Herbert Spencer was born at Derby, in England, in 1820. He was
taught by his father who was a teacher, and by his uncle, a
clergyman. At the age of seventeen he became a civil engineer, but
about eight years later abandoned the profession because he
believed it to be overcrowded. In 1848 he was engaged on the
"Economist," and five years later he began to write for the
quarterly reviews. Spencer's little book on Education dates from
1861, and has probably been more widely read than all his other
works put together, having been translated into almost all
civilised, and several primitive languages. It is generally
recognised as having effected the greatest educational reform of
the nineteenth century. It was certainly the most powerful of
single agents in effecting the liberation of girlhood from its
unnatural trammels. It placed the whole theory of education upon a
sound biological basis in the nature of the child and the natural
course of its evolution as a living creature. Spencer struck a
fatal blow at the morbid asceticism by proxy which adults used to
practice upon their children, and so great has been the influence
of his work for the amelioration of childhood that he is certainly
to be counted with the philanthropic on this ground. The first
chapter has no equal in literature in its splendidly sober praise
of natural knowledge. The wide knowledge which Spencer's writings
display of physical science, and his constant endeavor to
illustrate and support his system by connecting its position with
scientific facts and laws have given his philosophy great currency
among men of science--more so, indeed, than among philosophical
experts. Spencer died December 8, 1903.
_I.--What Knowledge is of Most Worth?_
It has been truly remarked that in order of time decoration precedes
dress, the idea of ornament predominates over that of use. It is curious
that the like relations hold with the mind. Among mental, as among
bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful. Alike in
the Greek schools as in our own, this is the case. Men dress their
children's minds as they do their bodies in the prevailing fashion; and
in the treatment of both mind and body, the decorative element has
continued to predominate in an even greater degree among women than
among men. The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like
historic trivialities are committed to memory, not because of any direct
benefit that can possibly result from knowing them, but because society
considers them parts of a good education--because the absence of such
knowledge may bring the contempt of others. Not what knowledge is of the
most real worth is the consideration; but what will bring most applause,
honour, respect--what will be the most imposing. As throughout life not
what we are but what we shall be thought is the question, so in
education the question is not the intrinsic value of knowledge so much
as its extrinsic effect on others; and this being our dominant idea,
direct utility is scarcely more regarded than by the barbarian when
filing his teeth and staining his nails.
The comparative worths of different kinds of knowledge have been as yet
scarcely even discussed. But before there can be a curriculum, we must
determine, as Bacon would have said, the relative value of knowledges.
To this end a measure of value is the first requisite, and here there
can happily be no dispute. How to live?--that is the essential question
for us. To prepare us for complete living is the function which
education is to discharge. We must therefore classify the leading kinds
of activity which constitute human life. In order of importance they are
(1) those which directly minister to self-preservation, (2) those which
by securing the necessaries of life indirectly minister to
self-preservation, (3) those which have for their end the rearing and
discipline of offspring, (4) those which are involved in the maintenance
of proper social and political relations, (5) those miscellaneous
activities which fill up the leisure part of life, devoted to the
gratification of the tastes and feelings.
It can easily be shown that these stand in something like their true
order of subordination, and such should be the order of education. It
must give attention to all of these; greatest where the value is
greatest; less where the value is less; least where the value is least.
Happily that all-important part of education which goes to secure direct
self-preservation is in great part already provided for. Too momentous
to be left to our blundering, nature takes it into her own hands, but
there must be no such thwarting of nature as that by which stupid
school-mistresses commonly prevent the girls in their charge from the
spontaneous physical activities they would indulge in; and so render
them comparatively incapable of taking care of themselves in
circumstances of peril.
But more is needed, and it is that we should learn the laws of life and
of health. This depends upon science, yet that increasing acquaintance
with the laws of phenomena which has through successive ages enabled us
to subjugate nature to our needs, and in these days gives the common
labourer comforts which a few centuries ago kings could not purchase, is
scarcely in any degree old to the appointed means of instructing our
youth. The vital knowledge--that by which we have grown as a nation to
what we are, and which underlies our whole existence--is a knowledge
that has got itself taught in nooks and corners, while the ordained
agencies for teaching have been mumbling little else than dead formulas.
Hitherto we have made no preparation whatever for the third great
division of human activities--the care of offspring, on which no word of
instruction is ever given to those who will by and by be parents. Yet
that parents should begin the difficult task of rearing children,
without ever having given a thought to the principles, physical, moral,
or intellectual, which ought to guide them, excites neither surprise at
the actors nor pity for their victims. To tens of thousands that are
killed, and hundreds of thousands that survive with feeble
constitutions, add millions that grow up with constitutions not so
strong as they should be, and you will have some idea of the curse
inflicted on their offspring by parents ignorant of the laws of life.
Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry may truly be called
the efflorescence of civilised life, but the production of a healthy
civilised life must be the first condition. The vice of our educational
system is that it neglects the plant for the sake of the flower. In
anxiety for elegance it forgets substance, preparing not at all for the
discharge of parental functions and for the duties of citizenship, by
imparting a mass of facts most of which are irrelevant, and the rest
without a key. But the accomplishment of all those things which
constitute the efflorescence of civilisation should be wholly
subordinate to that instruction and discipline on which civilisation
rests. As they occupy the leisure part of life, so should they occupy
the leisure part of education.
Yet in this remaining sphere of activity, also, scientific knowledge is
fundamental, and only when genius is married to science can the highest
results be produced; indeed, not only does science underlie the arts,
but science is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and
poetry are opposed is a delusion. On the contrary, science opens up
realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is blank. Think you that
the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry
in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over
this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is that those
who have never entered upon scientific pursuits are blind to most of the
poetry by which they are surrounded. Sad indeed is it to see how many
men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the
grandest phenomena--care not to understand the architecture of the
heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy
about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots are learnedly critical over a
Greek ode, and pass by without a glance that grand epic written by the
finger of God upon the strata of the earth!
If we examine the value of science as discipline, its priority is still
assured, whether for discipline of memory, or of judgment, or for moral
discipline. Also, the discipline of science is superior to that of our
ordinary education because of the religious culture that it gives.
Doubtless, to the superstitions that pass under the name of religion,
science is antagonistic; but not to the essential religion which these
superstitions merely hide; doubtless, too, in much of the science that
is current there is a pervading spirit of irreligion, but not in that
true science which has passed beyond the superficial into the profound.
Not science, but the neglect of science, is irreligious; devotion to
science is a tacit worship--a tacit recognition of worth in the things
studied; and by implication in their Cause. Only the genuine man of
science can truly know how utterly beyond not only human knowledge, but
human conception, is the Universal Power of which Nature and Life and
Thought are manifestations.
_II.--Intellectual Education_
While "believe and ask no questions" was the maxim of the church, it was
fitly the maxim of the schools. In that age men also believed that a
child's mind could be made to order, that its powers were to be imparted
by the schoolmaster; that it was a receptacle into which knowledge was
to be put and there built up after the teacher's idea. But now we are
learning that there is a natural process of mental evolution which is
not to be disturbed without injury; that we may not force on the
unfolding mind our artificial forms, but that psychology, like
economics, discloses to us a law of supply and demand, to which, if we
would not do harm, we must conform.
The forcing system has been by many given up, and precocity is
discouraged. People are beginning to see that the first requisite to
success in life is to be a good animal. The once universal practice of
learning by rote is daily falling into discredit. We are substituting
principles for rules, as is exemplified in the abandonment of that
intensely stupid custom, the teaching of grammar to children. But of all
the changes taking place, the most significant is the growing desire to
make the acquirement of knowledge pleasurable rather than painful--a
desire based on the more or less distinct perception that at each age
the intellectual action which a child likes is a healthy one for it; and
conversely. We are on the highway towards the doctrine long ago
enunciated by Pestalozzi that alike in its order and its methods,
education must conform to the natural process of mental evolution.
Education should be a repetition of civilisation in little. Children
should be told as little as possible and induced to discover as much as
possible. The 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. By 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 having
by our method induced helplessness, we make the helplessness a reason
for our method.
Education of some kind should begin from the cradle. Whoever has watched
with any discernment the wide-eyed gaze of the infant at surrounding
objects, knows very well that education _does_ begin thus early, whether
we intend it or not; and that these fingerings and suckings of
everything it can lay hold of, these open-mouthed listenings to every
sound, are first steps in the series which ends in the discovery of
unseen planets, the invention of calculating engines, the production of
great paintings, or the composition of symphonies and operas. This
activity of the faculties from the very first, being spontaneous and
inevitable, the question is whether we shall supply in due variety the
materials on which they may exercise themselves; and to the question so
put, none but an affirmative answer can be given. Here we must take the
course which psychology dictates.
What can be more manifest than the desire of children for intellectual
sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your
face the toy it holds, that you may look at it. See when it makes a
creak with its wet finger on the table, how it turns and looks at you;
does it again, and again looks at you; thus saying as clearly as it
can--"Hear this new sound." Watch the elder children coming into the
room exclaiming--"Mamma, see what a curious thing;" "Mamma, look at
this;" "Mamma, look at that;" a habit which they would continue did not
the silly mamma tell them not to tease her. Does not the induction lie
on the surface? Is it not clear that we must conform our course to these
intellectual instincts--that we must just systematise the natural
process--that we must listen to all the child has to tell us about each
object, and thence proceed? To tell a child this, and to show it the
other, is not to teach it how to observe, but to make it a mere
recipient of another's observations; a proceeding which weakens rather
than strengthens its power of self-instruction.
