In the chapters on Obedience, Temper and Truth, the general principle, that pleasure should excite to exertion and virtue, and that pain should be connected with whatever we wish our pupils to avoid, is applied to practice with a minuteness of detail which we knew not how to avoid. Obedience we have considered as a relative, rather than as a positive, virtue: before children are able to conduct themselves, their obedience must be rendered habitual: obedience alters its nature as the pupil becomes more and more rational; and the only method to secure the obedience, the willing, enlightened obedience of rational beings, is to convince them by experience, that it tends to their happiness. Truth depends upon example more than precept; and we have endeavoured to impress it on the minds of all who are concerned in education, that the first thing necessary to teach their pupils to love truth, is in their whole conduct to respect it themselves. We have reprobated the artifices sometimes used by preceptors towards their pupils; we have shown that all confidence is destroyed by these deceptions. May they never more be attempted! May parents unite in honest detestation of these practices! Children are not fools, and they are not to be governed like fools. Parents who adhere to the firm principle of truth, may be certain of the respect and confidence of their children. Children who never see the example of falsehood, will grow up with a simplicity of character, with an habitual love of truth, that must surprise preceptors who have seen the propensity to deceit which early appears in children who have had the misfortune to live with servants, or with persons who have the habits of meanness and cunning. We have advised, that children, before their habits are formed, should never be exposed to temptations to deceive; that no questions should be asked them which hazard their young integrity; that as they grow older, they should gradually be trusted; and that they should be placed in situations where they may feel the advantages both of speaking truth, and of obtaining a character for integrity. The perception of the utility of this virtue to the individual, and to society, will confirm the habitual reverence in which our pupils have been taught to hold it. As young people become reasonable, the nature of their habits and of their education should be explained to them, and their virtues, from being virtues of custom, should be rendered virtues of choice and reason. It is easier to confirm good habits by the conviction of the understanding, than to induce habits in consequence of that conviction. This principle we have pursued in the chapter on Rewards and Punishments; we have not considered punishment as vengeance or retaliation, but as pain inflicted with the reasonable hope of procuring some future advantage to the delinquent, or to society. The smallest possible quantity of pain that can effect this purpose, we suppose, must, with all just and humane persons, be the measure of punishment. This notion of punishment, both for the sake of the preceptor and the pupil, should be clearly explained as early as it can be made intelligible. As to rewards, we do not wish that they should be bribes; they should stimulate, without weakening the mind. The consequences which naturally follow every species of good conduct, are the proper and best rewards that we can devise; children whose understandings are cultivated, and whose tempers are not spoiled, will be easily made happy without the petty bribes which are administered daily to ill educated, ignorant, over stimulated, and, consequently, wretched and ill humoured children. Far from making childhood a state of continual penance, restraint, and misery, we wish that it should be made a state of uniform happiness; that parents and preceptors should treat their pupils with as much equality and kindness as the improving reason of children justifies. The views of children should be extended to their future advantage, and they should consider childhood as a part of their existence, not as a certain number of years which must be passed over before they can enjoy any of the pleasures of life, before they can enjoy any of the privileges of grown up people. Preceptors should not accustom their pupils to what they call indulgence, but should give them the utmost degree of present pleasure which is consistent with their future advantage. Would it not be folly and cruelty to give present pleasure at the expense of a much larger portion of future pain? When children acquire experience and reason, they rejudge the conduct of those who have educated them; and their confidence and their gratitude will be in exact proportion to the wisdom and justice with which they have been governed.
It was necessary to explain at large these ideas of rewards and punishments, that we might clearly see our way in the progress of education. After having determined, that our object is to obtain for our pupils the greatest possible portion of felicity; after having observed, that no happiness can be enjoyed in society without the social virtues, without the useful and the agreeable qualities; our view naturally turns to the means of forming these virtues, of ensuring these essential qualities. On our sympathy with our fellow creatures depend many of our social virtues; from our ambition to excel our competitors, arise many of our most useful and agreeable actions. We have considered these principles of action as they depend on each other, and as they are afterwards separated. Sympathy and sensibility, uninformed by reason, cannot be proper guides to action. We have endeavoured to show how sympathy may be improved into virtue. Children should not see the deformed expression of the malevolent passions in the countenance of those who live with them: before the habits are formed, before sympathy has any rule to guide itself, it is necessarily determined by example. Benevolence and affectionate kindness from parents to children, first inspire the pleasing emotions of love and gratitude. Sympathy is not able to contend with passion or appetite: we should therefore avoid placing children in painful competition with one another. We love those from whom we receive pleasure. To make children fond of each other, we must make them the cause of pleasure to each other; we must place them in situations where no passion or appetite crosses their natural sympathy. We have spoken of the difference between transient, convivial sympathy, and that higher species of sympathy which, connected with esteem, constitutes friendship. We have exhorted parents not to exhaust imprudently the sensibility of their children; not to lavish caresses upon their infancy, and cruelly to withdraw their kindness when their children have learned to expect the daily stimulus of affection. The idea of exercising sensibility we have endeavoured to explain, and to show, that if we require premature gratitude and generosity from young people, we shall only teach them affectation and hypocrisy. We have slightly touched on the dangers of excessive female sensibility, and have suggested, that useful, active employments, and the cultivation of the reasoning faculty, render sympathy and sensibility more respectable, and not less graceful.
