Kitabı oku: «A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education», sayfa 21

This same principle is also exercised to a very considerable extent in drawing and applying lessons from a previous announcement. A very little attention to the operations of the mind in that exercise will be sufficient to shew this. Let us suppose, for example, that an announcement is made to a child, from which he is required to draw a practical lesson. This announcement must be distinctly present to his mind, while he is engaged in considering its meaning, its moral character, and its bearing on his own sentiments and conduct; – but more especially, all this, besides the original announcement, has still to be kept in view, while he is engaged in giving the lesson to the teacher in his own language as required. But in the application of the lessons, the principle is still more extensively called into operation. The child is asked, how he should act in certain given circumstances. These circumstances must accordingly be kept steadily before the mind, during the whole of the succeeding mental operation. He has to consider the lesson, or the conduct which he should pursue in these circumstances, and then, by the association of his ideas, he must call up from the whole of his accumulated knowledge, the precepts, the examples, the warnings, and even the implications, which form his authority for deciding on the conduct which he ought to pursue. These again must be kept before the mind, while he is preparing, and giving in his own language his conclusions to his teacher.

All this was very obvious in the several public experiments, where the drawing of lessons, and the application of them by the pupils, were introduced. – In the case of the adult prisoners in Edinburgh County Jail, it was very observable; and the rolling of the eye, and the unconscious movement of the head, as if deeply engaged in some mental research when an application was required, were peculiarly pleasing and obvious to all the spectators. The reason was, that they had to keep before their mind, the circumstance, or statement involved in the question asked, while they had, at the same time, to review the several portions of their knowledge, chuse out the passage or example which was calculated to direct them in the duty; and then, still keeping these accumulated ideas present before the mind, they had to prepare and give expression to their answers. The same thing had to be done, but to a much greater extent, by the children in Aberdeen, in London, and in Newry. But the most satisfactory evidence of the beneficial working of this principle, in the drawing and applying of lessons, and by this means in giving even to children a command of language, and a power of extemporaneous speech which is but rarely attained even by adults, is to be found in the Seventh Experiment in Leith. The writer feels more at liberty in descanting upon the extraordinary results of that investigation with the children, because he had no share in their previous instruction; the peculiar merits of which belonged entirely to their zealous and pious teacher. He was a plain unlettered man; and yet he has trained hundreds of children in his Sunday school, whose intellectual attainments, for their age and rank in life, the writer has seldom known to be surpassed. There were exhibited by the children, from the beginning of the experiment to the end, an amount of knowledge, a degree of mental culture, a grasp of mind, and a fluency of expression, which had never before been witnessed in children of a similar class, or of the same age, by any person then present. The pupils were at the time quite unprepared for any extraordinary exhibition; – the subjects were chosen indiscriminately by the clergymen present, and were repeatedly changed; – and what is still more extraordinary, it was found, upon investigation, that the subjects were in general entirely new, or at least they had never been previously used as exercises in the school. The children, however, with all these disadvantages, were perfectly at home in each one of them. There appeared to be no exhausting of their resources; and the ease, and copiousness, and fluency of their language, were remarked by all present, as extraordinary, and by some as almost incredible. Many who were present, could scarcely believe that the children spoke extemporaneously. All these phenomena were simply the effects of the principle of which we are here speaking, regularly brought into operation, in the weekly acts of drawing and applying their practical lessons. The exhibition of so much mental power possessed by mere children, – and these children collected from the very humblest and rudest classes inhabiting a sea-port town, – appeared to be a circumstance altogether new. The official persons present, and the very Rev. Bishop Russell, who took an active part in the examination, expressed their decided satisfaction at the results of the whole experiment; and the effects of these principles, as illustrated by such children, made the present Lord Murray remark publicly at the close of the meeting, that it was obviously "a valuable discovery, calculated to be extensively useful to society."

