Realist Leaders not schoolmasters.

writings, the scientific spirit was totally careless about words and prized only physical truths which were entirely independent of words. Again, the literary spirit naturally favoured the principle of authority, for its oracles had already spoken the scientific spirit set aside all authority and accepted nothing that did not of itself satisfy the reason. (Compare Comenius, supra p. 152.)

:

§ 3. The first great leader in this revolution was an Englishman, Francis Bacon. But the school-room felt his influence only through those who learnt from him; and among educational reformers, the chief advocates of realism have been found on the Continent, e.g., Ratke and Comenius.* But the desire to learn by "things, not words" affected the minds of many English writers on education, and we find this spirit showing itself even in Milton and Locke, and far more clearly in some writers less known to fame.

§ 4. There is a wide distinction in educational writers between those who were schoolmasters and those who were not. Schoolmasters have to come to terms with what exists and to make a livelihood by it. So they are conservatives by position, and rarely get beyond an attempt at showing how that which is now done badly might be done well. Suggestions of radical change usually come from those who never belonged to the class of teachers, or who, not without disgust, have left it.

Among English schoolmasters of the olden times the chief writers I have met with besides Mulcaster are John Brinsley the elder, and Charles Hoole.

* Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel were also in this sense realists, but they held that the educational value of knowledge lay not in itself, but only in so far as it was an instrument for developing the faculties of the mind.

John Brinsley. Charles Hoole.

§ 5. John Brinsley the elder, a Puritan schoolmaster at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, a brother-in-law of Bishop Hall's, and father of John Brinsley the younger who became a leading Puritan minister and author, was a veritable reformer, bu. only with reference to methods. His most interesting

books are Ludus Literarius or the Grammar Schoole, 1612 (written after 20 years' experience in teaching, as we learn from the Consolation, p. 45), and A Consolation for our Grammar Schooles: or a faithfull and most comfortable incouragement for laying of a sure foundation of all good learning in our schooles and for prosperous building thereupon, 1622. The first of these, when reprinted, as it is sure to be, will always secure for its author the notice and the gratitude of students of the history of our education; for in this book he tells us not only what should be done in the school-room, but also what was done. In a dialogue with the ordinary schoolmaster the reformer draws to light the usual practice, criticizes it, and suggests improvements.

§ 6. In Brinsley we get no hint of realism; but by the middle of the sixteen hundreds we find the realistic spirit is felt even by a schoolmaster, Charles Hoole,* who was a kinsman of Bishop Sanderson, the Casuist, and was master first of the Grammar School at Rotherham, then of a private Grammar School in London, published besides a number of school books, a translation of the Orbis Pictus (date of preface, January, 1658), and also "A New Discovery of the old art of teaching schoole

published for the general

* Henry Barnard (English Pedagogy, second series, p. 192), speaks of Hoole as 66 one of the pioneer educators of his century." According to Barnard he was born at Wakefield, in 1610, and died in 1666, rector of "Stock Billerica" (perhaps Stock with Billericay), in Essex.

Hoole's Realism.

profit, especially of young Schoolemasters" (date of preface, December, 1659). In these books we find that Hoole succeeded even in the school-room in keeping his mind open. He complains of the neglect of English, and evidently in theory at least went a long way with the realistic reformers "Comenius," he says, "hath proceeded (as Nature itself doth) in an orderly way, first to exercise the senses well by presenting their objects to them, and then to fasten upon the intellect by impressing the first notions of things upon it and linking them one to another by a rational discourse; whereas indeed we generally, missing this way, do teach children as we do parrots to speak they know not what, nay, which is worse, we taking the way of teaching little ones by grammar only, at the first do puzzle their imaginations with abstractive terms and secondary intentions, which, till they be somewhat acquainted with things, and the words belonging to them in the language which they learn, they cannot apprehend what they mean. And this I guess to be the reason why many greater persons do resolve sometimes not to put a child to school till he be at least eleven or twelve years of age You then, that have the care of little children, do not too much trouble their thoughts and clog their memories with bare grammar rudiments, which to them are harsh in getting, and fluid in retaining; because indeed to them they signifie nothing but a meer swimming notion of a general term, which they know not what it meaneth till they comprehend all particulars: but by this [ie, the Orbis P.] or the like subsidiarie inform them first with some knowledge of things and words wherewith to express them; and then their rules of speaking will be better understood and more firmly kept in mind. Else how should a child conceive what a rule meaneth when he neither

Art of teaching. Abraham Cowley.

knoweth what the Latine word importeth, nor what manner of thing it is which is signified to him in his own native language which is given him thereby to understand the rule? for rules consisting of generalities are delivered (as I may say) at a third hand, presuming first the things and then the words to be already apprehended touching which they are made." This subject Hoole wisely commends to the consideration of teachers, "it being the very basis of our profession to search into the way of children's taking hold by little and little of what we teach them, that so we may apply ourselves to their reach." (Preface to trans. of Orbis Pictus.)

§ 7. "Good Lord! how many good and clear wits of children be now-a-days perished by ignorant schoolmasters!" So said Sir Thomas Elyot in his Governor in 1531, and the complaint would not have been out of date in the 17th century, possibly not in the 19th. In the sixteen hundreds we certainly find little advance in practice, though in theory many bold projects were advanced, some of which pointed to the study of things, to the training of the hand, and even to observation of the "educands."

§ 8. The poet Cowley's "proposition for the advancement of experimental philosophy" is a scheme of a college near London to which is to be attached a school of 200 boys. "And because it is deplorable to consider the loss which children make of their time at most schools, employing or rather casting away six or seven years in the learning of words only, and that too very imperfectly; that a method be here established for the infusing knowledge and language at the same time, [Is this an echo of Comenius ?] and that this may be their apprenticeship in Natural Philosophy."*

* A very interesting suggestion of Cowley's is that another house be built for poor men's sons who show ability. These shall be brought

Authors and schoolmasters. J. Dury.

§ 9. Rarely indeed have those who either theoretically or practically have made a study of education ever acquired sufficient literary skill to catch the ear of the public or (what is at least as difficult) the ear of the teaching body. And among the eminent writers who have spoken on education, as Rabelais, Montaigne, Milton, Locke, Rousseau, Herbert Spencer, we cannot find one who has given to it more than passing, if not accidental, attention. Schoolmasters are, as I said, conservative, at least in the school-room; and moreover, they seldom find the necessary time, money, or inclination for publishing on the work of their calling. The current thought at any period must then be gathered from books nly to be found in our great libraries, books in which riters now long forgotten give hints of what was wanted out of the school-room and grumble at what went on in it. § 10. One of the most original of these writers that have come in my way is John Dury, a Puritan, who was at one time Chaplain to the English Company of Merchants at Elbing, and laboured with Comenius and Hartlib to promote unity among the various Christian bodies of the reformed faith (see Masson's Life of Milton, vol. iii). About 1649 Dury published The Reformed Schoole which gives the scheme of an association for the purpose of educating a number of boys and girls "in a Christian way."

§ 11. That Dury was not himself a schoolmaster is plain from the first of his "rules of education." "The chief rule of the whole work is that nothing be made tedious and grievous to the children, but all the toilsomeness of their business

up" with the same conveniences that are enjoyed even by rich men' children (though they maintain the fewer for that cause), there being nothing of eminent and illustrious to be expected from a low, sordid, and hospital-like education."