Object lessons should be arranged to extend to things far wider and
continue to a period far later than now; they should not be limited to
the contents of the house, but should include those of the fields and
hedges, the quarry and the seashore; they should not cease with early
childhood, but should be so kept up during youth as insensibly to merge
into the investigation of the naturalist and the man of science.
We are quite prepared to hear from many that all this is throwing away
time and energy; and that children would be much better occupied in
writing their copies and learning their pence tables, and so fitting
themselves for the business of life. We regret that such crude ideas of
what constitutes education, and such a narrow conception of utility,
should still be prevalent. But this gross utilitarianism which is
content to come into the world and quit it again without knowing what
kind of a world it is, or what it contains, may be met on its own
ground. It will by and by be found that a knowledge of the laws of life
is more important than any other knowledge whatever--that the laws of
life underlie not only all bodily and mental processes, but by
implication all the transactions of the house and the street, all
commerce, all politics, all morals--and that therefore without a
comprehension of them, neither personal nor social conduct can be
rightly regulated. It will eventually be seen, too, that the laws of
life are essentially the same throughout the whole organic creation.
No one can compare the faces and manners of two boys--the one made happy
by mastering interesting subjects, and the other made miserable by
disgust with his studies, by consequent inability, by cold looks, by
threats, by punishment--without seeing that the disposition of one is
being benefited and that of the other injured. Whoever has marked the
effects of success and failure upon the mind and the power of the mind
over the body, will see that in the one case both temper and health are
favourably affected, while in the other there is danger of permanent
moroseness, of permanent timidity, and even of permanent constitutional
depression.
As suggesting a final reason for making education a process of
self-instruction, and by consequence a process of pleasurable
instruction, we may advert to the fact that, in proportion as it is made
so, there is a probability that it will not cease when schooldays end.
As long as the acquisition of knowledge is rendered habitually
repugnant, so long will there be a prevailing tendency to discontinue it
when free from the coercion of parents and masters. And when the
acquisition of knowledge has been rendered habitually gratifying, then
there will be as prevailing a tendency to continue, without
superintendence, that self-culture previously carried on under
superintendence.
_III.--Moral Education_
The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely
overlooked. Though some care is taken to fit youths of both sexes for
society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for the
position of parents. While it is seen that for the purpose of gaining a
livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed, it appears to be thought
that for the bringing up of children no preparation whatever is needed.
While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the
chief value is that it constitutes the "education of a gentleman," and
while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements
which fit her for evening parties, not an hour is spent by either in
preparation for a family. Is it that this responsibility is but a remote
contingency? On the contrary, it is sure to devolve on nine out of ten.
Is it that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly not: of all functions
which the adult has to fulfil, this is the most difficult. Is it that
each may be trusted by self-instruction to fit himself, or herself, for
the office of parent? No: not only is the need for such self-instruction
unrecognised, but the complexity of the subject renders it the one of
all others in which self-instruction is least likely to succeed. No
rational plea can be put forward for leaving the art of education out of
our curriculum. Whether as bearing on the happiness of parents
themselves, or whether as affecting the characters and lives of their
children and remote descendants, we must admit that a knowledge of the
right method of juvenile culture, physical, intellectual and moral, is a
knowledge of extreme importance. This topic should be the final one in
the course of instruction passed through by each man and woman. As
physical maturity is marked by the ability to produce offspring, so
mental maturity is marked by the ability to train those offspring. _The
subject which involves all other subjects, and therefore the subject in
which education should culminate, is the THEORY AND PRACTICE OF
EDUCATION._
Our system of moral control must again be based upon nature, who
illustrates to us in the simplest way the true theory and practice of
moral discipline. The natural reactions which follow the child's
wrong-doings are constant, direct, unhesitating, and not to be escaped.
No threats; but a silent rigorous performance. If a child runs a pin
into its finger, pain follows; if it does it again, there is again the
same result; and so on perpetually. In all its dealings with inorganic
nature it finds this unswerving persistence, which listens to no excuse,
and from which there is no appeal; and very soon recognising this stern
though beneficent discipline, it soon becomes extremely careful not to
transgress. These general truths hold throughout adult life as well as
throughout infantile life. If further proof be needed that the natural
reaction is not only the most efficient penalty, but that no humanly
devised penalty can replace it, we have such further proof in the
notorious ill-success of our various penal systems. Out of the many
methods of criminal discipline that have been proposed and legally
enforced, none have answered the expectations of their advocates.
