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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. A large number also hold that it is not desirable. Let us consider these two points separately.

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 som; 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

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

Should learning be made interesting?

in the mind to hard work. This can only be done, they say, by tasks which are repulsive to it. The schoolboy does not like, and ought not to like, learning Latin grammar any more than the colt should find pleasure in running round in a circle: the very fact that these things are not pleasant makes them beneficial. Perhaps a certain amount of such training may train down the mind and qualify it for some drudgery from which it might otherwise revolt; but if this result is attained, it is attained at the sacrifice of the intellectual activity which is necessary for any higher function. As Carlyle says, (Latter-Day PP., No. iij), when speaking of routine work generally, you want nothing but a sorry nag to draw your sand-cart; your high-spirited Arab will be dangerous in such a capacity. But who would advocate for all colts a training which should render them fit for nothing but such humble toil? I shall say more about this further on (v. pp. 472 ff.); here I will merely express my strong conviction that boys' minds are frequently dwarfed, and their interest in intellectual pursuits blighted, by the practice of employing the first years of their school-life in learning by heart things which it is quite impossible for them to understand or care for. Teachers set out by assuming that little boys cannot understand anything, and that all we can do with them is to keep them quiet and cram them with forms which will come in useful at a later age. When the boys have been taught on this system for two or three years, their teacher complains that they are stupid and inattentive, and that so long as they can say a thing by heart they never trouble themselves to understand it. In other words, the teacher grumbles at them for doing precisely what they have been taught to do, for repeating words without any thought of their meaning.

Difference between theory and practice.

§ 29. In this very important matter I am fully alive to the difference between theory and practice. It is so easy to recommend that boys should be got to understand and take an interest in their work-so difficult to carry out the recommendation! Grown people can hardly conceive that words which have in their minds been associated with familiar ideas from time immemorial, are mere sounds in the mouths of their pupils. The teacher thinks he is beginning at the beginning if he says that a transitive verb must govern an accusative, or that all the angles of a square are right angles. He gives his pupils credit for innate ideas up to this point, at all events, and advancing on this supposition he finds that he can get nothing out of them but memory-work; so he insists on this that his time and theirs may seem not to be wholly wasted. The great difficulty of teaching well, however, is after all but a poor excuse for contentedly teaching badly, and it would be a great step in advance if teachers in general were as dissatisfied with themselves as they usually are with their pupils.*

* Mr. Spencer and Professor Tyndall appeal to the results of experience as justifying a more rational method of teaching. Speaking of geometrical deductions, Mr. Spencer says: "It has repeatedly occurred that those who have been stupefied by the ordinary school-drill-by its abstract formulas, its wearisome tasks, its cramming-have suddenly had their intellects roused by thus ceasing to make them passive recipients, and inducing them to become active discoverers. The discouragement caused by bad teaching having been diminished by a little sympathy, and sufficient perseverance excited to achieve a first success, there arises a revolution of feeling affecting the whole nature. They no longer find themselves incompetent; they too can do something. And gradually, as success follows success, the incubus of despair disappears, and they attack the difficulties of their other studies with a courage insuring conquest."

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Importance of H. S.'s work.

§ 30. I do not purpose following Mr. Spencer through his chapters on moral and physical education. In practice I find I can draw no line between moral and religious education; so the discussion of one without the other has not for me much interest. Mr. Spencer has some very valuable remarks on physical education which I could do little more than extract, and I have already made too many quotations from a work which will be in the hands of most of my readers.

§ 31. Mr. Spencer differs very widely from the great body of our schoolmasters. I have ventured in turn to differ on some points from Mr. Spencer; but I have failed to give any adequate notion of the work I have been discussing if the reader has not perceived that it is not only one of the most readable, but also one of the most important books on education in the English language.

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