“If it be not such to me, What care I how fine it be!”
The more encouraging and more judicious parent would answer upon a similar occasion, “You are very right not to read what tires you, my dear; and I am glad that you have sense enough to tell me that this book does not entertain you, though it is written by one of the best authors in the English language. We do not think at all the worse of your taste and understanding; we know that the day will come when this book will probably entertain you; put it by until then, I advise you.”
It may be thought, that young people who read only those parts of books which are entertaining, or those which are selected for them, are in danger of learning a taste for variety, and desultory habits, which may prevent their acquiring accurate knowledge upon any subject, and which may render them incapable of that literary application, without which nothing can be well learned. We hope the candid preceptor will suspend his judgment, until we can explain our sentiments upon this subject more fully, when we examine the nature of invention and memory.
The secret fear, that stimulates parents to compel their children to constant application to certain books, arises from the opinion, that much chronological and historical knowledge must at all events be acquired during a certain number of years. The knowledge of history is thought a necessary accomplishment in one sex, and an essential part of education in the other. We ought, however, to distinguish between that knowledge of history and of chronology which is really useful, and that which is acquired merely for parade. We must call that useful knowledge, which enlarges the view of human life and of human nature, which teaches by the experience of the past, what we may expect in future. To study history as it relates to these objects, the pupil must have acquired much previous knowledge; the habit of reasoning, and the power of combining distant analogies. The works of Hume, of Robertson, Gibbon, or Voltaire, can be properly understood only by well informed and highly cultivated understandings. Enlarged views of policy, some knowledge of the interests of commerce, of the progress and state of civilization and literature in different countries, are necessary to whoever studies these authors with real advantage. Without these, the finest sense, and the finest writing, must be utterly thrown away upon the reader. Children, consequently, under the name of fashionable histories, often read what to them is absolute nonsense: they have very little motive for the study of history, and all that we can say to keep alive their interest, amounts to the common argument, “that such information will be useful to them hereafter, when they hear history mentioned in conversation.”
Some people imagine, that the memory resembles a store-house, in which we should early lay up facts; and they assert, that, however useless these may appear at the time when they are laid up, they will afterwards be ready for service at our summons. One allusion may be fairly answered by another, since it is impossible to oppose allusion by reasoning. In accumulating facts, as in amassing riches, people often begin by believing that they value wealth only for the use they shall make of it; but it often happens, that during the course of their labours, they learn habitually to set a value upon the coin itself, and they grow avaricious of that which they are sensible has little intrinsic value. Young people who have accumulated a vast number of facts, and names, and dates, perhaps intended originally to make some good use of their treasure; but they frequently forget their laudable intentions, and conclude by contenting themselves with the display of their nominal wealth. Pedants and misers forget the real use of wealth and knowledge, and they accumulate without rendering what they acquire useful to themselves or to others.
A number of facts are often stored in the mind, which lie there useless, because they cannot be found at the moment when they are wanted. It is not sufficient, therefore, in education, to store up knowledge; it is essential to arrange facts so that they shall be ready for use, as materials for the imagination, or the judgment, to select and combine. The power of retentive memory is exercised too much, the faculty of recollective memory is exercised too little, by the common modes of education. Whilst children are reading the history of kings, and battles, and victories; whilst they are learning tables of chronology and lessons of geography by rote, their inventive and their reasoning faculties are absolutely passive; nor are any of the facts which they learn in this manner, associated with circumstances in real life. These trains of ideas may with much pains and labour be fixed in the memory, but they must be recalled precisely in the order in which they were learnt by rote, and this is not the order in which they may be wanted: they will be conjured up in technical succession, or in troublesome multitudes. — Many people are obliged to repeat the alphabet before they can recollect the relative place of any given letter; others repeat a column of the multiplication table before they can recollect the given sum of the number they want. There is a common rigmarole for telling the number of days in each month in the year; those who have learnt it by heart, usually repeat the whole of it before they can recollect the place of the month which they want; and sometimes in running over the lines, people miss the very month which they are thinking of, or repeat its name without perceiving that they have named it. In the same manner, those who have learned historical or chronological facts in a technical mode, must go through the whole train of their rigmarole associations before they can hit upon the idea which they want. Lord Bolingbroke mentions an acquaintance of his, who had an amazing collection of facts in his memory, but unfortunately he could never produce one of them in the proper moment; he was always obliged to go back to to some fixed landing place, from which he was accustomed to take his flight. Lord Bolingbroke used to be afraid of asking him a question, because when once he began, he went off like a larum, and could not be stopped; he poured out a profusion of things which had nothing to do with the point in question; and it was ten to one but he omitted the only circumstance that would have been really serviceable. Many people who have tenacious memories, and who have been ill educated, find themselves in a similar condition, with much knowledge baled up, an incumbrance to themselves and to their friends. The great difference which appears in men of the same profession, and in the same circumstances, depends upon the application of their knowledge more than upon the quantity of their learning.