PART IV
ON THE SELECTION OF PROPER TRUTHS AND SUBJECTS TO BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES

CHAP. I
On the General Principles which ought to regulate our choice of Truths and Subjects to be taught to the Young

In all cases where our temporal interests are concerned, a proper discrimination in the selection of such exercises and studies as shall best suit our purpose, is considered as not only prudent, but necessary. The neglect of this would, indeed, by men of the world, be esteemed the height of folly. No ship-master thinks of perfecting his apprentices by lectures on agriculture; nor does the farmer train his son and successor to cultivate the land, by enforcing upon him the study of navigation. In a public school, therefore, when all classes of the community are to be taught, the truths and exercises should be selected in such a manner, that they shall, if possible, be equally useful to all; leaving the navigator and the agriculturist, the surgeon and the lawyer, to supplement their general education, by the study of those special branches of learning which their several professions require.

But even this is not enough: – Among those subjects and exercises in which all the children in a school may be equally interested, there are many which are neither equally useful, nor equally indispensable. A thorough consideration, and a careful selection of those which are most valuable in themselves, and which are most likely to be useful during life, become both prudent and necessary. In all ordinary cases, men act upon this principle. Health, food, and recreation, are all good and useful things; but even from among these we are sometimes compelled to make a choice, and the principle of our decision is always the same. When we cannot procure all, we chuse those which appear to us the most necessary, and abandon the others without regret. A man readily denies himself to sports and amusement, when he finds that he must labour for a supply of food and necessaries; and even the pleasures of the table are willingly sacrificed, for the purpose of securing or restoring the blessings of health. In like manner, those branches of education which are most important for securing the welfare of the pupils, and most for the benefit of society, ought to be selected and preferred before all others; seeing that to neglect, or wilfully to err in this matter, would be injurious to the child, and unjust to the community. – Our object at present therefore is, to enquire what those general principles are which ought to regulate us in our choice of subjects and exercises for the education of youth.

1. The first and fundamental rule which ought to guide the Educationist and the Parent in the selection of subjects for the school, is to chuse those which are to promote the happiness and welfare of the pupil himself; without regard, in the first instance at least, to the interests or the ease of his friends, of the teacher, or of any third party whatever. – Children are not the property of their parents, nor even of the community. They are strictly and unalienably the property of the Almighty, whose servants and stewards the parents and the public are. The child's happiness and welfare are entirely his own; – the free gift of his Maker and Master, of which no man, without his full consent, has a right to deprive him. This happiness, and the full enjoyment of what he receives, both here and hereafter, have been made to depend on his allegiance and his faithfulness, not to his parents, nor even to the public, but to the great Lord of both. This allegiance therefore, is his first and chief concern, with which the will and the wishes, the interests or the ease, of teachers and parents, have nothing to do. If the directions of his Maker and Lord are attended to, he has nothing to fear. There is in that case secured for him an inheritance that is incorruptible, and far beyond the reach or the power of any creature. It is for the enjoyment of this inheritance that he has been born; – it is with the design of attaining it, and for increasing its amount, that his time is prolonged upon earth; – it is to secure it for him, and to prepare him for it, that the parent has been appointed his guardian and guide; – and it is for the purpose of promoting and overseeing all this among its members, that a visible church, and church officers, have been established and perpetuated in the world.

In so far as each individual child is concerned, the parent is the immediate agent appointed by the Almighty for attending to these objects; and although, in a matter of so much importance, he is permitted to avail himself of the assistance of the teacher, he, and he only, is responsible to God for the due performance of those momentous duties which he owes to his child. When therefore the parents, for the purpose of forwarding some trifling personal advantage, or the teacher, for his own ease or caprice, are found indifferent to the kind of exercises used in the school, or to the results of what is taught in it; – doing any thing, or nothing, provided the time is allowed to pass, with at least the appearance of teaching; – they are, in such a case, betraying an important trust; they are heedlessly frustrating the wishes, and resisting the commands of their Master and Lord; they are sapping the foundations of society; and are thoughtlessly and basely defrauding the helpless and unconscious pupil of a most valuable patrimony. – In committing to parents the keeping and administration of this sacred deposit, reason, conscience, and Scripture, all unite in declaring, that it is given them, not for the promotion of their own personal advantages, but for the child's benefit; and that, while they never can be permanently bettered by its neglect, their good, even in this world, will be best and most surely advanced by a faithful discharge of their duty to their offspring.