In treating of vanity, pride, and ambition, we have been more indulgent to vanity than our proud readers will approve. We hope, however, not to be misunderstood; we hope that we shall not appear to be admirers of that mean and ridiculous foible, which is anxiously concealed by all who have any desire to obtain esteem. We cannot, however, avoid thinking it is a contradiction to inspire young people with a wish to excel, and at the same time to insist upon their repressing all expressions of satisfaction if they succeed. The desire to obtain the good opinion of others, is a strong motive to exertion: this desire cannot be discriminative in children before they have any knowledge of the comparative value of different qualities, and before they can estimate the consequent value of the applause of different individuals. We have endeavoured to show how, from appealing at first to the opinions of others, children may be led to form judgments of their own actions, and to appeal to their own minds for approbation. The sense of duty and independent self-complacency may gradually be substituted in the place of weak, ignorant vanity. There is not much danger that young people, whose understandings are improved, and who mix gradually with society, should not be able to repress those offensive expressions of vanity or pride, which are disagreeable to the feelings of the “impartial spectators.” We should rather let the vanity of children find its own level, than attempt any artificial adjustments; they will learn propriety of manners from observation and experience; we should have patience with their early unc
ivilized presumption, lest we, by premature restraints, check the energy of the mind, and induce the cold, feeble vice of hypocrisy. In their own family, among the friends whom they ought to love and esteem, let children, with simple, unreserved vivacity, express the good opinion they have of themselves. It is infinitely better that they should be allowed this necessary expansion of self-complacency in the company of their superiors, than that it should be repressed by the cold hand of authority, and afterwards be displayed in the company of inferiors and sycophants. We have endeavoured to distinguish between the proper and improper use of praise as a motive in education: we have considered it as a stimulus which, like all other excitements, is serviceable or pernicious, according to the degree in which it is used, and the circumstances in which it is applied.
Whilst we have thus been examining the general means of educating the heart and the understanding, we have avoided entering minutely into the technical methods of obtaining certain parts of knowledge. It was essential, in the first place, to show, how the desire of knowledge was to be excited; what acquirements are most desirable, and how they are to be most easily obtained, are the next considerations. In the chapter on Books — Classical Literature and Grammar — Arithmetic and Geometry — Geography and Astronomy — Mechanics and Chemistry — we have attempted to show, how a taste for literature may early be infused into the minds of children, and how the rudiments of science, and some general principles of knowledge, may be acquired, without disgusting the pupil, or fatiguing him by unceasing application. We have, in speaking of the choice of books for children, suggested the general principles, by which a selection may be safely made; and by minute, but we hope not invidious, criticism, we have illustrated our principles so as to make them practically useful.
The examination of M. Condillac’s Cours d’Etude was meant to illustrate our own sentiments, more than to attack a particular system. Far from intending to depreciate this author, we think most highly of his abilities; but we thought it necessary to point out some practical errours in his mode of instruction. Without examples from real life, we should have wandered, as many others of far superior abilities have already wandered, in the shadowy land of theory.
In our chapters on Grammar, Arithmetic, Mechanics, Chemistry, &c. all that we have attempted has been to recall to preceptors the difficulties which they once experienced, and to trace those early footsteps which time insensibly obliterates. How few possess, like Faruknaz in the Persian tale, the happy art of transfusing their own souls into the bosoms of others!
We shall not pity the reader whom we have dragged through Garretson’s Exercises, if we can save one trembling little pilgrim from that “slough of despond.” We hope that the patient, quiet mode of teaching classical literature, which we have found to succeed in a few instances, may be found equally successful in others; we are not conscious of having exaggerated, and we sincerely wish that some intelligent, benevolent parents may verify our experiments upon their own children.
The great difficulty which has been found in attempts to instruct children in science, has, we apprehend, arisen from the theoretic manner in which preceptors have proceeded. The knowledge that cannot be immediately applied to use, has no interest for children, has no hold upon their memories; they may learn the principles of mechanics, or geometry, or chemistry; but if they have no means of applying their knowledge, it is quickly forgotten, and nothing but the disgust connected with the recollection of useless labour remains in the pupil’s mind. It has been our object, in treating of these subjects, to show how they may be made interesting to young people; and for this purpose we should point out to them, in the daily, active business of life, the practical use of scientific knowledge. Their senses should be exercised in experiments, and these experiments should be simple, distinct, and applicable to some object in which our pupils are immediately interested. We are not solicitous about the quantity of knowledge that is obtained at any given age, but we are extremely anxious that the desire to learn should continually increase, and that whatever is taught should be taught with that perspicuity, which improves the general understanding. If the first principles of science are once clearly understood, there is no danger that the pupil should not, at any subsequent period of his life, improve his practical skill, and increase his knowledge to whatever degree he thinks proper.
