search of flowers, they were shut up and had the flowers brought to them. The way in which children turn from object to object, like the bees from flower to flower, is surely an indication to us that Nature herself teaches at this age by an infinite variety of impressions which we should no more attempt to throw into what we call regular order than we should employ a drill-sergeant to teach infants to walk. Of course I do not mean that there is no education for children, however young; but the school is the mother's knee, and the lessons learnt there are other and more valuable than objectlessons.*

The time for teaching, technically so called, comes at last, and what is to be done then? Let us consider briefly what is done.

There are in education few maxims which are so universally accepted as this-that education is, if not wholly, at least in a great measure, the development of faculties rather than the imparting of knowledge. On this principle alone is it possible to justify the amount of time given by the higher forms in schools and by undergraduates at the Universities to the study of classics and mathematics. In all the attempts which have been made to depreciate these studies no one of any authority has disputed that, if they are indeed the best means of training the mind, they should be maintained in their present monopoly, even though the knowledge acquired were sure to drop off, like the tadpole's tail,' when the scholars

* See, however, some observations of Mr. Herbert Spencer on the other side.-Education, pp. 81 ff.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CHILD AND THE YOUTH. 181

entered on the business of life. We are agreed, then, that in youth the faculties are to be trained, not the knowledge given, for adult age. But when we come to childhood we forget this principle entirely, and think not so much of cultivating the faculties for youth as of communicating the knowledge which will then come in useful. We see clearly enough that it would be absurd to cram the mind of a youth with laws of science or art or commerce which he could not understand, on the ground that the getting-up of these things might save him trouble in after-life. But we do not hesitate to sacrifice childhood to the learning by heart of grammar-rules, Latin declensions, historical dates, and the like, with no thought whatever of the child's faculties, but simply with a view of giving him knowledge (if knowledge it can be called) that will come in useful five or six years. afterwards. We do not treat youths thus, probably because we have more sympathy with them, or at least understand them better. The intellectual life to which the senses and the imagination are subordinated in the man has already begun in the youth. In an inferior degree he can do what the man can do, and understand what the man can understand. He has already some notion of reasoning, and abstraction, and generalisation. But with the child it is very different. His active faculties may be said almost to differ in kind from a man's. He has a feeling for the sensuous world which he will lose as he grows up. His strong imagination, under no control of the reason, is constantly at work building castles in the air, and investing the doll or

the puppet-show with all the properties of the things they represent. His feelings and affections, easily excited, find an object to love or dislike in every person and thing he meets with. On the other hand, he has no conception of what is abstract, and no interest except in actual known persons, animals, and things.

There is, then, between the child of nine and the youth of fourteen or fifteen a greater difference than between the youth and the man of twenty; and this demands a corresponding difference in their studies. And yet, as matters are carried on now, the child is too often kept to the drudgery of learning by rote mere collections of hard words, perhaps, too, in a foreign language; and absorbed by the present, he gets little comfort from the teacher's hæc olim meminisse juvabit.

How to educate the child is doubtless the most difficult problem of all, and it is generally allotted to those who are the least likely to find a satisfactory

solution.

The earliest educator of the children of many rich parents is the nursemaid-a person not usually distinguished by either intellectual or moral excellence. At an early age, this educator is superseded by the Preparatory School. Taken as a body, the ladies whose pecuniary needs compel them to open' establishments for young gentlemen' (though doubtless possessed of many excellent qualities) cannot be said to hold enlarged views, or indeed any views whatever, on the subject of education. Their intention is not so much to cultivate the children's facul

BLUNDERS IN EARLY EDUCATION.

183

ties as to make a livelihood, and to hear no complaints that pupils who have left them have been found deficient in the expected knowledge by the master of their new school. If anyone would investigate the sort of teaching which is considered adapted to the capacity of children at this stage, let him look into a standard work still in vogue (‘Mangnall's Questions'), from which the young of both sexes acquire a great quantity and variety of learning; the whole of ancient and modern history and biography, together with the heathen mythology, the planetary system, and the names of all the constellations, lying very compactly in about 300 pages. (See Appendix, p. 314.)

Unfortunately, moreover, from the gentility of these ladies, their scholars' bodies are often treated in preparatory schools no less injuriously than their minds. It may be natural in a child to use his lungs and delight in noise, but this can hardly be considered genteel, so the tendency is, as far as possible, suppressed. It is found, too, that if children are allowed to run about they get dirty and spoil their clothes, and do not look like 'young gentlemen,' so they are made to take exercise in a much more genteel fashion, walking slowly two-and-two, with gloves on.

At nine or ten years old, boys are commonly put to a school taught by masters. Here they lose sight of their gloves, and learn the use of their limbs; but their minds are not so fortunate as their bodies. The studies of the school have been arranged without any thought of their peculiar needs. The youngest class is generally the largest, often much the largest, and it is handed over to the least com

6

petent and worst paid master on the staff of teachers. The reason is, that little boys are found to learn the tasks imposed upon them very slowly. A youth or a man who came fresh to the Latin grammar would learn in a morning as much as the master with great labour can get into children in a week. It is thought, therefore, that the best teaching should be applied where it will have most result. If anyone were to say to the manager of a school, The master who takes the lowest form teaches badly, and the children learn nothing;' he would perhaps say, 'Very likely; but if I paid a much higher salary, and got a better man, they would learn but little.' The only thing the school-manager thinks of is, How much do the little boys learn of what is taught in the higher forms? How their faculties are being developed, or whether they have any faculties except for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and for getting grammarrules, &c., by heart, he is not so 'unpractical' as to enquire.

Pestalozzi, it has been said, invented nothing new. Most assuredly he did not invent the principle that education is a developing of the faculties rather than an imparting of knowledge. But he did much to bring this truth to bear on early education, and to make it not only received but acted on.

Much has been written about the amount of originality which may be allowed to Pestalozzi, but the question is, after all, of no great importance. We must, at least, concede to him the merit which he himself claims, of having lighted upon truths little noticed before, and principles which, though almost generally