These remarks go to establish the general principle, that the parent is not the proprietor, but merely the guardian and the administrator of the child's interests. These interests are of various kinds. And although the above remarks refer chiefly to the spiritual and eternal advantages of the young, that circumstance arises merely from their superior value and importance. The argument is equally conclusive in regard to every one of his temporal concerns. For if both the parent and the child be the special property of God, and if the parent has been appointed by him as the conservator and guardian of the child's happiness, he has no right either to lessen or to destroy it for any selfish purpose of his own. In every case – even of discipline – he is bound to follow the command and the example given him by his Father and Master in heaven, not to chastise his offspring for his "own pleasure," but for the "child's profit." The rule therefore which ought to regulate the parent, and of course the Educationist, in making choice of the subjects and exercises for the school, is, that they shall really and permanently conduce to the pupil's welfare and happiness, irrespective of the conflicting interests or wishes, either of the teacher, the parent, or the public. These will usually be in harmony; but as a general principle, the exercises are to be chosen with reference to the welfare of the child, – not of the community.

2. Another rule which ought to be attended to in the selection of subjects and exercises for the seminary, is nearly allied to the former, but which we think, from its vast importance, should have a separate consideration. It is this, that a decided preference should be given to every thing which advances the concerns of the soul, above those of the body; – which prefers heaven to earth, – and eternity to time. – Man is an accountable and an immortal creature; – and therefore there is no more comparison between the value of those things which refer to his happiness in eternity, and those which refer only to his enjoyments during his lifetime, than there is between a drop of water and the contents of the ocean; – nay, between a grain of sand and the whole physical universe. The truth of this observation, when viewed in the abstract, is never questioned; and yet the educational principles which it naturally suggests are too often jostled aside, and practically neglected. It plainly teaches us, that the young ought to be made aware of the comparative nothingness of temporal and sensual objects, when placed in competition with those which refer to their souls and eternity; and that the subjects which are to be taught them in the school, should tend to produce these feelings. – But this is not always the case; and even when the subjects are in themselves unobjectionable, the methods taken for teaching them frequently neutralize their effects. The national evils which have arisen from this neglect are extensive and lamentable, consisting in an almost exclusive attention among all classes to temporal matters, and to sensual gratifications. These characteristic, features in our people may all be traced, from their exhibition in general society, to the want of a thorough knowledge of those truths which tend so powerfully to deaden the influence of the things of sense and time, and to moderate our pursuit after them. It is in a particular manner at this point that the reckless cupidity, and the debased and short-sighted selfishness of the lower classes, ought to be met and removed, by the enlightened and kindly instructions of more capacious minds. Society, as at present constituted, acts as if there were no futurity. Time is the eternity of thousands; and therefore they think only of time. Had they, as rational creatures, but a correct view, – however faint, – of their destination in eternity, their conduct and pursuits would very soon be changed, and their selected enjoyments would become, not only more rational, but much more exquisite. Education is the instrument by which alone this can be effected, whether in the church or in the school; and to this point, both parents and children should be assiduously directed for their own sakes, and for the sake of the community.