With respect to a knowledge of history and chronologic learning, every body is now nearly upon a level; this species of information cannot be a great distinction to any one; a display of such common knowledge, is considered by literary people, and by men of genius especially, as ridiculous and offensive. One motive, therefore, for loading the minds of children with historic dates and facts, is likely, even from its having universally operated, to cease to operate in future. Without making it a laborious task to young people, it is easy to give them such a knowledge of history, as will preserve them from the shame of ignorance, and put them upon a footing with men of good sense in society, though not, perhaps, with men who have studied history for the purpose of shining in conversation. For our purpose, it is not necessary early to study voluminous philosophic histories; these should be preserved for a more advanced period of their education. The first thing to be done, is to seize the moment when curiosity is excited by the accidental mention of any historic name or event. When a child hears his father talk of the Roman emperors, or of the Roman people, he naturally inquires who these people were; some short explanation may be given, so as to leave curiosity yet unsatisfied. The prints of the Roman emperors’ heads, and Mrs. Trimmer’s prints of the remarkable events in the Roman and English history, will entertain children. Madame de Silleri, in her Adela and Theodore, describes historical hangings, which she found advantageous to her pupils. In a prince’s palace, or a nobleman’s palace, such hangings would be suitable decorations, or in a public seminary of education it would be worth while to prepare them: private families would, perhaps, be alarmed at the idea of expense, and at the idea, that their house could not readily be furnished in proper time for the instruction of children. As we know the effect of such apprehensions
of difficulty, we forbear from insisting upon historical hangings, especially as we think that children should not, by any great apparatus for teaching them history, be induced to set an exorbitant value upon this sort of knowledge, and should hence be excited to cultivate their memories without reasoning or reflecting. If any expedients are thought necessary to fix historic facts early in the mind, the entertaining display of Roman emperors, and British kings and queens, may be made, as madame de Silleri recommends, in a magic lantern, or by the Ombres Chinoises. When these are exhibited, there should be some care taken not to introduce any false ideas. Parents should be present at the spectacle, and should answer each eager question with prudence. “Ha! here comes queen Elizabeth!” exclaims the child; “was she a good woman?” A foolish show-man would answer, “Yes, master, she was the greatest queen that ever sat upon the English throne!” A sensible mother would reply, “My dear, I cannot answer that question; you will read her history yourself, you will judge by her actions, whether she was, or was not, a good woman.” Children are often extremely impatient to settle the precise merit and demerit of every historical personage, with whose names they become acquainted; but this impatience should not be gratified by the short method of referring to the characters given of these persons in any common historical abridgment. We should advise all such characters to be omitted in books for children; let those who read, form a judgment for themselves: this will do more service to the understanding, than can be done by learning by rote the opinion of any historian. The good and bad qualities; the decisive, yet contradictory, epithets, are so jumbled together in these characters, that no distinct notion can be left in the reader’s mind; and the same words recur so frequently in the characters of different kings, that they are read over in a monotonous voice, as mere concluding sentences, which come of course, at the end of every reign. “King Henry the Fifth, was tall and slender, with a long neck, engaging aspect, and limbs of the most elegant turn. * * * * * * * * * *. His valour was such as no danger could startle, and no difficulty could oppose. He managed the dissentions amongst his enemies with such address as spoke him consummate in the arts of the cabinet. He was chaste, temperate, modest, and devout, scrupulously just in his administration, and severely exact in the discipline of his army, upon which he knew his glory and success in a great measure depended. In a word, it must be owned that he was without an equal in the arts of war, policy, and government. His great qualities were, however, somewhat obscured by his ambition, and his natural propensity to cruelty.”
Is it possible that a child of seven or eight years old can acquire any distinct, or any just ideas, from the perusal of this character of Henry the fifth? Yet it is selected as one of the best drawn characters from a little abridgment of the history of England, which is, in general, as well done as any we have seen. Even the least exceptionable historic abridgments require the corrections of a patient parent. In abridgments for children, the facts are usually interspersed with what the authors intend for moral reflections, and easy explanations of political events, which are meant to be suited to the meanest capacities. These reflections and explanations do much harm; they instil prejudice, and they accustom the young unsuspicious reader to swallow absurd reasoning, merely because it is often presented to him. If no history can be found entirely free from these defects, and if it be even impossible to correct any completely, without writing the whole over again, yet much may be done by those who hear children read. Explanations can be given at the moment when the difficulties occur. When the young reader pauses to think, allow him to think, and suffer him to question the assertions which he meets with in books, with freedom, and that minute accuracy which is only tiresome to those who cannot reason. The simple morality of childhood is continually puzzled and shocked at the representation of the crimes and the virtues of historic heroes. History, when divested of the graces of eloquence, and of that veil which the imagination is taught to throw over antiquity, presents a disgusting, terrible list of crimes and calamities: murders, assassinations, battles, revolutions, are the memorable events of history. The love of glory atones for military barbarity; treachery and fraud are frequently dignified with the names of prudence and policy; and the historian, desirous to appear moral and sentimental, yet compelled to produce facts, makes out an inconsistent, ambiguous system of morality. A judicious and honest preceptor will not, however, imitate the false tenderness of the historian for the dead; he will rather consider what is most advantageous to the living; he will perceive, that it is of more consequence that his pupils should have distinct notions of right and wrong, than that they should have perfectly by rote all the Grecian, Roman, English, French, all the fifty volumes of the Universal History. A preceptor will not surely attempt, by any sophistry, to justify the crimes which sometimes obtain the name of heroism; when his ingenious indignant pupil verifies the astonishing numeration of the hundreds and thousands that were put to death by a conqueror, or that fell in one battle, he will allow this astonishment and indignation to be just, and he will rejoice that it is strongly felt and expressed.
