraldom and bondage? I love Rome, but London better; I favour Italy,
but England more: I honour the Latin, but I worship the English....
I honour foreign tongues, but wish my own to be partaker of their
honour. Knowing them, I wish my own tongue to resemble their grace. I
confess their furniture, and wish it were ours.... The diligent labour
of learned countrymen did so enrich those tongues, and not the tongues
themselves; though they proved very pliable, as our tongue will prove,
I dare assure it, of knowledge, if our learned countrymen will put to
their labour. And why not, I pray you, as well in English as either
Latin or any tongue else? Will ye say it is needless? sure that will not
hold. If loss of time, while ye be pilgrims to learning, by lingering
about tongues be no argument of need; if lack of sound skill while the
tongue distracteth sense more than half to itself and that most of all
in a simple student or a silly wit, be no argument of need, then ye say
somewhat which pretend no need. But because we needed not to lose any
time unless we listed, if we had such a vantage, in the course of study,
as we now lose while we travail in tongues; and because our understanding
also were most full in our natural speech, though we know the foreign
exceedingly well—methink _necessity_ itself doth call for _English_,
whereby all that gaiety may be had at home which makes us gaze so much
at the fine stranger.” Among various objections to the use of English
which he answers, he comes to this one:—“But will ye thus break off the
common conference with the learned foreign?” To this his answer is not
very forcible:—“The conference will not cease while the people have cause
to interchange dealings, and without the Latin it may well be continued:
as in some countries the learneder sort and some near cousins to the
Latin itself do already wean their pens and tongues from the use of the
Latin, both in written discourse and spoken disputation, into their
own natural, and yet no dry nurse being so well appointed by the milch
nurse’s help.” Further on he says:—“The emperor Justinian said, when he
made the Institutes of force, that the students were happy in having such
a foredeal [_i.e._, advantage—German _Vortheil_] as to hear him at once,
and not to wait four years first. And doth not our languaging hold us
back four years and that full, think you?... [But this is not all.] Our
best understanding is in our natural tongue, and all our foreign learning
is applied to our use by means of our own; and without the application
to particular use, wherefore serves learning?... [As for dishonouring
antiquity], if we must cleave to the eldest and not the best, we should
be eating acorns and wearing old Adam’s pelts. But why not all in
English, a tongue of itself both deep in conceit and frank in delivery? I
do not think that any language, be it whatsoever, is better able to utter
all arguments either with more pith or greater plainness than our English
tongue is.... It is our accident which restrains our tongue and not the
tongue itself, which will strain with the strongest and stretch to the
furthest, for either government if we were conquerors, or for cunning
if we were treasurers; not any whit behind either the subtle Greek for
crouching close, or the stately Latin for spreading fair.”
=Marcel’s “Axiomatic Truths.”=—=A.= I have seen Marcel referred to as a
great authority in education, but I look in vain for his name in Kiddle’s
Cyclopædia and in Sonnenschein’s. =E.= You would be more successful in
Buisson’s. There I see that Claude Marcel was born at Paris in 1793, and
died in 1876. He was one of Napoleon’s soldiers. After 40 years’ absence
from France dating from 1825 he went back to Paris. He had been French
Consul at Cork, and brought up nine children whom he taught entirely
himself. In 1853 he published with Chapman and Hall his _Language as a
Means of Mental Culture_ (2 vols.). This book was not very well named,
for it contains in fact an analysis of the subject—education. To the
study of this subject Marcel must have given his life, and it seems odd
that his contribution to English (not French) pedagogic literature is
so little known. A French abridgment of his work appeared in 1855 with
the title _Premiers Principes d’Education_; and in 1867 he published in
French _L’Études des Languages_ (Paris, Borrani) of which a translation
was published in the U.S.A. Marcel’s notion of education is threefold,
viz., Physical, Intellectual, and Moral Education: the 1st aiming at
_health_, _strength_, and _beauty_; the 2nd at _mental power_ and the
_acquisition of knowledge_; the 3rd at _piety_, _justice_, _goodness_,
and _wisdom_. According to him the Creator has made the exercise of our
faculties _pleasurable_. This will suggest his main lines. He expects to
find general assent, for he quotes from Garrick:—
“When Doctrine meets with general approbation,
“It is not heresy but reformation.”
But he has met with less approbation than neglect. His “axiomatic truths”
that I quoted in the old appendix were abused without mercy by a critic
of those days who accused me of “bookmaking” for putting them in. On the
other hand my last American reprinter singles them out for honour and
puts them at the beginning of the book. After this I suppose somebody
likes them, so here they are:
“=Axiomatic Truths of Methodology.=—1. The method of nature is the
archetype of all methods, and especially of the method of learning
languages.