Hitherto there has in education been too much of the mere shadow of rational knowledge, without the substance; and the consequence has been, that many parents in the lower classes have never been able to perceive their own best interests, and therefore it is that their children by them have been equally neglected. Nor is this only a partial evil, or confined to the lower classes. – It is, on the contrary, when we examine the matter closely, nearly universal. Among ignorant and thoughtless parents, who are either unable or unwilling to look any further than the few short years of life, the training of their children to figure respectably and gracefully during it, may not perhaps excite much wonder; – but that such conduct should be followed by Christian parents, who know that both they and their children have souls, and that there is such a thing as eternity before them both, is truly humbling. Nor is it much for the credit of the philosophy of the present day, that while its promoters admit as an axiom the superiority of moral and religious attainments, they are found in practice to bestow their chief attention, and to lavish most of their approbation on physical investigations and on intellectual pursuits. Every sound thinker must see, that by doing so, the first principles of philosophy are violated; and many well meaning persons are, by this inverted state of public opinion, insensibly drawn away from the more valuable food provided for them as responsible and immortal beings, to feed on the mere chaff and garbage of temporal and sensual enjoyments; or the more valuable, but still temporary crumbs of the intellectual table. That this practical abuse of acknowledged truths should be found among the ignorant and the depraved, might perhaps be expected; but that it should be witnessed, and yet winked at, by men of learning and study, whose comprehensive minds, although still inadequate to comprehend the full import of an eternity of advancing knowledge, can yet appreciate the comparative insignificance of seventy – nay of seventy thousand – years' investigation into the mysteries of Nature, is very painful. We do not, in saying this, depreciate in the slightest degree the sublime discoveries which are daily being made of the Almighty and his works; – but we say, upon the soundest principles of philosophy, that were all these discoveries multiplied ten thousand times, they could not for a moment compete with what yet remains to be communicated to the successful aspirant after the revelations of eternity. Religion and morals are the only means by which success in that great competition can be gained; and therefore, to a child, a knowledge of all that man has yet discovered, or can ever know in this imperfect state of existence, is really as nothing, in comparison with the knowledge and practice of but one religious truth, or with the slightest advance in the science of morals. – A child once possessed of a living soul is born for eternity. Its happiness has been made to depend, not on the possession of physical good, or of intellectual power, but entirely on its moral condition; – and the physical good it receives, and the intellectual power it attains; are nothing more than means intended by the Almighty to be used for the purpose of perfecting his moral condition while he is still in this world. The whole period of his existence here, is but the moment of his birth for eternity. Care and enlightened attention to his moral condition during that short period of probation, will usher him spiritually alive and fully prepared for enjoying an eternal weight of intelligence and glory; – while inattention, or misdirected activity now, may no doubt put him prematurely in possession of a few intellectual morsels of this eternal feast, but it will assuredly shut him out from its everlasting enjoyment, and will entail on him comparative ignorance, and a living death for ever.

In this view of the case then, – and what Christian will deny that it is the correct one, – there cannot be a more short-sighted proposition suggested in the counsels of men, than that which would sanction a system of education for an immortal being, that either overlooked, or deliberately set aside, his well-being in eternity. The very idea is monstrous. It is a deliberate levelling of man to the rank of mere sentient animals; and is another form of expressing the ancient advice of the sensualist, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." By every person of learning, then, and even by individuals of humbler attainments, in the exercise of a plain common understanding, the importance of the rule in education which we are here recommending, must at once be admitted; – That in the selection of truths and exercises for educating and training the young, a decided preference should always be given to those which have a reference to their well-being and happiness, not in time so much as in eternity.

3. In selecting subjects and exercises for the education of the young, those are to be preferred, by which the largest amount of true and solid happiness is to be secured to the pupil. – A man's happiness is his only possession. Every thing else which he has, is only the means which he employs for the purpose of acquiring or retaining it. Happiness accordingly, by the very constitution of our nature, is the great object of pursuit by every man.²⁹ The means of happiness are no doubt frequently mistaken, and often substituted for happiness itself. But even these conflicting circumstances, when properly considered, all tend to shew, that happiness is the great object desired, and that it is universally sought after by every intelligent mind. By a wise and beneficent arrangement of the Almighty, it has been so ordered, that happiness is to be found only in the exercise of the affections; – and the amount of the happiness which they confer, is found to be proportionate to the excellence of the object beloved. The love of God himself, accordingly, is the first of duties, and includes the perfection of happiness. The love of all that are like him, and in proportion as they are so, ranks next in the scale; and hence it is, that all moral excellence, – the culture of the affections and the heart, – is to be preferred to intellectual attainments, as these again are to take precedence of mere physical good.

