Comenius begins science of education. § 13. But towards the middle of the sixteen hundreds a very eminent Innovator took a comprehensive view of education, and reduced instruction to its proper place, that is, he treated it as a part of education merely. This man, Comenius, was at once a philosopher, a philanthropist, and a schoolmaster; and in his writings we find the first attempt at a science of education. The outline of his science is as follows: "We live a threefold life-a vegetative, an animal, and an intellectual or spiritual. Of these, the first is perfect in the womb, the last in heaven. He is happy who comes with healthy body into the world, much more he who goes with healthy spirit out of it. According to the heavenly idea a man should-1st, Know all things; 2nd, He should be master of things and of himself; 3rd, He should reser everything to God. So that within us Nature has implanted the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of piety. To bring these seeds to maturity is the object of education. All men require education, and God has made children unfit for other employment that they may have time to learn." Here we have quite a new theory of the educator's task. He is to bring to maturity the seeds of learning, virtue, and piety, which are already sown by Nature in his pupils. This is quite different from the pouring-in theory, and seems to anticipate the notion of Froebel, that the educator should be called not teacher but gardener. But Comenius evidently made too much of knowledge. Had he lived two centuries later he would have seen the area of possible knowledge extending to infinity in all directions, and he would no longer have made it his ideal that " man should know all things." § 14 The next great thinker about education-I mean Locke's teacher a disposer of influence. Locke-seems to me chiefly important from his having taken up the principles of Montaigne and treated the giving of knowledge as of very small importance. Montaigne, as we have seen, was the first to bring out clearly that education was much more than instruction, as the whole was greater than its part, and that instruction was of far less importance than some other parts of education. And this lies at the root of Locke's theory also. The great function of the educator, according to him, is not to teach, but to dispose the pupil to virtue first, industry next, and then knowledge; but he thinks where the first two have been properly cared for knowledge will come of itself. The following are Locke's own words :-"The great work of a governor is to fashion the carriage and to form the mind, to settle in his pupil good habits and the principles of virtue and wisdom, to give him little by little a view of mankind and work him into a love and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy; and in the prosecution of it to give him vigour, activity, and industry. The studies which he sets. him upon are but, as it were, the exercise of his faculties and employment of his time; to keep him from sauntering and idleness; to teach him application and accustom him to take pains, and to give him some little taste of what his own industry must perfect.”* So we see that Locke * This theory of the educator's task which makes him a disposer or director of influence rather than a teacher, led Locke to decry our public schools, for in them the traditions and tone of the school seem the source of influence, and the masters are to all appearance mainly teachers. Locke's own words are these:-"The difference is great between two or three pupils in the same house and three or four score boys lodged up and down; for let the master's industry and skill be never so great, it is impossible he should have fifty or a hundred JI Locke and public schools. Escape from “idols.” agrees with Comenius in his enlarged view of the educator's task, and that he thought much less than Comenius of the importance of the knowledge to be given. 15. We already see a gradual escape from the "idols " of the Renascence. Locke, instead of accepting the learned ideal, declares that learning is the last and least thing to be thought of. He cares little about the ordinary literary instruction given to children, though he thinks they must be taught something and does not know what to put in its place. He provides for the education of those who are scholars under his eye any longer than they are in the school together, nor can it be expected that he should instruct them successfully in anything but their books; the forming of their minds and manners requiring a constant attention and particular application to every single boy which is impossible in a numerous flock, and would be wholly in vain (could he have time to study and correct everyone's particular defects and wrong inclinations) when the lad was to be left to himself or the prevailing infection of his fellows the greatest part of the four-and-twenty hours." But the educator who considers himself a director of influences must remember that he is not the only force. The boy's companions are a force at least as great; and if he were brought up in private on Locke's system, he would be entirely without a kind of influence much more valuable than Locke seems to think-the influence of boy companions, and of the traditions of a great school. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that our public schools used to be, and perhaps are still to some extent, under-mastered, and that the masters should not be the mere teachers which, from overwork and other causes, they often tend to become. The consequence has been that the real education of the boys has in a great measure passed out of their hands. What has been the result? A long succession of able teachers have aimed at giving literary instruction and making their pupils classical scholars. Both manners and bodily training have been left to take care of then:selves. Yet such is the irony of Fate that the majority of youths who leave our great schools are not literary and are not much of classical scholars, but they are decidedly gentlemanly and still more decidedly athletic. Rousseau's clean sweep. to remain ignorant of Greek, but only when they are "gentlemen." In this respect the van is led by Comenius, who thought of education for all, boys and girls, rich and poor, alike. Comenius also gave the first hint of the true nature of our task-to bring to perfection the seeds implanted by Nature. He also cared for the little ones whom the schoolmaster had despised. Locke does not escape from a certain intellectual disdain of "my young masters," as he calls them; but in one respect he advanced as far as the best thinkers among his successors have advanced. Knowledge, he says, must come by the action of the learner's own mind. The true teacher is within. § 16. We now come to the least practical and at the same time the most influential of all the writers on education -I mean Rousseau. He, like Rabelais, Montaigne, and Locke, was (to use Matthew Arnold's expression) a "child of the idea." He attacked scholastic use and wont not in the name of expedience, but in the name of reason; and such an attack-so eloquent, so vehement, so uncompromising-had never been made before. Still there remained even in theory, and far more in practice, effects produced by the false ideal of the Renascence. This ideal Rousseau entirely rejected. He proposed making a clean sweep and returning to what he called the state of Nature. § 17. Rousseau was by no means the first of the Reformers who advocated a return to Nature. There has been a constant conviction in men's minds from the time of the Stoics onwards that most of the evils which afflict humanity have come from our not following "Nature." The cry of "Everything according to Nature" was soon raised by educationists. Ratke announced it as one of his Benevolence of Nature. Man disturbs. principles. Comenius would base all action on the analogy of Nature. Indeed, there has hardly ever been a system of education which did not lay claim to be the " natural” system. And by "natural" has been always understood something different from what is usual. What is the notion that produces this antithesis? § 18. When we come to trace back things to their cause we are wont to attribute them to God, to Nature, or to Man. According to the general belief, God works in and through Nature, and therefore the tendency of things apart from human agency must be to good. This faith which underlies all our thoughts and modes of speech, has been beautifully expressed by Wordsworth— "A gracious spirit o'er this earth presides, It comes to works of unreproved delight And tendency benign; directing those Who care not, know not, think not, what they do.” Prelude, v, ad f. Here But if the tendency of things is to good, why should the usual be in such strong contrast with "the natural"? again we may turn to Wordsworth. After pointing to the harmony of the visible world, and declaring his faith that “every flower enjoys the air it breathes,” he goes on— “If this belief from heaven be sent, If this be Nature's holy plan, Have I not reason to lament, What Man has made of Man ?” This passage might be taken as the motto of Rousseauism. According to that philosophy man is the great disturber and perverter of the natural order. Other animals simply follow |