Education and "learning."

learning foreign languages, but that its language should be the mother-tongue, and its exercises should include handwork, especially drawing; (6) that girls' education should be cared for no less than boys'; (7) that the only hope of improving our schools lies in providing training for our teachers. These are all regarded as planks in the platform of "the new education," and these were all advocated by Mulcaster.

§ 5. Before I point this out in detail I may remark how greatly education has suffered from being confounded with learning. There are interesting passages both in Ascham and Mulcaster which prove that the class-ideal of the "scholar and gentleman" was of later growth. In the fifteen hundreds learning was thought suitable, not for the rich, but for the clever. Still, learning, and therefore education, was not for the many, but the few. Mulcaster considers at some length how the number of the educated is to be kept down (Positions, chapp. 36, 37, 39), though even here he is in the van, and would have everyone taught to read and write (Positions, chapp. 5, 36). But the true problem of education was not faced till it was discovered that every human being was to be considered in it. This was, I think, first seen by Comenius.

With this abatement we find Mulcaster's sixteenth-century notions not much behind our nineteenth.

§ 6. (1 & 2) "Why is it not good," he asks, "to have every part of the body and every power of the soul to be fined to his best?" (PP., p. 34*). Elsewhere he says: "The end of education and train is to help Nature to her perfection,

* The paging is that of the reprint. It differs slightly from that of first edition.

1. Development. 2. Child-study.

which is, when all her abilities be perfected in their habit, whereunto right elements be right great helps. Consideration and judgment must wisely mark whereunto Nature is either evidently given or secretly affectionate and must frame an education consonant thereto." (El., p. 28).

Michelet has with justice claimed for Montaigne that he drew the teacher's attention from the thing to be learnt to the learner: "Non l'objet, le savoir, mais le sujet, c'est l'homme.” (Nos Fils, p. 170.) Mulcaster has a claim to share this honour with his great contemporary. He really laid the foundation of a science of education. Discussing our natural abilities, he says: "We have a perceiving by outward sense to feel, to hear, to see, to smell, to taste all sensible things; which qualities of the outward, being received in by the common sense and examined by fantsie, are delivered to remembrance, and afterward prove our great and only grounds unto further knowledge."* (El., p. 32.) Here we see Mulcaster endeavouring to base education, or as he so well calls it, "train," on what we receive from Nature. Elsewhere he speaks of the three things which we "find peering out of the little young souls," viz: "wit to take, memory to keep, and discretion to discern." (PP., p. 27.)

* Mulcaster goes on to talk about the brain, &c. Of course he does not anticipate the discoveries of science, but his language is very different from what we should expect from a writer in the pre-scientific age, .g., "To serve the turn of these two, both sense and motion, Nature hath planted in our body a brain, the prince of all our parts, which by spreading sinews of all sorts throughout all our parts doth work all those effects which either sense is seen in or motion perceived by." (El., p. 32.) But much as he thinks of the body Mulcaster is no materialist. "Last of all our soul hath in it an imperial prerogative of understanding beyond sense, of judging by reason, of directing by both,

3. Groundwork by best workman.

§ 7. (3) I have pointed out that the false ideal of the Renascence led schoolmasters to neglect children. Mulcaster remarks that the ancients considered the training of children should date from the birth; but he himself begins with the school age. Here he has the boldness to propose that those who teach the beginners should have the smallest number of pupils, and should receive the highest pay. "The first groundwork would be laid by the best workman," says Mulcaster (PP., 130), here expressing a