This established order for the attainment of happiness, is in society most strangely inverted. Beauty, strength, honour, and riches, – mere physical qualities, – are generally preferred to the qualities of the mind; – and mental attainments, again, too often command more consideration than moral worth. This is altogether an unnatural state of things; and the consequences of its prevalence in any community, must be proportionally disastrous. How far the modes for conducting the education of the young hitherto have tended to extend or perpetuate this error, it is not for us here to say. But if they have, the sooner the evil is rectified the better. Happiness, as we have said, is the single aim of man, – however he may mistake its nature, or the means by which it is to be attained. And as it is to be found, not in intellectual power, nor in the possession of physical good, but only in moral culture, it follows, that the attainment of this moral excellence should be the one chief design aimed at in the education of the young.

The benevolence and wisdom of this arrangement are obvious. For had happiness been made to depend on the possession of intellectual power, few comparatively could have commanded the time and means which are necessary for the purpose; and had it been attached to the possession of riches, or honour, or any other species of physical good, there would have been still fewer. But it is not necessarily attached to the possession of either. Men may enjoy riches and honours, beauty and health, and yet they may be unhappy. The highest mental attainments also, when disjoined from moral excellence, tend only, as in the fallen angels, to stimulate their pride, and to aggravate their misery. But happiness is exclusively and unalterably attached to the cultivation of the affections, – to the acquisition of moral excellence; – so that it is equally within the reach of every individual, however obscure, or however talented. Few men can be intellectually great, – fewer still can be rich or powerful; but every man may, if he pleases, be good, – and therefore happy. In choosing the subjects and exercises then for the education of the young, those which tend to the production and to the cultivation of the moral affections, – love to God, and love to men, – are always to be preferred to those which have relation merely to the attainment of intellectual acquirements, or the possession of mere physical good.

4. In choosing subjects and exercises for the education of the young, reference should be had, all other things being equal, to the prosperity and welfare of the community in general. – We have already shewn that, under God, the happiness and welfare of every individual are his own special property, and must in all cases, therefore, be at his special disposal. No ordinary combination of circumstances will ever warrant an unjust encroachment on what is so peculiarly his own. But the happiness and welfare of an individual are almost uniformly found to be connected with the happiness and prosperity of those with whom he has to associate. The Educationist, therefore, ought to have the welfare of the community in view, while he is selecting those exercises which are specially to benefit his pupil; and he will almost invariably find, that by choosing those subjects and exercises for the individual, which will tend most surely to promote the general well-being of society, he will not only not require a sacrifice of any of the personal benefits to which the child has a claim, but that he will greatly increase their amount, and add to their value. When this is the case, to overlook the good of the community in selecting exercises and subjects for the school, would be of no advantage to the pupils, and would be an act of positive injustice to the public at large.

These general principles, we think, when considered singly, must approve themselves to every thinking mind; and if so, they must be still more beneficial when they are combined, and acted upon systematically in the preliminary arrangements of any seminary. The nearer, therefore, the Educationist can keep to them in making his selection of subjects and exercises, the better will it be both for the pupil and for the community at large, while the benefits expected from an exercise where there is any material deviation from them, will most probably turn out to be delusive, and the exercise itself detected as the mere bequest of an antiquated prejudice, or the temporary idol of fashion. These principles being admitted to be sound in the abstract, will greatly assist us in deciding upon the relative value and appropriateness of some of the propositions which we shall immediately have to submit to the reader; and we would here only remark, for his guidance, that if, in the following recommendations, he finds an exercise correctly to accord with the above principles, while he yet hesitates as to the propriety of its adoption in the school, or feels inclined to accede to its exclusion, – he ought, in such a case, carefully to review the grounds of his decision, as these are most likely to be erroneous. He has good reason to suspect that he is labouring under prejudice, or is unduly biassed by long cherished opinions, when he refuses the legitimate application of a general law, – a law which he has previously admitted to be sound, – and which is as likely to be applicable to the case in hand, as to any other of a similar kind.