5. Nothing on compulsion.

but on sensible things," this truth is only now making its way into the schoolroom. Hitherto the foundation has hardly been laid before "the schoolmaster has stept in and staid the building by confounding the language.' Ratke's protest against this will always be put to his credit in the history of education. "The young

§ 15. V. Everything without constraint. should not be beaten to make them learn or for not having learnt. It is compulsion and stripes that set young people against studying. Boys are often beaten for not having learnt, but they would have learnt had they been well taught. The human understanding is so formed that it has pleasure in receiving what it should retain and this pleasure you destroy by your harshness. Where the master is skilful and judicious, the boys will take to him and to their lessons. Folly lurks indeed in the heart of the child and must be driven out with the rod; but not by the teacher."

Here at least there is nothing original in Ratke's precept. A goodly array of authorities have condemned learning "upon compulsion." This array extends at least as far as

* Lectures and Essays: English in School, by J. R. Seeley, p. 222. Elsewhere in the same lecture (p. 229) Professor Seeley says: "The schoolmaster might set this right. Every boy that enters the school is a talking creature. He is a performer, in his small degree, upon the same instrument as Milton and Shakespeare. Only do not sacrifice this advantage. Do not try by artificial and laborious processes to give him a new knowledge before you have developed that which he has already. Train and perfect the gift of speech, unfold all that is in it, and you train at the same time the power of thought and the power of intellectual sympathy, you enable your pupil to think the thoughts and to delight in the words of great philosophers and poets." I wish this lecture were published separately.

6. Nothing to be learnt by heart.

from Plato to Bishop Dupanloup. "In the case of the mind, no study pursued under compulsion remains rooted. in the memory," says Plato.* "Everything depends," says Dupanloup, "on what the teacher induces his pupils to do freely: for authority is not constraint-it ought to be inseparable from respect and devotion. I will respect human liberty in the smallest child." As far as I have observed there is only one class of persons whom the authorities from Plato to Dupanloup have failed to convince, and that is the schoolmasters. This is the class to which I have belonged, and I should not be prepared to take Plato's counsel: Bring up your boys in their studies without constraint and in a playful manner.” (Ib.) At the same time I see the importance of self-activity, and there is no such thing as self-activity upon compulsion. You can no more hurry thought with the cane than you can hurry a snail with a pin. So without interest there can be no proper learning. Interest must be aroused-even in Latin Grammar. But if they could choose their own occupation, the boys, however interested in their work, would probably find something else more interesting still. We cannot get on, and never shall, without the must.

§ 16. VI. Nothing may be learnt by heart.

It has always been a common mistake in the schoolroom to confound the power of 1unning along a sequence of sounds with a mastery of the thought with which those sounds thould be connected. But, as I have remarked elsewhere (supra, p. 74, note), the two things, though different, are not opposed. Too much is likely to be made of learning by heart, for of the two things the pupils find it the

* Rep. bk. vil, 536, ad f.; Davies and Vaughan, p. 264.

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7. Uniformity. 8. Ne modus rei ante rem.

easier, and the teacher the more easily tested. We may, however, guard against the abuse without giving up the use. § 17. VII.* Uniformity in all things.

Both in the way of learning, and in the books, and the rules, a uniform method should be observed, says Ratke.

The right plan is for the learner to acquire familiar knowledge of one subject or part of a subject, and then use this for comparison when he learns beyond it. If the same method of learning is adopted throughout, this will render comparison more easy and more striking.†

§ 18. VIII. The thing itself should come first, then whatever explains it.

To those who do not with closed eyes cling to the method of their predecessors, this rule may seem founded on common-sense. Would any one but a "teacher," or a writer of school books, ever think of making children who do not know a word of French, learn about the French accents? And yet what Ratke said 250 years ago has not been disproved since: "Accidens rei priusquam rem ipsam quaerere prorsus absonum et absurdum esse videtur," which I take to mean: "Before the learner has a notion of the thing itself, it is folly to worry him about its accidents or even its properties, essential or unessential. Ne modus rei ante rem.‡

*In Buisson (Dictionnaire) No. 7 is "The children must have frequent play, and a break after every lesson." Raumer connects this with No. 6, and says: “breaks were rendered necessary by Ratke's plan, which kept the learners far too silent."

+ In the matter of grammar Ratke's advice, so long disregarded, has recently been followed in the "Parallel Grammar Series," published by Messrs. Sonnenschein.

The ordinary teaching of almost every subject offers illustrations of

9. Per inductionem omnia.

This rule of Ratke's warns teachers against a very common mistake. The subject is to them in full view, and they make the most minute observations on it. But these things cannot be seen by their pupils; and even if the beginner could see these minutiae, he would find in them. neither interest nor advantage. But when we apply Ratke's principle more widely, we find ourselves involved in the great question whether our method should be based on synthesis or analysis, a question which Ratke's method did not settle for us.

§ 19. IX. Everything by experience and examination of the parts. Or as he states the rule in Latin: Per inductionem et experimentum omnia.

Nothing was to be received on authority, and this disciple of Bacon went beyond his master and took for his motto: Vetustas cessit, ratio vicit ("Age has yielded, reason prevailed"); as if reason must be brand-new, and truth might wax old and be ready to vanish away.

the neglect of this principle. Take, e.g., the way in which children are usually taught to read. First, they have to say the alphabet—a very easy task as it seems to us, but if we met with a strange word of twenty-six syllables, and that not a compound word, but one of which every syllable was new to us, we might have some difficulty in remembering it. And yet such a word would be to us what the alphabet is to a child. When he can perform this feat, he is next required to learn the visual symbols of the sounds and to connect these with the vocal symbols. Some of the vocal symbols bring the child in contact with the sound itself, but most are simply conventional. What notion does the child get of the aspirate from the name of the letter h? Having learnt twenty-six visual and twenty-six vocal symbols, and connected them together, the child finally comes to the sounds (over 40 in number) which the symbols are supposed to represent.

R.'s method for language.

§ 20. From these rules of his we see that Ratke did much to formulate the main principles of Didactics. He also deserves to be remembered among the methodizers who have tackled the problem-how to teach a language.

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At Köthen the instructor of the lowest class had to talk with the children, and to take pains with their pronunciation. When they knew their letters (Ickelsamer's plan for reading Ratke seems to have neglected) the teacher read the Book of Genesis through to them, each chapter twice over, requiring the children to follow with eye and finger. Then the teacher began the chapter again, and read about four lines only, which the children read after him. When the book had been worked over in this way, the children were required to read it through without assistance. Reading once secured,

the master proceeded to grammar. He explained, say, what a substantive was, and then showed instances in Genesis, and next required the children to point out others. In this way the grammar was verified throughout from Genesis, and the pupils were exercised in declining and conjugating words taken from the Book.

When they advanced to the study of Latin, they were given a translation of a play of Terence, and worked over it several times before they were shown the Latin.

The master then translated the play to them, each halfhour's work twice over. At the next reading, the master translated the first half-hour, and the boys translated the same piece the second. Having thus got through the play, they began again, and only the boys translated. After this there was a course of grammar, which was applied to the Terence, as the grammar of the mother-tongue had been to Genesis. Finally, the pupils were put through a course of exercises, in which they had to turn into Latin sentences