We have hitherto proceeded without discussing the comparative advantages of public or private education. Whether children are to be educated at home, or to be sent to public seminaries, the same course of education, during the first years of their lives, should be pursued; and the preparatory care of parents is essential to the success of the public preceptor. We have admitted the necessity of public schools, and, in the present state of society, we acknowledge that many parents have it not in their power properly to superintend the private education of a family. We have earnestly advised parents not to attempt private education without first calculating the difficulties of the undertaking; we have pointed out that, by co-operating with the public instructer, parents may assist in the formation of their children’s characters, without undertaking the sole management of their classical instruction. A private education, upon a calm survey of the advantages of both systems, we prefer, because more is in the power of the private than of the public instructer. One uniform course of experience may be preserved, and no examples, but those which we wish to have followed, need be seen by those children who are brought up at home. When we give our opinion in favour of private education, we hope that all we have said on servants and on acquaintance will be full in the reader’s recollection. No private education, we repeat it, can succeed without perfect unanimity, consistency, and steadiness, amongst all the individuals in the family.
We have recommended to parents the highest liberality as the highest prudence, in rewarding the care of enlightened preceptors. Ye great and opulent parents, condescend to make your children happy: provide for yourselves the cordial of domestic affection against “that sickness of long life — old age.”
In what we have said of governesses, masters, and the value of female accomplishments, we have considered not only what is the fashion of to-day, but rather what is likely to be the fashion of ten or twenty years hence. Mothers will look back, and observe how much the system of female education has altered within their own memory; and they will see, with “the prophetic eye of taste,” what may probably be the fashion of another spring — another race. We have endeavoured to substitute the words domestic happiness instead of the present terms, “success in the world — fortunate establishments,” &c. This will lead, perhaps, at first, to some confusion in the minds of those who have been long used to the old terms: but the new vocabulary has its advantages; the young and unprejudiced will, perhaps, perceive them, and maternal tenderness will calculate with more precision, but not with less eagerness, the chances of happiness according to the new and old tables of interest.
Sectary-metaphysicians, if any of this description should ever deign to open a book that has a practical title, will, we fear, be disappointed in our chapters on Memory — Imagination and Judgment. They will not find us the partisans of any system, and they will probably close the volume with supercilious contempt. We endeavour to console ourselves by the hope, that men of sense and candour will be more indulgent, and will view with more complacency an attempt to collect from all metaphysical writers, those observations, which can be immediately of practical use in education. Without any pompous pretensions, we have given a sketch of what we have been able to understand and ascertain of the history of the mind. On some subjects, the wisest of our readers will at least give us credit for knowing that we are ignorant.
We do not set that high value upon Memory, which some preceptors are inclined to do. From all that we have observed, we believe that few people are naturally deficient in this faculty; though in many it may have been so injudiciously cultivated as to induce the spectators to conclude, that there was some original defect in the retentive power. T
he recollective power is less cultivated than it ought to be, by the usual modes of education: and this is one reason why so few pupils rise above mediocrity. They lay up treasures for moths to corrupt; they acquire a quantity of knowledge, they learn a multitude of words by rote, and they cannot produce a single fact, or a single idea, in the moment when it is wanted: they collect, but they cannot combine. We have suggested the means of cultivating the inventive faculty at the same time that we store the memory; we have shown, that on the order in which ideas are presented to the mind, depends the order in which they will recur to the memory; and we have given examples from the histories of great men and little children, of the reciprocal assistance which the memory and the inventive powers afford each other.
In speaking of Taste, it has been our wish to avoid prejudice and affectation. We have advised that children should early be informed, that the principles of taste depend upon casual, arbitrary, variable associations. This will prevent our pupils from falling into the vulgar errour of being amazed and scandalized at the tastes of other times and other nations. The beauties of nature and the productions of art, which are found to be most generally pleasing, we should associate with pleasure in the mind: but we ought not to expect that children should admire those works of imagination which suggest, instead of expressing, ideas. Until children have acquired the language, until they have all the necessary trains of ideas, many of the finest strokes of genius in oratory, poetry, and painting, must to them be absolutely unintelligible.
In a moral point of view, we have treated of the false associations which have early influence upon the imagination, and produce the furious passions and miserable vices. The false associations which first inspire the young and innocent mind with the love of wealth, of power, or what is falsely called pleasure, are pointed out; and some practical hints are offered to parents, which it is hoped may tend to preserve their children from these moral insanities.
Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Page 749