Besides the false characters which are sometimes drawn of individuals in history, national characters are often decidedly given in a few epithets, which prejudice the mind, and convey no real information. Can a child learn any thing but national prepossession, from reading in a character of the English nation, that “boys, before they can speak, discover that they know the proper guards in boxing with their fists; a quality that, perhaps, is peculiar to the English, and is seconded by a strength of arm that few other people can exert? This gives their soldiers an infinite superiority in all battles that are to be decided by the bayonet screwed upon the musket.” Why should children be told, that the Italians are naturally revengeful; the French naturally vain and perfidious, excessively credulous and litigious; that the Spaniards are naturally jealous and haughty? The patriotism of an enlarged and generous mind cannot, surely, depend upon the early contempt inspired for foreign nations. — We do not speak of the education necessary for naval and military men — with this we have nothing to do; but surely it cannot be necessary to teach national prejudices to any other class of young men. If these prejudices are ridiculed by sensible parents, children will not be misled by partial authors; general assertions will be of little consequence to those who are taught to reason; they will not be overawed by nonsense wherever they may meet with it.
The words whig and tory, occur frequently in English history, and liberty and tyranny are talked of — the influence of the crown — the rights of the people. What are children of eight or nine years old to understand by these expressions? and how can a tutor explain them, without inspiring political prejudices? We do not mean here to enter into any political discussion; we think, that children should not be taught the principles of their preceptors, whatever they may be; they should judge for themselves, and, until they are able to judge, all discussion, all explanations, should be scrupulously avoided. Whilst they are children, the plainest chronicles are for them the best histories, because they express no political tenets and dogmas. When our pupils grow up, at whatever age they may be capable of understanding them, the best authors who have written on each side of the question, the best works, without any party considerations, should be put into their hands; and let them form their own opinions from facts and arguments, uninfluenced by passion, and uncontrolled by authority.
As young people increase their collection of historic facts, some arrangement will be necessary to preserve these in proper order in the memory. Priestley’s Biographical Chart, is an extremely ingenious contrivance for this purpose; it should hang up in the room where children read, or rather where they live, for we hope no room will ever be dismally consecrated to their studies. Whenever they hear any celebrated name mentioned, or when they meet with any in books, they will run to search for these names in the biographical chart; and those who are used to children, will perceive, that the pleasure of this search, and the joy of the discovery, will fix biography
and chronology easily in their memories. Mortimer’s Student’s Dictionary, and Brookes’s Gazetteer, should, in a library or room which children usually inhabit, be always within the reach of children. If they are always consulted at the very moment they are wanted, much may be learned from them; but if there be any difficulty in getting at these dictionaries, children forget, and lose all interest in the things which they wanted to know. But if knowledge becomes immediately useful, or entertaining to them, there is no danger of their forgetting. Who ever forgets Shakespeare’s historical plays? The arrangements contrived and executed by others, do not always fix things so firmly in our remembrance, as those which we have had some share in contriving and executing ourselves.
One of our pupils has drawn out a biographical chart upon the plan of Priestley’s, inserting such names only as he was well acquainted with; he found, that in drawing out this chart, a great portion of general history and biography was fixed in his memory. Charts, in the form of Priestley’s, but without the names of the heroes, &c. being inserted, would, perhaps, be useful for schools and private families.
There are two French historical works, which we wish were well translated for the advantage of those who do not understand French. The chevalier Meheghan’s Tableau de l’Histoire Moderne, which is sensibly divided into epochs; and Condillac’s View of Universal History, comprised in five volumes, in his “Cours d’Etude pour l’Instruction du Prince de Parme.” This history carries on, along with the records of wars and revolutions, the history of the progress of the human mind, of arts, and sciences; the view of the different governments of Europe, is full and concise; no prejudices are instilled; yet the manly and rational eloquence of virtue, gives life and spirit to the work. The concluding address, from the preceptor to his royal pupil, is written with all the enlightened energy of a man of truth and genius. We do not recommend Condillac’s history as an elementary work; for this it is by no means fit; but it is one of the best histories that a young man of fifteen or sixteen can read.
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