likely to be made, or by giving reasons why the request should be granted. 'Mamma, I won't break it; I only want to look at it; I will use it in my lessons; I only want one.' We must take care that this trick does not succeed. An open, straightforward request is what we should like. When he asks in this roundabout way, we ought to insist on his making his request again in a simple manner. It would perhaps be well to refuse what he does not ask for properly. "Lead your child out into Nature, teach him on the hilltops and in the valleys. There he will listen better, and the sense of freedom will give him more strength to overcome difficulties. But in these hours of freedom let him be taught by Nature rather than by you. Let him fully realize that she is the real teacher and that you, with your art, do nothing more than walk quietly at her side. Should a bird sing or an insect hum on a leaf, at once stop your talk; bird and insect are teaching him; you may be silent. "But in those few hours of study devoted to the steady acquirement of necessary knowledge, you must suffer no interruption. Let such hours be few, but let them be inviolable. The least irregularity in this respect must be immediately corrected. Make it impossible for the child to have the faintest hope of being able to escape this duty. Such a hope would encourage restlessness, whereas the certainty that there is no escape will cause even the desire to escape to be forgotten. In this case, indeed, Nature must no longer be listened to, and the child's desire for freedom must be resisted. "A father who guides wisely and blames justly must be obeyed by his child, but no unnecessary command must be given. Never let your orders be the result of caprice, or vanity, or a partiality for knowledge which is not essential. To ensure obedience it is most important that children should know exactly what is forbidden. Nothing produces so much bitter feeling as the punishment of ignorance as a fault. If you punish an innocent child you lose your hold on his heart. We must not imagine that a child knows by instinct what is harmful and what things are held to be important. "Plenty of joy and liberty, with a few periods of restraint, during which the child has to fight against and subdue his natural desires, will give strength and the power of endurance. Too much restraint would have a disheartening effect, and joys coming more rarely would no longer have the same happy influence. The character is formed by the strongest and most frequent impressions, all others are com.paratively powerless. That is why it is possible for education to correct defects, and why the maxim is no less false than discouraging which says that a few chance impressions suffice to undo the work of the most careful educator. "Jacobli has been self-willed and violent; I have been bliged to punish him several times to-day." "February 16th and 17th. To cure his stubbornness and void the daily renewal of the same rebukes, which, unFortunately, is beginning to be necessary, I must be more careful to alternate his lessons with his games, and not curtail his liberty unnecessarily; I must also decide definitely exactly how much time is to be set apart for actual study, so that nothing he learns at other times may seem like work. "I have taught him to hold his pencil. Although this is a very small matter, I will never let him hold it badly again." "February 18th. -To-day I have been walking with him a great deal. How little I am yet able to take advantage of circumstances which might help to teach some useful lesson! "My wife met the carpenter and asked for the payment of a debt. 'Mamma,' cried Jacobli, 'don't vex the carpenter." "February 19th. -I find myself sometimes embarrassed through having given up, with all other pedantries, the master's tone of authority. Where shall I draw the line between liberty and obedience, that social life so soon compels us te draw? "REASONS FOR LIBERTY. "It is impossible to curtail a child's liberty without, to some extent, incurring his dislike. "Experience proves that children who have been too much under restraint, make up for it later by excesses in the opposite direction. "Restraint excites various passions. "A wise liberty induces the child to keep his eyes and ears open, and makes him contented, happy, and eventempered. "But this complete liberty supposes a preliminary education, which has taught the child submission to the nature of things, though not to the will of man. "REASONS FOR OBEDIENCE. "Without it there is no education possible. There are crises, indeed, when the child would be ruined by being allowed his liberty. Even under the most favourable circumstances it is impossible not to thwart his will occasionally. "Liberty does not stifle the passions, it only delays their development. It is vanity, for instance, that makes Emile tremble in his desire to excel the juggler. And does not Rousseau himself recognise the state of dependence in which society places us, when he says that there are some men of such passionate natures that they would certainly have to be subjected to restraint in their youth, if their childhood had been left entirely free. "Social life