Training rather than teaching. have learnt by heart, he seldom does more than offer explanations. He measures the teaching rather by the amount which has been put before the scholars-by what he has done for them and shown them-than by what they have learned. But this is not teaching of the highest type. When the votary of Dulness in the "Dunciad" is rendering an account of his services, he arrives at this climax, "For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And in the same spirit Mr. J. M. Wilson stigmatises as synonymous "the most stupid and most didactic teaching." § II. All the eminent authorities on education have a very different theory of the teacher's function. According to them the master's attention is not to be fixed on his own mind and his own store of knowledge, but on his pupil's mind and on its gradual expansion. He must, in fact, be not so much a teacher as a trainer. Here we have the view which Jacotot intended to enforce by his paradox; for we may possibly train faculties which we do not ourselves possess, just as the sportsman trains his pointer and his hunter to perform feats which are altogether out of the range of his own capacities. Now, "training is the cultivation bestowed on any set of faculties with the object of developing them" (J. M. Wilson), and to train any faculty, you must set it to work. Hence it follows, that as boys' minds are not simply their memories, the master must aim at something more than causing his pupils to remember facts. Jacotot has done good service to education by giving pro minence to this truth, and by showing in his method how other faculties may be cultivated besides the memory. 3. Tout est dans tout. Quidlibet ex quolibet.. § 12. "Tout est dans tout" ("All is in all"), is another of Jacotot's paradoxes. I do not propose discussing it as the philosophical thesis which takes other forms, as "Evely man is a microcosm," &c., but merely to inquire into its meaning as applied to didactics. If you asked an ordinary French schoolmaster who Jacotot was, he would probably answer, Jacotot was a man who thought you could learn everything by getting up Fénelon's "Télémaque " by heart. By carrying your investigation further, you would find that this account of him required modification, that the learning by heart was only part, and a very small part, of what Jacotot demanded from his pupils, but you would also find that entire mastery of "Télémaque" was the first requisite, and that he managed to connect everything he taught with that "model-book." Of course, if" tout est dans tout," everything is in "Télémaque;" and, said an objector, also in the first book of "Télémaque and in the first word. Jacotot went through a variety of subtilties to show that all "Télémaque" is contained in the word Calypso, and perhaps he would have been equally successful, if he had been required to take only the first letter instead of the first word. His maxim indeed becomes by his treatment of it a mere paraphrase of "Quidlibet ex quolibet." The reader is amused rather than convinced by these discussions, but he finds them not without fruit. They bring to his mind very forcibly a truth to which he has hitherto probably not paid sufficient attention. He sees that all knowledge is connected together, or (what will do equally well for our present purpose) that there are a thousand links by which we may bring into connexion the different subjects of knowledge. If by means of these links we can attach in our minds the knowledge we acquire to Connexion of knowledges. the knowledge we already possess, we shall learn faster and more intelligently, and at the same time we shall have a much better chance of retaining our new acquisitions. The memory, as we all know, is assisted even by artificial association of ideas, much more by natural. Hence the value of "tout est dans tout," or, to adopt a modification suggested by Joseph Payne, of the connexion of knowledges. Suppose we know only one subject, but know that thoroughly, our knowledge, if I may express myself algebraically, cannot be represented by ignorance plus the knowledge of that subject. We have acquired a great deal more than that. When other subjects come before us, they may prove to be so connected with what we had before, that we may also seem to know them already. In other words when we know a little thoroughly, though our actual possession is small, we have potentially a great deal more.* § 13. Jacotot's practical application of his "tout est dans tout" was as follows :—“Il faut apprendre quelque chose, et y rapporter tout le reste." ("The pupil must learn something thoroughly, and refer everything to that.") For language he must take a model book, and become thoroughly master of it. His knowledge must not be a verbal knowledge only, but he must enter into the sense and spirit of the writer. Here we find that Jacotot's practical advice coincides with that of many other great authorities, who do not base it on the same principle. The Jesuits' maxim was, that their pupils should always learn something thoroughly, however : * See H. Courthope Bowen on "Connectedness in Teaching" (Educational Times, June, 1890). Mr. Bowen quotes from H. Spencer -“ Knowledge of the lowest kind is un-unified knowledge: science is partially unified knowledge: philosophy is completely unified know. ledge." Connect with model book. Memorizing. little n might be. Pestalozzi insisted on the children going over the elements again and again till they were completely inaster of them. Ascham, Ratke, and Comenius all required a model-book to be read and re-read till words and thoughts were firmly fixed in the pupil's memory. Jacotot probably never read Ascham's "Schoolmaster." If he had done so he might have appropriated some of Ascham's words as exactly conveying his own thoughts. Ascham, as we saw, recommended that a short book should be thoroughly mastered, each lesson being worked over in different ways a dozen times at the least, and in this way "your scholar shall be brought not only to like eloquence, but also to all true understanding and right judgment, both for writing and speaking." In this the Englishman and the Frenchman are in perfect accord. § 14. But if Jacotot agrees so far with earlier authorities, there is one point in which he seems to differ from them. He makes great demands on the memory, and requires six books of "Télémaque" to be learned by heart. On the other hand, Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau, H. Spencer, and other great writers would be opposed to this. Ratke insisted that nothing should be learnt by heart. Protests against "loading the memory," "saying without book," &c., are everywhere to be met with, and nowhere more vigorously expressed than in Ascham. He says of the grammar-school boys of his time, that "their whole knowledge, by learning without the book, was tied only to their tongue and lips, and never ascended up to the brain and head, and therefore was soon spit out of the mouth again. They learnt without book everything, they understood within the book little or nothing." But these protests were really directed at verbal knowledge, when it is made to take the place of Ways of studying the model book. to suppose knowledge of the thing signified. We are always too ready that words are connected with ideas, though both old and young are constantly exposing themselves to the sarcasm of Mephistopheles : Against this danger Jacotot took special precautions. The pupil was to undergo an examination in everything connected with the lesson learnt, and the master's share in the work was to convince himself, from the answers he received, that the pupil thoroughly grasped the meaning, as well as remembered the words, of the author. Still the six books of "Télémaque," which Jacotot gave to be learnt by heart, was a very large dose, and he would have been more faithful to his own principles, says Joseph Payne, if he had given the first book only. § 15. There are three ways in which the model-book may be studied.. Ist, it may be read through rapidly again and again, which was Ratke's plan and Hainilton's; or, 2nd, each lesson may be thoroughly mastered, read in various ways a dozen times at the least, which was Ascham's plan; or, 3rd, the pupil may begin always at the beginning, and advance a little further each time, which was Jacotot's plan.* This last, could not, of course, be carried very far, * As I have said above (p. 89) these methodizers in language-learning may, with regard to the first stage, be divided into two parties which I have called Complete Retainers and Rapid Impressionists. Two Complete Retainers, Robertson and Prendergast, have, as it seems to me, made, since Jacotot, a great advance on his method and that of his |