Artificial punishments have failed to produce reformation; and have in
many cases increased the criminality. The only successful reformatories
are those privately established ones which approximate their _regime_ to
the method of nature--which do little more than administer the natural
consequences of criminal conduct: diminishing the criminal's liberty of
action as much as is needful for the safety of society, and requiring
him to maintain himself while living under this restraint. Thus we see,
both that the discipline by which the young child is taught to regulate
its movements is the discipline by which the great mass of adults are
kept in order, and more or less improved; and that the discipline
humanly devised for the worst adults fails when it diverges from this
divinely-ordained discipline, and begins to succeed on approximating to
it. Not only is it unwise to set up a high standard of good conduct for
children, but it is even unwise to use very urgent incitements to good
conduct. Already most people recognise the detrimental results of
intellectual precocity; but there remains to be recognised the fact that
moral precocity also has detrimental results. Be sparing of commands,
but whenever you do command, command with decision and constancy.
Remember that the aid of your discipline should be to produce a
self-governing being; not to produce a being to be governed by others.
Lastly, always remember that to educate rightly is not a simple and easy
thing, but a complex and extremely difficult thing; the hardest task
which devolves on adult life. You will have to carry on your own moral
education at the same time that you are educating your children. The
last stage in the mental development of each man and woman is to be
reached only through a proper discharge of the parental duties; and when
this truth is recognised it will be seen how admirable is the
arrangement through which human beings are led by their strongest
affections to subject themselves to a discipline that they would else
elude; and we shall see that while in its injurious effects on both
parents and child a bad system is twice cursed, a good system is twice
blessed--it blesses him that trains and him that is trained.
_IV.--Physical Education_
The system of restriction in regard to food which many parents think so
necessary is based upon inadequate observation, and erroneous reasoning.
There is an over-legislation in the nursery as well as over-legislation
in the state; and one of the most injurious forms of it is this
limitation in the quantity of food. We contend that, as appetite is a
good guide to all the lower creation--as it is a good guide to the
infant--as it is a good guide to the invalid--as it is a good guide to
the differently-placed races of man--and as it is a good guide for every
adult who leads a healthful life, it may safely be inferred that it is a
good guide to childhood. It would be strange indeed were it here alone
untrustworthy.
With clothing, as with food, the usual tendency is towards an improper
scantiness. Here, too, asceticism creeps out. Yet it is not obedience to
the sensations, but disobedience to them which is the habitual cause of
bodily evils. It is not the eating when hungry, but the eating in the
absence of hunger, which is bad; it is not drinking when thirsty, but
continuing to drink when thirst has ceased, that is the vice.
Again, harm does not result from taking that active exercise which, as
every child shows us, nature strongly prompts, but from a persistent
disregard of nature's promptings; but the natural spontaneous exercise
having been forbidden, and the bad consequences of no exercise having
become conspicuous, there has been adopted a system of factitious
exercise--gymnastics. That this is better than nothing we admit; but
that it is an adequate substitute for play we deny. The truth is that
happiness is the most powerful of tonics. By accelerating the
circulation of the blood, it facilitates the performance of every
function; and so tends alike to increase health where it exists, and to
restore it when it has been lost. Hence the intrinsic superiority of
play to gymnastics. The extreme interest felt by children in their
games, and the riotous glee with which they carry on their rougher
frolics, are of as much importance as the accompanying exertion; and as
not supplying these mental stimuli gymnastics must be radically
defective, and can never serve in place of the exercises prompted by
nature. For girls as well as boys the sportive activities to which the
instincts impel are essential to bodily welfare. Whoever forbids them,
forbids the divinely-appointed means to physical development.
We suffer at present from a very potent detrimental influence, which is
excess of mental application, forgetting that nature is a strict
accountant, and if you demand of her in one direction more than she is
prepared to lay out, she balances the account by making a reduction
elsewhere. We forget that it is not knowledge which is stored up as
intellectual fat that is of value, but that which is turned into
intellectual muscle. Worse still, our system is fatal to that vigour of
physique needful to make intellectual training available in the struggle
of life. Yet a good digestion, a bounding pulse, and high spirits are
elements of happiness which no external advantages can outbalance.
Perhaps nothing will so much hasten the time when body and mind will
both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief that the
preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such
a thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and acts imply the
idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please.
Disorders entailed by disobedience to nature's dictates, they regard
simply as grievances; not as the effects of a conduct more or less
flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependents,
and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by time,
yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true
that, in the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a bodily
transgression is recognised; but none appear to infer that, if this
bodily transgression is vicious, so, too, is every bodily transgression.
The fact is, that all breaches of the laws of health are _physical
sins._ When this is generally seen, then, and perhaps not till then,
will the physical training of the young receive the attention which it
deserves.