2. The classification of the objects of study should mark out to teacher
and learner their respective spheres of action.
3. The ultimate objects of the study should always be kept in view, that
the end be not forgotten in pursuit of the means.
4. The means ought to be consistent with the end.
5. Example and practice are more efficient than precept and theory.
6. Only one thing should be taught at one time; and an accumulation of
difficulties should be avoided, especially in the beginning of the study.
7. Instruction should proceed from the known to the unknown, from the
simple to the complex, from concrete to abstract notions, from analysis
to synthesis.
8. The mind should be impressed with the idea before it takes cognisance
of the sign that represents it.
9. The development of the intellectual powers is more important than the
acquisition of knowledge; each should be made auxiliary to the other.
10. All the faculties should be equally exercised, and exercised in a way
consistent with the exigencies of active life.
11. The protracted exercise of the faculties is injurious: a change of
occupation renews the energy of their action.
12. No exercise should be so difficult as to discourage exertion, nor so
easy as to render it unnecessary: attention is secured by making study
interesting.
13. First impressions and early habits are the most important, because
they are the most enduring.
14. What the learner discovers by mental exertion is better known than
what is told him.
15. Learners should not do with their instructor what they can do by
themselves, that they may have time to do with him what they cannot do by
themselves.
16. The monitorial principle multiplies the benefits of public
instruction. By teaching we learn.
17. The more concentrated is the professor’s teaching, the more
comprehensive and efficient his instruction.
18. In a class the time must be so employed that no learner shall be
idle, and the business so contrived, that learners of different degrees
of advancement shall derive equal advantage from the instructor.
19. Repetition must mature into a habit what the learner wishes to
remember.
20. Young persons should be taught only what they are capable of clearly
understanding, and what may be useful to them in after-life.”
=A.= What do _you_ think of these? =E.= I confess they bring into my mind
the advice given to a learner in billiards: “When in doubt cannon and
pocket the red.” First catch your “Method of Nature,” as Mrs. Glass might
have said. As to No. 10 again, who shall say what “all the faculties”
are? And is smelling a faculty that must be equally exercised with
seeing? When the young Marcels went to Paris I fancy they found there far
more that was worth seeing than worth smelling. =A.= After what you have
said about pupil-teachers I infer you do not advocate the “monitorial
principle”? =E.= Not exactly. “By teaching we learn.” This is very true.
But if we can’t teach we can’t learn by teaching. =A.= But may we not
gain by trying to teach? And short of teaching a good deal may be done
by monitors. =E.= If by the monitorial principle we mean “Encourage the
young to make themselves useful” it is a capital principle.
=Words and Things.=—=A.= In your Sturm Essay you say: “The schoolmaster’s
art always has taken, and I suppose, in the main, always will take for
its material the means of expression.” Surely the signs of the times do
not indicate this. Have not the tongue and the pen had their day, and
is not the schoolmaster turning his attention from them, not perhaps
to the brain, but certainly to the eye and the hand? It has at length
occurred to him to ask like Shylock “Hath not a boy eyes? Hath not a
boy hands?” And as it seems certain that the boy has these organs, the
schoolmaster wants to find employment for them. Till now no scholastic
use has been found for the eye except reading, or for the hand except
making strokes with the pen and receiving them from the cane. But it will
be different in the future. Words have had their day. Things will have
theirs. =E.= You may be right; but be careful in your use of terms. As
is usually the case with “cries,” if we want a meaning we may take our
choice. The contrast between “words” and “things” is sometimes between
studies like grammar, logic, and rhetoric on the one hand, and, on
the other, _Realien_, studies which in some way have Things for their
subject. Then again we have _words_ as the vocal or visible symbols
of ideas contrasted with the ideas themselves. Those who complain of
the time spent on words are thinking, some of them, of the time spent
on the art of expression, others of the time given to symbols which
do not, to the learner, symbolize anything. But in our day Words and
Things are supposed to represent the study of literature and the study
of natural science. At present there is a rage for Things, but it is a
little early to adjudicate on the comparative claims of, say Homer and
James Watt, on the gratitude of mankind. The great book of our day on
Education, Herbert Spencer’s, would make short work with “words”; and
yet two School Commissions, the Public Schools Commission of 1862, and
the Middle Schools Commission of 1867 have defended “words.” The first
of these says: “Grammar is the logic of common speech, and there are
few educated men who are not sensible of the advantages they gained, as
boys, from the steady practice of composition and translation, and from
their introduction to etymology. The study of literature is the study,
not indeed of the physical, but of the intellectual and moral world
we live in, and of the thoughts, lives, and characters of those men
whose writings or whose memories succeeding generations have thought it
worth while to preserve.” The Commissioners on Middle Schools express
a similar opinion:—“The ‘human’ subjects of instruction, of which the
study of language is the beginning, appear to have a distinctly greater
educational power than the ‘material.’ As all civilisation really takes
its rise in human intercourse, so the most efficient instrument of
education appears to be the study which most bears on that intercourse,
the study of human speech. Nothing appears to develop and discipline the
whole man so much as the study which assists the learner to understand
the thoughts, to enter into the feelings, to appreciate the moral
judgments of others. There is nothing so opposed to true cultivation,
nothing so unreasonable, as excessive narrowness of mind; and nothing
contributes to remove this narrowness so much as that clear understanding
of language which lays open the thoughts of others to ready appreciation.
