THE AUTHOR VENTURES AN OPINION AGAINST THE PREVAILING WISDOM OF MAKING
CHILDREN PREMATURELY WISE.
Pray you, use your freedom;
And so far, if you please allow me mine,
To hear you only; not to be compelled
To take your moral potions.
MASSINGER.
“What, Sir,” exclaims a Lady, who is bluer than ever one of her naked
and woad-stained ancestors appeared at a public festival in full
dye,—“what, Sir, do you tell us that children are not to be made to
understand what they are taught?” And she casts her eyes complacently
toward an assortment of those books which so many writers, male and
female, some of the infidel, some of the semi-fidel, and some of the
super-fidel schools have composed for the laudable purpose of enabling
children to understand every thing.—“What, Sir,” she repeats, “are we
to make our children learn things by rote like parrots, and fill their
heads with words to which they cannot attach any signification?”
“Yes, Madam, in very many cases.”
“I should like, Sir, to be instructed why?”
She says this in a tone, and with an expression both of eyes and lips
which plainly show, in direct opposition to the words, that the Lady
thinks herself much fitter to instruct, than to be instructed. It is
not her fault. She is a good woman, and naturally a sensible one, but
she has been trained up in the way women should not go. She has been
carried from lecture to lecture, like a student who is being crammed
at a Scotch University. She has attended lectures on chemistry,
lectures on poetry, lectures on phrenology, lectures on mnemonics; she
has read the latest and most applauded essays on Taste: she has
studied the newest and most approved treatises practical and
theoretical upon Education: she has paid sufficient attention to
metaphysics to know as much as a professed philosopher about matter
and spirit; she is a proficient in political economy, and can
discourse upon the new science of population. Poor Lady, it would
require large draughts of Lethe to clear out all this undigested and
undigestible trash, and fit her for becoming what she might have been!
Upon this point however it may be practicable to set her right.
“You are a mother, Madam, and a good one. In caressing your infants
you may perhaps think it unphilosophical to use what I should call the
proper and natural language of the nursery. But doubtless you talk to
them; you give some utterance to your feelings; and whether that
utterance be in legitimate and wise words, or in good extemporaneous
nonsense it is alike to the child. The conventional words convey no
more meaning to him than the mere sound; but he understands from
either all that is meant, all that you wish him to understand, all
that is to be understood. He knows that it is an expression of your
love and tenderness, and that he is the object of it.
“So too it continues after he is advanced from infancy into childhood.
When children are beginning to speak they do not and cannot affix any
meaning to half the words which they hear; yet they learn their mother
tongue. What I say is, do not attempt to force their intellectual
growth. Do not feed them with meat till they have teeth to masticate
it.
“There is a great deal which they ought to learn, can learn, and must
learn, before they can or ought to understand it. How many questions
must you have heard from them which you have felt to be best answered,
when they were with most dexterity put aside! Let me tell you a story
which the Jesuit Manuel de Vergara used to tell of himself. When he
was a little boy he asked a Dominican Friar what was the meaning of
the seventh commandment, for he said he could not tell what committing
adultery was. The Friar not knowing how to answer, cast a perplexed
look round the room, and thinking he had found a safe reply pointed to
a kettle on the fire, and said the Commandment meant that he must
never put his hand in the pot while it was boiling. The very next day,
a loud scream alarmed the family, and behold there was little Manuel
running about the room holding up his scalded finger, and exclaiming
‘Oh dear, oh dear, I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery!
I've committed adultery!’”