for duty towards God, for society towards men, for conquest in affections, for purchase in knowledge, and such other things, whereby it furnisheth out all manner of uses in this our mortal life, and bewrayeth in itself a more excellent being than to continue still in this roaming pilgrimage." (p. 33.) The grand thing, he says, is to bring all these abilities to perfection "which so heavenly a benefit is begun by education, confirmed by use, perfected with continuance which crowneth the whole work" (p. 34.) "Nature makes the boy toward; nurture sees him forward." (p. 35). The neglect of the material world which has been for ages the source of mischief of all kinds in the schoolroom, and which has not yet entirely passed away, would have been impossible if Mulcaster's elementary course had been adopted. "Is the body made by Nature nimble to run, to ride, to swim, to fence, to do anything else which beareth praise in that kind for either profit or pleasure? And doth not the Elementary help them all forward by precept and train? The hand, the ear, the eye be the greatest instruments whereby the receiving and delivery of our learning is chiefly executed, and doth not this Elementary instruct the hand to write, to draw, to play; the eye to read by letters, to discern by line, to judge by both; the ear tc call for voice and sound with proportion for pleasure, with reason for wit? Generally whatsoever gift Nature hath bestowed upon the body, to be brought forth or bettered by the mean of train for any profitable use in our whole life, doth not this Elementary both find it and foresee it ?" (El., p. 35). "The hand, the ear, the eye, be the greatest instruments," said the Elizabethan schoolmaster. So says the Victorian

reformer.

4. No forcing of young plants.

truth which, like many truths that are not quite convenient, is seldom denied but almost systematically ignored.*

§ 8. (4) In the Nineteenth Century Magazine for November, 1888, appeared a vigorous protest with nearly 400 signatures,

* I wish some good author would write a book on Unpopular Truths, and show how, on some subjects, wise men go on saying the same thing in all ages and nobody listens to them. Plato said "In every work the beginning is the most important part, especially in dealing with anything young and tender." (Rep., bk. ii, 377; Davies and Vaughan, p. 65.) And the complaints about "bad grounding" prove our common neglect of what Mulcaster urged three centuries ago : "For the Elementarie because good scholars will not abase themselves to it, it is left to the meanest, and therefore to the worst. For that the first grounding would be handled by the best, and his reward would be greatest, because both his pains and his judgment should be with the greatest. And it would easily allure sufficient men to come down so low, if they might perceive that reward would rise up. No man of judgment will contrary this point, neither can any ignorant be blamed for the contrary: the one seeth the thing to be but low in order, the other knoweth the ground to be great in laying, not only for the matter which the child doth learn: which is very small in show though great for process: but also for the manner of handling his wit, to hearten him for afterward, which is of great moment. The first master can deal but with a few, the next with more, and so still upward as reason groweth on and receives without forcing. It is the foundation well and soundly laid, which makes all the upper building muster, with countenance and continuance. If I were to strike the stroke, as I am but to give counsel, the first pains truly taken should in good truth be most liberally recompensed; and less allowed still upward, as the pains diminish and the ease increaseth. Whereat no master hath cause to repine, so he may have his children well grounded in the Elementarie. Whose imperfection at this day doth marvellously trouble both masters and scholars, so that we can hardly do any good, nay, scantly tell how to place the too too raw boys in any certain form, with hope to go for. ward orderly, the ground-work of their entry being so rotten under. neath." (PP., pp. 233, 4.)

5. The elementary course. English.

many of which carried great weight with them, against our sacrifice of education to examination. Our present system, whether good or bad, is the result of accident. Winchester and Eton had large endowments, and naturally endeavoured by means of these endowments to get hold of clever boys. At first no doubt they succeeded fairly well; but other schools felt bound to compete for juvenile brains, and as the number of prizes increased, many of our preparatory schools became mere racing stables for children destined at 12 or 14 to run for "scholarship stakes." Thus, in the scramble for the money all thought of education has been lost sight of; injury has been done in many cases to those who have succeeded, still greater injury to those who have failed or who have from the first been considered "out of the running." These very serious evils would have been avoided had we taken counsel with Mulcaster: "Pity it were for so petty a gain to forego a greater; to win an hour in the morning and lose the whole day after; as those people most commonly do which start out of their beds too early before they be well awaked or know what it is o'clock; and be drowsy when they are up for want of their sleep." (PP., p. 19; see also El., xi., pp. 52 ff.)

§ 9. (5) It would have been a vast gain to all Europe if Mulcaster had been followed instead of Sturm. He was onc of the earliest advocates of the use of English instead of Latin (see Appendix, p. 534), and good reading and writing in English were to be secured before Latin was begun. His elementary course included these five things: English reading, English writing, drawing, singing, playing a musical instrument. If the first course were made to occupy the schooltime up to the age of 12, Mulcaster held that more would be done between 12 and 16 than between 7 and 17 in