Nor is equal clearness of thought to be obtained in any other way.
Clearness of thought is bound up with clearness of language, and the
one is impossible without the other. When the study of language can be
followed by that of literature, not only breadth and clearness, but
refinement becomes attainable. The study of history in the full sense
belongs to a still later age: for till the learner is old enough to have
some appreciation of politics, he is not capable of grasping the meaning
of what he studies. But both literature and history do but carry on that
which the study of language has begun, the cultivation of all those
faculties by which man has contact with man.” (Middle Schools Report,
vol. i, c. iv, p. 22.) As Matthew Arnold says, in comparing two things
it is “a kind of disadvantage” to be totally ignorant about one of them;
and I labour under this disadvantage in comparing literature and science.
But I own I do not expect the ultimate victory will be with those who may
kill, or even cure or carry, the body, and after that have no more that
they can do. Milton says of fine music, that it “brings all heaven before
our eyes.” Similarly fine literature can at least bring all earth and
its inhabitants, and the best thoughts and actions the world has known.
I remember Matthew Arnold in conversation dwelling on the difference it
makes to us _what we read_. Surely one of the great things education
should do is to enable and to accustom the thoughts of the young to
follow the guidance which is offered us in “the words of the wise.”
=Seneca= _v._ =Comenius=.—=A.= I like your quotation on p. 169 from Dr.
John Brown. After your see-saw fashion, you have, in a note on p. 365,
expressed a fondness for “a notion of the whole.” E. I am there thinking
of _minute_ instruction about parts. But in most things notions of the
parts precede the notion of the whole; and in this matter I think Seneca
was wiser than Comenius: “More easily are we led through the parts into
a conception of the whole. Facilius per partes in cognitionem totius
adducimur.” (Ep. 88, 1.) A. May I ask to whom you are indebted for this
erudition? E. To Wuestemann. (_Promptuarium._ Gotha, 1856.)
=Useful Knowledge.=—A. I am inclined to think that now and then you do
not attach sufficient importance to the possession of knowledge and
skill. E. Perhaps I do not. What I wish to cultivate is, not so much
knowledge as the desire for knowledge, and further, the activity of mind
that will turn knowledge to account. Knowledge driven in from without,
so to speak, and skill obtained by enforced practice are, I will not say
valueless, but very different in quality from the knowledge and skill
that their possessor has sought for. Knowledge is a tool. He who has
acquired it without caring for it, will have neither the skill nor the
will to use it. A. Does not this apply to the knowledges recommended by
Herbert Spencer, knowledge how to bring up children, &c., and to the
knowledge of physiological facts and rules of health which you yourself
say would be “of great practical value” (p. 444)? E. Certainly it does,
and also to the “domestic economy” of our Board schools; still more to
the lessons in morality which it seems are, at least in France if not
elsewhere, to supersede religion. If you can get the learners to care for
such lessons, the lessons are worth giving; if not, not. Care, not for
the thing, but for the examination in the thing, is different, and can
produce only a very inferior article. I expect there are instances in
which care for the examination develops into care for the subject of the
examination; but these cases are so rare that they may be neglected. A. I
see you would not take a deep interest in the “Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge.” And yet how terrible are the results of ignorance!
Herbert Spencer is great on knowledge for earning a livelihood. It
would add, perhaps, three or four shillings a week to the wages of the
working man if his wife had learnt to cook. In matters of food the waste
from ignorance among the English poor is appalling. E. In this case the
school might do much, as girls would be anxious to learn. And though we
cannot lay down as a general rule that it is “never too late to learn,”
this rule might be applied to cooking. I see that in Govan, a suburb of
Glasgow, the widow of the great ship-builder, John Elder, employs a
trained teacher of cookery to instruct both by demonstrations, and also
by visiting houses to which he (or she?) is invited. The results are said
to be excellent. May this good lady find many imitators!