The Individual and the Race. Empirical beginning.

complex], which implies that the mind should be introduced to principles through the medium of examples, and so should be led from the particular to the general, from the concrete to the abstract." In conformity with this principle, Pest lozzi made the actual counting of things precede the teaching of abstract rules in arithmetic. Basedow introduced weights and measures into the school, and Mr. Spencer describes some exercise in cutting out geometrical figures in cardboard, as a preparation for geometry. The difficulty about such instruction is that it requires apparatus, and apparatus is apt to get lost or out of order. But if apparatus is good for anything at all, it is worth a little trouble. There is a tendency in the minds of many teachers to depreciate "mechanical appliances." Even a decent black-board is not always to be found in our higher schools. But, though such appliances will not enable a bad master to teach well, nevertheless, other things being equal, the master will teach better with them than without them. There is little credit due to him for managing to dispense with apparatus. An author might as well pride himself on being saving in pens and paper.

24. 4. "The genesis of knowledge in the individual must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race." This is the thesis on which I have no opinion to offer.

$ 25. 5. From the above principle Mr. Spencer infers that every study should have a purely experimental introduction, thus proceeding through an empirical stage to a rational.

26. 6. A second conclusion which Mr. Spencer draws is that, in education, the process of self-development should be encouraged to the utmost. Children should be led to

Against "telling." Effect of bad teaching.

make their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences. They should be told as little as possible, and induced to discover as much as possible. I quite agree with Mr. Spencer that this principle cannot be too strenuously insisted on, though it obviously demands a high ainount of intelligence in the teacher. But if education is to be a training of the faculties, if it is to prepare the pupil to teach himself, something more is needed than simply to pour in knowledge and make the pupil reproduce it. The receptive and reproductive faculties form but a small portion of a child's powers, and yet the only portion which many schoolmasters seek to cultivate. It is indeed, not easy to get beyond this point; but the impediment is in us, not in the children. "Who can watch," ask Mr. Spencer, “the ceaseless observation, and inquiry, and inference, going on in a child's mind, or listen to its acute remarks in matters within the range of its faculties, without perceiving that these powers it manifests, if brought to bear systematically upon studies within the same range, would readily master them without help? This need for perpetual telling results from our stupidity, not from the child's. We drag it away from the facts in which it is interested, and which it is actively assimilating of itself. We put before it facts far too complex for it to understand, and therefore distasteful to it. Finding that it will not voluntarily acquire these facts, we thrust them into its mind by force of threats and punishment. By thus denying the knowledge it craves, and cramming it with knowledge it cannot digest, we produce a morbid state of its faculties, and a consequent disgust for knowledge in general. And when, as a result, partly of the stolid indolence we have brought on, and partly of still-continued unfitness in its studies, the child

Learning should be pleasurable.

can understand nothing without explanation, and becomes a mere passive recipient of our instruction, we infer hat education must necessarily be carried on thus. Having by our method induced helplessness, we make the helplessness a reason for our method." It is, of course, much easier to point out defects than to remedy them: but every one who has observed the usual indifference of schoolboys to their work, and the waste of time consequent on their inattention or only half-hearted attention to the matter before them, and then thinks of the eagerness with which the same boys throw themselves into the pursuits of their play-hours, will feel a desire to get at the cause of this difference; and, perhaps, it may seem to him partly accounted for by the fact that their school-work makes a monotonous demand on a single faculty-the memory.

27. 7. This brings me to the last of Mr. Spencer's principles of intellectual education. Instruction must excite the interest of the pupils and therefore be pleasurable to them. "Nature has made the healthful exercise of our faculties both of mind and body pleasurable. It is true that some of the highest mental powers as yet but little developed in the race, and congenitally possessed in any considerable degree only by the most advanced, are indisposed to the amount of exertion required of them. But these, in virtue of their very complexity will in a normal course of culture come last into exercise, and will, therefore, have no demands made on them until the pupil has arrived at an age when ulterior motives can be brought into play, and an indirect pleasure made to counterbalance a direct displeasure. With all faculties lower than these, however, the immediate gratification consequent on activity is the normal stimulus, and under good management the only

Can learning be made interesting?

needful stimulus. When we have to fall back on some other, we must take the fact as evidence that we are on the wrong track. Experience is daily showing with greater clearness that there is always a method to be found produc tive of interest—even of delight—and it ever turns out that this is the method proved by all other tests to be the right one."

§ 28. As far as I have had the means of judging, I have found that the majority of teachers reject this principle. If you ask them why, most of them will tell you that it is impossible to make school-work interesting to children. large number also hold that it is not desirable. consider these two points separately.

Let us

Of course, if it is not possible to get children to take interest in anything they could be taught in school, there is an end of the matter. But no one really goes as far as this. Every teacher finds that some of the things boys are taught they like better than others, and perhaps that one boy takes to one subject and another to another; and he also finds, both of classes and individuals, that they always get on best with what they like best. The utmost that can be maintained is, then, that some subjects which must be taught will not interest the majority of the learners. And if it be once admitted that it is desirable to make learning pleasant and interesting to our pupils, this principle will influence us to some extent in the subjects we select for teaching, and still more in the methods by which we endeavour to teach them. I say we shall be guided to some extent in the selection of subjects. There are theorists who assert that nature gives to young minds a craving for their proper aliment, so that they should be taught only what they show an inclination for. But surely our natural inclinations in this matter, as in others, are neither on the

FF

Apathy from bad teaching.

one hand to be ignored, nor on the other to be uncontrolled by such motives as our reason dictates to us. We at length perceive this in the physical nurture of our children. Locke directs that children are to have very little sugar or salt. "Sweetmeats of all kinds are to be avoided," says he, "which, whether they do more harm to the maker or eater is not easy to tell." (Ed. § 20.) Now, however, doctors have found out that young people's taste for sweets should in moderation be gratified, that they require sugar as much as they require any other kind of nutriment. But no one would think of feeding his children entirely on sweetmeats, or even of letting them have an unlimited supply of plum puddings and hardbake. If we follow out this analogy in nourishing the mind, we shall, to some extent, gratify a child's taste for "stories," whilst we also provide a large amount of more solid fare. But although we should certainly not ignore our children's likes and dislikes in learning, or in anything else, it is easy to attach too much importance to them. Dislike very often proceeds from mere want of insight into the subject. When a boy has "done" the First Book of Euclid without knowing how to judge of the size of an angle, or the Second Book without forming any conception of a rectangle, no one can be surprised at his not liking Euclid. And then the failure which is really due to bad teaching is attributed by the master to the stupidity of his pupil, and by the pupil to the dulness of the subject. If masters really desired to make learning a pleasure to their pupils, I think they would find that much might be done to effect this without any alteration in the subjects taught.

But the present dulness of school-work is not without its defenders. They insist on the importance of breaking