demands such talents and habits as it is not possible to form without restraining the child's liberty. "Which of these is the true position and which the false ? Liberty is good, and so is obedience. We must reconcile what Rousseau separated when, struck by the evils of the unwise restraint that only tends to degrade humanity, he advocated unbounded liberty. "Let us endeavour to see how far he was right, and profit by his wisdom. "I would say to the teacher: Be thoroughly convinced of the immense value of liberty; do not let vanity make you anxious to see your efforts producing premature fruit; let your child be as free as possible, and seek diligently for every means of ensuring his liberty, peace of mind, and good humour. Teach him absolutely nothing by words that you can teach him by the things themselves; let him see for himself, hear, find out, fall, pick himself up, make mistakes; no word, in short, when action is possible. What he can do for himself, let him do it; let him be always occupied, always active, and let the time you leave him to himself represent by far the greatest part of his childhood. You will then see that Nature teaches him better than men. "But when you see the necessity of accustoming him to obedience, prepare yourself with the greatest care for this duty, the most difficult of all in such an education as we are considering. Remember that if restraint robs you of your pupil's confidence, all your labour is lost. Make sure, then, of his heart, and let him feel that you are necessary to him. Be merrier and pleasanter than any of his companions; in his games let him prefer you to all the rest. "He must trust you. If he often asks for something you do not think good, tell him what the consequences will be, and leave him his liberty. But you must take care that the consequences are such as he will not easily forget, Always show him the right way. Should he leave it and fall into the mire, go to his rescue, but do not shield him from the unpleasant results of having enjoyed complete liberty, and of not having listened to your warnings. In this way his trust in you will be so great that it will not be shaken even when you have to thwart him. He must obey the wise teacher or the father he has learned to respect; but only in cases of necessity must an order be given." We have quoted from the journal at this length, because it has such direct bearing on the history of that great educational reform which began a hundred years ago, and which, partly in accordance with Rousseau's ideas, partly in opposition to them, is still going on. In the extracts we have given, we see Pestalozzi not only finding out the defects of Rousseau's system, but discovering some of the principles which he was afterwards to develop for the good of humanity. And yet this gentle and clear-sighted father, always under the charm of the eloquent author of Emile, often forgets his own principles and falls back into the very Grors he condemns. The poor child, who was the subject of all these experiments, and to whom we perhaps owe the Pestalozzian method, paid dearly for them. The system of the Genevan Philosopher continued to predominate in his education till the year 1775, but after that time his teaching became subordinate to the needs of a new enterprise which absorbed all his father's time and strength, and for the next five years he was simply the companion of the little ragged children, of whom we shall read in the next chapter. In 1782, in a periodical he was then editing, Pestalozzi wrote as follows: "My son is more than eleven years old and cannot yet read or write; but this does not at all trouble me. "The other day when he was playing alone near his mother, she said to him: 'To-morrow is papa's birthday; wouldn't you like to do something for him?' 'Yes, if I could write,' answered the child. 'If you will say something, I will write it for you,' said his mother. Whereupon he began to think, running up and down the room and muttering, almost singing, to himself what he wanted to say. Before very long he came and smiled at his mother. 'What do you want, my dear child?' 'Ah, you know very well.' 'Have you something to say to me for papa?' 'Yes, if you will write it down.' His mother then wrote down word for word the following lines, which the child dictated in a chanting voice, explaining that it was poetry : My wish, dear papa, for your birthday to-day, Is that you may live a long, long time; I thank you a thousand times for all your kindnesses, I thank you for having brought me up tenderly and happily, Thank you a thousand, thousand times! I don't know how often I should like to thank you ! Now I will tell you what is in my heart: I shall rejoice, I shall rejoice terribly When you can say: I have brought up my son in happiness; When I can say: I am his joy and his happiness. Then only shall I be able to thank you For all you have done for me during my life. You will be glad as well as I, The day I can say it. Then we will be happy together all our lives, And dear mamma will also pray with us. Then we will work together like lambs, That we may live with God and with honour, And that we may be content with what God gives us. |